Month: September 2002

Sunday morning. A man lies asleep on a bench outside the post office, wearing only a shirt and jeans. Soon the nights will be too cold for that sort of thing – my guess is that he had too many drinks the night before to coordinate his limbs sufficiently to get himself home. An elderly couple on the next bench act as if he isn’t there.
A watery autumnal sun shines down on the litter scattered across the cathedral green as the bells ring out from the tower to announce the morning service to the waking city. A man sits on a bench under the lime trees rolling a cigarette, and looks up at me as I walk past him. Nearby, a middle aged woman stares vacantly into the middle distance as a young girl walks past on her way to the shops, where workers are unlocking doors and switching off alarms.
A pigeon picks at a discarded sandwich crust.
At the railway station, a mother and daughter speak in high speed Spanish about their plans for the day, clutching their tickets for the Brighton-bound train. Jamie, working the early shift in the coffee shop, gives me a cheery “good morning!” as I pick up my newspaper.
Two men disembark from the train as it rolls to a halt, tweed jackets slung over their shoulders, talking about cars and motor racing as they head to the courtesy bus to the Goodwood Revival Meeting.
The countryside rolls past the window, filled with the sights, sounds and smells of the harvest, as I flick through the stories of war, rape, murder and D-list celebrities. A woman on the next seat wth puffy eyes and tousled hair dozes blearily.
As I arrive at work, the sun becomes stronger – I can feel it on my arms.

Happiness is…

• cheeky comments from vodkabird
• beer with Arron, Guy, Kearn, Greg and assorted folk
• coming home to very cool kitchen lighting and a very juicy melon (no double entendre intended)
• lots of other stuff too, but I can’t really relate to that at the moment because I am not experiencing it. ho hum.
• oh, yeh, and laughing at five very short bald men in the pub. heartless, amn’t I?
• random memory recalled of looking at wild flowers in a village halfway up the side of Mount Teide on Tenerife, many years ago

Approved.

A full day’s DIY activity with Dad, leading to the installation of new kitchen taps, a new shower curtain rail, a new bookshelf in the living room and a new light fitting in the kitchen. Top result. That’s another bottle of something that I owe him.

Rate these things in order of foolhardiness:

1. sending text messages whilst drunk
2. dangling from a second floor window to retrieve a broken window
3. shooting fish from a rubber dingy on a lake at 1am whilst drunk
4. wiping bleach-covered hands on a clean red towel
5. publishing details of your life on a website
6. launching a unilateral attack on a middle east nation
7. dating a woman who called her child Ryan
8. wearing trousers so low that your butt crack shows
9. supporting Brighton and Hove Albion football club

After blocking Google last week, the Chinese authorities have now prevented their citizens from using AltaVista. It seems that they are attempting to render the internet useless for anything other than viewing Chinese government-approved online material.
Is your site blocked in China? Check here. This site is available to Chinese readers at the moment, but if I keep critising the Chinese authorities I guess it will be blocked soon too.
I doubt I have any Chinese readers anyway – but leave a comment and prove me wrong if you’re in China now.

More sex please, we’re Swedish.

HarHarHar to the guys with the white van parked on the corner of Orchard Avenue on the double yellow lines who thought they would be clever and come and move their van at 9am. The traffic warden was more clever and gave them a ticket a 8.50.

Beer tonight with Frances, her husband Simon and Karen B, with assorted others. Very pleasant indeed.

Strange goings-on….

• a small boy keeps walking up and down past my windows, looking straight in at me as I sit here typing this. This is very disturbing. He is barely tall enough to see over the window sill. Graybo Theatre – do you think I could charge?
• a window has blown off of number 181 across the road and is resting on the edge of the roof, ready to fall to the ground. The window is often left open, and I’ve frequently noticed it swinging about wildly in the breeze and not on a latch. With today’s stronger wind, I guess it was all too much for the hinges. The glass is broken, and it really does look like it could fall on someone’s head at any moment.
  Damn. I was going to go to the takeaway, but I see the lodger is now dangling out of the window in a very scary manner in an attempt to retrieve it. This I *have* to watch!
  Darn – he’s got it in a most unexciting way. I was looking forward to some exciting smashing of glass or bone then.