Archive for December, 2005

What I did at Christmas.

At Christmas I gotta lift home to Newport with Owen, who is Ruth’s brother, and Robion, who is also Ruth’s brother. But Robin is Ruth’s yunger brother, and cannot drive like her older brother Owen can.

For Christmas I had lots of pressents, which were nice, and Santa gave me a apple. Then the next day was boxing day and my sisters burthday is boxing day, so it was her birthday, and she got even more pressents, which was good for here.

Then my mother sed that since I do not stay at home often ennymore, and since we have no space in the house, what should we do? And so we came up with a plan, and now I do not have a bed at home, because we throwed it out to make more room in the house.

And that is what I did for Christmas.

No, really. But it is actually very sensible that we’ve done that, because at current rates I’m at home something like one week in fifty-two, so there’s been a whole room designated as “my bedroom” that wasn’t being used as such, and wasn’t being used as anything else either. Making it a box room, therefore, is actually fairly sensible, which is why I said we should do it. And then on the rare occasions when I am home, I can kip on the sofa bed.

Just thought I’d give a vague update, there, since we now have sluggish 2.2 Mbp/s broadband at home (courtesy of the slightly suspicious people at Wanadoo, who told my mother that “You can only go online with Internet Explorer if you’re using Broadband”. Er, no. No, fuck off… No… There we go, Firefox. Or Opera. I’m not too fussy, I just want something good.). Also, of course, my mother now has my old PC which, though sluggish and old, is still ten million times faster that the knackered e-machines box aimed at users who’ll never even take the cover off, or show file extensions, so using the PC here isn’t as punishing as once it was.

Now, however, I’m for bed, because I’ve got a bloody horrible cold, and a sore throat, and I’m totally exhausted.

Happy New Year, since I’m unlikely to blog again before then!

Wotcha all. Christmas time is here again…

…And, at some point, I trust I’ll start feeling like it is. Mostly, I don’t feel like it’s nearly Christmas because every time I go into a shop, I hear the same bloody December music I’ve been hearing all month – Winter Wonderland, and Santa Claus is Coming, and so on and suchlike.

At some point several years back, that probably did make me feel like it was Christmas, but we’re talking over a decade, here, and people with ages still in single figures tend to get excited by the mere mention of stockings, so…

…Hmm. Stockings, you say?

OK, bad example. How about:

…excited by the mere mention of advent calendars, which is something I can’t say I’ve done for some time. Christmas carols make me feel like it’s Christmas, and, paradoxically, so does Slade’s “Merry Christmas Everybody,” but I think that’s because I generally only hear carols in the last week or so of Advent, and we used to sing Slade as in the final assembly of the Autumn term back at AGS.

Everything else, on the other hand, gets shoved down my throat from November onwards, with the result that I don’t associate it with Christmas anymore. But, never mind, eh?

Cheers to everyone who turned up yesterday evening, it went, though I say so myself, rather well, despite Lidl’s stupidly running out of Gluhwein.

O, and following on vaguely from the conversation we had about Interactive Fiction, and suchlike, I do recommend people faintly interested go to Adam Cardre’s website and download some – Phototopia is very good, in a linear way, but it probably a good introduction, if you’ve not done much in the way of IF before.

Also I highly recommend Varicella, which is fantastically Machiavellian – proper House of Cards stuff, in places – although I’ve found it pretty hard – for God’s sake, make a map ASAP… and if you want a proper confusing time of it, ‘Shrapnel’ is brilliant, and turns your brains out rather better than Ian Banks’ ‘Walking on Glass,’ which is fairly impressive of it.

Should be going off to work now (Portland Road isn’t going to clean itself, especially not with the real bloody Christmas tree they’ve gone and put in it) and I need to come back and sort out the washing so it has a chance to dry off before Ruth heads off to Northampton and I hitch a lift as far as Newport. All the fun of the festive season, huh?

O – and thanks to Dan & Claire for the spare monitor. It’s currently perched on a stool, and has made the DOS-box far more useable, now I don’t have to fiddle about swapping cables over before firing it up.

‘Ray, work… Still, it gets me money, which I can promptly throw away to bribe Orange to keep me connected…

Week Ending… (or “that was the week that sucked…”)

Well, care or naff off to some other ego-boosting website, bitch.

Autumn, rarely my favourite time of year, being, as it is, too long for Dick and too short for Richard, with it’s not-quite-summer-heat and not-quite-winter-frosts was OK, although a bit naff on and off, especially since my mother came down with sciatica (sp?) in September and it still hasn’t cleared up yet, which isn’t great, and then came November, and things just went from gay to intolerant fundamentalist bigot…

First there was the trouble at 72, when we realised that the housemates there weren’t too keen on us, and decided it would be better all round if we left them to it.

Then, PJM let us move my room over to house 119c, with a view to moving Ruth’s room to 119d when the girl in there moved out.

119c was great, and the housemates there were all very nice and friendly, and all was going well until I got a worrying letter from the PJM warden. After that things just collapsed faster then a Guild exec meeting, when I discovered what the Warden wanted, which was about the same time I realised that what I wanted was a Lee Enfield (it’s the only type of gun for which I have any amunition whatsoever) and a sniper’s nest overlooking the front door.

At that point, I came to the conclusion that life was just getting too stressful and that, whilst I could devote the rest of my year here to making the lives of the dicks at 119 a total bloody misery, it would have the negative effect of forcing me to stay there whilst they made my life a misery as well. So on Wednesday, Ruth & I went into town and looked around all the estate agents in Aberystwyth (except for ALP Property Management, because they’re terrible (see link).

It was looking fairly promising, with a couple of things we hoped to get viewings for, including a nice-sounding attic flat on North Parade, at about £70 p/w, plus bills. So we were feeling good and cheered up, and headed back for an early night’s sleep at 119 on the Wednesday. And, as I’ve explained that really didn’t work. Evil little bastards. At 0115 Thursday, just after I made that entry, I rang Dan, who was an absolute saint, reacting to my close-to-tears “could we come and stay at the flat, tonight, please” with a spot-on “Yes, I’ll make sure the door’s open and we’ll see you in a bit,” which neatly avoided any silly questions like “Why?” or “What’s happened?” until we were in a better position to explain about it without bursting into tears at him.

On the way to the flat we stopped at the PJM amenities block to tell the porter who’d just been round with the warden that we were down the hill for the rest of the night, and if he got called out again, he needn’t bother going. The fact that I was in floods at this point seemed to un-nerve him (grown men with beards not being the type of people you expect to come and weep at you right after you’ve been round to tell them off for the loud music they’re supposed to be playing), and he kept telling us he’d only been round because he had to, and did we want him to get the warden again, and we said no, because how could it help, and he made a helpless face, and looked worried.

Thursday morning, we woke on the sofa bed at the flat (I now realise why Dan claims it was designed by someone who neither slept nor sat down) and Ruth told me about the dream she’d just had, which was mildly amusing. Then we went round the estate agents again, to listen to the depressing news that, although there were places, there weren’t many, and we couldn’t get viewings until at least next Wednesday.

So we went back to the Flat, and met Dan & Claire, who had just found a place to live, and Claire gave us a lift up the hill to see Eileen Watkin in the Accommodation Office.

More or less to her credit, she didn’t automatically take our side, although since Ruth was in tears again at this point, I’d’ve taken a softer line. She did, however, ring the PJM Amenities block, and spoke to Heather Morgan up there, and got rather more sympathetic after she’d done so (I’ve a sneaking suspicion the porter must’ve put a note in their log to say “Er, the noisy people just came and sobbed at me for five minutes, and now they’re going to sleep on someone’s floor so they can’t get complained about again…”, which would explain why she suddenly stopped asking questions about whether we were sure we’d not done anything to annoy them) and said she’d got a solution.

That solution turned out to be Hafan, the University’s collection of static caravans, somewhere round the back of the Arts Centre. It would, she explained, be cheaper than PJM – in fact it’s about £80 p/w inc, for the pair of us, which is half what we were paying in PJM, and she suggested we go and take a look at it. So, we went up to Cwrt Mawr reception, and got the keys to the caravan, and went out there to have a look. By this point, I was already very enthusiastic, although Ruth wasn’t so sure, and was still too nervous to notice that I kept saying “well, I think we should take it unless there’s something really wrong with it,” at five-minute intervals.

As it was, we got in there, and were immediately struck by the fact that the sitting room of the, uh, caravan, was bigger than the PJM rooms, and there was still the kitchen, the bathroom, the bedroom and the spare bedroom to go. Also, there was a gas cooker, which just about sold Ruth…

…Since then, there’s been a mad rush to empty the houses in PJM – many, many thanks to everyone who helped with that, especially Paul, who was an absolute saint, helping us shift shopping trolleys full of our stuff to the caravan (yes, yes, make yer damn Gypsy jokes and have done with it), and also to Bec Corn (in the incredibly unlikely event that she’s reading this) for seeing me and Paul with our over-filled trolleys on the final trip, stopping her Union van, and getting out of it to say “Can I help? Only I notice I’ve got a van, and you’ve got a load of stuff in some trolleys”. OK, earlier that day would’ve been better, but it was still a nice gesture of general good-will.

So, now we live in a caravan. Yes indeed. And it’s stupidly vast. (Well, compared to a normal “study bedroom”, at least). Only downside is that it doesn’t have Ethernet access, but we’re hoping to get onto the Wireless point at Brynamlwg (sp?), which Paul thinks is a fair chance, so we can then turn the spare bedroom into a study, and hook up from there. At some point.

Horrible week, all things considered, and probably the second worst of my scarred and fucked-uip life, but things are looking up now, and my personal tutor’s given my an extension for my essay which would otherwise be due in on Monday. This is good, because we’ve not even properly unpacked yet, never mind had chance to look at notes.

Better now…

O fuck an evil-minded cunting BRICK

We’ve been asleep for an hour and a half.

We just got woken up by7 the assistant warden with a noise complaint because we’ve been moving furniture andf playing really loud music.

I honsetly can’t cope with this, it’s ridiculous.

The tem,ptation to haul off and thump someone is, remarkably for a situation like this, whe’re I’m being blatantly obviously got at, nowhere near as strong as the tempation to crawl under the duvet and hide for the rest of the year.

Shit shitty crap.