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Sunday 29th September

22:45

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Well, there's another day wasted, pottering about, not really doing anything. I did get to Tesco this morning to do the weekly shop and I took the bike out round the airport, but that was about it. I haven't even started reading those books I bought yesterday. So, no new revelations to report yet.

I have updated Peter's Pit though, with the last instalment of the Torture Garden columns for Tripwire. If you've missed the previous two articles, there's a link to the archive at the bottom of the current one. All I have to do now is persuade him to let me have some more of his stuff and I'll be laughing. Or not, as the case may be.

I guess the problem that I have is that I'm not particularly disciplined when it comes to getting things done, preferring to procrastinate, and I only really get down to things when there's a deadline to be met. Whilst this isn't a good thing at work, it's an even worse thing outside of work, because I don't have many natural deadlines that I have to meet. Take this site for example. I've been meaning to sort out the animations required for the "Who's In The Bin" feature for ages, but haven't and still haven't got any closer to sorting those out. And I probably won't unless someone can come up with a deadline for me, with some form of incentive at the end of it. Preferably one involving lager and Kylie. Hhmmm......Kylie....*drool*

Sorry, where was I? Oh yeah, being "indisciplined", or rather, lazy. Anyway, I've taken some advice from Peter Mann's latest column and have written down a few of my life goals. Admittedly, I did this a few weeks ago, and have stuck them on the back of my bedroom door so that I look at them every morning and every night. It does feel a bit strange to look at your life's ambitions written down though, and some days I could do with more useful stuff written on that list, like "do up trousers before leaving the house", or "don't forget to lock the front door before going to sleep" or even "put the rubbish out". However, written them down I have and set myself an artificial deadline of my 40th birthday to achieve those things. So, expect me to spend the next two and three-quarter years faffing about as usual, before I change everything in my life in the last three months. (Actually, I don't think I can lose that much weight in three months....) What are my life goals? Ah, you'll have to wait a while before I reveal those.

Saturday 28th September

22:45

Feet of Flames

No, not a reference to my fantastic dancing technique, but rather how I felt this lunchtime after a morning trekking round town. Having been suffering from an attack of gout for the last few days, I was relieved to wake up pain-free this morning. That soon changed after a couple of hours checking out the HMV sale. Sadly, there wasn't much in the way of music that I wanted to buy, although I did pick up Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Stigmata on video for less than a fiver each. I also picked up a punk compilation titled Kill All Hippies which promised 14 punk classics for the bargain price of £1.99. I should have examined it closer before purchasing for, as I discovered later, some of the tracks were not the original versions I was expecting. In fact, like those 60's compilations you always see cheap at petrol stations this should have had on it in small lettering "Some of these songs have been re-recorded by members of the original bands." It wouldn't have been so bad if the re-recordings were anywhere near as good as the originals. Whilst I can excuse The Damned's lumpen, Dave Vanian-less, live version of 'Neat Neat Neat', I have to say that the Steve Jones/Paul Cook revisitings of Sex Pistols classics 'Anarchy in the UK' and 'Pretty Vacant' must count as probably the worst versions ever. Even the "punk" band from school, who I saw on a night when the bass player was so drunk he couldn't even stand let alone play, did better versions than these. Ever get the feeling you've been cheated?

Anyway, feeling unsated by my visit to HMV I went to check out Fopp. This store has opened relatively recently in Cambridge, but seems to have a "pile it high, sell it cheap" policy for the most part. It's still quite expensive for more obscure stuff, but seen as you can't get most of that in the mainstream stores, you pays your money and takes your choice, I suppose. I took advantage of their policy and picked up The Ramones "It's Alive" Live CD and The Specials "Specials" CD for a fiver each. I also decided that it's time to start reading again and picked up the following:

  • 'On The Road' by Jack Kerouac - I'm nearly 37 years old and I've never actually read it. Can you believe that?
  • 'The Boy Who Kicked Pigs' by Tom Baker - who can resist a book written by a former Dr Who?
  • 'Little Boy Blue/Dog Eat Dog' by Edward Bunker - two books for the price of less than one. I had the privilege of hearing (or rather, not quite hearing) Mr. Bunker read some of his own work at the No Exit Press 10th birthday party, so it's about time I owned some of his work.
All those cost me a mere £3 each, which by anyone's standards has got to be a bargain.

Finally, I picked up tickets to see Pitchshifter, supported by Taproot and The Kennedy Soundtrack at The Junction this coming Wednesday (2nd October), and The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, supported by the most excellent Snuff and upcoming Brit-punkers (yeah, I think I made that up) Consumed on Monday 7th October. I'm looking forward to both of those I can tell you.

00:40

Yeah, alright, I'm claiming that it's still Friday, because I haven't gone to bed yet, but technically it is Saturday. Well, anyway, what's been happening in the world_of_jim since Monday, I hear you ask.

Tuesday night my co-workers and I went to The Wrestlers pub for some beers and some splendid Thai food to celebrate our workmate finally finding a place to live in Cambridge. After spending most of the last three months either commuting from Birmingham or living in a tent (yes, a tent!) Chris The Younger has finally found a house. Anyway my top tip, garnered during the night out, is don't tell your boss that a dish is "quite warm" on the spice front when really you mean it's very hot. And then don't rub it in by laughing at their discomfort as they try to eat it. Oh yeah, and try not to spill your beer all over Jack. Sorry, mate.

Wednesday morning I had a splitting headache and had to use up some more of my holiday time to recuperate. I got some very sarcastic welcomes when I finally made it into the office after lunch. Wednesday evening pretty much the same bunch of co-workers and I went to play Laserquest. My top tip from that night out is - try to remember what colour team you're on so you don't spend five minutes shooting at your own team mates. D'Oh! I was somewhat disappointed that despite my apathetic technique, which involves just walking round the arena without making any attempt to hide, I failed to achieve the lowest score in either game. I must try less.

Last night I took time to recharge my batteries after the two nights out. I think it must be a sign that I'm getting older that I can't manage to go out for two consecutive nights without feeling absolutely knackered. To be honest, I have trouble with one night out during the week these days. Perhaps I'm just out of practice....Anyway, I think that's enough for now - more tomorrow, or later on today to be technically accurate.

Monday 23nd September

22:00

"I feel the Earth move under my feet..."

There I was, at 00:55 this morning, just minding my own business - surfing the web, checking the newsgroups that I frequent and downloading Crack Whore mp3's, when there's a tremor running through the house. At first I just thought it might have been a plane taking off or landing at the nearby airport. As everyone in the UK must know by now, it was actually the strongest earthquake to hit Britain for more than 10 years. Having been in the North West of England for the two largest 'quakes to hit Britain in recent times - the Lleyn peninsula quake of 1984 and the Bishop's Castle (Shropshire) quake of 1990 - this one didn't seem anywhere as dramatic, although it wasn't as strong and I'm slightly further from the epicentre than I was then. I think I'll always remember the 1984 quake as I was in hospital at the time and it happened during the day, so there were a lot of nurses and doctors running around checking that the patients were OK.

Days off from work are great, aren't they? There can surely be no finer feeling than waking up and realising that you don't have to get up and drag your weary carcass into the office. And having spent more than three years unemployed, I also appreciate the fact that I do have a job to take the time off from, especially in the current economic climate. The only problem is that the day always seems to go so quickly. After getting up late, going for a bike ride, pottering around for a bit and then slobbing out in front of a video for a couple of hours, all of a sudden it's 6pm and the day has almost gone and I haven't done half the stuff I was going to.Ah well, I'll just have to take some more time off.

I'll admit I haven't watched much telly recently - mainly because there's been very little that actually interests me - but I'm a bit puzzled by the BBC's attitude to publicising some of it's new series that are starting in the next couple of weeks or so. For example, on Radio Five Live they're constantly advertising the new "BAFTA'ed up" series of The Office which starts next Monday. And on the TV they've been flogging the life out of the fact that a new series of the tremendously over-rated (in my opinion) Coupling started tonight. But I haven't heard a thing about the new series of Never Mind the Buzzcocks, which began tonight, or The League of Gentlemen, which starts on Thursday. And indeed if I hadn't been at home today, and perusing the TV listings whilst I was bored, I would have totally missed the start of the new series of Farscape. Come on BBC - get your act to gether and let me know when stuff is on that I'll like and stop telling me about stuff that I don't. OK, rant over.

Sunday 22nd September

18:40

Well lookee here, I've finally got round to adding some sort of fancy-dan system for visitors to add real-time comments to the website. It's a big 'Free Time' Thumbs Up for enetation for allowing me (and indeed anyone else who wants to give it a go) to set this up for a big No Pounds and No Pence. I hope it works properly. If there's any problems do let me know, please. They do ask for donations and I'll be running this for a couple of weeks and provided there's no problems, they'll be getting some of my hard-earned cash.

There's another Thumbs Up for RyanAir who are having a free/very cheap flight sale at the moment. I've been a bit crap about booking my flights to and from Ireland in November but I finally got round to doing it on the weekend and the flights cost me just 1p each way (excluding taxes) and a grand total of £26.90. That's about half the price that it was before their sale. Of course, the saving I've made will probably be eaten up by the cost of transport to and from the airport at either end of my journey. Whatever it costs though, it's considerably less than the £350 that British Airways were quoting for a similar journey. If you want to take advantage of the RyanAir offer, you'd better get a move on as you have to book by Midnight GMT on Monday 23rd September. That's tomorrow.

It's a big No-Prize though for Tesco in Fulbourn who have got some of their Christmas stuff up already. Right next to their 'Back to School' display. Fantastic - you've only just got the kids back to school and already they're badgering you to spend money for Christmas which is, after all, only three months away.....

I picked up the Trojan Records 'Young, Gifted & Black' compilation CD last weekend and was amused to see that it included 'Big Seven' by the late Judge Dread - a man who by his own admission was neither young nor particularly gifted and was most definitely not black. Not that there's anything wrong with that of course, but it just struck me as oddly amusing. Unlike the track which ably demonstrates his mastery of the single entendre.

Wednesday 18th September

22:30

Sometimes I feel a bit guilty about the fact that this is meant to be some sort of on-line diary-cum-blog and I don't update it very often, but then I only have to look at all the other "dead" sites out there and I feel better. And then again, this week I can't even claim to have been working on any new content or even any new features to put on the website, so what have I been wasting my time doing?

Well to be honest, I haven't been doing that much. Monday night I caught up with some of the stuff that I video-ed over the weekend and last night I watched Liverpool be resolutely second best against Valencia in the Champions League. They only lost 2-0, but it could have been so much worse. And then, tonight I spent an hour or so on the phone with my younger sister. It's always nice to spend time with her.

Anyway, I've got a couple of things almost lined up for adding to the site, and another featurette from Peter Mann for your delectation, so I might get round to putting those up on either Friday or Saturday. Hey, there's more football on the telly tomorrow night.....

Sunday 15th September

21:15

Oh, what a night!

Well, what a marvellous night out. It had just about everything - great company, good food, copious amounts of alcohol and even a decent club to finish the night off in. I have to say that cocktails at the Maypole has to be on everybody's agenda for a celebratory occasion. All cocktails a mere three of your English pounds in Earth money. We spent an hour or so in there and then it was on to Chez Gerrard to eat. The food was good and reasonably priced, coming in at around £28 a head including wine, but the service was dreadfully slow. We arrived at 8pm, and didn't get our starters till almost 9.30, and by the time we'd finished it was almost 11. Needless to say they didn't get much of a tip.

After the nosh, a hardy few of us made it to Alternation at the Kambar. Of course, I felt old because most people there were at least ten years younger than me. But they did at least play some music that I knew and none of your usual dance nonsense. Mind you, my eye was taken by a lovely-looking goth lady in a strapless leather dress. However, as I wasn't wearing all black, I doubt she noticed me (although how you can not notice a 20 stone man in a mustard yellow shirt, I've no idea...) Anyway, if anyone knows who she is - tell her I want my eye back as I'm having judging distances and stuff....

Anyway, Chris and David took plenty of photos, so if any appear on the web I'll be linking to them. (I would have included a link to Chris's website here, but he hasn't updated it for about a year.) And I've been feeling knackered all day, having not got to bed till 3.30am and then got up again at 8.30 this morning. So things haven't been done on here again. Ah, procrastination, the thief of time. Still, there's always tomorrow...

Saturday 14th September

15:00

Another night spent with my balls in the gutter.....

I am, of course, referring to my night spent 10 Pin Bowling at Strikes in Ely. Despite the flaming shirt, I bowled like an idiot for the first game - achieving the remarkably poor score of just 47. Yep, in twenty attempts I managed to knock over a mere 47 pins. I was convincingly last. Mind you, I put this down to the fact that I hadn't drunk enough - by the time we started the second frame, I was on my fifth pint and this time round I broke the 100 point barrier, pcking up two strikes on the way. That's still pretty poor, of course, but given that I've played the game less than ten times in my entire life, I'm not too bothered.

I managed to make it through Friday 13th without anything going disastrously wrong, I think. Of course, starting to surf the Internet after your boss leaves for the day and then finding he's come back and is standing right behind could be considered unlucky, but compared to the faux pas one of my co-workers made earlier in the day, that was nothing. Top Tip: Be very sure that the boss is not in the ofice when you say loudly that you thought they would have been on a programme called "Nightmare Bosses", which had been aired the previous evening.....

Anyway, I've got to go and make myself beautiful for Chris's birthday night out. I'll report back tomorrow.

Wednesday 11th September

22:15

Spooky

Well, after all that speculation on where my dream-state story came from on Monday, I received the latest issue of Fortean Times on Tuesday morning. And it contains a very interesting article on the 'hypnagogic state', which is that borderline state between sleep and wakefulness. It's written by Gary Lachman and there's also an interview with him on the website, in which he expands on the theme a bit, but also covers his experiences with magick and altered states. Interesting stuff and if you're at all interested in that sort of thing I'd urge you to check it out. It certainly helped me understand why I sometimes "hear" things and come up with strange concepts when falling asleep.

South Cheshire's finest football team - Crewe Alexandra - achieved a very satisfying win over near-neighbours Port Vale last night in the Worthington Cup. It's always nice to beat the Vale. Let's hope we can win there in the league too.

I had it confirmed today that one of my former colleagues, Helen B, is being made redundant from her job in Birmingham. Having shared the pain of redundancy with her almost two years ago, she has my every sympathy. Still, she's a very good technical author, a hard worker and a great person, so she shouldn't find it too difficult to get another job. In fact, I know she won't. You go, girl!.

I'm off out tomorrow night with a few people from work for a night of bowling and drinking at Strikes in Ely. In honour of the occasion, I'll be wearing my flaming shirt, and quite probably claiming that "Tonight Matthew, I'm going to be bowling for Jesus." or some such drunken nonsense. Perhaps I should shave my head as a tribute to Camper Van Beethoven's Take the Skinheads Bowling......?

That's it - more news Friday, probably.

Monday 9th September

21:50

"...old, grey, widow's pens..."

For a while now, I've kept a book beside my bed to write my dreams down in. Sometimes I scribble down a few lines of what I can remember, sometimes it expands to a page. Last night, well at 3a.m. this morning to be exact, I woke with an entire monologue (including the above phrase) in my mind and had to write it down. It took me an hour, I didn't get all of it, and it covers two and a half pages. I re-read it when I got in from work and I still have absolutely no idea where it came from. It's like someone else has written it and asked me to finish it off, to make it ready for other people to read. Perhaps there really is a creative muse. Perhaps it's better not to over-analyse the creative process. Anyway, I've had a huge pile of cheese on toast for tea and a couple of beers so if that doesn't get my imagination going, nothing will....

Sunday 8th September

22:00

Well, you'd think that having had a couple of evenings and the entire weekend to work on this site that I'd come up with something a bit more substantial than the update that has happened, but hey, it might not look much (as I tell the laydees) but you won't be disappointed. Sadly, you can't experience the full impact of my ability to turn my tongue sideways (a special treat for the laydees) by reading this website, so you might actually be disppointed. Sorry about that.

New Stuff

  • The second instalment from Peter Mann has been added, and you can read his take on the way comics have changed, but not people's perceptions, here. I've also archived off his previous column and there's a link to that at the bottom of the current column.
  • I finally got round to updating the "Who is.." page. It's got a brand new picture and probably more information about me than is either necessary or wise. Still, if you want to risk it check this out.
  • Previous postings on this site have now been archived into the two links at the bottom of this page.
  • New link added to the official website of the best football team in South Cheshire. Look to the right and see if you can spot it....
It's Deadline Day at work this Friday, so we'll be rushing around trying to get the documentation finished for the next software release. I'll finish the one document that I'm responsible for way ahead of Friday, so expect to spend the rest of the week picking up work from everyone else. Which is always fun. There's meant to be a works outing 10-pin bowling at some point during the week too and our summer student, Ally, leaves on Friday and then it's Chris's birthday on Saturday, so don't expect a great deal of activity on here from me later in the week.

Anyway, enjoy what's here and I'll catch you later, Bill and Ted.

Wednesday 4th September

22:00

Blimey, what's going on? I've been feeling so tired for the last week or so, and I can't really put my finger on why. I'm not sleeping too well, but that's not that unusual for me. Anyway, I've done this brief update tonight, rather than the more extensive one I had planned and now I'll be off to bed.

Decided to pass on the The Rude Mechanicals last night. Despite the recommendations I had that they are a good live act and well worth seeing, I wasn't persuaded by the song samples on their site that they'd be my cup of tea. Plus I'd had another long day at work and decided to get home and try (unsuccessfully as it turned out) to get an early night. And it's not much fun going to gigs on your own. And I need to save money for this wedding in Ireland that I've got to go to in November. Yeah, it's just one excuse after another with me....

I found myself being somewhat irritated by Dave Gorman's Important Astrology Experiment on BBC2 on Sunday night. It's hard to put my finger on exactly what it is that annoys me, apart from the pointless "panel of experts", the same old props as his previous series ("Let's see what that's done to the graph."), the lack of true scientific method, his stupid beard and the fact that it's not funny. What next? Imagine this...

Dave Gorman's "Pork and Beans", in which I, Dave Gorman, see how many consecutives times I can say "Pork and Beans" in response to a series of questions before I get punched out. On Tuesday this week I had to catch a train to Scotland to see my namesake, Dave Gorman. I took my mate Matt on the train with me. We travelled 450 miles and every time Matt spoke to me, I replied "Pork and Beans." He punched me out eight times, and on average I said "Pork and Beans" 47 times before each punching. Let's see what that's done to the graph....."

Hey, look how easy that was, perhaps I should start pitching to the BBC comedy commissioners? Imagine I pitch 34 half-arsed, under-developed comedy ideas to the BBC and they accept 7. Let's see what that'll do to the graph...

Anyway, this page is getting too long and I can't be bothered to sort it out tonight so I'll stop here. I'll try to get round to further updates in the remaining nights of the week. See you on the flipside.

Sunday 1st September

18:15

Hurrah! Time for some updates and stuff! First up, I finally got some long-promised content from my bro-in-law. You can read his first comics-related article on this page. I've got two more articles from him, which are a bit less comic-centric, and these will go up in the next couple of weeks. These articles have already been published in Tripwire magazine, for more information see the links on the bottom of that page. If you've got any comments to make on "the Mann's" analysis of comics, you can e-mail them to me and I'll forward them.

Secondly, the Friday lunchtime pub conversation took a bizarre turn, as usual, this week and we ended up talking about giant squid taking over the Earth. Well, at least the water-bound parts of it. And we imagined them attacking punters on the Cam. Our summer student, Ally, knocked up a rather impressive depiction of such an incident. However, it does involve an octopus rather than a squid, so eventually I've come with my own imagining. Needless to say, it's crap. I'm a writer, not an artist... Anyway, you can see both pictures right here. The images are about 110KB in size in total, so if you're on a 56K modem they might take a while to download. Not too long though, hopefully.

Thirdly, I got my other set of Truckfest pictures developed, finally, and am in the process of scanning them in to build up a fabulous pictoral record of the joys that was my Truckfest weekend.

Fourthly, I spent yesterday afternoon picnicking on Jesus Green with some of my work colleagues. It was great fun, although I wouldn't recommend playing football against Caroline without some form of decent foot protection. I opted to play barefoot as that was more sensible than the steel-toecapped boots that I was wearing, I thought. I won't make that mistake again.

Fifthly, and finally, I've got a few bits and pieces of other stuff to put on here, and soon that stuff'll be ready, provided I don't get distracted by work, beer, or football. or seeing The Rude Mechanicals at the Portland Arms on Tuesday night.