about three quarters of the way up the street actually

The whole moving house thing wound up being being pretty easy, largely because we seem to have some of the best friends in the world.

The Pixie hadn't seen the house at all until the day we picked up the keys, so it comes as some relief that she doesn't hate it and that we we are all settling in quite nicely. So far the only unforeseen horror has been in the cupboard under the stairs, where we found an old wooden box containing a single child's slipper and a rusty saw.

Which is hardly horrifying at all, actually; and far less disturbing than our pet Frenchman's collection of sinister foreign foodstuffs.

Soupe?! What the hell's that?

Those labels could say anything, and there is literally no way of finding out.

cumulonimbus

Went to see The Death Of Her Money at The Croft last week. I didn't get to see them straight away, of course; there were the obligatory support acts to wade through first.

First up was Pus, who were loud. Loud and to the point. Loud and to the point and thuggishly sludgy. Thudgy? Sluggish? Probably the second one. For the first thirty seconds it made some sort of terrible brutal sense, but after a minute or so it was starting to get tiresome. Then they played for another twenty minutes.

But then came Winston Egbert, who were charming. Self-proclaimed underdogs of 80s thrash, Winston Egbert are a boy/girl duo where the girl plays drums and the boy plays guitar and they both do a bit of singing. Kind of like The White Stripes. Except that they sound nothing like The White Stripes. Because they play 80s thrash.

Jesse Ventura (not to be confused with Jesse "The Body" Ventura, American wrestler and 38th governor of Minnesota) were apparently playing their first ever show, but looked like they'd been doing this kind of thing for years. It was all very reminiscent of Gay For Johnny Depp's homoerotic hardcore - they even had a song dedicated to "a man that's important and influential in all of our lives, and surely all of yours too; Patrick Fucking Swayze." Ones to watch.

And finally The Death Of Her Money, who were of course spiffing. I first/last saw them almost three and a half years ago, in what used to be The Junction, and dimly recall them sounding a bit like Isis and/or Pelican. On reflection their seismic riff dirge is more comparable to Godflesh without all the mechanical sounding frippery, but in truth they don't sound like they're trying to sound like anyone else; TDOHM have carved out their own doomgaze niche, and are bloody masters of it. Good stuff.

Meanwhile, it was my last day at the Big Gay Department Store last weekend. It is, in every sense of the word, the gayest place that I have ever worked. I think that I shall miss it slightly... but I start my new job at the end of September, and in the meantime I could use a few Saturdays off for things like sitting around in beer gardens, going on holiday and moving house.

We got keys to the new place on Tuesday, but don't have a van until tonight - so there has been very little moving of stuff. Instead we have been playing an odd version of Tetris using bits of squared paper cut out into the shapes of items of furniture.

If only we had spreadsheets and gantt charts to go with it all, Matt would be really proud of us.

And so that is, pretty much, it.

Assuming of course that I haven't utterly fucked up one, some or all of the exams/bits of coursework that have yet to have marks published. Which I probably haven't, but optimism was never one of my most defining characteristics.

In the meantime, my days are now largely filled with cups of tea, miscellaneous toy soldier tinkering and playing games of Blood Bowl against an artificial intelligence that only lives up to 50% of its job title.

And now: bullet points. You love 'em as much as I do. Don't even try to pretend otherwise.

• Gigs 'n' that: went to rather a lot of very splendid electronic music recitals whilst I should have been too busy with other more important things. Amongst others I saw Keelhaul, Knut, Zonderhoof, And So I Watch You From Afar, Shapes, earthtone9 and Humanfly. All of which were awesome, even if at the ASIWYFA gig I got kicked in the jaw so hard that I couldn't eat properly for two days.
• Moved house. The mice and I are now lurking about in the Nerd Tower with the Pixie and Dom. Which is great, except that this particular bit of Bristol (Westbury-on-Trym) is like one gigantic assisted living community. I am literally too loud for this place; so as soon as we can find somewhere else that we can all agree on, I shall be moving again. This may take some time.
• Much to the surprise of everyone - not least the mechanics who tested it - the track slag passed its MOT, needing only a replacement pump for the windscreen washers. Coolest advisory ever: "Interior stripped out, no rear seats or seat belts fitted." Like we might not have noticed... Looking forward to another full year of near-death motoring.

• We finally won the pub quiz again last night. For over a year the Luncheon Club has been dedicated to the destruction of noble gases (apart from a single week, in which we attempted to make reparations with noble gases). Now we can pick something even more inexplicable/pretentious/nerdy to destroy.
• Finished painting my Chaos Blood Bowl team in between endless/pointless finite element analysis simulations of suspension wishbones. I'd always wished that Matt liked Blood Bowl as much as I do; and now my wish has come true. I hate Blood Bowl. My Chaos team has so far proven itself to be awful at every aspect of the game, and is firmly planted at the bottom of our league table behind teams run by war criminals, sex pests and Victorian moustache wax connoisseurs. Friday games nights are now characterised by despairing sighs, the urge to drink heavily, and frequent use of the phrase BLOOD BOWL IS CUNT. Despite this, I still secretly love Blood Bowl; and I'm quite happy with how my new toys look.

• Got turned on to an epic dubstep re-working of Jeff Wayne's musical based on H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. AWESOME.

titles are good

And so on Friday last week, my work placement quietly came to an end. I bought doughnuts and tiny cakes for the office, handed in my badge and gun (clocking card and mobile), shook a few hands and that was it. I think I shall miss it; it's been an interesting way to waste a year on the slow trudge to expiry.

Mostly I shall miss the ludicrousness of the health and safety culture, which in my final week saw the installation of small flashing orange beacons on all furnaces. These are supposed to activate every time the furnace door is opened, to alert operators whenever hot metal was being handled. This is despite the fact that:

• By "hot" metal, I mean molten metal - filled moulds come out of the furnace at temperatures exceeding 1000°C, and radiate an intense heat that can be felt from many metres away.
• They also glow bright - and I mean BRIGHT - white/orange. Can't easily miss 'em.
• The only people at risk of injury should molten metal be spilled are the guys that are handling it; and they know that molten metal is being handled, because they are handling it. So a little beacon to warn them that molten metal is being handled is a tad redundant in this respect.
• When they handle molten metal, they use A FUCKING FORKLIFT TRUCK WITH A FLASHING ORANGE BEACON ON THE ROOF AND A CONSTANTLY BLEEPING SOUNDER TO WARN OPERATORS THAT THEY MIGHT GET RUN OVER IF THEY DON'T WATCH WHAT THEY'RE DOING

But the internal health and safety audit still determined that sufficient precautions were not being taken, and that the presence of a big ol' fork truck with flashing lights, carrying a four foot tall brightly glowing mould that will burn off your eyebrows at ten paces, surrounded by a bunch of guys in funny silver heat protecting overalls, was not enough of an indication that there might be some hot metal kicking about. Better stick up a flashing light, that should get everyone's attention.

I shall also miss playing boardgames in a kitchen bigger than my living room with my amusingly Catholic housemate Ruth. Of course, we've promised to keep in touch and visit and stuff; but this probably won't happen, because I'm rubbish and she's still not allowed to be friends with other boys - despite being in the "off" part of her on-again/off-again relationship with the insanely paranoid and jealous Sam. Sigh.

On the plus side, I no longer have to spend hours driving to and from Exeter each week, I now have full living room privileges, and I get to spend more time in my own home with my not-even-remotely Catholic flatmate Charlie Cat.

The new school year doesn't start until the last week in September; so I'm filling the time between now and then by working as many extra hours as possible at The Big Gay Department Store. It's helping to remind me why I wanted to get out of retail in the first place. To do the job well does require some skill, and frankly I'm bloody brilliant at it; but forty hours a week of pretending to give a freshly minted fuck about other people and their dreary existence is a bit much. So I'm attempting to break up the tedious monotony of constant consumption by subtly(ish) working rudeness into my flawless salesman's patter. Already this week I have managed "I've never seen so many knobs", "Would you like me to wrap your dangly what-nots in tissue?", and "Ah... Balls."

Good times.

Meanwhile, the Beastmans have been absent from this shitty blog for too long now; so here's a Giant.

By my reckoning, Giants are the worst thing you could possibly take in a Beastmans Team. On paper, they're full of destructive potential; my head fills with images of my foes fleeing in terror from this great striding behemoth, bellowing with rage and crushing the enemy underfoot as arrows bounce off his steely hide...

...whereas in practice, the Giant will usually swing his club ineffectually shortly before falling over in his attempt to run away from a bunch of peasants armed with sharp sticks and colourful language.

still here

Note: Since we are somewhat slightly bereft of internets at the moment, this post was composed at home and then saved to a memory stick so I could bring it in to grown-up work and use their internets, without wasting too much of my "valuable" work time typing out crap. As such, some of the information below is already out of date. Also, this post doesn't at all convey the apoplectic rage that currently consumes me, the cause of which I just can't be bothered to go into right now. Perhaps I shall write about it in the coming weeks; or perhaps I will have settled down a bit by then.

And so a few weeks ago, we moved house… big thanks to legendary man-with-van Kev, who gave up a day of work to lug all of our heavy crap in and out of his fine van, and up and down (but mostly up) our fine new stairs; to Sam, who gave up a day of sitting around in his underpants looking at pictures of hats on the internet to lug all of our slightly less heavy crap in and out of his perfectly adequate Volvo, and up and down (but mostly up) our fine new stairs; and to Charlie Cat, who found us an awesome place to live. Thank you Charlie.

After having spent the best part of a week compressing our entire lives into cardboard boxes and then an entire day moving it from a big place into a slightly smaller place, we weren’t massively enthused by the prospect of unpacking and sorting everything out. So we left our new home looking like this…

…and went to the pub instead, which is conveniently located next door. It’s quite nice there; they keep chickens, and have a wooden fort for us to play in.

Still, Charlie and I can be quite industrious when we want to be, and it didn’t take long for us to get everything ship-shape. Just in time for me to bugger off back to Exeter. Joy.

In other news…

• The Boy and I went to see bands at semi-respectable bar/live music venue The Croft. Tractor played trudging grind noise, and had a special pedal that made the guitar emit white noise at spleen ripping volumes; Alabaster Suns were good but ultimately quite forgettable; and Taint were as good as ever, and seemingly unfazed by the drunken suit-wearing middle aged colossus that climbed onto the stage to take extreme close-up photos of them, and then climbed off stage to take up-skirt photos of one of the girls in the crowd. What a class act. I assumed that he was some sort of wedding reception fugitive that had gotten drunk and lost at some point in the evening, and stumbled into The Croft by accident; but it turns out that he is some kind of unfeasibly wealthy online poker big shot, that just happens to really like Taint. And young women’s knickers.


• The RoboJEW and I went to see bands at crusty pub/breeding ground for virulent disease The Junction. Eaststrikewest were surprisingly good, and sounded like a post rock band with Buckley-esque vocals. And So I Watch You From Afar were staggeringly good, and deserve far more attention than they seem to be getting at the moment. And Maybeshewill were the band that followed ASIWYFA, and so were completely eclipsed by them.

• Our Luncheon Club Dedicated To The Destruction Of Nihilism stormed home to victory at the pub quiz a few weeks back. Having successfully seen off Bolshevism (twice) and Nihilism, we are now turning our attention to The Quintessons, the terrible five-faced levitating mechanical judges from Transformers The Movie that feed the innocent to transforming robot sharks. This means, amongst other things, that every week Matt and I have to explain to someone else what Quintessons are.


• At grown-up work, someone almost got killed/turned into glowing blue naked superhuman when they were locked inside the vacuum chamber of one of the furnaces. Fortunately someone heard the frenzied screams for help, and released the guy before the chamber was pumped down and his eyeballs boiled into vapour along with the rest of him. Health and Safety think this was a near miss brought about by the lack of adequate checks and procedures, and are pushing for the installation of more flashing lights and wailing klaxons and buckets of lasers. Plant Engineering (ie. us) think that the root cause was a bunch of dicks cocking about, and someone should be strung up for it. Apart from this, there’s been a whole bunch of nothing happening, which is bad because a) although I have a minor design project for lifting equipment on the go, it’s difficult to drag it out over two weeks; and b) it’s giving me lots of time to think. And thinking is bad right now.


• On the toy soldier front, I’ve finally finished painting the Marauders for my Chaos army (I’ve got 57 of these useless fuckers now), and am rewarding myself with something a bit different; a Vampire Count for my old Undeads team.
  
  
  At the time of writing, Count Drakon Von Carstein is about half painted. He’s looking pretty cool so far; expect pictures when he’s fully done. Oh, and don’t think I’m done with the Beastmans – there’s more of those goat-legged jerks on their way too.


• I miss my kitty cat.
  

And that’s pretty much it for now. Postings will continue to be erratic until some guy turns up to make internets happen in our new flat; deal with it.

activate

I made a startling discovery this week.

Ruth has never watched Robot Wars.

This means that she will have never played the three fun games that made Robot Wars that tiny bit more entertaining for thousands of nerds across the nation each week.

Game 1: Determine what roboteer George Francis actually is.

What the fuck are you?!

a) Male.
b) Female.
c) Space lizard.
d) Misc.

2. Try to catch the nerds checking out Philippa Forrester's boobs while she interviews them in the pits.



I find this game difficult, as I tend to be too busy checking out Philippa's boobs to notice what the other nerds are doing.

3. Designing deadly robots in your mind.

I might be wrong, but I reckon that anyone with even the smallest nerdal lobe rolling D12's in the back of their subconscious will have done this at some point. Here's my cunning plans.

The Remorseless Eating Machine

This one's about the size of a tumble dryer, and has massive jaws at one end that allow it to consume other robots (like that space ship in You Only Live Twice). NYOM!

Super Explodo Bot 2000 Deluxe

Essentially, a small explosive device on wheels. I'm sure I don't need to explain how this works.

Listen to Black Sabbath

This robot will basically be a giant speaker on wheels, with "LISTEN TO BLACK SABBATH" written on the side of it. It will have no weapons; it will simply drive around playing "War Pigs" really loud until all the other robots give up. Then it will explode (this one's packed with semtex too).

Mecha-Hamma-Spida-Bot

A V8 engine, only all of the pistons are attached to hammers instead of a driveshaft. The hammers act as weapons and give it something to stand on. You can't control how the thing moves, all you can do is give it more throttle and smash things faster. I don't see how this can possibly fail.

Hold the phone sister

'Cos Ruth and I got into the living room last week.

Those of you with poor memories, short attention spans, or simply an inclination to tune out completely when I start to rant about boring stuff that has nothing to do with you or your life may not recall just how forbidden a zone the living room is. Well, I'm too lazy to repeat myself; so click here instead.

The only thing close to a communal living area is the kitchen, and lately Ruth and I have taken to sitting around down there playing battleships, watching internet TV on her laptop and getting smashed on exotic cocktails (more on this later). But on Tuesday, all efforts to connect to the internets met with resounding failure. Marco had turned off the wireless router. That'd be the wireless router in the locked living room, then.

Trapped in a cold kitchen with no IT Crowd and only half a bottle of dark rum left? That shit's whack, y'all.

So, a bit of desperate rummaging through the kitchen drawers commenced, and keys were found. Not to the living room, but to Marco's bedroom.

So, a gross invasion of privacy and a bit of desperate rummaging through bedroom drawers commenced, and keys were found. The keys to the living room.

Which as it happens, contained a switched on and fully functioning wireless router - turns out that the Channel 4 website was just being a bit gay. But that didn't matter, because now we had access to the living room, the big TV, the big suede sofa, and the pointless table lamp. Nice.

So instead of sitting on uncomfortable kitchen chairs watching internet TV on a crappy laptop, we lounged about on a big ass sofa and watched DVDs on a big telly instead. Being incurably paranoid about this sort of thing, I took a photo of the remote controls so as to ensure that we would be able to put them all back into the exact same position that we found them in.

We also went to great efforts to brush our ass-prints off of the suede sofa; I suppose we could have sat on the floor, but I was suffering...

The previous weekend I got tricked into playing badminton with Dom, Laura and Matt (who loves all the people of the world - ALL OF THEM). I say tricked; what I mean is that I am highly suggestible when drunk, and also quite forgetful. So even though I had no memory of our conversation, it did sound like the sort of thing that I might have agreed to... and so I slapped on my formal shorts, rocked up to the sports centre at 12pm on Sunday, and leapt about like a goon. It was a bit like watching me dance, only with more swearing and less Beyonce. And even though Matt and I's "Horns of the Bull" tactic (whereby we lured our opponents towards the centre of the court, then ran around either side of the net and bashed them with badminton sticks) failed, it was all rather good fun. It was less fun the next day, when I was reminded of just how little exercise I've done in recent years by the aching protests of every muscle in my body...

And so a spot of ilicit lying about on the sofa was welcome relief. Further relief was provided in the form of the afore-mentioned exotic cocktails. Here is a Havana Beach.

Do not be fooled by it's appearance; it is not a highball glass filled with foaming nut-brown ale and dressed with a slice of lime. It is instead a delicious concoction of dark rum, ginger beer and pineapple juice. Yum.

We've tried a few other cocktail recipes, and even had a crack at making our own; with some success... We called this one "House Arrest".

Instructions: Tip what little whiskey you have left into a glass. Add some triple sec, fresh orange juice and a few drops of angstura bitters. After an abortive attempt to sprinkle grated orange peel over the top, settle for a slice of orange and some ice. Drink, and then break into your landlord's bedroom and living room.

It is called House Arrest because that is what Ruth currently finds herself under, due to the rampant paranoia and jealousy of her ex. Despite the fact that he chose to break up with her, Sam still seems to be taking it all quite badly; and Ruth is receiving quite enough hatefully emo text messages from him already, so doesn't feel the need to risk being spotted in public with - gasp - another boy...

We do not condone the mistreatment of cats. But we do think it's funny

Last week was mostly spent fighting a losing battle against self-inflicted narcolepsy.

Stupid drinking-on-a-school-night.

This has previously only been a feature of my Mondays at grown-up work, a result of misguided attempts to increase brain power through the consumption of alcohol so that we can destroy Bolshivism/win the IotG pub quiz every Sunday night.. It hasn't worked so far, but I'm going to keep trying anyway. The combination of Late Night + Early Morning + Long Boring Drive To Work means that I spend most of the day Monday staring at AutoCAD, trying to remember how to draw lines whilst I slowly drift out of consciousness. I wake up with a start when I realise that I've been clicking the mouse button randomly, and a bazillion windows have opened on my screen; I hurriedly close them all down, remember that I was trying to draw a line, and try to remember how to draw lines whilst I slowly drift out of consciousness...

And thus the cycle of incompetence is complete.

Usually this is only a problem on Mondays; but last week Ruth and I bimbled into the city centre in search of cocktails. We had a jolly nice time drinking in The Old Firehouse, marvelling at the stuffed crows perched atop the beams on the very very top floor. We got back home quite late, and then stayed up even later drinking tea and chatting about the search for God, what it's like to be an empty shell of a person, and the idea of starting a concept band called Hairy Entrails.

It all made some sort of sense at the time; less so when we each woke up for work the next day after only three hours sleep.

And it wasn't like I could get away with finding some secluded part of the plant to have a little nap in either; because grown-up work just got busy. More bosses from America are due to visit very soon, and various departments are jumping up and down about getting projects finished early. Most recent conversations have gone along these sorts of lines:

ME: We can get this done by the 3rd of February.

THEM: We need it done sooner than that.

ME: We can get this done by the 3rd of February.

THEM: Can we get it done by the end of January?

ME: We can get this done by the 3rd of February.

THEM: What can we do to get it done by the end of January?

ME: Start a breeding program for electricians. If we pump them full of accelerated growth hormones, stop the sun from setting, and adopt the use of a different kind of calender that puts an extra three or four days in January, it might just be possible.

THEM: ...just see what you can do.

Meanwhile, at my Bristol residence, we have a new toy; a Cat-in-the-boxTM.

She loves her box. Presently, the most fun thing to do with the Cat-in-the-boxTM is to close the lid and poke things through gaps between the lid and the box, resulting in frenzied thrashing and mad flailing of cat limbs from within.

Simple things, simple minds etc.

I am thinking that we should change the name of the cat from Rasputin to Captain Chesley B Sullenberger III; partly to honour the man who so bravely crashed an expensive plane belonging to someone else into a river without killing anyone, but mainly because I think it's the coolest name I've ever heard; and I like the idea of giving the cat a title.

If she's a captain, we can demand that people salute her.

Set phasers to suck

Customer: I got this for Christmas, and I don't really want it. Is it possible to get a refund?
Me: Certainly madam, no problem; there's is just a bit of paperwork to fill out. Because it wouldn't be fun without paperwork, would it?
Customer: Er... I suppose not...
Me: So, if you could just write your name at the top of this receipt, and sign at the bottom...
Customer: My name? What do you mean?
Me: Your name. That's who you are, madam. Write it just there, next to where it says "Customer Name"...

This is pretty much what life at the Big Gay Department Store has been like for the past few weeks. Also giving me the rage have been:

• The woman who tried to get a refund for an empty box, having forgotten to put the contents back into it before she left the house.
• The woman who tried to get a refund on items that she bought in an entirely different store.
• The couple who changed their minds four times when trying to decide where they wanted their new £1000 TV to be delivered to, each time requiring the whole transaction to processed again.
• The people who just stand in the middle of the escalators (our lives are short, and my lunch break even shorter; and I resent losing precious moments of each having t stare at a fat arse getting slowly fatter it's owner is TO LAZY TO CLIMB SOME FUCKING STAIRS).
• The jerk in the office that keeps putting me down on the rota for childrenswear.
• Newly married couples who want to refund EVERYTHING that was bought for them from their wedding list (I feel like saying to them that since they don't even seem able to agree on what kitchenware they want, their marriage is clearly going to fail very soon; and that when they each remarry, perhaps they should JUST ASK FOR FUCKING VOUCHERS).
• Me, every time I catch myself saying "PIN number" instead of just "PIN". Aargh!

Rant over. For now, at least.

Meanwhile, grown-up work has been slightly less farcical than usual (although we did have to endure an hour of mandatory health and safety training in which the floor was identified as a Fall Prevention System). I even got suckered into doing some vaguely important stuff at a two-day "Kaizen" meeting earlier this week. At first I was only there as the CAD bitch, to make layout changes on demand; but the guy that was supposed to represent Plant Engineering was off sick. The second choice person wasn't available, and nor were the third, fourth or fifth choices; even the Polish guy who changes the handtowels in the toilets was busy. So that meant it came down to me to point out such technical details as "you'll probably need some lights in that room, or something".

In other news, Fatty Mouse is unwell. Behold.

Those who find the above image too harrowing may prefer the artist's impression provided below, courtesy of The Boy.

It seems that something is causing irritation to little Blob-ra's wee snout, and so she has scratched it raw. Or maybe she is attempting to emulate Rudolph the Reindeer, so as to get into the festive spirit. Perhaps I shall make her some tiny antlers.

And finally, my former housemate Ruth became an ex-former housemate when she moved back into the Exeter Mafia Headquarters just before Christmas. Turns out that her boyfriend Sam that she had moved in with was perfect in every way, apart from being a clinically depressed Jehova's Witness forced to choose between his girl and his family. He chose... unwisely.

"Oh dear Ruth, that's a bit rubbish. How are you feeling about all that?"
"I'm a husk."
"High five!"

Tiny Cakes

Another week, another extended farce in preparation for some important guy's big visit. Only this time, instead of trying to find inventive places to hide stuff, we're trying to think of cunning places we can hide ourselves. If he can't find us, he can't demote us.

Though to be honest, as a placement student I don't think I can be demoted anyway. I'm so low down the pecking order that I have to salute the vending machines in the canteen.

And yet I still seem to have been somehow instrumental in the complete reorganisation of an entire department. At the start of the week, there was still quite a bit left to do, and some folk were getting a bit twitchy. On Monday morning, I found myself in a meeting with ML (Engineering Manager, always smiling like a politician, ghastly American accent that seems to come out through his nose) and JH (Process Owner, tall and ginger with a crippling stammer, answers to ML).

ML: What do you need to get this area finished?
ME: Errr...
ML: Don't tell me now. Go around with JH, make a list of what you need - not what you think I'll get you, but what you need - to get this area finished. Get that list to me and I'll make it happen.
ME: Ummm....

And so I went around with JH, and together we made a pretty complete list of everything that we needed. JH took the list and gave it to ML; ML gave the list to my boss; and and my boss gave it to me, thus completing the cycle of incompetence.

Sometimes I start to think that I quite it like it here; but I think that might just be Stockholm Syndrome.

Meanwhile, I seem to have lost another housemate this week; a girl called Ruth, who rented the other room in the Exeter house up until yesterday. Marco didn't tell me much about her before I moved in, other than to say that we would probably get along, because she is thirty also.

I don't quite follow his logic; perhaps he thought we would hang out together and talk about cool thirty year-old stuff. In actual fact, we mostly talk about what a jerk Marco is (Ruth doesn't have any living room privileges either); if we talk at all. Her boyfriend Sam is over most nights, so they are usually hidden away in her room discussing domestic policy making processes, or whatever it is that young couples do nowadays.

But one night a while back, Sam wasn't about; and in the absence of anything better to do, we sat around in the kitchen exchanging mouse stories...

A few years ago, Ruth was living in a student house with a bit of a mouse infestation. This would usually only manifest itself in the sudden and mysterious appearance of little nibbled holes in the bottom of cereal packets, coupled with the sudden and mysterious disappearance of the cereal itself; but as time went on, the little critters got more inventive, and started knocking boxes over in order to spill their delicious contents. It all went wrong for them when they tipped over a bottle of ice-cream topping syrup. Sure enough, a pool of sticky sweet deliciousness formed in the base of the cupboard, and sure enough, the mice did gorge themselves upon it. Unfortunately, being small and feeble little creatures, they couldn't then free themselves from the Yummy Pink Tarpit of Death; and so they all drowned in it. When Ruth opened the cupboard the next day the syrup had all set; and so the tarpit (along with it's cargo of little furry corpses) had to be chiseled off of the bottom of the cupboard with a ruler...

Silly mouses.

And finally... my family bimbled down this weekend for eats and drinks and birthday merriment. My sister made cakes happen. Behold!



Many cakes were decorated with the shattered corpses of jelly babies; some crushed beneath jelly bean rockslides, some cleft in twain with deadly chocolate buttons.

Legend.

The farce is strong with this one

Grown up work has been a veritable hive of frenzied activity over the past week, as we all prepared for a visit from one of the company head honchos. We shall call him Mr M. This activity has mostly been the industrial equivalent of hiding all your crap under the bed when you're told to tidy your room.

One of the things Mr M. would be very keen to see was that we had control over all of our inventory, that work was being processed in an ordered and organised manner. As such, fire corridors crammed full of a random assortment of turbine blades on trolleys would most likely not go down well.

Not well at all.

The sensible thing to have done would have been to organise the flow of work better; but it was too late for that. So what we did was take all of the random trolleys full of random work, hid them in a room with no windows and locked the doors.

Another thing that Mr M. would be very keen to see was that we had control of all our fixed assets; machines 'n' that. So the "Blaster Graveyard" at the end of the finishing department, filled as it was with decaying and disused bits of equipment, would most likely not go down well.

Not well at all.

For the most part, we pulled the same stunt again but on a slightly different scale; instead of a separate room, we hid all the crap in a separate building. All apart from a pair of non-functioning rework booths. These things are basically 4' x 4' workbenches, with a dust extractor on top that sucks air through the bottom of the bench, filters out all the crap, and spits out air that almost certainly won't increase your risk of contracting lung cancer. What they lack in footprint, they make up for in height; these things are 16' tall.

Which was a problem.

Because the tallest doorway out of the finishing department is only 14' high.

The sensible thing to have done would have been to take them apart and move them out bit by bit; but it was too late for that. So what we did was just move the rubbish broken rework booths within the finishing department, putting them next to some working rework booths in the hope that it would look like they were supposed to be there, and we just happened to not be using them that day...

Of course it all worked a treat, and no-one had to get nailed to anything.

But the farce doesn't stop there, oh no. It continues in the new year, when we will be subjected to an internal audit. The company wants to ensure that all policies and procedures are being complied with; including good ol' health 'n' safety. Apparently, everytime any contractor comes on site to do anything ever, they must provide us with a Method Statement (detailing what they will be doing and how), and a Risk Assessment (detailing what hazards they have identified with the work that they will be doing, and what measures they have in place to reduce the associated risks). At least twice each month, we must check that contractors are sticking to their method statements and risk assessments, that the correct PPE is in use, and that probably no-one is likely to die; and we must document it all.

In the last six months, this has happened precisely once.

And so in a few weeks, my most important task will be to invent method statements and risk assessments; and to then falsify our records so that it looks like we checked up on it all like we should have.

I had always suspected that life in industry would be something like this; but I wasn't quite prepared for the fact that life in industry would be exactly like this.

In other news: as alluded to last week, we have a new housemate. Sam, the Jolly Buffoon/Human Trombone, is gone. In his place we have some guy called Mike, a twenty-something floor fitter with good hair. Mike is incurably northern, and had just about got his life back on the rails - until he moved in with us. His girlfriend - who won't be living with us just yet - has thankfully intervened, saving him (and us) from himself, and hopefully ensuring that the rent will get payed at the end of the month.

And finally... I couldn't find a relevant picture to go with this post. So this one's for the nerds.

Please call me Eddy if it will help you relax

It is worth noting that my grown-up workplace is owned by an American company, and as such there is a distinctly American flavour about many of our practices and general goings-on. This is most noticeable when it comes to anything even vaguely health and safety related; Americans are famed for their litigious nature, and so our cruel tyrannic overlords at grown-up work go to great efforts to ensure that we don't get sued, for anything, ever.

Which seems reasonable enough... except it can get just the tiniest bit patronising at times.

Exhibit A: The attachment to an email sent to all recipients on site on Friday, entitled "Crossing the Road".


I was literally angry with rage. I don't think I need to explain why.

It's not like this is a one-off, either; about a month ago we all had to sign a bit of paper to confirm that we had read and understood the attached single point lesson on Safely Ascending and Descending Stairs.

Meanwhile, less rubbish things have been happening. Charlie Cat has returned from her summer death camp shenanigans, and has brought an actual cat with her.


The cat's previous owner (Charlie's sister) named it Molly. This was noisily proclaimed to be a rubbish name, and so the following shortlist of alternative monikers was produced.

• Brian
• Jeff
• Scorponok
• Hitler

Instead of any of the above, we seem to have settled for Rasputin. Rasputin enjoys sleeping and sitting on things, and so fits in quite well here.

All this, and I got to take bits of Matt's car apart last weekend too. Matt (who did not produce a short film in the 1940's entitled "Nazi Super-Men Are Our Superiors") has already produced a splendid account of our epic and manly exploits. It's got pictures and everything. Click here and here...

I was looking for a job, and then I found a job

I started my placement last week.

It started with a two hour induction focusing mainly on health and safety; How To Pick Up Boxes, How To Not Get Run Over By A Fork Lift Truck, that sort of thing. There are apparently a million and one ways to get horribly disfigured/lightly killed in this place, and as such I have been issued with a dizzying array of personal protective equipment; shatterproof safety glasses, tasteful blue helmet, snazzy high-viz waistcoat, ear plugs that look like delicious sweets, and metatarsal protecting footwear that feels like a lump of steel wrapped in leather, with a little hole for each foot. Neat. Attending the same induction were five other new starters; two of whom were also called Ben. Hardly confusing at all, actually. Once we were done with that, we got taken to our relevant departments; in my case Plant Engineering, where I met the outgoing placement student, who is also called Ben. At this point I began to wonder whether there was maybe some kind of bizarre recruitment policy at play...

Anyway, I've been doing this placement malarkey for a week and a half now. It's okay I guess, I just wish I had more to do. Also, the travel kind of sucks; I'm driving over 160 miles each day, having to get up early and get home late; and every two days I have to put another £50 of petrol in my car.

On the subject of my car... (collective gasp at effortlessly seamless transition) ...I got a new one. And yes, it is a bit of a tosser's car; but this particular tosser is jolly pleased with it.



Anyone who knows cars, knows what it is; and anyone who doesn't, won't care. So I will not go into tedious detail about it (there's a time and place for such geekery).

It goes a little way towards making the daily commute to and from Exeter that little bit more bearable; unlike that ghastly VW I've been trundling about in since the end of May, which offends me with its ruthless German efficiency every time I drive it.

Even so, I'm pretty sure that I need to be moving to Exeter sooner rather than later. The initial plan is to find somewhere cheap to stay Monday to Friday, coming back to Bristol for the weekends; my tenancy agreement here doesn't run out until the end of November, and I know of no-one who would want to take my place in the meantime. Plus, I still work Saturdays at The Big Gay Department Store (the wages almost pay for half my petrol from the rest of the week...).

Might still move before then, though. The vivacious Charlie Cat finishes her summer job at the end of October, and has said that she would be more than happy to run away to Devon with me...

Happy in the haze of a drunken hour

Such was my state last weekend, when I scarpered back to my parents' bit of the country for my cousin Paul/uncle Terry's combined birthday shenanigan. It was okay, I suppose. I spent the first bit of the day drinking in the conservatory with Paul's grandfather, whom I don't recall ever meeting before. He entertained me with tales of how his Jewish friend was too fat to join the RAF, how the happiest time of his life was when he was a tailgunner in a Lancaster bomber shooting down Germans, why he doesn't trust Muslims, the way that "The Continentals" have ruined meat for the rest of us... then Dr Sister arrived, allowing me to get on with the serious business of getting quite inappropriately hammered. By the middle of the afternoon, Dr Sister, Neil The Boyfriend, my dad and I had seemingly managed to relegate ourselves to the Naughty Step at the foot of the garden; slightly removed from the rest of the party, but still close enough that we could dive in and grab delicious snackums from time to time.

Meanwhile, two great events have occurred in Sam's life in the last month. Firstly, he has shaved off his beard ("What a strange sensation; I can feel the wind whistling through my chins"), though for some reason retained a ridiculous moustache. Secondly, he has bought a new car. Well, new to him, anyway.

Clearly, the first of these two crucial developments is of little interest to anyone other than Sam himself. The second, however, is somewhat more significant to Matt and myself, as will soon become apparent. Sam's "new" car is the majestic 1988 Volvo 240 GLT (Grand Luxe Touring), commonly referred to by motoring journalists as "The Swedish Brick". It has a genuine leatherette interior.

And this has inspired Matt and I, to no-one's greater surprise than our own. You see, Sam has gone out and bought a car that is clearly rubbish, but that he really likes - although in his defence, it is still infinitely better than his previous car; a Ford Fiesta, mostly composed of rust held together with duck tape, which he attempted to run on chip fat for a while. Anyway, this is precisely the kind of irrational heart-over-head decision that Sam can make with ease (because he is a buffoon), but that Matt and I are far too sensible to ever make - as much as we might like to. What we both need is an excuse to be as dumb as Sam, and buy rubbish cars that we love, but that we know will be appalling to run.


And so we have decided that for our holidays next year, we shall go on a road tour of the British Isles in our rubbish cars of choice. In a kind of Top-Gear-esque fashion, we have budgeted ourselves a maximum of £500 for buying our rubbish cars of choice, and will then vaguely bimble about the UK doing "stuff". The finer details (like where we will go and what we'll do) have yet to be be pinned down, but of course we have already decided what our rubbish cars of choice shall be. Mine will be a Mk3 Toyota Supra; a 3l turbo, if I can find one that comes in under budget.

Matt, meanwhile, is wasting work time searching eBay for a cheap BMW 5-series V8 (apparently considered to be "one of the most elegant shapes of its time").

Our intention is to sell these terrible heaps o' crap once we're done with them...

That's the plan, anyway.

Rated G

On Thursday, Matt left the relative safety of his White Supremacist Command Bunker and came round here so that we try our hand at casting miniatures.

I feel compelled at this stage to point out that this was not some sneaky attempt to save money on the cost of buying toy soldiers; nor was it a zany get-rich-quick scheme. No, as you might expect it’s far geekier than that. I decided that for a particular type of creature in my army, rather than use the standard model I would ‘convert’ my own, using parts of a current model, the majority of an older out-of-production model, and a bit of scratch-built putty sculpting goodness. The problem with this is that I need four of these beasts, and getting hold of that old out-of-production model (a Chaos Dwarf Great Taurus, if you must know) is both tricky and expensive – you have to wait until one turns up on eBay, and then be prepared to pay between £25 and £40 for it.

Whereas 1kg of mouldmaking RTV-101 silicone rubber only costs £20…

The mould itself was fairly easy to make. The complicated/exciting/hazardous bit would be the actual casting process, which is obviously why Matt was so keen to have some involvement. The initial plan was to use the uber gas barbecue that Dozer liberated from The Pub to heat our white metal in an aluminium watering can that was conveniently lying about. The watering can seemed like a sound move because it had a nice long spout, which would make the pouring of molten metal into the mould a bit easier.

We hit our first snag when the spout of our can fell off, it having been merely soldered on. Oops. Not to worry, we had a back up plan.

It is commonly understood that most problems can be solved with the careful application of a hammer; in this instance we used it to mash the edge of an old milk pan into a slightly more precise poury bit. Needless to say, by this point we were both quite intoxicated by the heady rush of barbecuing and metalwork, and were feeling quite exceptionally manly… but then it started to rain, so we had to retreat indoors before we had a chance to take our tops off and start doing weights.

The metal we used for the casting came entirely out of my bitz box – a kind of scrap yard of old toy soldiers, spare parts and offcuts. Matt insisted on checking through it all and removing the most choice bits of eBay fodder before it got melted. A tablespoon was used to skim the slag off the top of the liquid metal. I don’t expect this to be of interest to anyone; but I am a puerile engineering geek, and it pleases me to be able to use the word ‘slag’ so appropriately. I’m sure that dog breeders experience the same joy with the word ‘bitch’. The twats.

The mould was contained in an old soup tin, and the whole thing was then heated in the oven so as to prevent the metal from immediately solidifying on contact. It seemed as though all our efforts were in vain, though, when the mold started to brim over a bit sooner than we expected. We figured that a lump of metal had set in the mould and stopped the rest of it from filling, and dumped the whole thing into a sink full of cold water to let it cool off.

Because the mould had expanded slightly in the oven, we had to cut the tin away with clippers. Which is when we noticed that the channel cut into the bottom of the mould to allow air to escape had filled with metal… had it worked after all? We held our breath in collective anticipation.

With the tin cut away, all that remained was to carefully pry away half the mould, and see if our new toy had all of its fingers and toes, so to speak…

Huzzah! We had successfully played God, sinned against toy soldiers, infringed on copyright and made our own Dragon Ogre Bull Centaur Thing. Here is a poor photo of the final outcome, pictured alongside the original model (left), both in the shadow of the potently inspirational liquid that fuels all such manly DIY exploits.

All the green bits of the original were sculpted from scratch; the other colourful bits are just from where I was too lazy to strip the paint off of the various components that were used to construct this monstrosity. It still doesn’t really give a good idea of what the finished models will look like; arms, heads and additional bits of armour from more readily available sources will be added to finish them off. Perhaps I will put up photos of them when they’re done…

In other news:

• I went to see Red Sparowes with The Boy and Zak earlier this week. They were amazing. Report to follow.
• Charlie Cat came back to visit for a couple of days. We had an impromptu tea party in the front garden in her honour. She continues to rock, despite the photographic evidence of her wearing a tea cosy on her head which might suggest otherwise.

• Dozer’s motorbike got stolen, and subsequently recovered a few days later by Joe and myself from an alleyway less than 100 yards from our house.
• I caught Mouse eating a fly the other day. Urgh.