workin' nine to five... ish

So, I turned up on Tuesday last week to talk to this guy at university about work 'n' stuff. We spent about an hour trying to thrash out just what I ought to be doing, and then another hour talking about motorsport. Turns out that we've been in the same place at the same time before; the pit lane at Brands Hatch for the 1984 British grand prix. He was working for the Williams team as an engineer of some description; I was a little further down the pit lane in the Brabham garage, wearing a bad sweater and hanging out with my new pal Riccardo Patrese.

Anyway, it turns out that the nature of my work is such that I can pretty much do it all from home; and so I spend half my day researching fuel saving aerodynamics, and the other half playing minesweeper.

However, I do take my minesweeping commitments quite seriously; and so there has been no time for toy soldiers, my busy work schedule allowing for only the most essential booze-soaked engagements such as The Boy's birthday (many happy returns 'n' that), and banger racing in the picturesque Mendip hills followed by a delicious roast lamb dinner (thank you Charlie Cat).

all bets are off

We took the slag to it's first trackday at Castle Combe last week.

Most remarkably, and despite our best efforts, we brought it back in mostly one piece, too (I think we may have left a bit of rear mudflap somewhere on one of the grassy bits).

On the whole we had a good time, and learned a lot. Mostly we learned that it's really easy to spin rear-wheel drive cars on wet and greasy tracks when you have more enthusiasm than talent.

Still, the important thing is we didn't hit anyone else whilst we did immaculate pirouettes around tiny imaginary tracks of our own devising, and having returned with a still functioning slag we now intend to make it lighter and more imbalanced by taking out every single non-essential item. This does not include the stereo, which is of course essential.

I returned from our satisfying day of near-death experiences to find that Charlie Cat had taken delivery of one of her more recent eBay purchases.

We have decided to name him Mr BIMBLE; although certain less charitable South Africans have since dubbed him Mr Binnable.

We love Mr BIMBLE, with his orange fur and creeping horror and hat at a jaunty angle. But we're apparently the only ones.

And what else? Well, it was a bank holiday weekend, so we had to go to the Mendips to watch the bangers. To cut a long story short, there were limos...

...hearses...

...and Reliant Robins held together with bits of string...

...but mostly there was a lot of huddling together like penguins as we tried (and mostly failed) to shelter ourselves from the freezing bloody wind.

Schoolwork now. Get lost.

blood for cream

I've been listening to a lot of This Will Destroy You this week. They're an amazing band, but it's not doing much for my will to live.

The only other thing to happen this week was the final banger racing fixture of the year at the world-renowned Mendips Raceway. There were mini-rods and special rods racing, but we barely saw them as we spent most of our time wandering around the pits poking at the wreckage from the main event - the unlimited bangers.

Unlimited means no restrictions on engine size, and since there was also a prize of £50 for the oldest/rarest entrant, we got to see an impressive variety of automotive excellence get atomised.

There were a few Jags...


...an old Triumph 2000...


...a Mk3 Toyota Supra...


...some ludicrously big ol' Daimler of some description (shown here shortly before it caught fire)...


...quite a lot of Volvos (including a team of four bright red 760 estates with the words "TEAM IMPACT" daubed ominously on the sides in lurid purple)...


...and some stuff that could no longer be identified.


And here's what they were all fighting for; big prizes.


That's right; shiny trophies, rough cider, and blocks of cheese.

Welcome to the West Country.

Sharks don’t look back, because they have no necks

Last Monday was a bank holiday; therefore the bangers were on; therefore we went to watch the bangers. Brave knights of the road did battle with no thought for their own personal gain or safety, first in the usual assortment of gaily-coloured clapped-out motors, then in a glorious figure-of-eight Reliant Robin destruction derby, and finally in bangers towing caravans. It was pretty damn awesome.

Aside from that, it’s been a fairly slow week; I’ve been tweaking (ie. completely re-writing) my CV for this Cern placement application thingy, and have now got it to the point where even I think it makes me sound employable. Sort of. Jeff “Smash Your Foes, See Them Scatter Before You, And Hear The Lamentation Of Their Women” McDeath has been around a fair bit too, so naturally there has been a bit of drinking and Blood Bowl. If it seems as though Jeff spends a lot of time at our house, that’s because he does. Jeff doesn’t have a great time in his own home, mainly because he regards his mother as dominating and unreasoning matriarchal dictator, whilst she regards him as a disorganised, lazy and irresponsible stoner that’s far too content to just bimble through life at his own pace. They are of course both right, which explains why Jeff failed to get onto the teaching course he had planned to do this year; and also why he is now trying to get a job in recruitment consultancy far, far away from his mother, in London. He’s had a few interesting interviews with some very self-important people in expensive suits, who mostly seem interested in how ruthless he can be, and whether or not he possesses the same kind of maniacal greed more commonly found in Bond villains.

Mr Dozer’s got himself a job, working at a friend’s motorbike shop. Here’s what he did at work this week.

That’s not all he did, of course; he also made one for The Boy and one for me, and liberated a pair of all-weather motorcycle boots for himself.

And finally, I went see the Transformers movie. I’ve loved Transformers since I was a kid, and was expecting to be massively disappointed by the film; mainly because most of the characters transform into the wrong things… yes, I’m that kind of geek.

The fact is that it’s really easy to find fault with the film. But do you know what? Giant robots are fucking cool. And theres an awful lot of giant robots smashing stuff up in that film. I give it seven thumbs up.

Type 6 post

Although it wasn’t intended to be, clearly my assertion that I might start posting more than once per week was no more than an empty threat. This could be viewed as either a blessing or a curse; you get less reading material, but it is (in theory at least) less banal. Probably a lot less emo, too.

I could try to claim that I have simply been far too busy to write, and as an experienced and dedicated procrastinator I reckon that I could quite easily make it sound as though the mundane activities of the past week have left me run off my feet. The truth is that aside from a job interview, some banger racing and a lot of toy soldiering, I’ve mostly just been to drunk and/or lazy to drive a computer.

Yep, more banger racing. Since it was only Dozer, The Boy and myself going this time, I had to do the driving, since neither of the other two have a car licence. In fact, Dozer still doesn’t have a bike licence, a fairly essential piece of paper for anyone wanting to be in a biker gang… he assures us that he is getting it all sorted out. We know full well that he isn’t doing anything of the sort, but it’s easier to just not care – and so that’s what we do.

Anyway, I actually remembered to bring my camera to the racing this time, so you can be bored by pictures instead of words. You lucky people.

The view out over the pit area, just behind where we were standing. That's a whole lot of Somerset right there. As impressive as the view was, what was even more impressive was the way that no matter what kind of damage had been inflicted on a car during a race, it could all be fixed with either a hammer, or a really big hammer.

As luck would have it, this was the first (and quite possibly the last) time that Mendips Raceway had ever hosted Coach Racing. The racing itself was pretty dull, what with coaches being quite desperately slow 'n' all; but the demolition derby at the end of the day was splendidly destructive, even if there were only five participants - four actual coaches, plus one light goods vehicle with windows painted onto the side of it.

The job interview was for the position of “Part-time Guest Services Assistant”, or something. Basically, driving a desk at Bristol Premier Apartments for sixteen hours a week. The pay’s pretty crappy, but it seems like a nice place to work, and it is a bit different to the retail environment that I’m more used to. The interview itself seemed to go quite well, and I should only have to wait another week for them to get back to me and explain that 11 years experience in the toy soldier retail industry is worthless, and no, I am not even fit to answer their phone.

Most of my time this week has been wasted in the company of Mr Jeff McDeath A-Bomb Urban Destruction, either getting drunk, or playing with toys, or both. He is a servant of the Dark Side of procrastination (ie. just plain lazy), and as a result missed out on getting a half-decent degree by a whisker; then applied for a teaching course in London far too late to have any realistic chance of getting in; then applied for the same course back here in Bristol even later, with even less chance of getting in. The legendary Remorseless Loving Machine is now supposed to be finding himself a job of some description, but instead is spending a lot of time at my house playing games and smoking weed. Silly boy.

Meanwhile, it seems that Sam has developed a new and quite unsavoury habit. For some reason he has taken to graphically describing his bowel movements to anyone that happens to be around at the time. Last week we all got to hear about an unpleasant and embarrassing “following through” incident when he tried to fart in bed one morning; more usually he simply insists on describing how he feels his excremental efforts have rated on the Bristol Stool Scale, a local cultural and scientific claim to fame that I had not previously been aware of.

In hindsight, I was probably far happier in my ignorance.