Burning those candles
I’ve been all over the place this week, it seems. And I’m tired, so goddamned tired.
I had three days of nightwork oop north at the beginning of the week. Nightwork isn’t usually a problem for me, but I do struggle to sleep during the day. This week, for some reason, moreso than usual. Consequently, come Thursday, I was dead on my feet. Didn’t know whether I was coming or going.  And I still feel knackered, even now.

You don’t bite the hand that feeds you
That’s why I deleted yesterday’s post before anybody saw it. I got a bit pissed off about some things (and people) at work, this week and wrote a big ranting, whinging post about it. S’funny, but writing about it had a sort of cathartic effect and getting it all off my chest to you lot, helped a great deal… even if the post wasn’t actually up long enough for any of you to read it. And I’m glad I deleted it, because in hindsight, the whole situation doesn’t look as bad as I’d felt it was. Just me whinging more than usual, through lack of sleep, probably.

Blurring the lines
I went up the Fish & Chip shop earlier. I was served by a surly teenager in a grubby white dustcoat.  I looked at them quite hard… to the point of staring. I even had a short conversation with this person, regarding the condiments I’d like sprinkled on my chips. And I’ve given it much thought over the last few hours. But, even now, I couldn’t tell you whether the person serving me was a boy or a girl.

… first of the month. Hurrah!

And, of course, that also means the end of my February Challenge.

It got quite hard sometimes to think of things to post about (quite evident, in some posts, methinks), but we got there in the end.

It’s good to have challenges, I think, something to make you push yourself… to help discover your limits.

With that in mind I have already set myself a new trial: I’m going to take the Activia Challenge.

Yes, I will have to eat a small pot of yoghurt everyday for two weeks.

It’s quite a task, I’m sure you’ll agree, but with you lot backing me, I’m sure I can do it.

Wish me luck.

Amelia has her uniform now for Beavers. And with it, came a host of badges to sew on - I have no idea what the collective noun for badges is.

Mrs M had already left for work and I was putting the kids to bed, when Amelia reminded me that the badges needed sewing on. By tomorrow morning.

Arse.

My sewing skills have never been that good. I can sew a button on, no problem, but darning and stuff like that is a no-go area for me. I asked Amelia whether she’d prefer to have some buttons sewn on instead. But, apparently not.

It took me ages. And they look a bit wonky. And the last one went on with double-sided sellotape because I was rapidly losing interest.

And I pricked my finger. Twice.

There was blood.

Pah! Woman’s work!

Now, when she needs someone with fine soldering skills, to sling together a monostable timer circuit, so she can get her Electrical and Electronics  badge, then I’m the daddy!

Even though I’ve mentioned it here before (actually, it was on the old site), somebody I was talking to at work yesterday, didn’t believe that I was once kissed on my leg by former Miss Whiplash, Cleo Rocos.

So when better to repeat myself - and provide photographic evidence at the same time - than during my February blogathon?

Unfortunately, despite much searching, I seem to have lost the original photo’s, but luckily these smaller copies still resided on the old .co.uk server.

As can be seen in the picture(s) above, I had the wonderful Ms Rocos on her knees before me, planting the aforementioned smacker.

Admittedly, I had my leg in plaster at the time, but I think it still counts!

I played squash again this evening and I think it’s fair to say, I ache like buggery.

However, it’s not just the aches and pains from playing comedy squash - a game that shouldn’t really be played by a man in my condition (slightly overweight) - that ails me. I have several other long-term ailments that perhaps I should get a doctor to look at.

I’ve mentioned here before that I have the knees of a geriatric, so I won’t mention them again. Except to tell you that they often hurt. For no reason. And when it’s quiet in the house, I can hear them “graunch” as I climb the stairs. That’s not good. Is it? Having damaged knees in my thirties [Ahem].

Oh, and I have a cough.

I also have a touch of tennis elbow, which gives me jip quite often.

But most worrying, is the almost constant pains I have in my neck. I think this stems from a squash game about a year ago, when I ran headlong into my opponent. I hit him quite hard with my head and I think I compressed my neck as I did so. I remember feeling something click, at the time and have had almost constant aches there ever since.

I know I should go to the doctor with it, but I’d feel a bit of a wuss… complaining about an achey neck.

So maybe I’ll just continue to suffer in silence and not tell anyone.

Except you two.

When I arrived at the office this morning - in Northampton - I found my access card wasn’t authorised to let me in. A quick phone call to the security people told me that I’d have a bit of a wait before it could be sorted, so I went off in search of some tea and toast.

A short drive down the road and I happened across two supermarkets, next door to each other. The first was a branch of the decidedly pikey Asda store. Next to it was it’s antithesis: the somewhat upmarket Waitrose. I placed my vehicle in the car park of the former (because I drove into the wrong entrance) and then walked across to the latter. Of course.

The cafeteria didn’t do toast - possibly considered too downmarket for its clientele - and so I sat down at a table with my pot of tea and a fruit scone.

At the table next to me, two people - a man and a woman - were having an argument. This being Waitrose though, their heated exchange hardly rose above a barely audible whisper.

With my mid-morning ripast over,  I made my way back to the car.

In Asda’s car park, were two men, locked together in some sort of wrestling hold, rolling about on the ground amongst the spilled contents of an upturned trolley. As they grappled with each other, various expletives rent the air. People walked past, giving them a wide berth. I did likewise.

To quote Stephen Fry (sort of): “That’s the good thing about Asda… it keeps the scum out of Waitrose.”

So, maybe the economy isn’t in such bad shape after all.

Maybe our beloved, weirdly eyebrowed Chancellor, Alistair Darling, just exagerated a little when he said we were a thousand billion zillion quid in debt.

Because we now know, of course, that he is prone to exagerate somewhat.

In the latest political saga to grip the nation (yeah, right), the little Darling reveals how some of his colleagues questioned his ability to run the nation’s economy after he predicted a big recession in 2008. In his mind, Downing Street had “unleashed the forces of hell” upon him.

Forces of hell? That’s a little over dramatic, don’t you think? A bit like a petulant schoolboy trying to get his mates in trouble because they hid his football shorts and called him names.

And we also hear that Gordon Brown is “upset” at the news that people think he’s a bit of a bully.   Ahh, bless.

Now, do we have any grown-ups that could run the country, please?

My journey home from Lewisham today, was a nightmare.

An accident in the Blackwall Tunnel left me sitting in three lanes of stationary traffic. I sat there - not moving - for about ten minutes then pulled out and went down a sliproad.  I had no idea of where I was going but anything was better than just sitting there.

A quick call to Sprat-Nav soon had me routed toward the Woolwich Ferry. It was brilliant! I went across the Thames. On a boat. In my car. For no money. Marvellous. And I didn’t even get seasick on the five-minute journey!

From there to the M11 was a doddle and we sped along. Then I hit the M25 and we ground to a halt. We crawled along for ages. All thanks to another accident. When we finally filed past the three cars involved I screamed “Bastards!” at them. It felt like the right thing to do.

And then I reached the M1. It was super speedy. For two miles, then we ground to a halt.  Then we crawled for 15 minutes until we passed another accident - now sitting on the hard shoulder. “Fucking bastards!” I yelled at them, as loudly as I could. With my windows up.

Then we all stopped again, thanks to the perpetual roadworks that have been there since the motorway opened in nineteen sixty whatever. “Bastards! Bastards! Bastards!”

My (normally 90 minute) journey finally ended when I got home at 7.15

I’d left at 3.30, nearly four hours earlier.

What a bastard.

Following a somewhat huge bill for gas and electric last month, I decided to look at ways of saving a few quid.

One way, was to sign up for British Gas’  EnergySmart scheme. The main advantage of this, is that you take the meter reading yourself each month and then enter it on the British Gas website, therefore having more accurate bills and no more estimated ones. You also pay monthly as opposed to quarterly, as I do at the moment.

New customers to the scheme also receive an energy monitor. This is a two part device. The first is a clamp that fits round one of the cables going into your electricity meter. This then transmits data wirelessly to a display unit that you plug in somewhere indoors. You can then see in real-time what your current energy consumption is - electricity only, obviously.

So, I connected it all up and - as with any new gadget - we had a bit of a play. The first thing we tried was seeing how far we could get the real-time bar to go round the display, so we turned on everything in the house - just for a minute or two. The display went to maximum quite easily. Gulp.

Then we decided to see how low it would go, and went round turning off everything we could find. The display went to zero… almost. I put the small remainder showing, down to the burglar alarm and the display unit itself requiring electricity to work.

All well and good.

A few days later, Mrs Masher rang me. “Y’know the other day, when we turned everything off?”

“Yep”

“You forgot to turn the freezer in the garage back on, didn’t you?”

[short pause] “Er…oh… fuck. ”

So, that’s a hundred quid’s worth of food that had to be thrown away.

So much for saving money.

“So, what do you use?” is a question I am often asked when sorting out PC issues for family and friends.
So, here are a few of the software programs that I rely on to… do my stuff.

Antivirus There are plenty of AV progs on the market, including some very good freebies. Personally, I’ve always paid for AV software, as the freebies - good as some of them are - never quite achieve the same level of protection as a decent paid-for program, according to the lab tests done by various computer magazines.
So, which is the best paid-for program? Well, if you read the nerdy computer mags - and I do -  you’ll see that there isn’t a ‘Best’. They vary from month to month and magazine to magazine.My current preference though, is ESET NOD32 Antivirus 4 which has served me well for a few years now and always appears in the top 5 of the AV tests. Whichever you use, make sure you do a full scan regularly and don’t just rely on the program’s Real-Time protection.

Spyware As well as horrible viruseseses, there’s another set of nasties out there, known as spyware or malware. Generally not as malevolent as a virus, malware still infects your system and causes problems: pop-up windows suddenly start appearing, your homepage changes to something you’ve never heard of and won’t switch back; you suddenly have so many toolbars at the top of your browser, it feels that you are reading webpages through a letterbox; and your system slows down considerably. Again, there are plenty of good Spyware/Malware removers on the market and they tend to jump about as to which is the best.  I tend to run two of these (one after the other) as one will invariably pick up something the other has missed.  AntiMalwareBytes and SuperAntiSpyware are both very good. Both offer paid-for (pro) versions, but I find the free ones work just fine.  Run them weekly.

Uninstaller When you install a program on your PC, it sticks bits everywhere: the main program executable and it’s associated files in the program folder; dll files in the system folders and dozens of registry entries that are almost impossible to find - and shouldn’t be tampered with anyway, unless you know what you’re doing. Unfortunately, in many cases when you uninstall the program, a lot of these ‘bits’ don’t get properly removed and over time this can lead to problems. So, there are now a plethora of uninstaller programs on the market. My favourite is Revo Uninstaller. It seems to do a good job of completely removing even the most stubborn of programs. And it’s free!

Clean Up Again, over time your PC will amass all sorts of shit (that’s tech speak for temporary files; unwanted backup files; not needed log files etc). One of the best tools around for cleaning all this up is Piriform’s CCleaner (the first C stands for Crap).  It’ll also tidy up your registry, but make sure you make a backup first.

Defrag As you install and uninstall and install and uninstall and install and… well, you get the idea, the files on your hard drive become ‘fragmented’. Instead of all being together in a nice straight line they are dotted about the drive’s surface. This doesn’t cause any problems per se, but can lead to a significant slowing of loading times if you have a large drive. Depending on computer usage, you shouldn’t have to defrag very often.
Windows has a built-in defragger, but there are better ones about. My defrag tool of choice at the moment (and has been for the last year) is Auslogics’ freebie version. It can handle multiple disks and you can analyse the disk first to see if it needs attention.

Well, they’re the software tools that I use for general PC maintenance.  I have more though, and if you’ve found this interesting or useful, then I’ll maybe do another one next week.  And of course, I’m interested in any recommendations you may have.

Disclaimer: Whilst I recommend these programs, use them myself and have had no problems as a result, I cannot and will not be held responsible for any fuck ups you may incur through their usage.

Due to her working at the weekends, it’s rare that the current Mrs Masher gets to spend any quality time with us (holidays aside, of course).

But she has taken this week off work, due to the school half-term holidays, and that means we get the weekend together too. So, what to do, as a family?

We needed something cheap, as due to a cockup on the wages front for both us this month, money’s too tight to mention.

She suggested we load the kids and their bikes into the car and find a country park with a couple of Geocaches, as it’s a long time since she’s cached with us.

So we did just that and it’s been brilliant.  The kids have had plenty of fresh air and exercise. We had a picnic in the park which we all enjoyed. And the Geocaching did what it does best: took us to a lovely country park only twenty miles away, that we otherwise wouldn’t have known was there.

All in all, a thoroughly enjoyable day that cost us no more than a tenner.

Could do with a few more of them.

My brother-in-law has been having a few computer problems of late and asked me if I could have a lookee.

And so, as it’s the end of the week and there wasn’t much happening, I spent the day working from his office.

I can log on to our systems as long as I have a decent broadband connection. Unfortunately, his broadband is 10 times slower than mine and when I finally got logged in, the latency just made it so bloody difficult to use. I didn’t get a great deal of work done.  But I think I fixed his computer.

I was also asked to attend a conference call at short notice. In order to not tie up his phone line, on a national rate number, I had to dial in to the call using my mobile phone.  It only lasted 90 mins!  So there’s a nice bill to look forward to next month!  Also - and I don’t know if this is psychosomatic or not - but at the end of it, I had a dull headache which lasted several hours.  I still think the mobile phone companies are covering up the health effects of these things.

As the afternoon quietened, B-I-L suggested a game of squash. I haven’t played for about six-months and am so very out of condition.

But, we played.

I won.

And I’m absolutely knackered.

I had a crap day at work, today. Everything I touched just seemed to go wrong.

I left late and then had a 2hr journey home on the motorway to contend with thanks to another bloody accident.

Speaking to the missus on the phone, she said that she and the kids would probably be in bed when I got home and that I’d have to fend for myself.  Great!

As I neared my house I made plans: I’d stop at the chip shop and get some food and then - with everyone in bed and the living room all to myself - I’d put on an action DVD, with guns and helicopters and fighting and death and blood and gore and - maybey - a few scantily clad women.

But as I stepped through the front door - piping hot sausage and chips in my hands - I could tell straight away that they weren’t all in bed: strains of ABBA forced their way past the closed living-room door: they were watching Mamma-Mia, The Musical.

Dejected, I sat on the sofa and devoured my chips. Well, it’s had rave reviews, I thought, so let’s give it a try.

I gave it a try.

It was shit.

I’ve never had a good sense of direction.

When I passed my motorcycle test all them years ago, I found it wonderful to be out on the open road and took it upon myself to travel round, visiting various relatives. And time after time I would get lost, always turning up at my destination way past the time I’d told them I would.

When I got a car, things didn’t get any better. Having a map on the seat next to me, was just a way of adding insult to injury as I drove miles in the wrong direction.

If ever a person needed sat-nav to be invented, it was me.

And yet, strangely, when it finally did arrive on the scene, I didn’t get one. The extortionate prices may have had something to do with that.

But my last car - HMS Masher - had sat-nav built-in (as well as sonar) and suddenly I started arriving at places on time. It was marvellous!  I, of course, ensured that my next car also came with it.

But, even with sat-nav, I have managed to get lost. It isn’t idiot (Masher) proof.  And of course, ordinary sat-nav is unaware  of roadworks and diversions and hold-ups. Sometimes I have driven for tens of miles with Sharon telling me to “Make a U-turn if possible”.

In these instances, I turn to Sprat-Nav.  This free service is only open to a select few, but on numerous occasions it has been worth it’s weight in gold. Or Jaffa Cakes.

Only t’other week, I was daydreaming and missed my junction on the motorway. That meant I’d have to go down to the M25 and sit in the torturous Monday morning traffic. But a quick call to Sprat-Nav and I was directed on a route neither me or Sharon would have considered and I arrived at my destination in no time at all. Bloody brilliant.

Sprat-Nav… I’d be lost without him.

Last night I was working in Oxfordshire.

The work didn’t go quite as smoothly as it should have and I was still on-site when the cleaner turned up at 05.30

He introduced himself as Reg.  He was an old boy, with a nose that made Karl Malden’s look like it belonged to a small girl… a small girl with a wee petite nose.  He also had old boy sensibilities and views on life, as I was soon to discover.

He asked if I’d come far and I told him. “Blimey, that’s a fair way to drive at this time in the morning.”

“It’s certainly far enough when you haven’t slept in 24hrs”, I agreed.

“So, what’s Luton like for jungle bunnies, then? You got many? We’re fuckin’ overun with them here.” he said, not pausing for breath.  He interpreted the quizzical look on my face as one that meant his question needed further explaination. Far from it: I knew exactly what he meant, I was just a bit stunned at his forthrightness. “The darkies. You got many?” he continued.

“Er, yes.” I said, “Jungle bunnies abound in Luton. They’re everywhere. You can’t turn a corner without bumping into a jungle bunny”. I hoped the tone of my voice conveyed the fact that I was taking the piss out of him.  But no.

“Do you get on alright with ‘em? ” he asked, “I mean, they’re not all bad, are they? Some of them are OK.”

“Oh yeah”, I said, “In fact, some of my very best friends… know some darkies.” He still wasn’t picking up on the sarcastic tone in my voice. I continued.  “And my very best friend, the best man at my wedding, was a jungle bunny. Probably still is.”

“That’s right”, said Reg, unabashed, “As I said, some of the bastards are OK. But the rest of ‘em should be fuckin’ well sent home.”

I laughed. I didn’t feel angry at all with this sad old man. I genuinely thought it funny. Here was a bigot with opinions that would make Nick Griffin look positively left wing, and he wasn’t afraid to tell them to anybody, whether he knew of their political stance or not.

Idiot.

Maybe his nose was that big, because he’d been punched in the face so many times.

The more astute amongst you will have noticed that I am now halfway through my self-imposed annual challenge, to wit: post something up on this site every day for the whole month of February.

I haven’t mentioned it before this. I don’t know why. But, I’m pleased to see that I’m not alone and at least one other has joined me in my quest.

Anyhoo…

Today, I am mainly being in Langley. Not the Langley in Virginia, staffed by shadowy types in dark glasses, I hasten to add.  No, I am in the UK version of Langley, just up the road from Sluff. Shadowy types abound, but there is a distinct lack of sunglasses.

I’ve come to Langley to catch up on some ‘paper’ work. And, as I type this (a short break from the overly complicated spreadsheet that I’m currently immersed in), there is a young chap wandering around me, talking into his mobile phone. It’s very distracting.

Why do some people do that?  Given a desk phone, most people will happily sit and discuss things on their 30 min conference call. But give them a mobile and they suddenly have an urge to perambulate up and down the office, letting everyone know how important they are.

This particular fellow has made it worse, by wearing a big pair of headphones that are plugged into his iPhone. As such, he probably doesn’t realise just how loud he is talking. Or how annoying he is being.

Or how bloody daft he looks.

I’m sure that, like us here at Masher Towers, whenever you go away on holiday you nearly always  become friends with another family… usually via the respective kids playing with each other on the beach or something.  But even before we had kids, we often befriended other couples and would often end up spending much of the holiday dining and drinking with them.

It’s a nice thing to do on holiday - meet new people - and we all do it, I’m sure.

I’m willing to bet that also like us, you do the “Oh we must keep in touch” thing and swap names and addresses at the airport. Of course, nowadays, it tends to be email addresses that are swapped.

But, I can count on one three-fingered hand, the number of times we have actually made the effort to stay in touch with people we have met on holiday.  Those people tend to be ones that we haven’t just got on well with, but where something has actually clicked and a firmer friendship has formed. They have a similar outlook on life as us, maybe. I don’t know.

Today, we are driving to Swindon - a not-inconsiderable distance - to meet up with Alex and Michelle, a couple that we got on famously with when we were in Egypt last year.

The currently rain-soaked streets of Swindon will provide very different surroundings to when last we met them.

But I’m really looking forward to it, nonetheless.

Today was to be “Shed Erection Day”.

My sister has bought a bloody great big shed and rather like anything purchased from Ikea - except the Swedish meatballs - it comes flat-packed and needs to be put together. I hasten to add that the shed didn’t come from Ikea. I don’t know if they even do sheds. Anyway, enough of that.

So, I turn up on site (sister’s back garden) at about 10:30 this morning to meet the rest of the workforce: my dad; my brother-in-law and sister’s boyfriend. I drilled a few holes in some panels, ready for screwing and then we stopped for a big fry-up breakfast. Because that’s what shed builders do.

My sister(s) then took the kids into town to get out of our way, leaving strict instructions that the shed should be complete upon their return.

Right, time for another cup of tea then.

We put the shed floor together and heaved it into place. It wobbled like crazy on the “more uneven than it looks” paved surface.

So we tried to even it up, using spare paving slabs and the like. But nothing worked: if one side was even, the other wasn’t; if both sides were even, the middle sagged… or bowed.

And then it started raining, so we went in and had a cup of tea. Oh look, there’s rugby on the telly. Maybe we’ll just watch this for ten minutes.

An hour later, we ventured out again and decided that the only way to do this was to do it properly and lay a proper concrete base. And so a trip to B&Q was made and long lengths of wood were purchased.

When the girls returned from town, it was just starting to get dark and we’d almost finished for the day and there on the floor, in place of the big shed my sister was expecting, was a perfect wooden square, just waiting to be filled with concrete.

She didn’t look too happy.

If she’s lucky, we’ll do the concreting next weekend.

Did I ever tell you about the nutty woman? I wrote about her on my old site - as more of an essay than a blog post. But I don’t think she’s ever been mentioned here.

It was quite some time ago, when I lived in the house on the hill; just me and my German Shepherd dog. I lived in a terraced house which had a block of garages to the rear.

I arrived home one night at about 9.30 having just finished a game of squash. As I drove into the block of garages, the front door to the house adjoining the entrance to the garages, opened. I didn’t pay it much attention and duly parked my car.

As I walked out, I could see a woman standing at the open front door and I bade her a good evening. She looked troubled. “Sorry,” she said, “I thought you were my husband coming home from work. He’s very late.” I apologised for not being her husband and continued on my way.

As I walked, I looked back. She was still standing there, looking nervous. “You going to be OK?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’m a bit scared, being here on my own,” she said, “would you mind sitting with me for a while?” I quickly thought it over: they were new to the street and probably hadn’t got to know anyone yet, so I agreed: it was a neighbourly thing to do.

“I’m sure he’ll be home soon” I said, stepping inside and placing my squash bag on the floor.

We sat and chatted for about ten minutes and then there was the sound of a vehicle pulling up outside. She rushed over and peered through the curtains. “It’s him,” she said, “he’s home.”

“There you go,” I said, getting up from the sofa “I told you there was nothing to worry about.”

“Oh my God!” she said suddenly, “You’ve got to hide. He’ll kill you if he finds you here!”

“What?! Are you joking or something?” The look on her face told me she was deadly serious. “Look,” I said, “I’m sure he’ll understand. I’ll just go now.” I walked over and picked my squash bag up from where I’d left it behind the door. As I turned, she was there: just inches from my face, eyes wide with panic.

“You don’t understand. He will kill you if he finds you here. You need to hide, quickly.” Then she pushed me towards the stairs and actually up a couple of steps.  She was quite strong for such a small woman.

“What… what are you doing?” I said, starting to get a bit panicky myself now. “What am I supposed to do upstairs? Hide under the bloody bed? You’re fuckin’ mad! I’m not hiding: I’m leaving.” And with that, I pushed my way past her and out the front door.

Her husband was seated in his van, reading some paperwork and didn’t even notice me walking down the short garden path. That was until she loudly shouted after me: “No! I’m sorry. He doesn’t live here anymore.” He damn well noticed me then!

I quickly walked the short distance to my house and once in, I grabbed a big piece of wood from the back garden, and then me and my dog waited for the inevitable rap on the door.

It never came.   And I never spoke to that woman again.

Mrs Masher went to a funeral yesterday.

It was for Nikki - a girl who worked at our local nursery as a carer.

Both Amelia and Harry went to that very nursery and  - along with a couple of dozen other kids - would have been looked after at times, by Nikki.

By all accounts, I believe she was very popular there, both with the kids and the other girls.

But apparently, she developed bipolar disorder and two weeks ago, aged just 23, Nikki threw herself in front of a train.

So very sad.

My stay oop north got extended by a day, due to a faulty piece of equipment delaying the schedule.

As I hadn’t planned on this extended delay, I only brought a single change of clothing. So, this morning I had a couple of hours to spare and decided I’d go shopping and get myself a clean shirt.

My satnav suggested the Jarrow Viking Shopping Centre about 6 miles away, so off I set.

(A strange thing just happened. I’m sat in my hotel room typing this and there was a knock on the door, just now, and then it opened. A young chap - obviously a member of staff - apologised for disturbing me and then asked if I should actually be in this room. I could see, behind him, another chap holding a small overnight bag. I explained that I had booked an extra day and showed him my printed receipts. He apologised and shuffled off. There’s obviously been a booking cock-up somewhere. Anyway…)

A couple of miles away from my destination, I hit some major roadworks. “Keep to the right” suggested Sharon (the personification I have uncharacteristically given to the disembodied voice of my satnav bird), helpfully. But it was too late: there were cones everywhere and I was in a stream of traffic heading into the Tyne Tunnel.

Not to worry, I thought, I’ll just turn around at the other end of the tunnel. In fact, Sharon ( Hold on he’s back… He’s now taken my receipts away to check something. I told him he’d better bring them back. Anyhoo - where was I?) Oh yes, the satnav showed a roundabout just the other side.

What it didn’t show, was the fact that there was a toll booth at the end of the tunnel, as well.

I paid £1.20 to go through the booth, I went around the roundabout, and then paid another £1.20 to go back into the tunnel!  To say I was pissed off, was an understatement. I was so pissed off, that I curtailed my planned shopping trip and drove straight to work. I’ll just have to drive home smelling a bit skanky!

(Update- he returned my receipts and explained that for some reason, although their computer showed that I had booked the room and paid, it also showed that it was unoccupied and another guest had therefore booked it as well. As I said: a booking cock-up)

But hey, I wouldn’t have minded taking in a roomie… a roomie with certain criteria, of course. 

This post comes to you from Sunderland. I am working oop north for a couple of days.

It’s currently 2:30 in the morning and I am surfing the internet, whilst I wait for the video server card that I have changed to come back online.

However, I say surfing, but it’s really more of a paddle in the gently lapping waves of the www.  A paddle just up to my ankles.

I’m having to use my mobile broadband dongle to get access to the internet. But it’s slow. So, so slow. Both here and back at my hotel room.

I cannot get a 3G connection. It’s just… well, G.

Did I mention how slow it is?

Remember the days of dial-up modems?  Watching that little egg timer revolve for hours on end?  Well, it’s slower than that. Because todays web is built for broadband and contains so much feature-rich content, that anything slower than a 2MB connection renders it painful to use.

With my 20MB service at home, I guess I take it for granted. The web is something that is just… there. Waiting for me to spend more time on it, than is considered healthy by most doctors. And the World Health Organisation. And Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Probably.

I’m looking forward to coming home.  I don’t like it here in the stone age.

I took Amelia and Harry to a children’s birthday party yesterday. It was held at a local open farm.

Once the kids had tired of stroking the rabbits and feeding the lambs, we all went inside, where they had one of those indoor playgrounds, and our little party of a dozen 5 to 8 year-olds spent the next two hours running around like loonies.

One of the biggest attractions was the big red slide: a quite daunting, polished wooden contraption about ten metres high, that gave a near vertical drop at the top but mellowed out to a gentle curve at the bottom.

Amelia surprised me by dropping down this thing, not just the once, but a dozen times. “Come on, Daddy, slide down with me”, she said, grabbing my hand and dragging me up the steps toward the top.  I’ve always enjoyed the thrill rides of rollercoasters and stuff, so I went with her.

But when I got to the top, I changed my mind. Logic told me it was obviously quite safe: hell, there were kids as young as Amelia throwing themselves down this thing, but something in my head clicked and I just didn’t want to do it. I wimped out and took Harry on the shallower blue slide, instead.

I’m getting old.

I had to scold Amelia yesterday.

She had written “Don’t come in my room. Because I said so.” on her bedroom door, in marker pen. Not on a piece of paper stuck to the door, but on the actual paintwork.

As I attacked the graffiti with a cloth and some white spirit, I had a right go at her about how wrong it was to do such a thing.

And then, I congratulated her on her spelling and use of punctuation.

Well, what’s the point of having kids, if you can’t mess with their heads?

She was the prettiest girl in the school, right from the very first day.

Her blond hair shone like spun gold and her eyes were a piercing blue. The smallest of smiles from her perfect lips were enough to send any boy’s heart a flutter and mine did so on many occasions.

Though I’d seen her around the school several times, our paths first properly crossed when I’d been sent to the Headmaster’s office for a dressing down – for what offence, I really can’t remember. As I sat on one of the chairs outside his office -crapping myself and convinced my backside was about to be caned into oblivion – she came and sat next to me, having also been sent to “see the Head”. We exchanged a few words, as we wondered about our impending fate, but sat mainly in silence together.

I’ve always thought that that first meeting, under stressful and worrying circumstances, forged a tiny and tenuous bond between us. I never took it any further though and just continued to admire her from afar.

We were only eight.

In High School, we never mixed in the same circles: she hung out with the cool kids and I… well, I didn’t. And so I continued to fancy her from a distance.

I developed (pun intended) a keen interest in photography and in our last year at school, I opted to do ‘O’ Level photography at the local college. I was surprised and pleased when I turned up on the first day to find she was also on the course. We occasionally worked together and got on well with each other.

I remember one day, the two of us were alone together in the darkroom. I don’t mean the print processing room with the red light, but the film processing room which was proper dark. Black. It was totally lightless. But despite the dark, we knew exactly where everything was, obviously… how else would we develop the films? We also knew exactly where each of us were standing, which is why it was so obvious when I turned and rather clumsily bumped into her, ‘accidentally’ fumbling a quick grope of her knockers as I did so.

To my surprise, no slap round the face or verbal rebuke was forthcoming and I suddenly felt that, just possibly, we still had that slight connection that we’d forged together years before. Something told me that if I pursued it further, there and then, there was a real chance that I’d actually get further. Ask her out. Ask her out, for Godsake!

But, I was nerdy: I lacked confidence when it came to girls and I was swathed in teenage angst and acne, so I never followed it through. For a long time afterward, I cursed my shyness and awkwardness around the fairer sex and castigated myself over the possible missed opportunity of actually having this lovely creature on my arm.

Several years later, I’d taken the day off work and gone up to the NEC in Birmingham with my mate, Dave, for the annual motorbike show. As we wandered around looking at all the bikes, I suddenly heard someone calling my name. I turned around and there she was, looking as gorgeous as ever and sexy as fuck, wearing just a white two-piece bikini and high heel shoes, with a sash going diagonally across her ample chest and slim waist.

We chatted together for a short while, talking about what we’d done after leaving school – I was still following a career in electronics whilst she’d gone into modelling. This particular gig – dolly bird draping herself over motorcycles – was just a temporary assignment while her boyfiend/manager sorted out some proper modelling work for her. Or something. I forget.

Our chat over – she had work to do – I went back over to Dave, who’d stood several feet away to give us some privacy and whose mouth was still wide open in amazement. “How…? Where…? Who…? How the fuck do you know her?” he eventually spurted out.

“Oh her?” I said as nonchalantly as I could, “she’s the one that got away.”

Arggh!

The quest to make my home PC into the computer equivalent of the six-million-dollar man - better; stronger; faster - has hit a major snag that I’ve been so far unable to resolve.

Windows 7 doesn’t bloody well come with an email client! Can you believe that?

Nope, Microsoft has dropped my beloved Outlook Express from it’s latest OS. Instead, they want you to use the full-blown Outlook, which comes as part of their latest Office suite at a cost of 4 zillion quid. Bastards.

So, what are my options? Well, there are plenty of very capable free clients out there. But, I have to find one that will work under 7 running in 64bit mode.

Two such contenders are the much vaunted Mozilla Thunderbird and the much respected Pegasus Mail. I tried both.

Thunderbird’s connection wizard scanned my settings and gave me an IMAP mailbox instead of the POP3 one that I require. I don’t seem to be able to change it. It also won’t import my old OE files that I spent ages getting off the old drive.

Pegasus seemed to work perfectly though and did everything I asked of it.  But… I just don’t like it.

There is a third option: apparently Windows Mail (part of Vista) will run under 7. I quite like Windows Mail and use it regularly as I have Vista on my laptop.

The question is: can I get it off the laptop and on to the desktop, without fucking up either, or both, machines?

If it all goes quiet round here for a while, you’ll know what’s happened.

I mentioned a few posts back of how my PC up and died a little while ago.

Well, the new bits arrived in the post yesterday and I hurriedly slapped it all together.

I made a few changes to my original shopping list by getting a slightly more expensive motherboard and a slightly more expensive processor… that’s what usually happens when I spend too much time thinking about buying stuff, as opposed to actually buying it.

The big change though, was the OS.   Bored of XP (good as it is, but soon to be no longer supported by Microsoft) I toyed with the idea of using Ubuntu as I really like the idea of open-source. I installed it on my backup machine and have been using it for a few weeks and I must say, it’s pretty good. But, I just seemed to struggle with several aspects of it - possibly due to a lack of knowledge on my part.  I could persevere and I’m sure I’d get the hang of it after a while, but in all honesty, I couldn’t be arsed. I know also, that the current Mrs Masher would have constantly moaned at me about it: she likes it simples. And so, I opted for the much vaunted Windows 7.

It’s early days yet, but so far she seems to fly quite well and 7 is rock solid and fast.

Now all I need to do is get round to installing my RAID 1 configured network drive, that has been laying under the bed for over a year!

I returned home from work yesterday evening, to an empty house: Mrs M had taken the mini-Mashers swimming.

I went upstairs and changed out of my work clothes, then came down again.

Just as I reached the bottom step, I heard my mobile phone ring and turned to go back upstairs to retrieve it. Then I realised it was actually downstairs as I’d already put it in the study. So I turned back round and stepped off the bottom stair. Without looking.

I stepped onto a McDonalds toy that had been left on the floor by either Harry or Amelia. It was a small plastic coffin with a mummy in it, from the terrible Scooby Doo 2 movie.

And just like in a scene from Scooby Doo, the plastic toy, with my foot atop it, skidded across the wooden floor of our hallway and I - arms flailing and with both feet in the air - landed flat on my back.

As I went down, I caught my head on the banister rail but, fortunately, not very hard.  But I partly broke my fall with my elbow, which is feeling quite painful.

I lay on the floor listening to the phone ring. It rang two more times then cut off.

I’d have gotten to it too, if it hadn’t been for those pesky kids.