Meet the Neighbours

I've been meaning to post this for a while, but the week before last we attended the Eden Project Big Lunch. Essentially the idea is that on Sunday the 19th of July, as many local communities as possible, would gather together and have a kind of 'getting to know each other' picnic.

I was sceptical at first, telling Lucy that 'I already know loads of people I dont have time to keep in touch with - why do I need to know some more?'. I protested. She made me go.

Actually it was pretty good fun. We live in a new build house in the grounds of an old mansion which has been converted to flats. The mansion appears to come complete with quite a few curtain twitchers, which I was concerned would lecture me about parking my car accross the big 'keep clear - no parking' sign as is my want. Contrary to that, we were informed that anyone can park there and that as the only renters we hadn't found out because our landlord had neglected to tell us.

I ended up meeting the old dean of a major university as well as a high court judge (who informed us that our favourite restaurant is actually a front for a Thai marajuana dealing operation). We made friends with some of the people that live in the terraces next to us. A friendship that we put to good use when they had to store our dead cat in their garage for a day last week.

the main concern really is that we were the youngest people there by a good five years. Ok Lucy was the youngest person there by a good five years (I was borderline fitting in). They all had kids or were pregnant, or had grandkids so far as I can tell!

Anyway. I have discovered that it is good to know your neighbours.

What Made Me Laugh Yesterday

Lucy and I were making our way to Blockbusters last night, knowing we had a fine to pay and arguing about whose fault it was as we couldn't remember. After deciding on our rentals (which is a lengthy process involving much negotiation), I asked the guy at the counter: 

"Do we not have some kind of fine to pay?"

The guy replied "yes, you have £4 outstanding for some crappy chick flick"

"I knew it!!!"

A Cat Called Beau

Every day when Lucy or I come home from work, we come in the door and Beau is there to greet us. She rolls on her back straight away and demands her belly rubbing (she does this a lot). Lucy picks her up and carries her around the house, I tend to swear at her and tell her to get out of my way.

And every morning, I wake up at a bout 4am to Beau purring like a demented tractor, staring into my eyes from about 1 inch away. She follows us around when we get dressed, she keeps me company when I work from home, and she follows us down the drive when we go out. When we eat you have to throw her off the table / sofa at least 10 times per meal. Lucy is totally in love with her, and I have to admit, despite the early mornings and the inability to hit the cat litter tray, I was too. I have known a lot of cats and have never met a cheekier, friendlier bolshier one.

The only one she follows around more than Lucy is our other cat - Ripley. They are quite the gang, roaming the neighbourhood together. Beau cant be more than 5 metres from Ripley. They sleep in the same basket or at the bottom of the bed together.

Except that our neighbour horrifically backed his car over Beau (as unfortunately witnessed by Ripley) this morning and we are totally gutted.

The heartbreaking thing is watching our other cat roam around the house looking in every corner and walking round in circles looking for Beau and miaowing (and they say cats aren't sentimental). Apparently she was doing this outside all day.

Totally gutted.

The Rock Star's Tribute to Michael Jackson (Latvia Style)

Complete with random drunken girl.

This was actually a brilliant bar we went to on a couple of nights.

On Latvia

I have just got back from a 5 day trip to Latvia and am now in recovery mode. At the moment this involves trying to de-tox by drinking water and eating celery, though this is not working so well...

Riga is a brilliant city however - full of contradictions. On the bad side, the influx of stag-do's into the country as assisted by Ryanair's cheap flights (I may prepare an entire blog post about my feelings for Ryanair) has meant that the city is full of sleazy joints where attractive women feign interest in you to trick you into buying £500 bottles of champagne. The hostel I stayed at has a whole list of clubs and bars that 'you cannot go into or you WILL be robbed'.

This has led to a bit of bad blood between the Latvians and the English and we struggled a little bit to get to see the real city. We weren't helped by the fact that there were seven of us, and we were drinking, and we were loud!

I have kind of decided that I will try to veto foreign stag do's arranged by my mates, as I really think it can affect a place.

On the good side we did managed to do some cool things, like get ourselves into a Latvian nightclub on the 6th floor of some old soviet bloc concrete building, we had some great food and managed to get out of the city to some of the beach resorts which were absolutely fantastic. And unlike when we went to Prague 5 or so years ago, we managed to completely avoid the stags (except in the airport), and by Monday the stags had all disappeared. So it can be done!

Riga is beautiful and boasts some of most beautiful people you will ever see anywhere (and I've been on a fair few different continents). Just don't go where the stag do's do.

Goodbye John.

When I was traveling to Canada a lot for work back in 2006-07, I worked with quite a character called John. 

John was an electrician of some 35 years service to a large steel works that I worked on a long term energy reduction project with. He had been there so long that in fact his employee number was '3'.

John spent most of his years as an electrical maintenance supervisor, trouble-shooting problems and responding to breakdowns on the many large motors and electricity supply systems at the site. Towards the end of his career (actually I think it was technically after he retired), John became actively involved in our energy teams, being the implementer for many of the good ideas that were generated. It was a great project and since has become a case study for the work we do over there.

He got so involved that he saw a gap in the market when trying to solve one of the energy efficiency issues on site relating to industrial lighting control - he began building his own automatic control systems that could withstand the incredibly dusty, dirty, tough conditions in a steel melt-shop. He set up his own company delivering these simple robust systems to anyone who would have them.

John and I spend many an hour walking the myriad of switch rooms, investigating pumps and fans and motors and drives across the factory. He would tell me funny stories about how the guy who first build the site, built the huge electric arc furnace on the assumption that he could just plug it into the local grid and faced a 1 year delay in production start up due to having to get a larger supply to the entire township to feed his factory. He would tell me of his ice fishing escapades on the local river, and we would discuss the merits of American trucks and European diesels.

The funniest story I remember, though I cant tell it properly, was about how one of the factory cats (semi feral creatures which are often found in steelworks and fed by the operators - to keep the rats down), got into one of the electrical rooms and electricuted itself across two live circuits and took town the entire factory causing $100,000 of lost production. Feeding cats was banned after that, though I did see a couple of soot covered creatures which I mistook for huge rats myself.

I remember John fondly because he was, despite his age, extremely kind, very courteous,  enthusiastic, friendly and warm. And because he had a real belief in what we were doing. A real deep seeded belief that the work we were doing was important - not just for money saving reasons, but for moral reasons too.

I am writing this post because today I found out that John died of cancer a few months ago.

Goodbye John.

I Have Found a New Hero

I am not the kind of person that usually looks up to anyone. I hate our celebrity culture and if someone asked me who my hero was, I would rally struggle for an answer, possibly citing Tim Flannery of some ageing rock god.

I have found a new hero. He is a little short, overweight, as silly hair and is a complete geek. Not general hero material. But I agree with absolutely everything he says.

David Mitchell is one half of the comedy duo that wrote Peep Show. In my opinion the funniest comedy show EVER written. I am struggling to find a video that I can embed, but I have linked a you-tube clip here.

Recently I have discovered that David Mitchell is extremely funny, but also that he shares almost all of my opinions too. Surprisingly left wing and Tory hating for a Cambridge graduate, he now blogs regularly on 'Comment is Free' on the Guardian / Observer website and his articles are just about the only thing I laugh out loud at in this age of over-stimulation. Witty and clever - the only problem being that some of the commenters cant quite keep up with his point.

Here are some favourites on wheelie bins and Alan Sugar. 

What got me laughing today:

"They say a sneeze is like a mini-orgasm. Well, if my cock went off six times in a row every couple of minutes for hours on end I'd cut the blasted thing off"

There' Something Weird About this Recession

A recession is a time of hard graft, where everybody just gets on with it and tries to get out the other side without losing their job / house / business beer allowance. Its a time when everybody is grim faced and resolute. The sky is grey, its always raining, and old episodes of 'Cheers' are on repeat play on the TV.

Thats how I imagine the early 90's.

But the funny thing about this recession is its not really like that at all. 

I work in an office where approximately 70% of the staff are being forced down to a 4 day week (and there have been several redundancies in the last six months). Where we are battered by constant edicts from up above, telling us off for spending too much money on mobile phone calls, informing us of the new biro rationing scheme and battering us about how bad we are performing financially (but at the same time completely missing the point and failing to understand the simple steps which would actually make us more profitable - steps which everyone around me seems to understand).

It seems to have become a little bit of a joke almost. For some its almost at that if-I-dont-laugh-i-will-cry point. I can only laugh at spending days writing a proposal for a client, only to find that that client has gone bust a few days later. Luckily I am still busy at the moment, but others joke about having sat in the office not having done any work for the last three days.

Added to this, the industry I work in has basically seen blanket recruitment freezes. There is usually a relatively high turnover of staff, but as nobody is recruiting - nobody is leaving. In my team of twenty, the personnel has not changed in twelve months. Nobody is getting pay rises, nobody is getting promotion, therefore levels of office politics are low.

This, along with worries about impending doom has actual led, in my opinion to wierdly high levels of humour an camaraderie in a group where nobody usually has any time to talk to one another. 

Its very strange.