Dom Davis (The Blog)

So, for one reason or another, The Zozo and I are holidaying in June for a week. This has posed a number of problems.

Firstly, a lot of package holidays assume you’re on holiday for 9 days if you have a week off, starting Saturday until the following Sunday. This doesn’t hold for us as The Zozo gets her weekend days off at fairly random times during the week. As a result we’re looking for 5 or 6 nights abroad, not 7 and we’d like to leave on Sunday, not Saturday or Monday as most package holidays do.

Secondly, The dates put us in peak holiday season, jacking the prices up and limiting the availability of some places.

Thirdly our holidays to date have involved 5* hotels and much luxury. This holiday needs to be done on a budget.

I’ve been looking for a few days now and the majority of holidays in our price range are either going to be with hordes of other Brits (no thanks, the stereotype appeared for a reason), hordes of screaming kids (pass), or are on awkward dates/are for too many nights.

What I want is a quiet, stress free, romantic spot with a nice hotel/guest house, some sun, a pool, things to do or see locally (cultural/picturesque things would be ideal) with flights and transfers included, ideally from Norwich airport (but can cope with Stanstead, Gatwick or Heathrow), leaving on the date we want, for the duration we want and all for a few hundred per person. With the world to choose from (although we’d probably limit the amount of travel time given the length of the holiday unless we found something truly amazing) there must be something, somewhere that fits the bill

“Do you know where your teenager is at five o’ clock in the morning? The after hours club. The clubs attract thousands of Chicago area young people. Some say they come looking drugs, dirty dancing, and pounding, pounding techno music.”

I have a track that’s part of a set put together by one of the Slimelight DJs that contains that sample. I have no idea who it’s by or what it’s called and Google isn’t being much help. In the 90′s Soulwax, who aren’t exactly a mainstream band, did a side project called Samantha Fu and a track called Theme From Discoteque. While it used that sample it’s not the track I’m after. It could be a remix, or it could be an entirely different track by someone completely unrelated. And, no, Shazam doesn’t have a clue what it is either. The last time the Internet was this unhelpful with locating a track it took me 10 years and in excess of $100 to obtain it. I’m rather hoping this will be quicker, even if I have to track down which DJ, go to Slimelight and physically ask him.

For the past God knows how long (months at least) I have been in the process of reviewing the first draft of a friends book. I started off well, attacking each chapter as it was given to me on my morning train journeys. Now, reviewing a book is much harder than just reading it. There’s sentence structure to look at, grammar, flow, tempo, continuity, unnecessary duplication and sentence structure to look at. Each chapter ends up riddled with annotations and comments and was taking me 3-4 hours to complete.

This still doesn’t explain why I took so long but then you have to understand that the ‘process of reviewing’ also included rather a lot of really meaning to review some of it today, but actually doing something else instead. There may have been more ‘meaning to review’ than actual reviewing. Nonetheless, it is done. And I only missed my second deadline by 20 days. For IT (and let’s face it, I’m IT through and through) that’s positively early!

I am now free to spend my days travelling into work guilt free while really meaning to get on with some black projects at work but actually feeding my Minecraft addiction instead.

So with 2 long weekends in a row I’ve started thinking about painting the bathroom, bedroom and touching up some of the exterior paintwork. Great in theory as I have 8 days off and probably shouldn’t spend them playing Minecraft (much as I’d love to). The practice may prove rather different. I’m crap at DIY. No, seriously, I’m really shit at it. I know the theory, I just can’t put it into practice. Still, what’s the worst that can go wrong…

Spring. The daffodils come out, lambs are in the field, days start getting warmer and longer and our spirits are lifted by the ending of winter. And then the fucking wasps turn up. Little shits whose sole purpose on this planet it to crash the party and ruin it for everyone. I mean, come on. What purpose do they serve that couldn’t be handled by less annoying, less buzzy and, above all, less stingy creatures? The only redeeming feature of the wasp is that they’re not leeches. This does not say much for them as a species.

So I can now enjoy my walk to work with either having to leave the path at various points or having to duck. The trees that were previously impeding my route have been quite severely pruned (although not quite as much as those by the office which haven’t been pruned so much as cut back to the trunk and left bald and naked).

Now all the need to do is reopen the path at the end of my walk and I can return to my old route and not have to make any detours. At least I’m remembering to detour these days.

So having been mercifully gout free for a while now my knee has started playing up again. Last time this happened the doctor said it was tendinitis caused by walking funny thanks to gout in my toes, but I’m not so sure. Other than driving I’ve not done anything over the past few days that would cause tendinitis to flair up.

Regardless, my knee now hurts like he’ll when I try and bend it. This makes things like getting dressed and walking to work slightly awkward. Still I’m perseveringly and slowly making my way towards the office looking like I’m working for the Ministry of Funny Walks. I’m also having to take a different route as they’re trimming the trees along my more usual route. This is A Good Thing™ as the branches were getting a tad low.

The outcome of yesterday’s hospital appointment was they needed to do more tests to see if there is any medication I should be on to prevent gout and future kidney stones.

One of these tests is a 24 hour urine test. This involves me collecting all my urine in a large 1 gallon container over a period of 24hours and returning it to the hospital.

Most people, apparently, perform the test on Sunday, returning the sample on Monday as this avoids unpleasantness like having a container of your urine under the desk at work for the day. This is most likely going to be the tactic I employ, although it does rather depend on The Zozos day off.

It does beg the question: How many gallons of piss does the path lab get on an average Monday?

So this morning I got the train to work, collected the car from the work and drove to the hospital. It’s the school holidays. The roads are empty, the journey uneventful… until I got to the Carpark. There there was a queue. Of the two outpatients carparks one was blocked off (and full by the looks of it) and there were 7 cars waiting to get into the other. A lady in a high visibility jacket was getting cars to stack at the entrance nicely. Once I joined the queue, however, my fears of not being able to get a space were allayed. There were lots of spaces in this carpark. There was obviously just a glut of people arriving…

…or not. After a few minutes the lady in the high visibility jacket went to go see why none of the cars were moving. The reason was simple. There, right by the entrance, was a family getting into a car to leave. Not wanting to pick one of the millions of other spaces the person at the head of the queue was waiting for them to leave.

The family leaving had a frail person in a wheelchair. It was, understandably, taking them time to pack up and get ready. Meanwhile we waited with The Idiot blocking us. Even with the lady waving them on and tapping on the window to get them to move they resolutely stayed put. Meanwhile the queue grew larger.

Finally, after 5 minutes, with a queue of 30 or so cars behind us the blockage was cleared and we were able to stream into the carpark. I was able to park in my choice of bays a scant 10 seconds further walk than the one the moron had held everyone up for and the queue had drained by the time I’d walked back to the entrance.

So, Mr Moron with the numberplate ‘I KOL’, you, sir, are an idiot of the highest order.

I, like many others, hate mondays. So much so I’ve even gone and created a special category for it. Mondays are evil. Usually it’s just a background malevolence but on occasion they attack with extreme viciousness just to remind you they’re there. Yesterday was such a day.

I have a hospital appointment on the 12th of April. I’ve known about this for months. Work has been informed, a car parking space has been booked at the work carpark. Reminders have been put in calendars. Alarms have been set. All I have to do is drive there on the day, drive back to work, finish my day and drive home. Aside from the fact I hate driving into work nothing could be simpler.

No. From across the void the insidious touch of Monday can be felt, whispering in my ear “You have a hospital appointment on Monday”. And so it is that my April goes: Friday the 8th, The Weekend, Monday the 12th. A Monday that sees me waking tired, crawling out of bed and getting ready.

By 7:20 I’m logged into work remotely. This disturbs The Zozo on her day off but needs must and the hospital appointment means I’ll be in late.

By 8:00 I’m out of the house and taking the car to work. A car that The Zozo was going to use.

By 8:15 I realise it’s the 11th. My appointment it tomorrow and Monday has, in one fell swoop, buggered up my day, The Zozos day and had my drive into work unnecessarily. Not bad for that time in the morning. Monday had not finished there though.

Thankfully the drive to work was uneventful. It’s the school holidays so the roads were peaceful. By the afternoon I was feeling rough though. I suspect I was just tired but by 3 I had a raging headache. I thought it would be best to leave the car at work overnight and get the train home. Monday thought otherwise. I had no coat, Monday had a big raincloud. Mercifully Monday didn’t get wind of my change of plan until too late and I spent my journey home racing the rain. I won. Just.

Feeling spiteful Monday got it’s revenge by letting the milk leak in the fridge overnight. I hate Mondays.