Dom Davis (The Blog)

Yesterday our pterodactyl proof bird table arrived. I’d bought this with two main criteria in mind. Firstly, did it look good. Secondly, would it be sturdy and survive gale force winds and giant wing-ed beasties with little or no external support.

After a quick Google I found the perfect match. Two tier, hook to hang the new hanging birdbath The Zozo had got, nice wide base, sturdy wooden construction. Being a man I didn’t read the full set of details (too much like instructions and we don’t need them), leapt straight to the headline figure of 1.6m height, visualised the item in the picture being 1.6m tall and decided it was perfect. Job done.

Yesterday our bird table arrived. It’s… well… big. You see I’d failed to realise the stand was 1.6m tall and with the bird mansion bit on the top (‘house’ doesn’t convey the scale of the thing) it’s about 2m tall. This means it’s all about 20% bigger than expected. One thing is for sure though, it’ll survive a whole flock of bloody pterodactyls

Given the small miscalculation with size the outside area where it’s going needs to be prepared. It’s not our land and is a right of way so blocking it with oversized bird condos will be frowned upon. Chopping back the shrubs and putting it right up against the fence should be fine, it just needs some work one weekend. In the interim the whole thing is being stored out the back in our tiny yard there (and I mean tiny, it’s now full with just the bird table).

Getting the bird table in the house was easy enough. We have a good, wide front door and the table itself was in two bits. Getting the base into the kitchen was more problematic. I had to rotate the whole thing through to get the legs through the door. Getting it out the back door threw up a new problem.

Sitting there, pretending to be dead to sucker me into coming within killing distance, was Shelob. I did what any red blooded male would have done: I ran to The Zozo for help. The Zozo then scooped up Shelob and promptly declared that she wasn’t sure about feeding it to the mice because she’d “grown quite attached to it”. I certainly hadn’t, that’s for sure, so I simply resorted to good old emotional blackmail: save the spider and deny the mice their treat, or show the mice how much you love them and throw the vile thing in the mouse house. That worked. A few seconds later and our very cute mice had descended on the hapless spider and ripped it to pieces with me cheering them on in the background. A glorious moment, I can tell you.

With Shelob dispatched and our wyrmery (with added pterodactyl shelf) stored out back pending assembly and positioning it won’t be long until we’re safe from all mythical beasties for a while.

We have a spider in our living room. Normally I’d not mention such seemingly trivial things but this particular spider is a monster. I’ve named it Shelob which should help convey the sheer monstrosity of this beast.

I’m not great with spiders and anything over a few mm in diameter (including legs) needs to be dealt with using specialist equipment. Medium sized spiders are handled with a glass with a bit of card slid underneath. Larger and more dangerous specimens are handled at a remove with the Dyson. Monster spiders, such as the one we have are traditionally with by small, hairy footed hominids wielding magic swords. Lacking, as we do, a friendly hobbit I am turning to a more modern solution.

The Zozo, you see, is made of sterner stuff than I and will happily scoop up Shelob In Her Bare Hands. This manoeuvre is performed with me safely out of harms way so that should the spider attack, or run, or look at either of us funny I can then run screaming like a little girl out of the house.

Once captured Shelob is then dumped unceremoniously into the mouse house whereupon our cute little meeces proceed to rip Shelob to shreds and devour her.

This is all very well and good but Shelob escaped the attempt to capture her and is still running free. I’ve checked my bag and jumper many times today in case she’s decided to hitch a lift so she can eat me in the office. I’m hoping this is not the case and that I’ll get to watch the latest episode of meeces vs spider tonight.

For the past 4 years I’ve used my mobile as my primary telephone number. The land line is really just for broadband, although the mobile reception in Little Cottage is a bit crap so we have started encouraging people to call the landline if there’s no answer on the mobile. Even so I couldn’t really tell you what the ring on the home phone sounds like, I hear it so infrequently. Which is why, when it rings at 00:40 it’s causes such confusion.

Here’s the scene. The Zozo and I sound asleep with that serenity being shattered by a noise. A few seconds confusion while we try and work out what’s going on followed by me getting out if bed to pick up the phone. It’s dark and the handset doesn’t light up when you pick it up. I can’t find the answer button. The phone goes to voicemail. Now we’re both awake and wondering what’s wrong and who’s calling.

I turn my mobile on in case someone is trying to get hold if me. The Zozo does 1471. Number withheld. She checks the message. Nothing. It’s a fucking automated dialler. Some bastard machine has called our number so that, on the off chance that we answer and there is an ‘agent’ free, some Indian sat in a call centre half way round the world can try to sell me something I have no interest in buying.

Does it matter that were on the TPS scheme? Does it fuck! To report the company you need to get some details from them which the ‘agents’ have been trained not to give. It’s not “Hello this is Mahindra from Annoying Corp.”, it’s “Hello sir, let me feed you some shit about why you need to buy something from me”. With a withheld number you can’t report them.

I’ve even had them phone up claiming my computer has returned diagnostic information that it’s booting up too slowly. Utter shite, especially when the ‘agent’ couldn’t tell me the make or model of my computer. They wanted me to ‘click start’ and pass that info to them. Firstly, if it’s calling some remote helpdesk to say it’s got problems then you have that information and secondly it’s a Mac. There is no start button, so kindly fuck off! I did get him to admit that he couldn’t help me because I didn’t have a Windows machine and that my computer didn’t cause them to call but I never got the company name to complain about them.

So here we are. An hour later. It’s nearly two in the sodding morning and I can’t get back to sleep, all thanks to some stupid fucking sales company and their bloody auto dialler. I want to hurt someone¹!

¹Given the state of this country on how the authorities can blow the simplest figure of speech way out of proportion I should probably point out that this is just a statement of frustration and not a threat, implied or otherwise, against any person or persons, living or dead. Anyone taking it as such is hereby admitting that they are a moron of the highest caliber and unfit to make judgement against me.

However many years ago it was I last saw my urologist he told me I had a small kidney stone on the right hand side. It wasn’t doing much so he suggested we leave it and see what happened. There are two ways this stone can leave my body: naturally and artificially. Passing a stone smarts a little and it’s the kind of thing you notice. I’ve not passed the stone. lithotripsy, ureteroscopy and other artificial methods of getting rid of stones are also not the kind of thing that would go unnoticed so I think we can safely say I still have a stone.

These days I no longer have the fancy health insurance with the Harley Street urologists and am dependent on the NHS who, while great at scooping you up off the floor and getting you going again, can be a bit slow for non urgent things. If we remember I rocked up to A&E on valentines day complaining of a kidney stone. They x-rayed me, gave me some nice painkillers (although not the really nice ones) and sent me home with the message that they’d be in touch.

A few months later I got a letter saying I’d been referred to a consultant and that they wanted to give me a CT scan. CT scans are much more fun than X-Rays (and infinitely more fun than IVUs which are basically a legal form of diagnostic torture) so that was cool. Then I had to go speak to the consultant (pitch up to outpatients, wait for over an hour) to be told the CT was inconclusive and they wanted to do another CT. Could have been done by letter, but at least I was being processed. CT the second was a few weeks ago.

Today I got a letter from my consultant. Turns out I have a kidney stone. It’s not moved since the first CT and they’d like to remove it. Apparently they are now able to see the kidney stone on my original X-Ray “now that they know what they’re looking for”. Clue was in the “I have a kidney stone in my right hand side”, but there you go, at least they found this one (they’re now 2 for 5).

I’m now on a waiting list for a rather fun little procedure where they shove a laser up your… well, lets just say they put you to sleep and when you wake up there’s no stone and it hurts like hell to pee. This is an overnight job which will then involve a couple of days recovery. Why am I telling you all this? Well basically I will require VAST amounts of sympathy during the recovery time and I want you all to be prepared.

People handle grief differently. I tend to be very private with my grief getting through the more public parts of the day by listening to very loud, very aggressive music and eating crap. Since I couldn’t be there I marked my grandmothers funeral today by stuffing my face with one of those individually wrapped portions of Cadburys Fruit and Nut (the 200 gram one so it’s more than 1 mouthful).

I’ve eaten a lot of crap this week so the diet should probably begin again in ernest tomorrow. That said, I am a lot happier with my shape these days and I did notice the other day that I had the body of an Athlete¹ so that’s OK.

¹ OK, so maybe not the body of an athlete, but I do have the feet of an athlete at least… OK, OK, I have athletes foot. Happy now?

Blam!

The alarm shocks you from blissful slumber to bleary eyed consciousness. Clinging at the desperate belief that, somehow, an extra 60 seconds in bed will make all the difference you delay the inevitable as long as you can. Eventually, resigned to your fate, you can put it off no longer. Trying to peel your eyes open you stumble into the bathroom trying to work out how, after 8 hours sleep, you’re more tired than when you went to bed.

Ablutions done and with the shower having had very little effect you head downstairs to prepare breakfast and lunch only to discover you’ve left the fridge open all night and nothing is cold anymore. Spreading half melted butter on your sandwich you contemplate toast for breakfast instead of cereal with warm milk, but no, you decide to be good.

Taking the cereal out of the cupboard in it’s plastic container you tip it upside down like you do every day to mix the large and small bits together but somehow today you’ve completely failed to hold onto the lid and there is now half a box of Alpen strewn over the work surface and floor. With a sigh you retrieve the dustpan and bush and tidy up before retiring to eat breakfast.

Having to clean up the mess has made you late. You have to rush your tea and head out the door to go to work. The Zozo is off today and you don’t want to go. You want to stay home with her. As you head to the station wondering what else is going to go wrong today the rain pipes up: “Remember me?” it says, “and you don’t have your big brolly with you either, what a shame!”

Cue a short, sharp cloudburst.

The area at the front of Little Cottage is little more than a gravel drive giving access to the houses past ours. Getting a car up it is impractical so we use our bit to store the bins, hang the washing out, keep pot plants and, recently, somewhere to keep The Zozos bird table.

The bird table is a rather neat arrangement of large bird bath below and bird house and feeding area above made to look like it’s made from greening metal. Since it’s not actually made from metal it’s only really meant for smaller birds and not, say, pterodactyls. In fact the box clearly states “Unsuitable for larger birds, pterodactyls, dragons or other wyrms”¹.

Yesterday the bird table clearly suffered pterodactyl strike (can’t have been a dragon, there’s naff all room for them to manoeuvre and a complete lack of scorch marks) resulting in the loss of a fat ball and serious structural damage. This is not good. Replacing it is not going to be easy either. Clearly the new one will have to be able to withstand extinct creatures but there is also the local environment to consider.

The geography outside the front of our house means that when it’s windy we get serious gusts of wind. Enough to rip washing from lines, blow over clothes horses and knock over fully grown adults¹. Clearly whatever we buy must be stable and easy to fix in place. Which leads me to the next problem.

The gravel drive sits on about 1″ of soil which in turn sits on a substrate of diamond¹ which makes putting fixing things into the ground very hard. I bent all the metal fixing pins on the other bird table trying to drive them into the ground.

Of course, as always, the Internet will prevail and I’m sure we’ll find something suitable.

¹ True story^2
2OK, maybe a little exaggerated

It would appear my squash game is getting better as I won my first game this weekend. OK, yes, I had previously taken The Zozo out for a large meal, fed her booze then woke her from an afternoon nap to play so she may have been a tiny bit off form and she may have won every other game, but that’s beside the point. I’m thinking next week feed her more food, more drink, deny the nap entirely and steal her shoes and I may be able to steal two games of the match

All this squash (and by all I mean the 3 hours played thus far) is, unfortunately, taking it’s toll on my delicate hands which are used to typing rather than gripping. As a result I have a blister. Actually, let’s be 100% accurate here: I got the blister during the second match, it burst before the end of that and I have since formed a blister on that old blister which has also burst. My thumb is a mess.

To stem the tide of life threatening lesions on my limbs I decided to investigate squash gloves. Turns out there is really only one glove one should be wearing when playing squash and that’s the Bionic squash glove, a rather snazzy white, black and grey affair made with a leather outer in a number of sizes for a perfect fit… of your right hand. That’s right, I can’t find anywhere that stocks the left handed version of this glove and I’m not learning to play squash cack handed.

What I have found is a similar glove for tennis that allows you to buy right, left or both hands. Not knowing the ins and outs of sports equipment I have no idea what the difference between a squash and a tennis glove is. I suspect they’re the same glove so I may well just get the tennis version and hope no one notices.

The biggest problem with going to the gym is that it can be a bit dull. I entertain myself watching films and TV on my iPhone but that only works on the cross trainer and bikes. For everything else it’s whatever is blaring away on the big TV and in the pool, sauna and jacuzzi¹ it’s just me and my thoughts. Even when we go together there’s not a huge amount of conversation as the gym doesn’t lend itself to that kind of thing.

There is, of course, another way to get regular exercise that burns off calories very efficiently that couples who Love Each Other Very Much can do. OK, for reasons of endurance, it generally doesn’t last as long as a gym session but it’s much more fun, leaves your heart racing and gives you a warm glow and a happy feeling that just can’t be replicated on a rowing machine. I am, of course, talking about squash².

Friday was my first ever game (The Zozo had played many times previously) and I learned all about the rules, the etiquette and the fact that overhead smashes generally end up with me driving the ball into the baseboard or the lights (regulation squash courts need to be about 15 foot taller). We then tried a proper match where The Zozo proceeded to hand my butt to me on a plate winning 6 games to 0.

Sunday was my second game and it was clear I’d absorbed the lessons of Friday. No longer was it serve, *swoosh*, point Zozo on every point. On occasion I was able to return shots, even break serves and, sometimes, score points. At times we even managed rallies. While my butt was still handed to me on a plate (7 games to 0) the plate was much less ornate. Next time I may even win a game

¹I pay a lot of money for the gym so I use everything to get my monies worth.

²Minds out of the gutter people!

So given my recent dillema I spent enough time with iMovie to realise that it wasn’t going to cut the mustard and that cash was going to have to be spanked. One of the nice things about where I work is that we get employee discounts at various places, including Apple. This is about 8% for hardware so I figured I’d toddle to Temple and find out what savings could be had. Turns out the goof folk at the Apple Store were going to give me a 17% discount which, on an upgrade that costs £254, comes to over £40. Bonus. Hopefully I shall finish installing tonight (it comes on several DVDs and a full install is over 50Gigabibbles so it takes a while). I can then work on my video projects… which I won’t be sharing with you lot