Dom Davis (The Blog)

I have, or rather had, two umbrellas. A large, automatic, wind proof, keeps me and the bag dry even in a downpour job and a little-un that lives in my bag. The large one is a bit unwieldy when strapped to my bag for carrying so I tend to only bring it if I know it’s going to rain. After all, if I get caught short there’s the small backup. That said the small one can’t really cope with wind… or heavy rain… or, it would seem, opening.

Yesterday as I walked home improperly attired for the freezing rain and biting winds I decided that deploying the small brolly (the large one having been left at home) might help mitigate some of the negative aspects of the weather. It had other ideas. I fished it out of the bag, pressed the latch to allow me to open it and promptly pulled the handle from the brolly. Since being armed with two halves of a brolly was counterproductive I attempted to reattach the handle, an endeavour that I was successful in but that would ultimately prove to be futile. The damage was now done and the handle would easily disengage from the brolly with the slightest gust of bitterly cold wind.

Faced with little other option I did what any hardened London commuter would do: I looked for a taxi. It’s unfortunate that, pretty though. It is, my route into work yields, on average, 0 taxis on any given day. Instead I thrust my hands in my hoodie pocket, hunkered down and set a new world speed walking record from work to the station.

Today I have the big brolly. And a coat. The little brolly is in the bin and I shall be taking no chances against this winter.

I’m not sure if it’s the same with every airline but Malaysia Airlines require you reconfirm your flight 72 hours before hand (presumably so they can sell your seat again if you don’t). Doing this for our flight out was tricky to say the least. The windmill where we got married has mobile signal in limited areas in our room so the call involved being on hold for while trying not to get disconnected before speaking to a lady with a very thick Malaysian accent and understanding about 1/10th of what was said. Anyway, I think I confirmed the flight, and we were able to get on the plane which was the important thing.

For our internal flights I just let the hotel sort it. Wonder up to the front desk, hand them the details, 2 hours later a message on the room phone, all sorted. Job done.

For our return flights we decided to be clever and not only confirm our flights but also checkin online to get the seats we wanted. Turns out there is an app for this. What could be simpler?

App installed I entered the retired details for The Zozos ticket, booked her a seat where she wanted on the flight to KL and had the boarding pass emailed to my phone. It then allowed me to check in to the longer flight to England, only this time there was no option to pick a seat. Oh well, booked into 52A. Process finished there is then a message about would I like to check in another passenger and a note saying that for mobile checkin each passenger needed the checkin sent to a separate device. Hmmm.

So I proceed with my checkin. Book myself a seat next to The Zozo to KL, tell it to SMS the boarding pass to her phone. We’ll just have to swap phones for a bit when boarding. Next step, the flight to London. Again, not able to select a seat, but hey, the bookings were made together, they’ll know we want to sit together… 57F. Right. Sod that, let’s phone them and get them to change it so we can sit together. Ironically enough the lady in the Malasian MA office spoke better English than the one in the UK office.

Seats now sorted I was told to disregard the boarding passes on our phones and collect new ones at the airport. Incidentally the call cost about 3p from the hotel phone. In the UK it would be 100 times more.

To make the whole experience totally not worth it the flight we actually did successfully check on for and have mobile boarding passes for was cancelled, so we had to go to the checkin desk and recheckin anyway. I wonder, if when getting the hotel to do it, you can give them your seat preference and have them sort everything.

So the good news is I can still make it out, club all night and get back to Colchester without passing out.

The bad news is I no loner live in Colchester, I live a further 2 hours down the track.

The worse news is that there are engineering works (sorry, “Route Improvement Works”) today and I had to get a bus from Ingatestone to here.

But the absolute best news, and this is a doozy, is that the buses haven’t been given enough time to get from one station to the next so I watched my train to Norwich pull out without me and a whole bus load of other people. So I get to spend an hour sitting at Colchester station. Somewhere that I thought I was done with in terms of waiting for trains.

It’s unfortunate for the customer service guys that their office is right by where our train was 30 seconds before. Some ire may have been vented by some passengers. I stuck with resigned dejectedness. It’s not their fault, there’s bugger all they can do and they’re probably going to have a day of this.

Funnily enough a combination of 8 hours of thumping music and the slight auditory hallucinations I get when very tired means that the rumble of the rail replacement bus engines is hitting my brain as a banging, if a little monotonous, tune. That, blogging and incessant Facebook updates are passing the time and stopping me from falling asleep on this bench.

Having been awake for some stupidly large number of hours due to me deciding I wanted to go clubbing on a night with an extra hour in it (self inflicted, no sympathy) I need to keep myself occupied and my brain active so I don’t fall asleep and miss my county (never mind my stop). To this end I shall list a number of lessons that people should have learned last night:

1) In a club with a strict no photography policy, while you might get away with mobile phone pics, you’re not going to be left unchallenged when you pull out a ruddy great big SLR with huge flash gun. One assumes you’ll be picking that up at the end of the night now.

2) Men who are overweight should not take their tops of and expose their chests. Ever. No matter how hot it gets. End of discussion.

3) Men who think they are trim and in shape should not take off their tops and expose their chests. You’re not quite as trim as you think.

4) Men who are trim and in shape should not take off their tops and expose abs and 6 packs. Bastards!

5) Covering your friends in beer on the train on the way to your Halloween party greatly reduces the number of friends you have.

6) Banging on my window at Witham station while I snooze on my way to London is not big, nor is it clever.

7) Ripping the signs that say “out of order” from the cash machines won’t suddenly magically make them work. Not even if you remove all of them.
Brave though it was to wear a g-string and fishnet top with those trousers (male, and not dissimilar build to me, which is something you want to hide rather than flaunt) you might want to check for labels. They glow under the UV light and the visible label on the thong was very disconcerting.

9) The clocks went back an hour last night. It happened after 01:59. After this time some, older time pieces may need manual intervention. Asking “are you sure” after enquiring about the time and canvassing a large number of people (presumably so you can take an average, or go with the majority vote, or something) really isn’t needed.

10) And last, but by no means least, this is Slimelight. The fact you’re not peeing into a trough after wading across a floor covered in piss, beer and puke while women (and men) check their makeup is a small miracle. You’ve got your own, men only toilet, it’s relatively clean and there’s even a thing of hand soap by the sinks. Accept that hand towels or a working hand drier is too much to ask. I take my own little towel. It Comes in very handy.

Todays best phrase was overheard in the gents toilets: ” Dude! How is your makeup not running?”. Given it’s Halloween you would be forgiven in thinking that it’s not a completely off the wall question. Let me take it completely off the wall, therefore, and tell you they weren’t in costume. At least not a Halloween one. They weren’t in drag either

And now I must leave you and change onto my bus replacement rail service

It’s always amused me that people find basic PC maintenance and assembly difficult.  Plugging the bits in? Look at the connector, find a hole with the same shape (and pin count if there are pins), plug it in. Simples If you need a screwdriver then you probably want to be a little confident in what you’re doing, but, provided you take not of what came from where it’s still fairly straight forward and, although the cables may have funny connectors, the game of match shapes to find out where it goes still holds once you get inside the case. If you need specialist screwdrivers then you probably shouldn’t proceed unless you know what you’re doing.

All PC hardware comes with Magic Blue Smoke. If the Magic Blue Smoke escapes then it’s game over for, at the very least, that component and quite possibly for the entire computer.

Finally some bits spin. A whirring noise is good and normal. A rattling noise indicates forthcoming failure (bearings have gone), grinding noises are generally never good.

Even laptops can be handled with these basic rules, the only difference is you’re likely to hit specialist screws pretty quickly and some of the bits can be really fiddly to get back in so proceed with caution.

Once you get more familiar with the hardware you will be able to tell, sometimes by sound alone, what kind of repair you’re looking at. Sounds like a Lancaster Bomber taking off? Not a huge problem, couple of £10 fans to replace the ones whose bearings are on the way out and you’re as good as gold. Rattling, grinding noise when you pop a CD into the drive? Going to need a new drive. Can we guess which one I’ve got? Go on, guess.

Yup, popped a CD into my laptop yesterday and it made a hideous noise, the kind of sound that is only really made when the finely calibrated components are out of whack and a large bit of spinning plastic is ramming into the drive at God knows how many RPM. This is what is known in the business as ‘an expensive noise’. Thankfully the machine should still be under warranty, but it will mean dropping it off and leaving it at the Apple store for a period of time. I might see if they can fix it while I’m away, drop it off Friday on my way home and collect it two weeks later on Monday when I get back.

So I had written a long post about iPhone apps and how we were getting to the point where the first generation of apps were no longer being updated and stopping working. Replacing these apps sometimes cost money and there was a discussion on old boxed software and modern downloaded software and the shifted perceptions in terms of how much people are willing to pay for software and how they expect continuos updates. It was all very interesting.

The irony is that the app I use to blog got a big update midway through writing that post and, while I thought it had gone out fine, I’ve just noticed it’s missing. Nor do I have a copy of it. So you have post lite instead. Two days late. Sorry

Among other things there were two things which, now I come to think of it, I distinctly remember discussing with The Zozo last night.

The first discussion was about the bin. Our normal and recycling bins are emptied on alternate Tuesdays. Today is the normal bin and will be the last collection before the honeymoon. Realising this The Zozo made a point of reminding me last night. I agreed that, yes, I must remember to put the bin out, especially this week.

As I walked out of Norwich station this morning I sent my usual text to The Zozo wishing her a good day and she replied wishing me a good day and saying she’d put the bins out for me. D’oh!

At that point the conversation flew back into my mind and my 20:20 hindsight went: you should have put the bin out on your way out of the house. Hey well, The Zozo had my back (not for the first time) and it turned out ok.

The other conversation was one I actually initiated. The Zozo, you see, is out all of today and not home until late. I must, therefore, remember my key, something that I’ve get quite bad at remembering of late. You can guess what’s coming next

Yup, as I neared the house I thrust my hand into an empty pocket and thought to myself: bugger. All is not lost though. My step Dad lives in the Zoo just down the road and has a spare key. A quick call confirmed he was in so I headed on the not unpleasant walk there. A chat and catchup later and I’m on
My way home, armed with key.

Had that option not panned out I was lucky that The Zozo was on the train behind me and would be passing through Cromer on her way out tonight. Plan B would be to meet her at the doors of the train and grab her keys. Given the trains are once an hour that plan would have had me in at roughly the same time as going to the Zoo but would have involved an hours wait and no chat and catchup.

Anyway, now my brain remembers the “must remember key” discussion. Lets hope there were no other things I was meant to remember.

The Met Office have, via the medium of their televised weather forecasts, been banging on about what a fantastic day today is going to be. Numbers like ’25′ were bandied about in association with this area and phrases like “glorious sunshine” have been uttered. To my knowledge this prediction of great weather started yesterday evening and persisted to this mornings weather report.

Since The Zozo is currently ill and has a day off (the two events are unrelated) I didn’t open the curtains this morning allowing her to remain in bed and have a well deserved lie in. Also, having been so conclusively told about the nice weather today I never bothered checking my phone. My first experience of the actual weather was, therefore, when I stepped out of the front door resplendent in tshirt and sunglasses and encountered… mist.

1 hour later and slightly further inland and there is still mist. Fearing the Met Office had furnished me with untruths I checked my weather app on the phone. It’s suggesting that 18 might be a more realistic temperature for today.

I just hope the sun comes out otherwise it’s going to be a bit chilly today.

So the astute among you will gave spotted we’re getting married on the 9th of October 2010, or 09/10/10. This is a Saturday. Why, I hear you ask, didn’t we wait one day and have our wedding on 10/10/10? After all, these memorable dates are all the rage at the moment.

Ordinarily I’d agree with you. I love numbers and number patterns, so much so that I tried to have 15/12/09 as our engagement day (3 numbers, 15-3=12, 12-3=9)… that was the plan anyway. Due to a monumental cockup on my part to do with being on holiday and completely losing track of the date it ended up being the 16th :S so why 09/10/10 instead of 10/10/10? The answer is simple, and nothing to do with me cocking the date up, or making up for being a day late by being a day early. 09/10/10 will mark the second anniversary since we started dating. It was The Zozos idea and I think it’s great

It turns out that motorway driving at night is, in my opinion, easier than during the day. You’re separated from oncoming traffic enough that their headlights don’t cause the same issues as on a single carriageway and, when moving between lanes it’s easy to spot where everyone else is, especially if their in your blond spot because their lights just give them away.

I also discovered that in third at about 4,500 revs there is a tiny bit of grunt in Po’s 1104cc engine which meant I could risk overtaking some of the slower moving vehicles on the drive.

About 90 minutes into our journey we stopped at a pub for food. It was here that I discovered Po had a massive scratch along her passenger door. Some bastard had either keyed her, or run a shopping trolley into her or otherwise injured her while she was parked. Since were not sure when it happened we can’t be sure. There’s me thrashing the nuts off her and she’s injured, albeit just winged.

Despite her wound Po performed admirably over the weekend, if a little thirstily (for her size of engine) as squeezing out that last little drop of performance rather wrecks the fuel economy. Unfortunately the biggest challenge was about to come.

25 minutes from home, entering a little village called Letheringset (fantastic pub there if you ever fancy a meal by the way), we had slowed to just under 30 when a big four wheel drive pulls out of a side road to our right. He’s already made one abortive attempt at pulling out and we’re that close to him that I assumed he was going to pull half way out, wait for us and the car behind to pass and slot in behind. After all, Po is bright red, he’s surely seen us and isn’t going to pull out in front….

…yes, yes he is. Brakes were firmly applied and I wondered if I’d stopped in time or if Po was now sporting a new accessory off her offside front wing.

Now, to give you an idea of the final speed of the incident imagine, if you will, you’ve turned off a roundabout that has two lanes that instantly merge into one. Some tosser has gone round you and is bullying their way in front. You have to slow and they try squeeze in front of you. Eventually both cars stop at close to hitting and the car that can proceed without causing a crash wins. It was like that only in our case there weren’t two lanes going into one, just one small lane that our new appendage had tried to merge into and they weren’t slowing, or indeed doing anything to avoid us. Not going to work.

Anyway, he pulls off into the next little turning on the left and we followed. Not sure what to do, or how to react (he wasn’t the first person to drive at me that weekend, just the most successful) I opened the door to be met by a very apologetic man which rather diffused the situation. The Zozo, being infinitely more practical than I, proceeded to take charge of the situation and organise things like insurance details and the noting down of the number plate.

During the discussion the damage was assessed. Remember that I wasn’t even sure if we’d hit. I’d stalled the car and been a little surprised but during the whole thing hadn’t heard any bangs. The Zozo, on the other hand, tells a tale of hearing the tortured screams of metal upon metal. The reality was somewhere in between. We had hit, but barely. Po was sporting less red paint and more silver paint than before and the other car was slightly scuffed if you knew where to look. I believe the term is traded paint.

As accidents go it was almost pleasant. It’s not something I’d like to repeat, but if you absolutely, positively have to crash then that’s how you want it to happen. Meanwhile we’ll get a quote for buffing Pos front wing and see if we can’t get her scratch sorted at the same time.