Live and let DIY

As a homeowner (I say homeowner - technically the bank is the homeowner and kindly allows me and Mrs O to live in it) I have occasion to perform small maintainence tasks around the old pile from time to time.  I do these things not because they are easy but because I am mean.  Well, not mean per se.  It's just that I get nervous with tradesmen in the house, so I prefer to have a bash at them myself.

I have no real idea what people who use their hands for a living are talking about.  This is an unusual scenario for me as, if I might blow my own trombone for a mo, am pretty switched-on.  Not much gets past me then.  But when some hairy 20-year-old (ahem) electrician tells me I need to give him five hundred pounds for "parts", I don't know whether to laugh or cry.  Clearly I want my house to work, and so will cough up under duress.  However, the part of my brain that deals with duplicity (let's call it The Weasel Plateau, shall we?) lights up at moments like this and tries to smite me into protesting.  When I don't, I spend the rest of the day fretting and am guaranteed to suffer from anxiety dreams.  You know the kind of mundane nightmare where you have to eat an entire boiled cocker spaniel at a black tie dinner because you didn't stipulate the vegetarian option on the RSVP and don't want now to make a fuss.

Anyhoos, I've taken on another task recently.  I'm installing a water butt in the front garden.  You'd think this a piece of piss, wouldn't you?  But no - it involves massive drill bits, saws and running water, albeit not under mains pressure.  I suppose I could get someone in the do this for me, but that would mean putting up with all manner of plumbing fanny.  And I'm not having that.

Camp Bastion

Mrs O and I went camping at the weekend, as is our wont at the end of August.  Sadly, the summer ended a little prematurely this year in England, so the weather alternated between air frost and torrential rain the entire time.

The final day of the trip, Bank Holiday Monday, was worthy of especial note.  It started raining at about 10am and gently ramped the action up until lunchtime, by which time it would have brought down an albatross.  We had intended to have a mooch to the coast after breakfast, but you couldn't really get out of the car without a full-face crash helmet, so decided against it.  Instead we thundered back to London to do some utility shopping.

There are fewer more spirit-sapping experiences than being in the B&Q in Leyton on a Bank Holiday Monday in the p1ssing rain.  People were slumped in corners writing war poetry.  It was that bleak.  The dead-eyed staff didn't help much either, shuffling about trying not to catch anyone's attention.  The whole thing was miserable on an industrial scale.

Next year we're taking the tent to Doha.

Eyes, eyes, baby

I had an eye test this morning.  It was supposed to be a simple contact lens test, but it morphed into a sight test too when it emerged that my prescription had probably changed. 

It was a new optician who performed the test (new to me I mean, not new to the profession) and something in her mien made me uneasy.  It was like I was giving the wrong answers to her diagnostic questions.  "What the fcuk are you talking about?  The green's only clearer than the red if you're a kestrel."

Anyways, it seems the eyes are okay, but during her enquiries behind the iris, my oppie discovered that my cholesterol is probably high.  "You should get a blood test," she told me.  I won't be doing that.  It's not that I've got a death wish or anything; it's just that I've had this condition before.  And the reason it's elevated is because I'm a monster for cheese.

When the old high-cholie was first spotted some years ago, I was stunned.  I'm thin and extremely fit for a man even 15 years my junior.  Also, my diet is exemplary.  How the phuque does someone like me get high cholesterol?  My then GP and I sat in her consulting room pondering this, both of us staring at our feet and scratching the respective noggin.  I then shattered the moment by letting slip that I eat cheese everyday, and had been doing so from about the age of six.  The quack was horrified.

The upshot is I had to bin the curd.  But, as with most addictions, it's crept back without my noticing.  Well, not entirely without my noticing.  I'm well aware that I've been hitting the cheddar a bit hard of late, but "what the hell?" I thought.  So I'm having to go cold cheese turkey again.

Giving Bill Gates a Chinese burn

I've been forced at gunpoint to upgrade to Excel 2007 recently, and I think I can say, hand on heartburn, that it's the biggest heap of sheight I've ever worked with.  One needs to be careful in making judgements of this kind with changing software because it causes the operator to have to shift from one comfort buttock to the other.  The natural reaction to this enforced realinment is to moan.  However, I made this change over a month ago now, and my opinions as to the new version are therefore more measured and objective.  It's hellish. 

It's impossible to memorise the graphic menu system.  And the designations as to where functions sit within it appear to be absolutely arbitrary.  I've tried memorising the new system but to no avail.  I speak as an expert user of Excel - in its 2003 iteration, at any rate.  But now I struggle to perform simple tasks.

In short, it's simply unacceptable.  Not only is the new version sufficiently different from the old as to make it effectively a different application all together, but the new version defaults to not even being able to see 2003 spreadsheets on the hard drive.  Why is this?  Is Microsoft so ashamed of 2003 that it's trying to airbrush it from history?

Microsoft's intractability is symptomatic of a monopoly gone mad.  They are refusing to listen to end-users' concerns.  They don't even dismiss them; they just maintain a lofty disdain and silence.  I've had a fcuking gut-full.  Bill, you have enough money and power.  It ends here, and it ends now.  You butchered DR-DOS and I looked the other way.  More fool me.  I've learned my lesson.  I will destroy the entire company using satire and sarcasm.  I've done it before.  What do you think happened to C&A?

Weasels.

Haaaaaabla Inglayss?

Yawn - well then, that was the weekend, that was.  Mrs O and I are back from our brief sojourn in southern Spain.  We shot off to Andalusia on Friday night.  And, yes, it was murderously hot.

Our first night was spent in Jerez.  In most agreeable clichéd Spanish style, our (complimentary) dinner included a live Flamenco accompaniment.  I don't much care for Flamenco.  I don't wish to sound like an ingrate, but there it is.  It's simply too hysterical for someone raised in England to embrace.  The quality of the musicianship is uniformly high, particularly the guitar playing.  Flamenco guitar playing has a very high entry level in terms of skill.  It's like snooker: you can do it or you sooooo can't.  Flamenco singing, on the other hand, is simply caterwauling masquerading as art.  Yes, it is, and I won't listen to another word on the subject.

After Jerez, we jumped the train to Cádiz, which is on the coast.  Just as well too, because the heat in Jerez could have brought down a camel.  It was excruciating.  But the sea breezes in Cádiz took the edge off to such an extent that one was able to walk sixty yards after sundown without a respirator.  Despite this, one still needed a siesta after lunch for the body to take stock and make sense of matters.

Cádiz, which really is the greatest place on Earth, has an upbeat and practical approach to the summer heat.  During the summer months, the entire town wanders down to the beach after sundown of a Saturday, laden with food and drink.  Then they all have a massive barbecue/piss-up.  It's a joy to behold.  All generations, from babies to nonagenarians, are represented.  And the Andalusians' attitude to drink helps the convivial atmos.  They love to get a bit pissed-up, but never legless.  Consequently there is no bad blood or scrapping.  Looking at the whole affair last Saturday, I couldn't help but be struck by the thought of what utter carnage would ensue if the English ever tried such an event.

This trip was fleeting one, however.  We arrived on Friday evening and flew home on Monday evening.  Still it was enough to recharge the old batteries.  Also my boss went off on leave on the very day that I returned to the office.  He's off to the highlands of Scotland on a stag hunt.  Horses for courses and all that notwithstanding, what kind of person does that in the name of R&R?  So you've chosen to drive 400 miles in a Land Rover in order to crawl on your front over a peat bog whilst being eaten alive by midges in order to shoot a one tonne wild animal in the head?  What kind of fcuking postcard would one send home to the loved ones from a mini break of that nature?  The brain boggles.

Vacation

I typing this at my soon-to-be deserted desk in the office.  Today is a half-day as Mrs O and I are off on hols this afternoon.  I'm shooting off at 12.30 (a little over an hour's time).  The plan is to hook up with the spouseuse at Stansted, and then to jet off to Jerez.

Normally we rent apartments when we're away, but as this is a mini-break, we're staying in hotels.  Luckily, southern Spain is relatively cheap so we can stretch to four and five-star hotels for the duration.  But staying in places like this unnerves me.  I'll be honest with you: I'm a low-born cock-er-knee urchin at heart.  I know I carry myself with a world-weary and distrait sophistication, but that's all bullsh1t.  In fact I'm an impostor in polite society.  And the staff at posh hotels can spot rotters like me, even ones from abroad, from about 700 yards.  This puts me on the back foot.  I feel ill-at-ease all the time.  Should I tip this chap?  If so, how much etc.  It's a decidedly first world problem, I grant you, but it is a worry.

Soy posh, sí.

Have A3 boarding pass, will travel

Mrs O and I are off for a long weekend in southern Spain tomorrow.  We're doing a greatest-hits tour of the places we know well - Jerez and Cadiz.  I adore Andalusia; it's so vital and so brutal.  We've never been there this early in the year, and it's going to be bastard-hot.

We normally head down to Al-Andalus in late September at the earliest.  Even then it's generally scorching.  I've a photo from Jerez of one of those giant thermometers you get outside pharmacies (pharmacists, why?).  It reads 39 degrees.  So presumably in August it's like sitting in an inglenook fireplace whilst dressed like a Norwegian trawler man.  Oh, well, the hotel has a pool, and Cadiz is on the Atlantic, so what's the worst that can happen to a pasty London Irish weed, comme moi?

The greatest pleasure on Earth has to be cowering from the relentless heat of an Andalusian day until the sun begins its descent and then heading off to a sheltered bar somewhere that has a view of the sea or a river and sipping a freezing-cold fino sherry.  The astringent quality slakes the thirst no nothing else I've ever quaffed.  Suddenly, the limbs lighten and the brain springs back into life for a few hours.  Colours appear more vivid and you just want to embrace life.  Necking Guinness whilst listening to sean nos in a dark pub in the west of Ireland is fantastic, but it doesn't get close to this.  Nosirree.