NTL update

I rang NTL but this time went past the frontline muppets and straight to management. It turns out that as I told the guy I spoke to this morning, it was a fault in our area. It should be fixed by 1pm and there is no reason for me to take time off work on Monday.

The chap I spoke to this time was very critical of his colleague saying that based on the info I gave him, he'd handled my call incorrectly. Blimey - a mistake admitted!

Of course the proof of the pudding will be this evening when I try to watch Big Brother.

Talking of pudding - I am going for lunch at the Reform Club today with my predecessor as SU Prez. I'm dressed to the 9s and very excited - it's the nearest to the ruling elite I'll ever get. A full report will follow

Fuming.....x*&%@*&@(* NTL!

Last night I had a nightmare 2.5 hour journey to get home. Bloody Thameslink decided to keep cancelling trains but neglected to tell us poor saps at London Bridge Station until we had been waiting over 45 minutes. So I made my way to Kings Cross Thameslink only to find the platform jam packed. 4 trains later I managed to get on a train, and of course it stopped at every poxy flea-bitten backwater between London and Bedford.

I got home frustrated and knackered, sat down on my sofa, switched the tv on and...... nothing. No channels were working. I rang NTL's customer service line and after a 5 minutes of "if you want.... press 3" finally got through to the right department only to be told that customer services shuts at 8pm. Grrrr.

My g/f was out and so I decided to pop across to the chippy. On the way I stopped by at my neighbour's to see if their tv was ok. Nope, same problem. So clearly an NTL fault and not my set-top box. Not my fault Your Honour! And to cap it off I found out later that Broadband wasn't working either.

On the plus side the fault meant that I watched 2 episodes of "Curb Your Enthusiasm" and most of an Indian film called "Lagaan", DVDs that had been sitting on my shelf unwrapped and unwatched for months.

Anyway, back to the grumbles, this morning I still had no TV and so on the dot of 8am I called NTL. "The earliest we can get an engineer out is Monday". Monday!!!! MONDAY!!!! a whole bloomin week with no tv!!!!! And to cap it all I have to take 1/2 day of annual leave to sit and wait for NTL. Last time I did that they didn't even come in the house.

So I am about to ring NTL again and ask why I should stay with them rather than going with SKY.

No tv - no Big Brother - God how we depend on the Gogglebox

Bizarre

After the seriousness of the last post I thought I'd just share this bizarre dream that I had the other night. Before you cry "Oh God there's nothing more boring than someone talking about their dreams" stop! There is nothing deep about this and its pretty short.

So a few days ago, 2 nuggets were buried in my mind.

Nugget 1 - I saw an advert on tv for a new version of Monopoly where the London properties have been changed as have their values.

Nugget 2 - I bought some Strawberry Cheesecake Ice Cream from Tesco.

When you add them together you get:

A dream whereby I buy the latest Monopoly which when I open it then morphs into a massive board that I have to walk around rather than moving a counter. To make things stranger, this game was on 2 levels. Level 1 was your standard board and level 2 was a Strawberry Cheesecake. For a while I just took this in my stride thinking it was an interesting innovation. And then eventually sanity prevailed and I realised it didn't make sense. At that point I woke up.

I am sure there is no deep Freudian meaning to it. But imagine, how cool would it be if it were true? If you got a giant strawberry cheesecake for winning at the end of 3 mind-numbing hours it would almost be worth playing!

Old Certainties Challenged

WARNING
This post is the result of a mounting frustration. It may not be coherent and I may disown it when my mood improves. There is no levity or humour in here. If you want that scroll down.


I have always voted Labour. I've done so at every local and General election, and in '97 I pounded the streets several nights each week and all election day knocking on doors canvassing votes. That election victory in 1997 still ranks as one of the greatest nights of my life. Old friends in the constituency party told me that they had the same feelings of euphoria in 1945 when Attlee won. For weeks afterwards I felt like I was walking a few inches above the ground. At last it was OUR turn. At last we were going to put right society's wrongs.

Well it hasn't quite worked out that way. In 1945 Clem Attlee's Government set about giving us a country fit for heroes. They didn't quite pull it off but they had the balls to try. Blair's first term started superbly. Loads of new ideas and some amazing successes, but then the focus changed and re-election became the target. It's ok we all said - Labour will be radical in the 2nd term. The first term was all about proving they were competant to run the country. We were wrong. Despite another landslide where was the radical programme?

And so now, where are we? A much reduced majority and a PM who probably won't see out the life of this Parliament as our leader. No chance of the Grand Vision coming to the fore then. I hope that Brown becomes the next leader and becomes PM with a majority strong enough for him to take radical action. I have faith that he can still prove that the euphoria of 97 was justified. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't have preferred any other party to have been in office despite everything.

But what really worries me is that I was at the launch of the Centre For Social Justice last week. It is an Iain Duncan Smith led project with support from members of all parties. I have my reservations about it (it has a very Tory view of how to achieve social justice) and yet I heard more coherent ideas that evening than I have heard from the Government recently. A case in point being a different conference I was at last week where a very senior civil servant was suggesting what in effect was a nationalisation a large swathe of the voluntary sector in order to make up for 8 years of failure in a particular policy area. I won't name names lest I compromise my employers.

Part of the problem is that there are people and organisations who have the Government's ear, and for the rest of us it's so damn hard to get heard by people that matter. Another part of the problem is that I am just not sure what Labour stands for any more and I don't think they do either. Their mission has become muddied by the myriad pressures they face in power. What I do know is that there are a lot of good people in the Labour Party (in parliament and the country as a whole), and that they need to reclaim the agenda from Blair.

Billy Bragg once wrote the following (while Labour were in opposition):


Another day dawns grey, its enough to make me spit
But we go on our way, just putting up with it
And when I try to make my feelings known to you
You sound like you have changed from red to blue

You're a father now, you see things in different ways
For every parent will gain perspective on their wilder days
But that alone does not explain the changes I see in you
The way you've drifted off from red to blue

Sometimes I think to myself
Should I vote red for my class or green for our children?
But whatever choice I make
I will not forsake

So you bought it all, the best your money could buy
And I watched you sell your soul for their bright shining lie
Where are the principles of the friend I thought I knew
I guess you let them fade from red to blue

I hate the compromises that life forces us to make
We must all bend a little if we are not to break
But the ideals you've opted out of, I still hold them to be true
I guess they weren't so firmly held by you

Labour has moved from red to blue under Blair. In little over a decade the party is unrecognisable from John Smith's Labour Party. It was an absolute tragedy for the country the day he died. I only hope that his legacy will live on in Brown, if and when he gets into number 10. They need a clear vision and a radical programme - I hope to god they come up with the goods.

Whitely, Peel, Freddie et al

It's struck me in the last couple of days, the unexpected impact that people you never meet can have on your life. It was all brought about by the death of Richard Whitely, presenter of Countdown on Channel 4. Now I'm not a massive Countdown fan because I'm pretty poor at the letters game and never beat the studio contestants at the conundrum. And yet when I've watched it I've always enjoyed it.

The reason for this was that Richard Whitely, with his 'favourite Uncle' persona and warm harmless humour made him a perfect afternoon tv host. So watching his obit on the Channel 4 news unexpectedly moved me to tears. Now I can be a funny bugger in this regard - I can't watch Animal Hospital because it upsets me too much but on other occasions I have no problem absorbing very sad events in a matter-of-fact manner.

The first celebrity death I remember affecting me was Dustin Gee. He was Les Dennis's comedy partner and his death was out of the blue. Sure, other celebs I had known about had died and Gee was never really one of my favourites and yet it really hit me hard.

Later the death of Freddie Mercury devastated me for weeks, but at least I had a long track record as a fan of his music. And last year the death of John Peel was a real body blow. Peel along with Tommy Vance (who also died last year) had provided me with the soundtrack to my teens, a window to new horizons (although despite all this Queen remained my favourite band). I know that when Nelson Mandela dies it will prove to be very upsetting although I will at least be able to console myself with the memory of having seen him in the flesh three times.

So why Whitely? Why a man who I only watched if there was nothing better on? Why should he move me to tears? I guess there is fundamentally an innate sadness when a good person dies before their time. It doesn't really matter who it is because when one of these dies it reminds us of the others. So my tears for Whitely were probably also tears for others we have lost too soon, and miss.

So my thoughts are with Whiteley's family and friends, but they also turn to people like Dick, my boss when I was a kid, to Emma - a girl in my class at school killed in a car crash, and to Stephen my old next door neighbour's son who died in a climbing accident. Next time I have a drink I will raise a glass in a silent toast to all of these and more - Rest In Peace and thanks for everything.

Ode to Glasto

Glastonbury
my spiritual home
the music I love
all in one place

You and I
are meant to be
and yet
fate keeps us apart

So I watch you
from a distance
our love
unconsummated

Because you
wont give me tickets
and I
hate camping anyway

Goodbye to the 9th Doctor

Who could have guessed that the resurrected Doctor Who would be that good? My God, after watching the last episode of the series and the Doctor's death/regeneration there is only one word to sum it up - FANTASTIC

It wasn't just that it made such a welcome change from reality tv and AntnDec, Doctor Who took us back to the days when the BBC was not afraid to make challenging, brave drama. For Chrissake, Doctor Who this series brought us a male/male kiss at Saturday tea time (not a passionate kiss, but it was on the lips nonetheless). And that's not to mention the 51st century sexual freedom of Captain Jack who "dances" with both men and women. Russell T Davies stopped short of banging a drum for gay rights - instead he did something far more clever. He made sexuality a non issue - it's just how you are! How many kids, having idolised the Doctor, Rose and Jack will have a slightly different view on sexuality now? God knows, and only time will tell.

So now we have 6 onths to wait until the next installment. A new Doctor and different issues but with RTD at the helm it is certain to be a hell of a ride!

My nephew...

....was hit by a bus on Wednesday. He's ok - fractured skull, bruising etc - but nothing too serious. Nobody quite knows what happened despite there being loads of people around. The police have just written it off as a kid running out in front of a bus, but everyone says that he didn't although they don't know exactly how it happened. Very weird. But the main thing is that he is ok.

Apparently the bus wasn't so lucky and he managed to destroy the front windscreen.

Meeja Hor

Not knowing what else to write I thought I would let you all into a seedy and sordid area of my life - my television career.

A number of years ago I decided that it would be fun to liven up my drab existence by applying to go on a tv gameshow. I was lucky enough to get picked to go on 'Pass The Buck' a BBC daytime gameshow hosted by Eamonn Holmes. It was filmed in Manchester and so they paid for me to head up North and put me up in a hotel. Now it just so happened that in the hotel there were a lot of other PTB contestants because PTB has 10 players a show and films 6 shows a day.

So needless to say in the bar we were all sizing each other up - wondering how we would all do against each other. Me, being in it for a laugh, was one of the last to leave the bar (at about 1am) despite having to be in the studio to start filming at 9. It got worse than that, because as I headed to my room I heard noise coming from another bedroom and as I unlocked my room a head poked out from next door - it was an Irish chap called Ian and he invited me to join an impromptu room party. Ah the memories of Uni flooded back.

It was 3am and 2 complaints from the hotel porters later that I eventually crawled into bed. Suffice to say when I got to the studio the next morning I was not on top form. Despite this, in the first show I did well enough to get to the final 3 players and secure an invite for the next show. God knows how, but I remember it involved picking mercilessly on an OAP. By the time show 2 was filmed it was 10.30am and being hungover and having already spent an hour under lights I was feeling worse and worse.

So in round 1 of show 2, the question was - "Name something that runs on batteries". I was the 10th in line to answer and couldn't repeat what anyone else had said. So after all of the options I had thought of had been used up it got round to me and there was only one thought in my drink addled, dehydrated brain "vibrator". I couldn't say it, surely? Well if I said nothing I was out - and so like the muppet I am out it came "Vibrator Eamonn". Hushed silence, then laughter. Clearly my answer couldn't be used. So we were given another question. By this point my brain was in meltdown and I was unable to even come up with a smutty answer to save myself and was eliminated.

Despite everything I had had a great time. A ray of light had shone in my dull life and I knew I had found my spiritual home - daytime tv gameshows. But with 3 caveats - next time I would not get drunk beforehand, next time I would play to win, and in future I would apply for quiz shows (more my forte).

Since then I have been on a number of shows with a fair smattering of success. Maybe one day I'll share some more of my exploits.

luv and best wishes.

Eat That Frog

I recently had a downward blip in my performance at work. I decided that I needed to do something about it and searched around for the causes and a structure to help me improve. I found it in a book called "Eat That Frog" (ETF). ETF is a lightweight book in terms of length but packed into its pages are loads of useful tips on time management and prioritisation techniques.

So I implemented elements of ETF about 3 months ago and the benefits are really showing. I am immeasurably more effective at work. Results are improving significantly, and as a consequence of being on top of things more I think my staff are feeling less under pressure than at any point since I've been here.

I'm not saying I was bad before, merely that I wasn't performing to my own expectations. Now I can't see myself ever slipping back to my old practices. So that's today's lesson folks. Make sure that the first thing you do every morning is eat the ugly frog on your to do list and the world will become a better place!

The big C

A friend of mine has been diagnosed with cancer recently. I have suprised myself with my reaction. I am really calm and confident that he will recover. He has one of the less aggressive cancers and I think they have caught it early. But nonetheless I am sure I should be more worried than I am.

I think it has something to do with the fact that my Mum, my girlfriend's Granny and also her Uncle have all had cancer in the last few years and have all beaten it. Perhaps I am living in a false world of confidence, but I really believe that he will win this battle.

Hi .... err... this is me

Look, I'm new to this whole blog thing. So what am I supposed to write? Well perhaps I ought to start with a bit about me. I am 32, live in Bedfordshire (England) and own a house with my partner Jen.

I am a little concerned that middle age is starting to hit me. Why's that? In a word - gardening. Not so long ago I thought the preponderence of gardening shows on tv on a Friday night was criminal. Now, since buying a house with a garden I've got really into gardening. I perhaps lack the patience of the seasoned gardener (I risk ovedosing my plants with Miracle-Gro in the hope that they'll grow quicker). I even bought a gardening magazine teh other week for Chrissakes!

When I took up watercolour painting a few years ago I decided I wasn't becomming middle-aged, everyone needs a way of de-stressing. I cn get away with that once, but not twice. So be it. I have grey hair and I like to garden - bring on the zimmer!

Other than that, at the moment the cricket season is in full swing. I play for 2 teams: Cranfield University on Saturdays and Olney Town on Sundays. Last year I had my best ever year, winning the batting award for both teams and the League as well as Player of the season for Cranfield. I didn't think I could top that, but so far this year I am doing even better. It can't last of course, but please God let this be my golden season! Just one year where everything goes right, I get no injuries and the fickle finger of dodgy umpiring stays pointed downwards.

Well, that's my brief intro, a kind of 'State of the Union' only without the lies.