May 30, 2002  

the pleasing shape of oranges 28 may 2002

Went to see Le Placard [The Closet] Monday night. Excellent, excellent film. French, hence cultural. Starred the omnipresent Daniel Auteuil and Gerard Depardieu, both of whom rocked out. I haven't laughed that much during a film in ages. Those wacky French and their crazy gender politics, eh? Brief plot precis: dull guy pretends to be gay in order to keep his job, becomes more interesting, ends up happy. Set in a condom factory, so it gets style points there. Doesn't over-egg the condom-gag pudding, which gets it further style points. Slight lack of nudity for a French production, though. Ah well. This week's recommendation.

Today's amusing search string: death death metal video clip philosopher mpeg. That and 'gay satanist'. You're not doing badly here, kids.

And so the desperate search for a mobile operator cash cow continues. Vodafone looks to be putting a lot of eggs into the mobile image transmission market - you point your phone/camera, take a picture, and send it to a mate. Based on the success of trials of this in Japan, they think it'll be a winner. I think that if they can come up with a way of squeezing a medium quality digital camera into a phone, and it doesn't cost too much, they could be on to something. I'd happily pay 50p to send a quick snapshot to someone. Mind you, it's hardly the sort of thing you'd use to have a conversation, isn't it? The cash cow of SMS is largely driven by the fact that people tend to send multiple txts back and forth. You gonna be doing that with photos? Mind you, kids today, maybe we all are. The age of the peripatetic webcam is upon us.

I'm tempted to buy a Union Jack cycle helmet for the jubilee. Or maybe not.

Crunch time at work! Updates may become slightly more periodic as a result. Still, we're looking forward to the upcoming Jubilee (and I assure you that, leftist as I am, I'll be singing along Carter USM's Stuff the Jubilee rather than the piss-poor Sex Pistols warmed up leftovers), and of course to Strawberry Fair on the 8th June. Ah, dogs on strings, trustafarians as far as the eye can see, and a fresh cloud of cheap ganja smoke rising into the sky.... actually, to be honest, I'm mainly going along because there's a decent carnivorous plant nursery that tends to have a stall.

May 28, 2002  

it's a fine day 27 may 2002

We spent an odd afternoon at the Beer Festival on Saturday. When we got there (2:30pm) it was a lovely sunny day. We picked a nice spot on the grass, parked ourselves, picked up pints, and prepared for a pretty perfect day in the park. At 2:45pm, it started raining torrentially. We moved inside the tent. At 2:55pm, the sun came back out and starting blasting again. We moved back outside. At 3:15pm... I think you can guess what happened. A slightly peripatetic, and fairly drunken, afternoon followed. We ended up leaving at about 7:30pm to get some pizza at the Zebra. Don't ask me what I drank throughout the day, as all I can remember is that one of the pints was Frog Island's Natterjack, which sticks in my memory because I like frogs. It was good. So was pizza at the Zeb, and we ended up staggering home and chilling hard by about 10:30.

Saturday was a good tattoo day. As many of you know, I have a rather large spiral tattoo on my right calf. It's about the size of my hand; I have fairly large hands. So: big, black, and obvious. At the Beer Festival, zany coworker Chris has his brother and nephews there. Said nephews are 3yr-old twin boys. Usefully, Chris' brother thought to colour-code them in red and blue tops. Handy. The one in the red top thought that my leg tattoo was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. I was standing up talking, and I noticed that he would come up to my right side, peer closely at my calf, laugh loudly, then run around to my left side, peer at my (untattooed leg), then run around back to my right side and check that the tattoo was still there, laugh loudly, etc. He repeated this for twenty minutes. Small children have faith in the repeatability of the scientific method. I think he was trying to see if he could catch the tattoo appearing on the wrong leg. Twenty minutes, I tell you. Then, later at the Zeb, a couple leaving the pub gestured at my leg and made thumbs up signs. I thought they were saying that I'd dropped something, but they made it clear that they were approving of my tattoo. As Spike Milligan once said, it's nice to get these unsolicited compliments.

In the news this week - apparantly a tab of E is now £7, which makes it certainly competitive given the current price of a pint of Stella.

OK, own up. Who found this site by searching for 'Ipswich fleshpots'? What were you thinking?

And on the plus side: it turns out that we get a special employer's discount at Disneyworld Florida. Hooray.

May 23, 2002  

Dealing with death and dying on a daily basis confronts you with your own mortality. This job makes you realise how important it is to live life, hence I go on as many trips as I can. I have just spent a month in Morocco where I did everything I could possibly do that was legal in that country. I believe in taking life very seriously.

Marguerite van Doren [source], Funeral Director for Westminster Council (i.e. person who buries people who die with no families).

Did I mention that the beer festival had a total of 12 beers specifically brewed for the jubilee? I can feel a challenge coming on.

May 22, 2002  

smell of hot tarmac 22 may 2002

Stephen Jay Gould is dead. A moment of silence, please.

In a world where eating shellfish or cleaning your bathtub is "potentially life-threatening," Blaine, it is oft commented, could use an occasional bitch-slap.

Cintra Wilson [source] on David Blaine

A good time was, in general, had at the beer festival last night. My word, was it ever. I'll be interested to see the state of the other participants this morning, as a rather large amount of real ale was consumed (I'm sure I saw Micky finishing the evening off with a pint of Skullsplitter, 8.5% abv). A good one, though. We got there at about 5:50pm (they start charging for entry at 6), wandered in, bought glasses (£2, refundable if you don't want to keep the glass), and promptly bought pints with silly names. Thus fortified, we found a nice spot on the grass, under the calm spring skies.

The torrential rain started at 6:15pm. It continued to rain throughout the entire evening, ranging from a slight pissing slurry to full-on caning it down. This is, after all, England. This wouldn't have been too much of a problem - the festival organisers aren't stupid, and there was an extremely large marquee to stand in - except that all the food stalls were outside. At the other end of the festival grounds. With no covered way to get from point a (wherever you were inside the tent) to point b (the guy selling highly dubious sausages with the byline "Nine inches of meaty fun"). Soaking was a bit of a theme. Especially on the bike ride home.

The atmosphere in the tent was great, though. Incredibly friendly. I've not seen that many drunk people in one place without a fight for quite a while. Random strangers would strike up conversations. OK, so they were mainly Australian, but at least one genuine English person started chatting to us randomly - an almost unheard-of event.

And as to the beers! Throughout the evening, I had a good swig of:

• Scuppered (Ales of Scilly)
• Trafalgar Bitter (Flagship)
• Fraoch Ale (Heather)
• Osiris (Milton Brewery)
• Vivat Regina (Milton Brewery)
• Pendle Witches Brew (Moorhouses)
• Skullsplitter (Orkney)
• Rule Brittania (Titanic)

Varyingly good. Recommendations go to the Vivat Regina and the Pendle Witches Brew. Before you all start thinking I'm an alcoholic, I was drinking halves, OK? And before you start thinking I'm worryingly obsessive, I didn't write that list from memory, but from a copy of the program. So there we go.

May 21, 2002  

now it's time for our wrap up 20 may 2002

Wow. One comment, one throwaway line, and suddenly the undisputed king of the search terms that people use to find this site is: "natalie portman's nipples" (or semantic variants thereof). Well, that's humanity for you. All I can say is: you came here looking for that, you are going to be sorely, soooorely disappointed.

Went on a rather nice bike ride yesterday. Four hours around the place, including a pub lunch in Trumpington. Lovely. Quiet meanderings around country lanes in the blazing sunshine (leading to a certain degree of burning for those of us who neglected their sunscreen), pauses to look at ducks, a swift couple of pints in the garden of a local pub, and then a calm womble home. A great way to spend a late spring afternoon. The pace was fairly relaxed, due to both of us having done a serious leg workout on Saturday afternoon. We're both now having slightly difficulty walking or climbing stairs. Always nice to know you got your money's worth.

Of course, having spent four trouble-free hours on the bike yesterday, I broke a spoke during my ten minute commute this morning. Whoops! That's the second one on that rear wheel. I wouldn't mind, but it's not as if I'm doing anything particularly punishing. In point of fact, I'm pretty sure that I broke it (heard a high pitched 'ping!') when I was taking a corner at about 10mph. Tch. Made of cheese, I tell you.

And can I just go on record here as saying that you get some rather funny looks if you walk into a pub while wearing lycra bike shorts. Nothing you can't get used to, though.

Sign of the times I suppose. When I first arrived here in the UK at the end of 1998, I remember a friend of mine making disparaging remarks about people who were backpacking around the country but could afford mobile phones. This lunchtime, I bought a Big Issue off a vendor in town. He scribbled the URL for his web site on the cover for me. I'll admit to being slightly surprised.

May 19, 2002  

I've realised that when I commented earlier that the problem at the Beer Festival was actually making it to the bar and getting served, that probably came across as a "how hard it is to walk after 15 pints of real ale". No, no, no. You actually have to rather work at it to get drunk at the beer festival. Really. The standard is to buy 1/2 pints rather than pints, as if you get a duff one you've not wasted as much money (happens more than you'd think). Also, the overworked volunteers will usually overpour a half, so it ends up being about a 2/3 pint. Economy, eh?

It's the overworked volunteers thing that causes the problems. The beer festival is entirely run by volunteers from CAMRA. They're not being paid - they get cheap beer, but that's about it. This means that they're not particularly speedy at pulling pints, they've normally had a few drinks, and there's not many of them. End result: it takes about fifteen minutes each time you get served. Remember that we're buying halves, not full pints. You'll start to see the issue.

Still, it's not going to stop us going or anything. We'll just spend as much time as possible talking the Reverend Jim into going up to the bar for us while we lie around in the lovely sunshine. This plan subject to revision without notice in the likely event of torrential rain.

Observant readers will have noticed that the titles of the last four updates (inclusive) are the chorus to Front 242's late '80s industrial dance classic, Headhunter. It's a thing of joy and beauty.

Saw a fascinating bike at Ben Hayward Cycles today. It was a commuter-style, alu frame, Shimano Nexus 7-speed rear hub gear. So far, so nice, but not so unusual. What made it really interesting was the drive mechanism. None of this untidy chain malarky. This sucker ran on a shaft drive. Turning the pedals turned an eccentric cam just above the bottom bracket, which then turned a shaft drive that lead down to the rear wheel, where another cam converted this to rotational motion. Cool bananas. Heather had a go on it, and reckoned it felt slightly unusual - but that might have just been that she wasn't used to a bike that light. Mind you, the maintenance benefits are obvious. We'll be watching these suckers with interest.

Shaft drive links: Chainless.com FAQ, Zero Cycles FAQ - the bike we saw was a Zero, and it looked like a solid piece of kit.

May 18, 2002  

four: you catch the man 18 may 2002

OK, who from Queen Margaret's College is reading this? I know you're out there. I've seen you in the referrer logs. Ah, Queen Margaret's - happy memories of childhood. Not that I went there, but I did used to walk past it and jeer at the students. Those of you who are attending the school at the moment will know what I'm talking about here.

 

New updates from Heather, by the way.

 

three: you spread the net 17 july 2002

Few clusterfuck days at work, mainly due to one portion of management having seriously differing ideas of what we require in the way of documentation for a beta release. Let's just say that a certain amount of stitching up has occurred, leading to me and several other people having to pull a very large amount of documentation out of the relevant body cavities. Our quality metric for betas seems to involve the presence of documentation, but makes not stipulations about accuracy (though it must be perfectly presented). The actual usefulness of the resulting PDF is the subject of some comment.

I haven't got a fucking clue. I don't try to be funny. It's just the way I am, but people think I'm hysterical.

Ozzy Osbourne, on why The Osbournes is so popular

Feh. Too much API documentation.

Did find time to take in Attack of the Clones last night. Capsule review: not as crap as Phantom Menace, far too fucking po-faced (aren't there any cynics in the future?), Natalie Portman's nipples are extremely visible, R2D2 and C3PO are reduced to the comic stumbling, teenage petulance doth not Darth make. Worth seeing for Temuera Morrison, though. And for the set design. I have a thing for art deco, and this satisfied it nicely.

May 15, 2002  

This is driving me mad. I'm uploading files to the site, but I can't view the changes. Is blogger in a bad mood with me?

 

Hens on benzedrine, I tell you.

 

I now have my tickets for Star Wars. I am officially sad. I am not officially pathetic: I'm going on the opening evening, rather than attending the five past midnight showing on the previous night. Unlike some of my coworkers.

I've been having fun reading through my referrer logs. See previous comments about being officially sad. It's actually quite good fun finding the people that are linking to you. It means that you can, for example, coincidentally find out that David Ritchie has a site with actual content on. See? It's amazing what you can find.

In fact, having a squiz at David's site has convinced me to have a go at formatting this via CSS rather than through tables. Fingers crossed, this should have worked, and it should now all look well pretty and grooved out.

Those of us who managed to wade through our corporate newsletter this month will have noticed that this month, our diversity council is celebrating Israeli culture. Well, that explains the management style right there, that does.

 

two: you bait the line 15 may 2002

 

Right, that seems to have cascaded through. I'll be migrating all the other pages in the site to the new, no tables, CSS-only version as soon as digest this curry and sober up a little. Yeah, like you don't update your site drunk? Milquetoast.

 

one:you lock your target 14 may 2002

Stylesheet change. See how that looks.

Blogger is misbehaving, damn it.

May 14, 2002  

One of my coworkers dropped off some stuff that Blair had left behind for us when he translocated to Edinburgh. A bit of miscellany, but two things leapt out at me from the assortment:

• A bottle of Finish Line bicycle oil (yay!).
• A bottle of baby oil.

We would appear to be giving the impression that we're insufficiently lubricated.

 

we're still alive 13 may 2002

If you were wondering - yes, we're all still alive. We weren't on the Potters Bar crash train - although it is the train we use to get to/from London. Looks like we're taking the bus down to London next time, then.

The living room is now finished. Pictures will be available soonish. The weekend saw the final push: we now have not only a floor and walls, but completed paintwork, curtains, and shelving. I am the flat-pack god. Probably going to the gym on Friday and doing a heavy back workout was not the most sensible way to do things, though. Let's just say that I was a less than optimally happy bunny by the time I'd finished assembling some of the shelving. Still, it's damn good to have our stuff unpacked again. Specifically, it's great to have the various books and photos out. Of course, in the best tradition, we still don't have enough bookshelf space - we're short about two feet. And the problem's just getting worse as time goes on.

Is it me, or is it hilarious that one of the possible time zone values given in java.util.TimeZone.getAvailableIds() is 'WET'?

Maybe I should cut down on the caffeine at work.

There was an interesting Guardian article on Raleigh's decline on Friday. The basic upshot is that it's now so much cheaper to design stuff in the UK, and actually get it made up in the Far East. Or: what pretty much everyone else has been doing for the last ten years or so. Frankly, I'm surprised that Raleigh managed to hold out UK manufacturing so long.

Another one from the flamingly obvious department: teenagers with body piercings likely to be more rebellious. Well, duh.

What we're listening to: lots of Front 242 (still - ah, those wacky Belgian industrial kids!), lots of MC Solaar (hip-hop in French - now you have an excuse for not understanding the lyrics), lots of Blackalicious (my word that man's hefty on the mic). Big recommendation on the Blackalicious.

May 09, 2002  

welcome internauts 9 may 2002

So what are you doing here? Looking for poorly thought-out diatribes about life in Scenic Cambridge, complete with railings against crap driving and the distressing prevalence of nylon clothing in our neighbourhood? Or, as at least one visitor here this week was, looking for 'hawaiian pornography photos'? Or, perhaps, 'mature women barefoot'? The amusing search term saga rolls on. Though I'd just like to say that I'm quite proud that the single most common term that has been used to find this site is "i hate mormons".

Had a good one at work yesterday. One of my managers comes over to my desk with a rather scrubbed looking American woman, and asks me to give this lass a demo of the product that I'm currently documenting. I go through the standard ten minute "wow-this-is-cool-look-at-what-it-can-do" schpiel. It's not easy - I'm working on a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) product, which does not give the average person in the street much of a stiffy. However, if you're into CRM, it's well whizzy. Anyway, I do the talk ("Look! Buttons! You click them!"), giving it a full soft-soap job. I'm not sure who this woman is, so I avoid swearing or slagging off any of our products. At the end of the talk, she thanks me, shakes me hand, and wombles off. Asking around later, I find out that she's one of the senior VPs of the company (and we're a multinational), here to find out what we're doing over in the UK office. Good thing I didn't swear, then.

The weather here has gone to shite over the last week. We had a lovely fortnight in the middle of April - shining sun, warm weather, little wind. Then the bottom dropped out, and it's been blowing a gale and pissing rain since. Having rather optomistically bought a new pair of shorts to wear to work, it's all a bit annoying. Still, the forecast is good for the end of the month (sigh).

Speaking of the end of the month... It's gonna be a good'n. The week of the 20th is looking like a right little ripper at the moment. First off, the Chelsea Flower Show is open to the public on the Thursday/Friday. I've been a couple of times, and it's usually an absolutely wonderful experience. As long as no-one elbows you in the face on the last day. And you don't mind paying £5 for a small bottle of lager. But it is, without a doubt, one of the most awe-inspiring days out possible if you're at all interested in plants. You'll never see 90% of this in your local garden centre, that's for free.

And at the other end of the spectrum from five squid lagers, there's the well-known and loved Cambridge Beer Festival. All the real ale you can drink, provided you can make it to the bar and actually get served (always a tricky one). A few long after-work sessions are already planned. Let's just hope that the weather behaves, eh?

I listen to music a lot at work. It helps me focus, particularly anything with a reasonable beat and few lyrics. I use some of those hefty, DJ-style headphones. Just recently, I've noticed that I tend to put the headphones on, start concentrating on something else, and absent-mindedly forget to turn the music on. I usually notice within half an hour or so.

May 08, 2002  

it all mounts up 7 may 2002

So we're out on Friday night, for Lisa's leaving do. The table next to us is a little boisterous. Like, very boisterous. Halfway through the evening, they pass over a sheet of paper. This contains the best guesses of everyone at their table as to what we do for a living. Highlights were:

• Plane spotters from greece
• Bikers
• Red Dwarf fanatics
• Scrapheap challenge contestants
• Shoe fetish convention
• Gay rights activists
• Socially inclusive Satanists
• Haulage company
• Rugby player extraordinaire
• Academic scientists

Frankly, we were astonished at how accurate the list was (we definitely had a rugby player, gay rights activist, Satanist, and a guy who spent a weekend at a truck convention).

New thrill! Jim From Work has finally got around to posting his web site. It has the added advantage that he tends to update it when leglessly tired and emotional, so value added humour is practically guaranteed.

So, an impressive long weekend. What tomfoolery did we get up to, I hear you ask? Simple. Two coats of paint on the living room and a laminate floor. Yup, we spent our May bank holiday at home, merrily engrossed in DIY. The fun! The thrills! Actually, it was pretty cool. Painting something gives you a tangible feeling of achievement: it's obvious where you've been, and the end result is significantly different from the starting point. Ditto laying flooring, though with considerably more swearing at the bloody saw. And the fact that the weather was utterly, utterly pants the entire weekend meant that we got a good bit done (living room should be finished in a day or so).

It's odd, innit? Every time I get involved in a bit of DIY, I end up with a variety of small wounds that I have absolutely no recollection of acquiring. And no, it's not just the post-completion piss-up - I now have a variety of small nicks and bruises all over my hands (and, more worryingly, legs) that I must have got while actually doing stuff. And I'm aching like it's the day after a very hard workout - turns out that laying a floor is actually bloody hard work (who knew?). Most of it's standard - obviously if you spend a lot of time crouched over, you'll have a sore back - but I'm slightly worried that the arches of my feet hurt. Apparantly laying floorboards necessarily involves having tense feet. Again, who knew?

Actually, it's remarkable how much quieter the office is since Lisa left. It's spooky.

May 04, 2002  

yet more beauty 3 may 2002

Today is Heather's birthday. Nice one, babe. I love you very much indeed.

Radio 4 did a piece on spies yeseterday morning - specifically, on the 'tell-all' autobiogs of ex-spies that seem to be in vogue at the moment. They interviewed some ex-CIA type who's a script advisor on Spooks, the new TV show about espionage. They also interviewed a Cambridge don who is an expert in spying; ah, the romance! Cambridge as a hotbed of espionage! Young students recruited into M15 and thence into the KGB! Checkpoint Charlie! This was slightly dampened by the fact that we actually know this guy. He's a fellow at Corpus, and is indeed an expert on espionage (and is well-known to, in fact, be one of MI5's recruiters on campus). Heavy, think you. The man must be fascinating and subtle. You'd have thought so. However, I know for a fact that this is the bloke who sends emails around to the whole college with everyone's email address in the To: line. Yes, the spymaster has never heard of Bcc:, and is merrily passing potentially sensitive information around to all and sundry. Cambridge, eh?

I swear one of my coworkers just muttered about 'hens on benzedrine'.

Interesting Guardian article the other morning on fat Americans. That's put the fear of god in me, I'll tell you.

For your delectation: a short piece I wrote and sent in to Home Truths, about my grandmother's death five years ago:

Last week's article on odd burial stories reminded me of my grandmother's funeral. My grandmother had always owned a cat, and later in life she started adopting rescue cats from the local Cats Protection League. When she died, she owned two eldery moggies: Tonic (Gin having died a year previously) and Bunty. Both cats had been badly abused as kittens; they trusted my grandmother, but anyone else had a hard time getting near them. When my grandmother died, the family had a meeting about what to do with the cats. The upshot of this was termed the Egyptian Solution: first, the cats were taken to the vet and humanely put down. Next, after some degree of persuasion with the undertaker, the cats' bodies were put in the coffin with my grandmother. When she was cremated, the cats went up in smoke as well, presumably off accompanying her to the underworld. The kicker was during the service, when the priest said "Mildred was always very close to her pets..." and wondered why the whole family laughed.

So there we are - a bit of my past exposed. Treat it gently, now.

May 02, 2002  

the flood waters recede 1 may 2002

Is that? Can it be? Yes, the sun is back, thank god. And what has it brought with it? Yup, a cold. Bollocks.

Heather found something cool in Sainsbury's last night. Golden Jubilee Ale - produced by Youngs for, funnily enough, the Golden Jubilee this year. Fucking drinkable, nicely pale, goes well slightly chilled. The bottle reckons it's got a "hint of elderflower", but I didn't really notice. Worth the price of admission. That's the kind of monarchism I like.

As many of you know, I hate mormons with a passion. Actually, I often quite like mormons as human beings - I once spent half an hour trying to pick up a mormon girl until I realised that she was really serious about this no drinking, no smoking, no tea, no coffee, and no fornication thing - but the religion and the way they spread it bugs the hell out of me. The religion is stupid, infantile, and incredibly whacked out (yeah, right, the twelfth tribe of Israel migrated to North America in 600BC, etc.), and the canvassing in the street and door-to-door is obnoxious. I don't want the hard sell about loft insulation, and I definitely don't want it about my immortal soul. And I regard tactics like "Excuse me sir, can you tell us how to get to [location x]... and can we talk to you about our dumb-ass religion?" as taking advantage of my good nature and willingness to help people out. This is why my instinctual response to mormons in the street is to swear at them and walk away. It's kind of a mental block with me.

Anyway. So I'm walking to the supermarket at lunch to buy another tray of diet coke (I resell to my coworkers and turn a slight profit - I'm the nutrasweet daddy of Block C!), and I spot some mormons up ahead. Mentally preparing the speech ("Feck off!"), we approach. As we get closer, we notice that they're already talking to someone. Someone who is lying on the ground. With a wastepaper bin. A flaming wastepaper bin. Which he is roasting a large cut of meat over.

As we pass, we hear these two young American mormons desperately attempting to convert this gibbering (although amiable) lunatic. It's an image that I'll treasure... or at least, will have a hard time getting rid of. The local ducks seemed amused.

May 01, 2002  

and as the world slowly rusts 30 april 2002

Finally scored a copy of Kylie singing Can't Get You Out of My Head to the tune of Blue Monday (a la this year's Brit awards) last night. Yeah daddy.

Actually I've been on a bit of a Kylie binge recently. Ah, disposable pop music - just as good as when we were kids. Mind you, I'm also filling up on all the industrial music that I couldn't afford when I was a penniless student.

Speaking of music: I had a dream last night where I found out that Front 242 were originally a psychedelic rock band from Bury St Edmunds. I guess it must have been the conversation about shamans at the curry house earlier.

It has now been raining for five days solid. I have permanently soggy knees from cycling. The garden loved the rain at first; now it's dissolving into a muddy soup. The river is up, soon to be dangerously so. Robins and sparrows are becoming waterlogged and dropping from the sky like huge, chirping hail. Welcome to sunny Cambridgeshire, the driest county in England. Annual rainfall of 600mm, and it's all coming down right bloody now.

I've got carpet burns on my knees from helping to wrangle Alison's chinchillas the other night. One of my friends has carpet burns on the small of her back from frenzied group sex. That's the other side of the fence for you.

I forgot to mention this the other day - I got my passport back from the Home Office on Saturday morning. I'm now legitimate to live in the UK until April 25, 2003. Ha!

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