Irregular Verbiage

It’s been quiet on this blog as I have no internet connection. Having got tired of Tiscali Broadband’s repeated outages and phone operatives that bring new meaning to the phrase “reading from a script” I’ve tried to move to a different Broadband ISP.

If only it were so easy. Apparently because of local loop unbundling, I can’t migrate from one provider to another. I have to cancel it – wait for them to clear the line and then start from scratch. Grrrr. I phoned Tiscali to find out why it was taking longer than the 10 days they said it would take and it turns out they’d managed to screw up my request to cancel.

In short, don’t ever consider doing business with Tiscali Broadband  – ever. You have been warned!

After work yesterday I raced up to London to have a curry with friends from uni. It was a good restaurant (Bengal Village) on Brick Lane – if you’ve never been there before it’s quite an experience. Lots and lots of restaurants in a row – competing for passing trade.  Looking on the web, I couldn’t find a website for the restaurant but I did find this list of recommendations for particular places to try.
Walking back from the train station late at night, I ended up listening to Mark Lamarr’s late night radio 2 show. I loved it. I notice the tagline on the website reads, “The best music you never knew you loved from the last 70 years…”. True in my case. I’d never heard of the band the Ethiopians but I loved their “Last  train to  Skaville”. I was literally dancing down the “mean” streets of Winchester. When I don’t get a chance to listen to this music when it’s broadcast then I suspect I’ll catch up via the internet.

My little black fiesta went into a garage today. It’s leaking power steering fluid and stalls when the engine is cold. It turns out that this requires a new steering rack and some “engine management unit” jiggery-pokery. The estimated cost to repair is more than £500. I bought the car in February for £350.

I think that it’s the end of the road for that car.

It’s been a good weekend. I left work early on Friday – we drove up to York and arrived about 8:45pm. After the road atlas in the car had got wet on a previous trip I’d binned it and forgot to replace it. Luckily “Google Mobile Maps” saved the day – not for the first time.

After a flawless journey and being impressed with the B&B (clean & tidy with an ideal location – close to the wedding venue and the city centre (you had a view of the minster from our window) we wandered around town. Em was tired after working an early shift but I was determined that we should have a potter about. On the way back we had a pint in the “Hole in the Wall” – recommended.

Saturday was the wedding itself. I’d met quite a few of the guests at a combined stag+hen night a few weeks ago – I’m sad that I’m unlikely to get a chance to spend any time with most of them again. It was the first secular wedding that I have been to. I was impressed – it didn’t drag on but at the same time it did have a sense of occasion. The two readings were both really good – one was about the bride and groom and how they’d met. The other was about two dinosaurs. I thought it had been especially written as a metaphor for the couple but was actually an extract from a book.

It was a good night and I felt slightly worse for wear the next morning but Em was much worse – even missing breakfast! We’ve been back a few hours now but we’re both still exhausted.

Last weekend, I went to Centre Parcs in Sherwood Forest. It was a chilled out stag/hen night for some friends of mine who are about to get married. I knew almost no-one there but everyone was really friendly and I had a great time.

I found out quite a bit about the people I met and I’ll be a little embarrased if I can’t remember who is who when I go to the wedding in a few weeks. It occurred to me I should write some notes, then I thought maybe I should have a little paper “people” diary. I dismissed the idea of setting up a database as overkill but does anyone use any technological aid for this sort of thing?