As I said, on Saturday I spent most of the day with cBay as we dashed about in the Green Mighty Machine having much of the laddish fun that comes when you get a van, an 18 year old guy and a 19 year old guy and put them together. Even if it is pea green and stupidly big.



But the van was missing something, and this was a working radio. Someone’s genius idea when the radio broke was to chop all of the cables off. Nice move, mayt. So we proceeded to fix that and fit an ISO connection for it, which was all good. Craigy set off home to do the final fixings and about an hour after he’d left I got a phone call.

“Nic, well the aerial lead didn’t fit the radio, so I went back to Halfords and got an adaptor, but it’s still not working. You know what’s wrong with it?”

“Did you deffinately get the right adaptor,” I asked. Why he thinks I’d have a clue what was wrong is beyond me, but you never know. For I am a genius and capable of solving any technology related problem whatsoever. Bring me your broken Microwave (although, obviously, not you Dom).

“Ye I did. I checked with the guy in Halfords and he said that he deffinately knew it was the right one and it’d all work.”

So I asked him to ring me back when I’d had a think. He dutifuly said goodbye and said he’d speak to me soon.

Give it 20 mins or so and my phone’s ringing again - I’ve got some ideas by now, maybe the cable is disconnected or something on the roof, or the radio is just broken.

“The bloody thing isn’t on the roof,” he said.

Waking up to find your car caked in a thick piece of ice is never fun. As I conversed today with cBay, Nath and indeed TGO, we all had to de-ice our cars this morning. I found mine was more de-sludge than de-ice, but who cares about the difference between the two at 8.10am, when you’re 15 minutes late for work and it’s minus three degrees celcius?

“Almost just killed myself skidding on some ice in the car! Scared me stiff!,” TGO textededeed to tell me. (Annoys me that - it’s text. All forms past and present of language should be TEXT) I text him. She text me. He text her. They text me. It text me. I was text.

“I had some skiddy fun this morning too. Quite fun,” I said. Equally truthful is it that I was expecting the skiddy fun and it has become a regular feature of my Sunday morning drive to work this winter.

“If it wasn’t for the fact I was the only one on the road, it could have been crashteim.”

“Well ye, If there were actually people about I might have avoided the ice and not skidded.”

“I was also doing 40 in a 30 around a sharp bend….:/”

That, my children, is the truth. Now I need to go and De-Ice Dom’s blog. Do excuse me.

Valentine’s day. To be honest, it was never going to start off well when Aselya at work said:


“You know you’re single?”
“You know it’s valentine’s day?”
“Ye”
“Well I’m working, and I’m married. Can we do the right thing please?”

So I was doing the stock take last night….And you get the picture. But I pulled “A lover’s guide” out of the newspaper and was reading some of the tips. Essentially, it’s 14 steps to making your partner go “oooohhh” at you on valentine’s day.

Only, it made me laugh. A lot.

Number 1 tip - girls, lower your voice. Talking like a man is a right turn on :D
Number 5 - “Moving in after a drink is always good” - rape them. Go on!
Number 6 - “Copy their actions”. Become them. Everyone loves a clone on valentines day!!
And finally, my personal favourite…Number 13.

You’ve got home from the romantic dinner. You’ve drunk the coffee. You’re going upstairs. You’re there….What is the advice of this particular, un named newspaper?

GET TO THE BOTTOM OF THINGS.

Nx

So you might have heard me mention that I was going to "somewhere silly" on Sunday to collect a lawnmower that my Dad had won on eBay from a man there. Well, we left - I set my alarm at...

... 7.45am, got up and found no-one else was up, despite the fact we were leaving at 8.30am. So heh - I got back into bed and waited for someone to come and get me. At 9am, I was woken up and told I needed to "think about getting up." I love my father's ever-so-British "I don't want to tell you what to do, I'll ask you nicely" methods. They were in effect this morning too, but I'll go into that a bit later.

Anyhow, after I finally managed to get up (my dad demonstrating his can-be-ready-and-out-the-door-in-5-seconds-and-feel-fine methods which I just don't poses) and we left at 9.30amish. On a 140 mile journey to Surrey. Yes, for a lawnmower that cost £5.

When we got to the place we were headed, my excellent navigation skills found the road and even the house! It was quite a large house, which looked quite council-estatey. We phoned him, telling him we'd "found him a little quicker than we expected" and he popped outside and met us. We were invited into his garden, which to my dad's delight was filled with logs and - at the very top - Chickens.

This is my first area of concern - we went nearer to a place with bird flu, and went to see some chickens. I managed to avoid having sex with them, but couldn't help notice the two dead chickens hung (presumably awaiting something? plucking? I don't know) from a hanging-basket hook. Lovely.

Anyhow, after my dad arsed around "making it secure" or something (I'm going to be such a good driver? I'd just have thrown it in and left it - but heh) and I watched his arms flail as he tied bits of rope to random bits, and put wood under other bits to stop it moving, we drove off in search of food.

First, a pub - in South Godstone which said "family," "beer garden" and all the normal stuff - only on closer inspection, it's a chinese restaurant. No thanks. So back in the car...

We eventually found ourselves in proper Godstone - none of that "lower" or "south" bollocks. Godstone is a place with a village green, pond, and five pubs with one cafe. The cafe was closed and there was not a single parking space avaliable within a 5 mile radius.

So we decided to squeeze the car into a postbox or something up a side-street (I really don't know how you fit a focus into the space it was fitted into yesterday without straining something, but the almighty father did it) and went into the Beefeater.

Some more pain for me: it's owned by whitbread. I get 25% discount in Whitbread places. But my card is STILL AT WORK. So we were in a place I had an entitlement to 25% discount, paying 100%. And that annoyed me and hurt me - if I'm ENTITLED to a discount, I want it!

So we got some drinks, and sat down and looked at the menu. I shoook a little at having to pay full price. But eventually I settled down enough to decide on the classic big club sandwich. Basically, it's lots of meat, cheese, thrown at a piece of bread. They essentially bring you a dead chicken. Possibly one prepared by the hippy guy who sold us the lawnmower, I don't know. And they surround that chicken with bread. And then set fire to it, so it goes black, and shove a twig into it so it doesn't fall to bits. Which it does anyway. But you still manage to injure yourself with the twig that they found in the garden and shoved into your food.

The sandwich was quite nice, and the chips were lovely. I didn't eat the salad because it was that stuff that looks like it has already been chewed. Back onto the m25, a motorway I always imagine just curves round in a circle for its entire length (no, it doesn't Nic, because motorways try and be as straight as possible don't they? :P) and then up onto the m40. It took less time on the way back, but that's - I have a feeling - because we had Radio One on by this point.

We got home at about 4.30pm. We took the lawnmower out of the boot, undoing all of the rope and stuff which had, I admit, stopped it from moving. We tried to start it, and failed. Discovered petrol was switched off. Switch it on. Still no noise.

Nic goes to get plug socket - so we can see if the area under the spark plug is flooded - which happens sometimes, and it's not. It is full of carbon though, so we clean it. Put it back in, and pull the cord. It makes a bell-like sound. Whoops, it's broken.

Shall we use it for spare parts for our other broken one then? I think we shall.

Have fun ;)
N x

So he took the wooden penis out of his podium, and asked for a volunteer to hold it for him.

*silence decends in the lecture theatre*


“I’ll do it then,” one of the teachers jumped in, through sheer obligation. I mean, it’s a teacher’s job that, holding the carefully carved penis for the posh doctor.

“So, what do I do next then? I’ve got all of the juiiiicceeess flowing and I’m about to go for it. Out of my pocket it comes.”

At this point, the man once again demonstrated that sexual health advisors can produce condoms from nowhere. They APPEARED in his hand. In front of my very eyes, two condoms appeared in his hand. In their packets, of course.

“Do I rip it open with my teeth?” *does demonstration.

At this point, I think we need to realise this man was at least 65, if not older, and was very very posh. The kind of person who goes for walks on Sunday afternoons, comes home to watch the cricket, with his feet up and a huge pot of earl grey on the table. He’s reading The Times.

Oh dear god. In short, we’ve all got a sexually transmitted disease and should get tested. But we haven’t got HIV, and we’re clever enough not to get it. Someone might be disagnosed with HIV every 65 minutes in the UK, but all that matters to us is one number - one. If you get it, you’re dead.

Oh, and Cadbury College is the best college in Birmingham. Advice to all people - go somewhere else if you want to be educated.

Nicx

So today I have spent 4 hours of my time sat in the way-too-small old gym hall which was rebranded “mezzanine” and had some 1980s computers thrown into it, though they do run XP, working on a project answering a question which has one answer:

“It’s impossible to say.”


No, for those of you wondering, it was English Lang, not History. That’s this week!

So Mr Babb walks up to me. I love his name because I’m from Birmingham, and as those of you who know good old Brum will know, calling people “Babb” is a favourite of many a Brummie, almost as a term of affection within the region. I still await an opportunity to use this particular occurance to his face, and I’m sure if the chance ever does arrise it will be met with a look which can only be discribed by saying it is similar to that look given by someone to whom you have just handed a dead baby. Only worse.

“Excuse me,” he said, at 4.45pm today. I’d got very loud music playing on my iPod, but this didn’t deter him.. I took out my ear phones and said, “Hey up, Babb?” (Woo, there it is! And there was the look. Damn.)

“Did you miss one of your business studies exams?”

“No, I only had two and I went to both of them,” I’m bloody sure I did. One was about Cravenale milk (so good the cows want it back), the other was about a motor mechanic’s garage.

“No I think you did. You need to go and talk to the business studies department, because I went and told them just that you’d missed one of them, and he didn’t seem very pleased because it was one of your re-sits.”

Previous to this, I had walked into a history lesson with Dr Brown and been quizzed as to why I had been spotted around college on Monday and had not come to his lesson on this same day. It is through my inability to actually remember switching off alarms in my sleep, that I know for a fact he could not have seen me on this day.

It’s starting to feel a bit like the Mint card advert. For every time I’m marked absent when I am present, I am marked present for being absent.

Nx