The recent nice weather has got me thinking. As you know I'm a jobless bum again so I'm alone with my thoughts most of the day as I've got no friends!! Well, my thoughts have taken me back to the days just after I left school, the mid 90's (OK 1993) and as usual the memories are usually filled with the music I was into at the time. I've always been into everything, I like music, not all of it but you could say I'm a bit obsessed. So, I've been up in the attic having a look through my old Tapes and CD's (I miss Tapes). Thankfully I have a cassette player that still works so I cleaned the Heads up and played some of my collection. There's alsorts in there, Ozric Tentacles, Orbital, Back To The Planet, Levellers, alsorts. Orbital though I hadn't listened to in ages so I decided to revisit and downloaded a few albums on MP3. Eat Static being another, the Abduction album was played to absolute death when it came out by me and a couple of mates.
I remember seeing Orbital on the TV at Glastonbury though and liked what I was hearing but loved the torch glasses. They've just performed the Radio 6 Music gigs still wearing them!
Has anyone seen the TV program Man Vs Food? I've become hooked on it. Not because I'm some sort of Food buff or anything but for reasons I will get to. It's basically about an American bloke called Adam Richman and his quest to find Americas' best food Hotspots. Now then, by best food hotspots he doesn't mean fine dining (although that depends on your view of fine dining!), he actually means places that sell the biggest, hottest or most craziest menus.
Nine times of Ten times this consists of fried, battered junk food so we aren't talking Heston Blumanthal style. We are also treated to some Seafood creations that would give Rick Stein a heart attack (literally). Todays episode saw our hero take on the "Chilli Firebrand Challenge" in a Chilli Shack in Springfield Illinois, five bowls of their hottest chilli. ten pounds of minced beef, a truck load of beans which I presumed where Kidney Beans and their chilli sauce which was a secret recipe. To be fair even looking at it made me sweat. It looked like the inside of a Volcano. This was then dished up and had a huge amount of cheese dumped on top. He did it.....but it hurt. There was also a place that sold sandwiches, well I say sandwiches, more food mountain inbetween two slices of toasted bread doorstops. One of note contained humburgers, a pile of french fries and covered in an ocean of Cheese sauce. It looked awful. But thats not all, on past episodes there was a place that served portions of Seafood, mainly Crab and Lobster, that are so huge they don't bother with plates and just dump it straight on the table and a monster Burger wwith just about everything you could image in it, including a Fucking Doughnut! Yes Doughnut.
I was cleaning my teeth this morning and got thinking. As we all know we get ripped of left, right and centre in this country. For example Mars Bars are smaller, Crisp packets are usually half empty etc etc. There was even and advert for Aero on TV the other day proclaiming as if its a good thing that they are now more bubblier! Yes, thats more air and less chocolate for the same money. And like twats we go with it. Back to my story, cleaning my teeth and I realised the Toothpaste I've used for years isn't really a Toothpaste anymore, more a Toothfoam. Colgate is the offending item, the Standard Toothpaste in the red and white tube, not the fancy "Rebuilds your teeth and whitens at the same time if you use it 3 times a day and tastes like chalk" shite. I remember in the olden days you use toothpast to plaster your walls with, the stuff that if you dropped a bit in the sink you needed road sweeper to clean it away. Not anymore, it's this light fluffy stuff that if you aren't careful and get in your mouth quickly its likely to float off round the bathroom.
Is it me? Do I have to much time on my hands or am I correct?
There's been a series of showings from the BBC 6 Music Birthday gigs on the "Red Button" and as I've had very little to do I've watched them. My Personal Highlights have been Orbital
And Public Image Ltd
The vast majority was shit however.
You may know that I tend to get irritated by Radio DJ's pretty easily. Most talk complete crap, Steve Wright and Chris Evans being at the top of my "punch if I meet them" list. I do find though, 6 music presenters to have a bit more about them, for example, they actually seem to be music fans and know what they are talking about. Sadly though Steve Lamaq is starting to grate (you are not a Student anymore) and Lauren Lavern is turning into the new Jo Wiley. It's a great station for music so I urge everyone to stop listening to the mainstream stations and listen to this instead.
Anyways, back to the Live gigs, listen to them online and the 6 music site.
I signed on the dole this morning, despite still not knowing if I'm entitled to anything!
The Lightning is finished. Well I say finished, it is as far as I'm concerned. I've missed the missiles off, simply because the parts that connect the missile to the plane didn't fit well and I couldn't be arsed pissing about. I also had Decal issues, the main being the long white strips that run along the wings broke up in to small pieces so I had to bodge them to look the best I could and there were a hell of small ones, very small in fact and extremely fiddly for my great plates for hands. So, I've called it a day with this. I'm happy with it though considering.
I am tempted with another Ligning though, a 1/48 scale. Never done on in that size. Shall see how the funds go.
I'm a music head, as I've mentioned before and sometimes a tune comes from nowhere and gets inside my head and wont go away. I got a free CD with Mojo magazine a few months ago. It was to coincide with the re-release of the Pink Floyd special edition albums. Most of it was rubbish but two tracks stuck out. This one by comedian Matt Berry, who you would have seen in The Mighty Boosh, Garth Marenghi's Dark place and many other things. He's also a musician and did this cover of "Any Colour You Like" from Darkside of the Moon. I rather like it.
He also does this:
Funny!
The other track by The Last Hurrah!! "Great Gig In The Sky" contains some really nice guitar. It's not really that different from the original but has their "sound" injected.
OK, It wasn't a break down I was heading for it was yet another bug of somekind which I'm still suffering with having spent the weekend in bed.
I'm getting new neighbours and I'm waiting with baited breath how it goes. They look a bit rough but as they say should judge a book by its cover.....bollocks, I'm expecting trouble. It's how my life works these days.
I'm now back in the job market and sadly missed out on a job last week by a couple of days. So this morning it's been phone calls to Job Centre and Tax office. Job Centre peopleI've always found to be very helpful over the phone and today was no different. The HMRC on the other hand no so. getting passed from pillar to post and eventually ending up where I started just to tell them I'm not self employed anymore. I'm fed up with it...nothing it seems is simple anymore.
I'm going to carry on with my modelling, keep my brain working in these dull days. I started an English Electric Lightning at the end of last year and aim to get that finished. I also have a Rd arrow thats done and needs painting and a Buccaneer that I started which needed attention. Along with a few other models I've been given lately it should keep me busy.
Has anyone see the latest Noel Fielding series? I can't quite make my mind up about it....
After the last few weeks of bullshit and stress I think my body is reacting. Woke up this morning and have been sick twice for no apparent reason and I've got the shakes. I feel generally uneasy about things for some reason. I'm hoping this will pass as I've got job seeking to do and a depression will not help things. I don't suffer with depression by the way but I'm not feeling myself at all and feel I could easily slip into a dark mood.
Today so far I've tried to sort my tax out with the HMRC and luckily actually got through to a person. Unfortunately I can't sort anything out until after Saturday! It's then down to the Job Centre to see what they advise, no doubt more bollocks. I'm then going to see if I can get some application forms from various places and visit a previous employer to see if he minds giving me a reference.
It's then up to my girlfriends house for a few days, hopefully get my head together.
Well I've just been down town to replace the rear windscreen wiper blade on my car and ended up needing new front ones as I notice they were perished and splitting aswell, £15 spent. On arrival back home a letter from DVLA, £90 for 6 months road tax (or more if I want a year). Isn't it funny these things are due when your skint!
Well, I lasted 2 months. That's 2 months of being ripped off, generally fucked around and lied to. I finally told my "boss" to "shove your job up your arse". From day one he's lied, generally taken the piss, as I've mentioned here before, and after some thought I decided at the weekend I've had enough of it. He cut my wages after cutting some of my route and giving it to somebody else and then slowly added drops and not adding to my wage yet pocketing the extra money himself. After working out the hourly rate I wasn't even meeting the national minimum wage and considering I was doing 12 hour days near enough every day I think thats a bit cheeky. I was also promised a new Merc Sprinter Van, which I did have.....for 4 days until he swopped it for an ex-rental 2006 reg Iveco that didn't have a door that shut properly, no central locking on the side door unless you lent against it when you locked it, poor hand brake (when I mentioned it needed looking at he said it was ok because it was getting MOT'd at the end of March!), no interior lights, I could go on and on. The reason he said he'd swopped it was he wanted to save on Diesel, OK I can't blame him on that, but due to the Vans past life, it wasn't economical, in fact you could literally see the fuel gauge drop once it reached the half way mark. So, it's back to looking for work and a lesson learnt, trust your instincts as usually I'm right with first impressions.
OK, I've spoke of my hatred of Grantham before. I thought i'd share this with you so you can get a glimps why. Last week I amongst my many drops on Dysart Road I had a couple which should have been simple, the 1st was for (company name), unit 3, Dysart Road. The 2nd was for Steve, Unit 3a, Dysart Rd. Right, would you put these 2 addresses together, neighbours of each other? Yeah you could safely say they would be. Oh No! Not in Grantham. I fact the where about 400m metres from each other on different sides of the road and in 2 different Industrial areas. I spent a good 20 mins plus trying to find Steve as there was no company name. have a look a the diagram to get some idea.
