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Thursday, March 08, 2001 22:39 I'm so pleased I finally worked out that the music being used on the Direct Line mortgage advert was originally used as the title music for the Paul Merton Show on BBC2. At least that's where I first heard it. Can't forget that bloke with the rubber dolphin for a head. Off to Cornwall tomorrow. No updates for a few days. I'm perfectly sure you'll live. (0) comments | links to this post
Tuesday, March 06, 2001 17:19 RB (0) comments | links to this post
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Monday, March 05, 2001 12:17 The other big excitement at the weekend was the car. Frood went off to do the laundry first thing Sunday, but when he got there discovered that he didn't have the change for the machines. So he came back. When he went out to go a second time, the car wouldn't start. At all. There was a brief fluster of activity while we tried to determine whether it was the battery, the electrics, or the starter motor - without the use of a multi-meter. Finally, Andy helped us push start it (I'm very good at being the driver in a push start) and we drove down to Halfords, as it's open on a Sunday. The man came out and tested the battery for us. The machine said "replace battery", so we bought a new one and Andy put it in while Frood pretended o try to electrocute him and I sat shivering in the front seat. Thankfully it was just the battery and not anything more serious. Good old Voltaire, obviously getting his break down out of the way before we go to Cornwall. (0) comments | links to this post
11:59
Oh cool. This Blowzabella CD has credits for the people who made the instruments, and the hurdy gurdy maker is the player's brother (or sister, its only an initial). Weird dreams last night, and I woke up more stiff and sore than I have in a couple of days. I remember that there were a group of us on the boat, including E, and a fat American bloke. We were actually heading home after a very tiring mission (the details of which are currently beyond me) and I had reluctantly given up the helm to someone else because I was about ready to drop and had been told that I was needed for something below. When I came back up the scenery was familiar but it was wrong. To my horror, we had gone straight past the loch were we were suppose to turn in to go back to the mooring and had sailed right into enemy territory. I shoved whoever it was away from the helm and tried to figure out how far we had come. It had been a very long time since I sailed those waters. Comparing the chart to landmarks I worked out that we were in deep trouble, basically, and we were going to have to bluff it if we were spotted. We were, of course, and ended up in a tactical race. Thankfully the enemy hadn't been in place for very long and my youthful memories knew more about that part of the sea than they did, so I managed to hide us, taking the boat into a disused defence emplacement. All bar one of us went on to this man-made rock of an island, more like a fat lighthouse than anything else, as we thought we had better take the opportunity to check it out. It was like a maze in there, full of gantries and narrow corridors and narrower stairwells. Some of them were carved roughly out of the rock. E and I managed to get ourselves alone and quickly confirmed our respective fears that the fat American was a double agent. This was confirmed when we discovered he had been following us, at a slight distance, leaving a paper trail so that he could find his way back to where he was supposed to meet the others. We were his targets, more than any of the others. It did seem odd that our assassin/putative nemesis should be someone who was apparently so headblind he couldn't track 5 living pattern signals in a dead space, but that's what he was. We doubled back, avoiding him easily because we are not headblind, and picked up his paper trail. We were actually very close to him and E and I were holding our hands over our mouths and trying not to giggle like a couple of schoolgirls as we stuffed his paper into our pockets and heard him cursing quietly, sometimes only 8 feet away around a corner. Then we let him catch up with us, just to confirm his intent. He backed me into the top of a stairwell. The stairs were wire mesh, the stairwell narrow and it was a long drop into inky blackness. Cold came up from below, damp, like the breath of a ghost climbing out of his grave on a winter's night. E allowed herself to be left behind the door to the stairwell, so the fat American would feel able to make an attempt on my life, free from witnesses who could gainsay that it was anything other than a tragic accident. That was when his smile turned cold and reptilian. He got a glint in his eye, but being headblind didn't realise that he had been set up, nor that I could read his every intent as clearly as if I had a head-up display wired to display his thoughts. He tried to push me over but I twisted just so and he went over the railing. I didn't hear a soft, thudding impact for several seconds, and it was very quiet when it did come. Of course, we still had to get back into safe waters, so we decided to shadow a big cargo ship that passed by, hoping that no one would notice us so close to the side. That was scary. I really thought we were going to be crushed because boats like that are slow to respond, not like these river jet things. Every movement has a built-in delay and you must account for that. I kept thinking that it didn't matter if we were seen or not, I was going to get us crushed against this monstrosity of a cargo ship. The hull was a rust red, not unlike the colour of anti-fouling, and it was a good 30m or more to the top deck. I couldn't tell how long she was. We weren't crushed, and we weren't spotted, and later on that night we sat on the mooring eating beans and corned beef and potatoes, with white wine, chilled in the sea, drunk out of plastic glasses. The stars were very clear and the phosphorescence was gorgeous. I have to say, though, experiencing hours and days of (stressful and adventurous) living while one's asleep doesn't make for a restful night. Maybe Andy is right - old before my time, but only because two thirds of my life is lived while I'm supposed to be asleep. Man, I'm tired. (0) comments | links to this post
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