Monthly Archive for: ‘September, 1998’

Day Three – Beinn A’Chaorainn (3,550ft / 1,082m), Beinn Bhreac (3,054ft / 931m).

On which it rained a lot. Lots of walking across boggy marshy stuff sprinkled with deer and sheep crap. Another metaphor for life, then.

I’ve never been so glad to see Richard’s Volvo, and I’ve don’t remember ever doing anything so exhausting. Thankfully we’d already decided that Thursday would be a rest day.

We went to a pub in the evening, and the millennium came up in conversation again. But instead of looking forward, we were trying to work out what has defined the mood of the ’90s, the zeitgeist of this decade. But we couldn’t think of anything general, just a whole heap of one-off news events, celebrities, sporting events, and pop scenes with no real socio-cultural change beneath them. With under 460 days left of the 1990′s, I can’t see that situation changing, either. Hey ho. “The transitional nineties”, then.

Day Two – Carn A’Mhaim (3,402ft / 1,037m), Ben Macdui (4,295ft / 1,309m).

I’m really not fit enough for this lark. As Rich later said, “Nel has invented a pace between stop and walk.” But at least I give it a go and get away from the PC once in a while. Can’t get much further away from it than Ben Macdui – just a shame we didn’t reach the summit until almost dusk. Oopsy. By the time we got to the bothy it was pitch darkness, and the bothy was full of people who showed no intentions of squeezing up. So after some chicken soup and bread (supplementing the two Mars Bars we had already eaten that day – bloaters or what?) we got into sleeping bags and survival bags for a rather damp night’s sleep. The first time I’ve ever worn a woolley hat while sleeping, and hopefully the last. Oh well, at least it didn’t rain.

Does anybody else think Savage Garden sound like Spandau Ballet? Sorry, just had to get that off my chest…

Day one of the holiday proper, then. Irn Bru and Double BK Cheeseburger for breakfast, a quick jaunt into the city, and then we’re off. We didn’t reach the highlands until the afternoon, so decided just to bag a few teeny munros which are adjacent to a 2,000ft high road! Namely Carn Aosda (3,008ft / 917m), Carn A’Gheoidh (3,199ft / 975m) and The Cairnwell (3,061ft / 933m).

I find it really annoying to reach a summit only to discover that people have gotten there before me and built buildings or transmitters – it’s almost as if they’re mocking my shoddy level of fitness. It especially annoys me when the transmitter is for Racal Vodafone, and I have an Orange phone…

I did something silly coming down the Cairnwell. It should have been an easy wander down, but, well, to cut a long story short and skip the embarrassing details, I kind of stumbled a bit and went for a roll. I eventually stopped rolling, stood up, fell over again, and continued rolling. Dizzy was not the word for it! Bruised my back quite painfully too (sympathy, please!). When Rich finally caught up with me, the second thing he said was “Well, there’s something for the journal!”. So there you go.

Up early for the customary bacon sandwiches that seem to precede all our Scottish jaunts these days. Then, after I throw some clothes in a bag, we’re off.

I think I’m unique amongst my friends in theat I enjoy the long journey up, it’s one of my favourite aspects of the holiday. But today the journey isn’t quite so long, as we’re spending the night with Bruce at his new flat in Edinburgh.

Upon entering the building, we were struck by the similarity to the stairwell in Shallow Grave, and half expected a torch to fall down the centre, or see a disgruntled and shunned Cameron passing us. Thankfully, no such events occurred, and indeed the flat itself was more Swiss Family Robinson than Shallow Grave.

After some fish suppers in town, we went for an unintentionally long walk, during which we found ourselves in a somewhat insalubrious area of the city – tall, ugly tower-blocks dominated the skyline, surrounded by oppressive-looking floodlights and CCTV cameras. To cap it all, there were huge banners stating seemingly obvious truths such as “Nobody deserves to feel scared in their own home.” That there was even a need for such signs seemed quite worrying.

Bruce’s new flatmate was in when we returned – goes by the name of Kim, and is fit in both senses of the word. Unfortunately, though, she insisted on watching You’ve Been Framed, so we were subjected to 25 minutes of people falling over and “cute” animals. Beer was most definitely required at this time, and had to be accompanied by a few games of Risk.

Risk has been one of those few constants in life over the last few years. It has been played at the start of term, the end of term, after exams, during holidays, in Scotland, Yorkshire, Nottingham, and London, whether we’ve been busy or had free time. When you are tired of Risk, you are tired of life.

Bruce won four games in a row, each within a few moves. Can you believe that? Spawny git.

Stupid game, anyway.

Woke at 5:30 feeling thirsty – a thirst that has remained with me all day. Hope I’m not diabetic, I couldn’t stand all the injections. That’s not meant to sound flippant, I really do detest all that stuff. I was the kid at school who fainted when they mentioned needles in the drugs-awareness lessons, and ended up flat on my back throwing up on the one and only occasion I ever had a blood test. I put all this to the back of my mind, and after a pint of milk, go back to my cosy sleeping bag.

Friday. Thank f***. Dress-down day too, and it’s someone’s birthday so there’s choccy and cake. I make an effort to wrap up my work before my week holiday, and I actually get thanked for the mundane crap I’ve been working on over the last few weeks, which goes some way to making it all seem worthwhile. “Thanks” is such a short word, but hearing it makes me feel like Muttley when he’s been given a medal. (hey, a second reference to Dick Dastardly in my journals – uncanny…)

Home by four to face the torrent of junk mail. It really does make me chuckle. There’s only so many WWF stickers and RSPB biros that one guy can possibly need? Oh, and then there’re the CDs – two from AOL, one from LineOne, and one from Virgin. I would link to them, but I really can’t be bothered. Still, my one-year old niece enjoys playing with the CDs, and they come in useful as coasters.

My eyes really shouldn’t tremble like this, should they? They’ve been at it for months now, and the Optrex isn’t helping much. I think that eye test is well overdue. Hope I’m not going blind, that would make my job pretty difficult, and it would mean I couldn’t see the funky new mouseover features I’ve just added to these pages especially for users of IE4/5. I think a week away from VDUs is going to do me the world of good.

Smeg, I’ve just realised that the javascript for that nice month calendar up there will cause the date to revert to 1 September on 1 October, and I’ll be in Scotland at the time. Better get patching the code tomorrow, then. Oh, it’s 1:12am. Well, I guess I mean later today. Hmm, think I’d better sleep…

I decided to try viewing my journal from a PC at work. Not out of narcissism, you understand, I merely wanted to check that it was working OK. I only ever see it from my home PC, and I was shocked at the differences – IE3 rendered the pages totally differently to IE4. OK, so some of this could be attributed to my use of stylesheets and occasionally sloppy code, but even so, it was just… ugly. I can’t believe cross-browser compatibility can be so hard to achieve. Oh well, never mind – soon everyone will be running IE4 anyway…

When people are good enough to take you for a meal, it’s impolite to gripe about the details. But I was mystified as to why my colleague insisted on a smoking table in Pizza Hut when none of us smoke. He pointed out that the smoking section is at the rear of the restaurant, and claimed that you’re 89% more likely to be killed or injured if you’re sitting near the front of a restaurant. I kid you not. In the meantime I increased my risk of lung cancer, and ate a Grand Pan Pepperoni Feast mixed with a side order of cigarette smoke. Mmmm…

Oh, and I’m sure that the likelihood of death is greatly increased if your designated driver misjudges turns and careers toward traffic islands, but as I said, it would be impolite to complain about such things. The food was good, and didn’t cost me a penny.

I intended to finish off England, England (incidentally, a Booker nominee, I see) before retiring, but for some reason I dropped off before 10pm, so Julian Barnes’ exquisite prose will have to wait a little longer.

Wednesdays have a tendency to suck. Throughout my so-called formative years they were always my favourite day of the week, but now they’re just boring, neither-here-nor-there type days. Hey ho. And I could go on about how dull work was, but I won’t. Not this time.

Another day, then. Stayed away from home again, and the undisputed highlight of my day was the BBC2 documentary on the Manic Street Preachers. I need a holiday. Roll on Scotland.

It reflects badly on my current lifestyle that the only thing I have to write about is, once again, the email that I’ve received. But with gems like this in my inbox, it would be churlish not to mention them:

From: Martin Smith

Sent: Tue 22/09/98 21:16
 
Nel,
 
Isn’t it amazing what crap you will think of when you are sat in a foreign country, bored.
 
This is what has been going through my mind over the last few minutes…..
 

Musicians with “Double Initials” :

 

AA – Adam Ant

BB – Billy Brag

CC – Erm?

DD – Erm?

EE – Erm?

FF – Frankie Fraser? No, he is a nasty criminal.

GG – Gary Glitter (perhaps should be struck off the list?)

HH – Erm?

II – Erm?

JJ – Janet Jackson

KK – Erm?

LL – Erm?

MM – Erm?

NN – Erm?

OO – Erm?

PP – Erm?

QQ – Erm?

RR – Erm?

SS – Erm?

TT – Erm?

UU – Erm?

VV – Erm?

WW – Erm?

XX – Erm?

YY – Erm?

ZZ – Erm?

 

Erm? !!! Over to the Music-Miester…..

 

Martin

So far I, and a few others, have also come up with Chubby Checker, Doris Day, Herbie Hancock, Kitty Kallen, Lindy Layton, Leapy Lea, Marilyn Manson, Ozzy Osbourne, Patti Page, Robbie Robertson, Samantha Sang, Sandie Shaw, Tinita Tikaram, Tina Turner, Woody Woodpecker (!) and Wendell Williams.

Any others you can think of? You know what to do…:

Internal Email:

DO: Do you think working for [our company] is a bit like gardening?

IN: This had better be good…

DO: Well, gardening is a relatively tedious task. You have more enthusiasm to do the gardening in your own garden than you have to do the gardening in somebody elses. [Client] being somebody elses garden. If you worked for [Client] you would a) take more pride in your garden, b) do a better job, c) have more enthusiasm, d) you would have more work to do

He’s right, too. Analogy of the month, then.

Apart from that it was a pretty dull Monday. Plenty of work to do, but none of it remotely interesting. Hey ho.

On a lighter note, I phoned Rich and we decided to go to Scotland instead of Wales, after all – yay!

"You must enter a valid five-digit ZIP code to register with this website."

Uh, even if I don’t live in the US? Yep, apparently so. Hmm, a use at last for that Aaron Spelling show. I do wish website designers would take some time to consider those of us in Europe once in a while.

It’s never easy to relax on a Sunday knowing that the working week starts again at 5:30 the next morning, but I’ve tried my best. Am reading the new Julian Barnes novel, "England, England", which is all very wonderful, and, well, English. It even prompted me to dig out my old jigsaw puzzle of the British Isles.

Also spent quality time listening to some good music:

• Manic Street Preachers – "This is My Truth, Tell Me Yours"
• Spinanes – "Arches and Aisles"
• Billy Bragg & Wilco – "Mermaid Avenue"
• Beatles – "Revolver"
• Barenaked Ladies – "Stunt"

Quite a pleasant weekend, really. Hey, and only one five days separate me from a week-long holiday. Whether it’s will be Scotland or Wales remains to be seen, but either way I’m looking forward to getting away from it all for a while. There’s just the small matter of the intervening five days at work. My weekdays are less than ideal; I’ve been browsing Sartre and Coupland for sympathy.

And now, to distract myself from the weekend coming to a shattering halt, I’m off to tidy up my CD collection (the most orderly part of my room), and organise my IE4 Favorites. These are things that, perversely, I enjoy doing…