Travel advice

I have some advice for drivers who want to drive from West London to South West London. Go via Aldershot. It won't be pretty, but it will save you time.

I drove from Aldershot to Aldershot yesterday, in 3 legs.

1) Aldershot to Northolt (38 miles) took 45 minutes

2) Northolt to Wimbledon (15 miles) took 110 minutes

3) Wimbledon to Aldershot (32 miles) took 45 minutes


People often ask me why I don't own a car. Well I suppose I could pay lots of money for the privilege of sitting in traffic for hours, whilst refraining from reading, drinking, sleeping and crashing into other cars. But I won't bother for now.

Data magicians

Apparently HMRC officials didn't remove sensitive information before they decided to lose a disk full of data because it would have cost too much time and money. Having worked quite a lot with SQL database queries recently, I can fully sympathise.

Typing...

SELECT * FROM BIGDATABASE;

takes far fewer keystrokes than...

SELECT FIELD1, FIELD2, FIELD3 FROM BIGDATABASE;

Doing a Matthew

Went to a TNS leaving do on Friday. The most common question asked of me by ex-colleagues was, "So what are you up to these days, are you doing a Matthew?"

Is that a dance or something?

Should I stay or should I go?

Reasons why Sir Ian Blair shouldn't resign in the wake of the Menezes shooting:

July 15th - no-one died
July 16th - no-one died
July 17th - no-one died
July 18th - no-one died
July 19th - no-one died
July 20th - no-one died
July 21st - no-one died
July 22nd - someone died
July 23rd - no-one died
July 24th - no-one died
July 25th - no-one died
July 26th - no-one died
July 27th - no-one died

....I could go on.

What price the mule?

Apparently we all drink too much alcohol. I've been listening to various suggestions as to how we should tackle this particular demon.

1) Increase tax on alcohol.
Obviously a few extra pence on a pint will stop everyone from drinking

2) Increase the legal drinking age to 23.
Clearly teenagers aren't resourceful enough to find ways to get hold of alcohol

3) Decrease the legal drinking age to 13.
"That will stop it from going underground"

4) Don't let advertisers make alcohol so appealing.
Apparently it's up to advertisers to try not to sell their product

5) Prohibition.
If in doubt, just ban it

But by far the best one..

6) Give everyone vouchers for a certain number of units a week, which they need to display when buying alcohol. Brilliant.

I wonder how transferable these vouchers are, as I'm sure I would make it a personal mission to use up all my family's spare weekly units.

Big up the Peach

There was some English sporting success over the weekend, which seems to have passed most people by. Daryl Peach won the World 9-ball championship in Manila, the first Briton ever to do so.

I look forward to seeing his open-top bus parade when he returns home.

A day in the other office

Last week I spent a day in the traders' office rather than the usual geeks' office. It was no less perplexing, though extremely entertaining. Most conversations were something like the following:

字意字漢字かん字形漢한漢字形字意字じ漢字
意じHahahaha Robbie Keane hahahahaha 形形じ漢字形じ漢字
会象形字か字漢字漢象形한じ形字漢意字じ漢字
意会意字 Muthafaakaah 象形字字かん象字漢じ漢字
字象形漢字한자かじ漢象字字한漢한字象한じ漢象形漢意
字漢形漢한字象象字意Yayaya Spartak Moscow penalty形字漢字
字会意象形字한자んじ漢字字漢字形意字じ漢字
會Aaah shit, lost ten thousand dollaah 意字字字한象じ漢字
意字会字象漢字かじ字形漢한漢한象形한じ字字


[NB The Chinese characters above are intended to represent generic Cantonese chit-chat. Any offence caused by their actual meaning is purely coincidental/serendipitous.]

They don't make cricketers like they used to

Well done to the caption writer on the BBC website ...


"Gatting's new role is wide-reaching"

Vagrant of the day

Without wishing to give the impression that I'm spending all my time carousing with London's homeless community, I've just met an entertaining fellow on Turnham Green. Some of his words of wisdom:

"Today's not yesterday, and yesterday's not today, that's all you need to know"

"So I said to him, excuse me sir, can I marry your daughters."

"I have a short memory. It's good to have a short memory, 'cos that means you never forget"


I think I impressed him - he said to me: "I like you, you're a sarcastic bastard."

Most surprising response ever

Whilst wandering in the West End, I was passing an old sozzled, dishevelled tramp in a doorway. He was approached by a younger but equally sozzled and dishevelled colleague:

"Where's the nearest off licence mate?"
"Dunno mate"