» Buses

Brixton!
Heading south along the high street of this merry hole celebrated cultural melting pot, a delightful skank of a woman boarded the bus with her buggy and baby strapped thereto, and annexed the buggy/wheelchair area.

Two stops later a man in a scooter sought to board the bus, and the driver duly lowered the ramp. Now I don't know if this is actually written down, but apparently wheelchair/scooter trumps buggy/pram for the hallowed yellow space, which the driver very politely asked Ms. Charm 2008 to vacate. Naturally, she told him get to fuck, and five minutes later there was a shouting match between the two of them, three kids at the back of the top deck shouting "Why Are We Waiting?" and general merriment.

Clearly beaten down by the unrelenting stupidity and vitriol of dole-for-brains, the driver turned to laughing scooter-man, shrugged, apologised and went back to driving the bus.

The traffic that day was pretty claggy.

The guy in the scooter, grinning from ear to ear, followed us from stop to stop, trying to get on each time, and all the while building up a small band of 'supporters', and making the harridan more and more defensive and angry.

All the way to Waterloo station...
(Fri 26th Jun 2009, 21:50, More)

» Best and worst TV ads

Free advice to Santander:
In a recent advert, you appear to suggest that you can afford your customers safe passage across the financial landscape, in an allegory where a specially built red viaduct represents Santander, responding to the needs of its customers and delivering a tailored service. The sleeping child in the family car may even hint at how much better his life will turn out because his parents chose Santander.

This may all be wonderful, however your bridge design appears to be based on gigantic LEGO bricks, whose proportions are no different to their normal size equivalents. There's not enough friction between LEGO bricks to form a stiff arch, necessary to achieve the slender spans of your supposed bridge design. LEGO bricks are designed to be easily separated. Any family car attempting to cross this bridge would plummet to the valley floor, along with the number of structural engineers banking with you. The LEGO studs would also make it a very bumpy ride.

...and while Lewis Hamilton may be a Formula 1 champion, his skills are not necessarily transferable to the job of supervising a major construction job.

Just a thought.
(Sun 18th Apr 2010, 15:56, More)

» Ripped Off

1st class to York
Once, my boss had to take a client to York. To keep face, First Class train tickets were the order of the day (on expenses). So, in they walk to King's Cross station.

Boss: Two first class returns to York please.
Clerk: Certainly sir, that'll be £1,104 please.
Boss: But, but, I could walk up the Caledonian Road, buy a second had Mondeo, put fuel in it, insure it for a day, drive up to York, drive back and dump it for less.
Clerk: Well, quite sir, I wouldn't pay it. The train leaves in five minutes.
Boss: Amex OK?

And that was without food...
(Fri 16th Feb 2007, 15:57, More)

» School Projects

Computer desk
CaptainSpunker's story reminds me...

Many moons ago for my 'Design & Technology Resistant Materials' GCSE, I embarked on the design and construction of a computer desk. Obviously, I spent 80% of the weeks allocated to this work doing drawings, fucking about with the lathe (goodness only knows what fine machining had to do with my design) and laughing at the truly awesome Mr Chapman mix up his wrongly colour coded steel rods in the oxy-acetylene torch demonstration ("Now this is low carbon steel, so this will bend after heating..." *PING!* "Shit!")

Anyway, when the time had long passed to get down to building the sodding desk - which had developed through interminable doodling into a true leviathan of Brunelian proportions and strength - I realised there was no time to finish. What to do?

Well, I cut the MDF shelving out myself and invested a great deal of effort in profiling and staining it, honestly I did, but my mum's partner seeing my predicament offered to get the metalwork made up at his friend's light engineering workshop. I felt a bit bad as a good few of my classmates had slaved away for weeks realising their Rotring-drawn dreams in steel, vacuum-formed plastic and "a range of aesthetically pleasing hardwoods". However I figured only I would know, as my partner's friend had a reputation for turning out stillages, farm trailers and restored tanks - hardly the pretty engineering that might give me away.

So I was more than a little mortified when a set of beautifully fabricated steel frame sections arrived at our house, fashioned from 20mmx20mm square section steel tubing, bent at the corners in a way only achievable by a specific machine the school certainly did not have, all topped off by a stunning cobalt blue powder coat finish. Offend my mum's partner and his talented friend (who'd done the work gratis) or fail the course and get teased forever?

I plumped for the latter, and predictable uproar ensued when 'my' creation was unveiled. Frankly, I agreed, and bravely admitted my weakness and failure to my hard-working colleagues looked at the floor. But Mr Chapman then threw a fairly typical curve-ball - in answer to all the protests around the theme of "but I built mine myself!", he stated: "Nowhere in the brief does it say, or did I say, that you had to actually build the entire project yourselves. This is an example of good project management, and also something known as outsourcing. A*."

I was as dumbfounded as the 20 pupils who'd just learned to hate in ways they hadn't imagined were possible. Nice desk though.

Length? Considerably shrivelled five minutes later when I thought I'd damaged the inlaid marquetry on my friend's cherry wood jewellery box with a dropped chisel.
(Tue 18th Aug 2009, 23:58, More)

» Beautiful but Bonkers

easyJet pest
Not beautiful - it was me - but I was bonkers. Worth the read I reckon...

Flying to the south of France years ago, I met this girl in the check-in queue, who I'll call Kate. I chatted to her quite briefly, but checked her out: 5’10”, long blonde curls, a really shit-hot curvy figure, very justified low-cut top and pretty, even without the make-up (which would’ve taken a while, I reckon). Anyway, had a bit of banter, got to the desk, got my boarding pass, pissed off to the lounge and thought no more of it.

Later, after I’ve bagged my window seat, Kate wanders along looking for her spot. I catch her eye and she recognises me, smiles (cue ‘woo!’) and asks me about where her seat was. I was able to tell her that “there aren’t any numbered seats on easyJet, you just sit down” - thank you Stelios, for once - and she plopped herself down next to me (cue ‘hell yeah!’). We had a great time, chatting away constantly and getting on really well. It was a clear day, so she even seemed impressed with my spoddy knowledge of the English countryside. She told me she was a lawyer working for a big retail group, and while she was in no way showy, it transpired she had flats in Manchester and in London and was taking the helicopter to Monte Carlo when she got to the airport $¬) so, the dates would be fun. She even felt familiar enough to roll up her trouser leg to show me a scar on her knee from an operation (cue magazine in lap - well, I could see an inch of her lower thigh).

We landed, and I asked if she had a pen and paper (I had none - doh!), and she just handed me her card and said “let’s hook up back in London.” Fair to say, I contend, that this was a result. We even parted with a hug and kisses on the cheek (facial).

Back in Blighty, I gave her a ring, she answered, remembered me, was pleased I rang and suggested we meet up the following Saturday for a day - that’s a whole day - in town (cue stadium roar). Cut to the following Friday, and I was back at work, with a pesky new mobile in my pocket. I’d yet to set it to vibrate, which it needed to do because I was working all evening around very noisy trains. Also, I’d been single/celibate for over a year and didn’t want to tempt fate, so I bit my tongue hard when I told a mate what I was doing the next day. Sure enough, two missed calls and a quick chat later, and Saturday was off because her flat in Manchester was damaged because of - get this – an earthquake (Beeb article).

This is where I got the nutty bug. I ‘phoned her perhaps five times over the ensuing weekend, leaving a couple of messages, and fired in some more unanswered calls over the following week. I was hopping mad about losing out on my first date in ages to a supremely rare seismic event, so eventually I ticked a few more stalker boxes by looking up the number of her company’s office in Manchester. Within seconds I was on her extension…

Kate: (very stern) I really don’t feel comfortable with you calling me at work.
Me: Well I called you a few times…
Kate: I know, I know. Look I’ll call you later
Me: Perhaps you shouldn’t call at all
Kate: Well OK then. Bye.

Me: (months later) Why the hell didn’t you wait a bit rather than behave like a randy Alsatian sniffing a bitch in heat?

Length? She never got to decide, or be gentle like I know you’ll be.
(Thu 23rd Nov 2006, 16:29, More)