I thought that in these times of CCTV, satellite imaging and cafe latte drinking that the world had seen the last of the armed robber. They always got caught and the sentences were so high that you were better off pulling some large scale internet fraud or offloading some crack on small children.
It appears that I was wrong: Two prominent armed robberies in as little as two weeks, what with the raid on Securicor in Kent and the burglarising of a plane at Heathrow yesterday, it seems like the balaclava wearing sawn-off shotgun-toting east-end diamond-geezers have returned.
I don’t know why, but I feel rather happy about this. Until, I walk into my local bank and get caught in an exchange of local terror, I will probably feel this way. I suppose there’s just something vaguely comforting in seeing someone make a few million by running about, shouting, firing shots off at the ceiling and speeding off in a souped-up Capri.
Went to the dentist today. Stung for 40 notes and it hurt. The lecture she gave me was character building though. Must try harder….
Then walked to the station in the rain. Low sky today and persistent drizzle. Teeth aching, laptop bag swinging. Stopped in the park again for a sit down in the shelter and watched the rain drip through the gaps. Reminded me of my bedroom which took it upon itself to start leaking yesterday. Constant cold in there. Only hope to shut all the doors, batten down the blinds and type fast. Get up every few minutes for a jog, as you’ve got to keep the circulation going.
Hard to stay cheerful under this kind of adversity, but feeling alright. Just the right side of spun-out and knackered to keep it real, headphones in for the big stride walk and a smile on the face for the commuters.
Yes, at last the ubiquitous cry goes up from the groover – but not over the mobile phone airwaves, not words from my mouth, but from my typewriter as I blaze across the land in a wireless internet equipped GNER supertrain.
A mixed bag of people on trains on a Sunday night: Salesman and executives heading out to clients in the provinces for the week. Northern visitors and students returning from energetic weekends, faces jaded from high jinx and chemical abuse. Deviants like myself, head buried in laptops trying to control our universe and get a jump on the new week by firing some sporadic emails off into the ether. Brash hectoring blazer types in first class snipping off the ends of cigars for when we get there (of course this train is fiercely non-smoking) and shouting into the bluetooth headsets about stocks and shares.
I have a busy day tomorrow. A day no doubt full of grief and recriminations (on both sides). But it is a day I feel I can get through. Four sharp meetings, a smart suit and the right line of breeze should see me through. Then it’s home on the bullet train again, some more emails, a sausage, mash and leek tea waiting at home and then at last sweet maroot and rest. It all seems so easy, but only time will tell…….
Well … I’ve finally managed to work out (with help from the groover) the password conundrum.
I’m a little drunk at this stage and not got too much to say for myself.
But I’d like to go on record as saying that I feel totally fucked off with everything. Long may it last.
In the course of my day job I’ve been reading a lot of government reports recently and it’s got me thinking. Most of these documents are extremely dull, but the reasons for this go beyond the expectation that may spring to mind – i.e. that the subject matter is often not very interesting. Funnily enough when you are reading the reports for a reason (and why would you do it otherwise?) the subject matter isn’t that dull. What makes them dull is that very rarely do they actually say anything.
It’s a strange symptom I think of the fact that no one has the capacity or the courage to make a decision any more. Rings of legalistic breeze, paranoia and incompetence mix to create a state of inertia excused by the cry of ‘evidence-based research’. Simply put, what this means is that no one makes a decision because they want evidence to base it on, but there’s often no evidence, so there’s no decision just more evidence collection – which is interesting, but never quite enough to make a decision. People like me spend all day looking for evidence, not finding it, hand in a report and then the person it’s meant for can say “there’s no evidence, so we’re going to wait a bit and then look for some more. We certainly won’t be making any decisions on the basis of this”. Seriously, it’s like Catch 22.
I travel on the tube a lot and many many things about it bother me, but some things I like. I like the blur of people’s faces as they pass by on another train from the other side of the tunnel. I like the noises they make – factory squeals and twists of metal cable. I like the heaters under the seats. I like the muted eye contact and the furtive glances. I like nodding off in the morning and reading in the evening and scrawling thoughts hunched over after a few beers. I like humorous announcements from the drivers and when people shout at each other for imagined transgressions of personal space. I like the noise of ipods and haircuts and shoulder pads and the quick breaking when a nodding driver nearly misses the platform. Man, I like the heaters under the seats. Mostly I like the fact it takes me into and out of the city, on the bumpy ride of my suburban commute.
If scienctific techniques have evolved so far that we can clone virtually any species, produce crops that are resistant to certain climatic conditions, perform face transplants, make chickens as big as emus and grow human ears on the backs of rats, why can’t we remove tar from tobacco ? Replace it with, say, vitamin C ?
I recently inherited my mate’s old phone when he upgraded to a phone which can presumably accomadate his savage need for constant access to big tit pron. His old phone, a Sony Ericsson, is pretty high tech compared to my battered old Nokia. I discovered evidence of this when I was setting a reminder yesterday morning…whilst keying in whatever it was, the phone seemed to be suggesting either the most frequently used words for each key, or those that had been added to the dictionary. I’m not sure which would be more amusing, but here are a some of the once texted words that came up:
1) Adulthood is forced upon you whether you like it or not in a desperate bid for survival.
2) My kitchen sink looks rank. It looks like it may be harbouring bird flu.
Went to the dentist today. Stung for 40 notes and it hurt. The lecture she gave me was character building though. Must try harder….