Category Archives: life

All Change

“Change is the law of life. And those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.” John F. Kennedy (1917-1963) 35th President of the United States I know, I know. It’s been ages. I’ve broken promises and resolutions, hearts and heads, but the blog is back again. For a [...]

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In Sewer Ants

While I was on the blog-hiatus, I changed my car (though the 306 still lives with me!). I went from the RX8 to a nice, sensible, economical diesel Audi A3. Co-incidentally, the car change happened at the same time as my car insurance was due to renew, so I took it as an opportunity to shop around for a better deal.

Using the myriad comparison websites, I eventually did find a good deal, with Privilege. So good a deal, I opted to pay up-front, instead of by instalments. After a week or two, Privilege wrote to me to ask for me to send them some ‘proof’ of my No Claims Bonus. After enquiring with them, what this boils down to is a piece of paper from your previous insurer which says “Yes, this person has X years no claims bonus”.

So, I ring up my previous insurer, Esure and ask for this piece of paper. They’re very nice and efficient on the phone, and tell me that they’ll send it out and I’ll have it within a few days. Great stuff.

A couple of weeks pass and there’s no paperwork from Esure. There is, however, a stern letter from Privilege saying that if they didn’t get the ‘proof’ soon, they may have to charge me extra. So, I ring up Esure again and ask, again, for my proof of no-claims bonus. They, again, say they will send it, and that it’ll take 3-5 days.

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Onward and upward, or thereabouts

So, for a million and one reasons, the blog’s fell by the wayside again. Some reasons are more valid than others, some were downright more important, but, that’s not important now. What is important is that I’m back on the hoss, and am going to try and talk up some crap on the blog again.

There are those out there that believe in karma, or in fate and the pre-ordained nature of things in general. I’m not a subscriber to any of this. You make your own bed, and you sleep in it. Your choices, your actions, your decisions, that’s all it is, in life the onus is on you.

As Forrest Gump once said, “That’s all I have to say about that”, and, yeah, I concur. Those of you who really know me, will know what I’m referring to, the rest of you, well, everything will come out in the wash, as they say.

Anyhoo.

I put the John Cooper Clark poem up the other day, well, just because I like it, and it’s suitably shouty and I wanted to see if anyone was still reading. Turns out people are, and it also turns out that my mam doesn’t like all the swearing, either. So, heartily reprimanded, here we go again.

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A Well Needed Break

Another blog hiatus – good reasons this time, though!

One, holiday. We went to Lanzarote for a week in April – blummin’ lovely. The weather was nice and toasty all week – topping out at a positively sticky 38.5C! Really very hot – especially for Aimee, who point-blank refused all week to wear her sun hat. She only accepted the sunglasses too towards the end of the holiday, and even then only because we’d managed to convince her that they were ‘cool shades’, with us demonstrating to her multiple times that mummy and daddy wore them, so she should too!

Never been to Lanzarote before – been several times to Tenerife, another Canary Island, but never to Lanzarote. It’s often been said of Tenerife that “it’ll be nice…when it’s finished” – a nod to Tenerife’s non-stop redevelopment, with more building sites and construction cranes than actual holiday resorts, and that downtown Playa Las Americas is a bit of a haven for lager louts and clubbers – and this is true, but there’s also some very nice parts of the island and the year-round summer climate is certainly welcome.

So, when we touched down in Arrecife on Lanzarote, I was braced for more of the same. As it turns out, I was quite wrong.

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Don’t They Grow Up Quick?

Aimee slept in this morning and wasn’t awake when I left for work. This is depressing for me. When Emma took her off to her folks last Friday, it meant that I’d now not seen her for four days (I got home late last night). I resolve to get home from work on time so I can at least spend some time with her when I get in.

Thankfully, my working day presented me with a long afternoon meeting, which once I’d finished with, I tied up my loose ends for the day and headed back down the M18. They appear to be nearing the completion of the J6-J7 roadworks, which is good, because the 50mph restriction there gets right on my tits – the M18 is bad enough as it is with lorries overtaking one another – one in the inside lane doing 56mph, the overtaker doing 57mph. Grrrrr.

When I got home, I was greeted with a “DADA!” exclamation from Aimee, and she attempted to rush over and greet me. This was a little inopportune as Emma was in the middle of changing her nappy – ooops!

She’s only been away a few days, but she changes so quickly. She’s also very quickly turning into her mother – yatter-yatter-yatter-yatter. She never shuts up! Burbling away to us, and herself, in mad babyspeak punctuated with the odd English word here and there. Mebo-waba boo ba Mama, mebo-maba ro-ro Hiya – etc.

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New Year’s Day

Had a very quiet and subdued New Year’s Eve – Aimee in bed around 7pm, and just me, our lass and the dog watching the telly and catching the bells at midnight. Stayed up til around 2am watching Jools’ Hootenanny. Pleased to see Seasick Steve and his famous ‘Three Stringed Trance Wonder’ guitar again – Jools gave him his TV debut _last_ New Year’s eve. Kaiser Chiefs and Kate Nash good, Macca looked a bit tired, Kylie had an awful dress on and looked like she was there for the money. Madness were very good, but there’s no escaping that they’re old men now.

We agreed that I’d give Emma a lie-in in the morning, and deal with Aimee when she woke, which I did, but because I’m working on-call today I got dragged to my laptop at about 9am when Nagios told me that something was broken at work, so I had to disturb Emma for her to look after Aimee.

Aimee is such a handful now. She’s walking, and by God does she want to use those legs. She runs round the house like crazy, and being on her feet – it brings a _lot_ more into her reach than ever before. She got an absolute shedload of toys for Christmas, but does she want to play with them? No. No, She wants to paddle in the dog’s water bowl, or swing on the tv unit door, or repeatedly switch the damn tv off!

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Getting on a bit

It dawned on me the other day that I am advancing in years and that my tastes and opinions are slowly changing. I guess it happens to all of us, but I never expected it to happen to me.

For example, I’ve recently switched to listening to Radio 2 in the afternoon when driving home from work. I just found myself constantly cursing Radio 1′s choice of music – it wasn’t so much the DJ’s (in fact, I still listen to Moyles for the morning commute – I can’t yet bear to bring myself to purposfully listen to Terry fucking Wogan), but the music.

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YAB, YAG.

Yet another blog, yet another geek.

This’ll be my, <counts> fourth attempt at entering the unbelievably wankily named ‘Blogosphere’. I’m sure it’ll be interesting, informative and fun. A journey through the mind of an addled sysadmin, bored-beyond-belief with the politics, wankery and machiavellian antics of his cow-orkers and colleagues.

Of course, it won’t always be about work. There’ll be nice stuff too.

We’ll see.

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