“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 while, at least. Maybe. Fuck it – who knows? The last… puhhhh…. year has been, well.. – an absolute, total and unrelenting disaster for me, on several levels, and – to be brutally honest – the idea of actually writing down and chronicling my misery at the time was just a bridge too far for me.

So. Change. Things have changed. Irrevocably. Things(tm), as they say, are unquestionably better. They are – by no means – perfect, though, this will come in time.

In August last year, as those of you who know me personally will already know, my marriage broke down. I think, on reflection, it was probably coming sooner or later anyhow, and it just took one of us to have enough guts to actually do something about it. We remain cordial and friendly, and not just for the sake of our beautiful daughter, and are both quite happy being apart.

However, the split meant big changes financially (for both of us), and with the IT industry shrinking following the economic collapse last year, I was finding it very difficult to get work in the North. The house dropped into negative equity, and I spent rather a long time feeling very, very down indeed. Something had to change, and soon.

The only long-term work I could find was in the South – and being as the alternative (not working, not paying the bills) would lead rapidly to bankruptcy – I had to make the decision. So here I am, working slap-bang in the middle of the M4 ‘silicon corridor’, in Reading.

Clearly, a Sheffield to Reading commute isn’t possible, so I am going to move to a ‘penthouse apartment’ (estate agent speak for ’2nd floor flat’) down there, and am going to let out the house in Sheffield until such time as the house becomes viable to sell again.

Of course, this is all exciting and new, and a big change – however it will mean that I’m no longer on Aimee’s doorstep anymore, and this is something which is going to be very, very difficult for me to deal with. I keep telling myself that this arrangement isn’t going to be forever, and that regular families deal well with fathers being away for extended periods (armed forces personnel, oil rig workers, etc), but it does worry me a lot. Though I’m sure this is better than being a penniless bankrupt father living in my mum’s spare room.

To try and help alleviate this, Aimee and I have been using Skype to video chat with each other, but nothing beats a good hug and a toddler-slobber kiss! We’ll see how it works out, I guess.

However – all of this change is currently making my life incredibly busy! Flitting between Reading, Sheffield and Corby, sorting stuff out, moving stuff around, bagging up rubbish, going to the tip, packing, packing, packing! Trying to spend time with Aimee. Spending time with my family. Having the occasional malt and hop-based beverage.

I get the keys to my flat next week, and have got the big job of moving my stuff in ASAP. I’m hoping by this time next month, I’ll be all settled in and – maybe – there’ll be a tenant lined up for the Sheffield place. That’d be good. That’d make me twice as happy as I am now – which would be at least 10 times happier than I was in May.

So – with all this going on, I’m resuming writing – because, clearly, I have enough time to do this as well as everything else!

Oh – and what do you think of the new blog? I migrated it all from Drupal to WordPress, and fiddled around with themes and plugins until I had it how I liked it. What do you think?

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.

I ring Privilege and explain to them what’s happening, and they say that everything is ok, and they’ll hold off on any excess charges for a little while longer while Esure sort themselves out.

My personal life turns upside down at this point, and car insurance is the last thing on my mind, and some more time passes – perhaps a month or so, and we come to yesterday. I receive another letter from Privilege saying that they’ll be debiting my account with around £500 within 7 days due to the no-show of this ‘proof’.

So, last night, I rang Esure again, once again requesting this proof. They claim to have sent me it twice over, and suggest I check with the Post Office as they believe my post may be being tampered with! Yes – because naughty posties are only interested in letters from Esure, and not anything more juicy.

They do offer to verbally tell Privilege (but only if Privilege phone them!) that I’m a good driver, but when I check in with Privilege, I find that they won’t entertain such frivolity and demand this mythical piece of paper again. However, they will entertain the paperwork in facsimilie form and give me a fax number. Great!

I ring Esure back again, armed with fax number – and to my utter astonishment, they claim that it’s their policy to only fax any policy details to a person’s own fax number! Back to square one. I have a sudden brainwave, and give Esure _my_ fax to email number – which, even though it’s an 0870-prefixed number, the Esure monkey does not question. I figure I can get Esure to fax me the document, then I can print it, and fax it on to Privilege. A kind of intra-insurance-company-fax-proxy, if you will. There’s a gap in the market right there, you know!

He assures me that the details will be faxed through “first thing tomorrow”, which I deem acceptable, as it is knocking on for 9pm by this point.

This morning, Thunderbird ‘bings’ at me as my fax-to-email folder recieves a new message, at 10:40. It is a fax! Hurrah! I open the fax….and it’s a blank sheet of paper. FOR FUCKS SAKE.

Hang on – it’s ok, there’s another one just popped into the mailbox – perhaps they screwed the first one up….and…no, that’s blank too. And, oh, there’s another one. It’s blank. And another… they send me 6 fucking blank fucking faxes one after the fucking other. Either Esure really, really have it in for me, or the spotty oik they’ve got manning the fax machine in their office is feeding it the paper upside down.

I’m angry now, and ring Esure to find out just what the fuck is going on. This is where it gets really, really fruity. Someone answers the phone, or, do they – they seem to be reading a script – like an answerphone message – “I’m sorry, the department you have called is unable to take your call right now. Would you like to phone back after 2pm?”. I’m still undecided as to wether it was a person or not, until the voice said “Is that ok?”

“No. NO. It’s bloody well not ok!”. What kind of absurd idea is it to have phone operators ANSWERING THE PHONE only to tell callers that they can’t help them? Surely this achieves absolutely nothing other than frustrating the caller? If they have a computer glitch, or technical problem – why not just say so. It’s a more honest excuse, and I just found it utterly incredulous that the bosses at Esure think this is a good idea.

The phone operator who helpfully won’t help me, takes down my policy number and promises to get things sorted, but I suspect I’ll be calling again later/tomorrow in a vain attempt to try and unfuck things.

What makes me laugh the most, however, is this. Esure’s customer services department operates out of a building at 19 Cadogan Street, Glasgow. Do you want to guess where Privilege operate from?

Yep, 18 Cadogan Street, Glasgow.

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.

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.

There is very little construction and building work going on, it seems – at least not any you’d notice, since there is allegedly a local rule laid down which says that no building should be erected on the island which is taller than a Canarian palm tree. This rule was apparently effected by the influential local artist and architect Cesar Manrique – whose works can be found all over the island.

There is only one high-rise on the whole island, the seemingly towering 14 storey Arrecife Gran Hotel. Local folklore says that the hotel was knocked up in the 70′s whilst Mr Manrique was off the island, and he returned back, disgusted. It has sat there ever since, ever more looking out-of-place, a giant tower amongst two and three-storey buildings. The guidebook we had described it as a burnt-out wreck, blotting the skyline, but thankfully it appears to have been restored, and remodelled in a more sympathetic and upbeat design. It still, however, sticks out like a sore thumb.

The other big difference on Lanzarote is something which took me a few days to actually register. I could fathom that something was different, but I couldn’t put my finger on it…. the island seemed ‘cleaner’, almost, less commercialized, less touristy… but then I’d look at the resorts like Puerto Del Carmen and see the lines of English ‘Fun Pubs’ and think again. It was only after a few days that the penny dropped. Advertising. There’s no prominent advertising on the island. No giant road-side billboards promising X, Y and Z. Really – their non-presence really does make that much of a difference.

Whilst we were there we hired a car (a Seat Ibiza, mercifully with working aircon) and toured around the island. There’s some spectacular sights to be seen around Lanzarote, if you venture out of the tourist resorts. The Timanfaya National Park is a place of stark, barren volcanic lands – with the landscape littered with razor-like shards of solidified magma, with the molten core bubbling away under your feet. Inside the park they give demonstrations of the temperature just a few feet below – most spectacularly by creating a walk-in oven, containing a grill perched over an open fissure into the lava below, cooking chicken – Volcano BBQ, anyone?

Another highlight was the Mirador Del Rio – an outpost built into a cliffside overlooking the island of La Graciosa. The view is stunning, and the walkway across the face of the cliff is quite taxing if you’re at all acrophobic. I’ll put up some photos at some point, I will!

When we told everyone we were going on holiday, and that 18 month Aimee was coming, everyone said “Oooh, you’ll have a lovely time” whilst at the same time looking at Aimee with a ‘knowing look’ thinking “But you’re mad taking an 18 month old on a 4hr flight”. I’m pleased to report, they were all wrong. About the flight at least. Aimee was a little restless on both the outbound and inbound flights, but nowhere near as bad as we’d expected. Her first few days on the island, however, were a different story. She’s learnt the ancient womanly art of ‘stropping’.

For the first couple of days, we were quite concerned, as Aimee was being very, very difficult, but after the third day she seemed to be more herself, and I think she enjoyed her little holiday. Gorra watch her with those Spanish waiters in the future though, she’s going to be a right bugger, I can see it coming.

And – the other reason for the delay – work.

To cut many long stories short – my previous employers have decided to relocate. This was not a move universally accepted by all, and a number of people have taken voluntary redundancy. I, however, decided to contract for them for a while, until they get back up to speed.

So, I’ve been busy beavering away, speaking to bank managers, accountants and generally networking – the usual new business things. I’ve also bought another car – I’ve no intention of committing financial suicide by using the RX8 to commute the circa 100mile return-trip every day – so I’ve picked up an R-reg Peugeot 306 DTurbo from a University student in Huddersfield. The seller had it listed at nearly £1100, but I picked out some (easily fixable) faults and got him to accept £875 – I’d like to think that I out-bargained a desperate student needing quick cash, but I guess if it turns out to be a lemon then perhaps it was I that got the bum-deal.

Anyhow, it seems a nice motor, and it’s ran ok for the last few days, so far. Fingers crossed it makes it through the next three months, then I can flog it on.

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.

I appear to have managed to create myself a depressing ‘game’ with Aimee. It is now, for Aimee, the funniest thing in the world for her to be asked by her mum for a kiss, and she duly obliges, she then turns to me, and I ask for a kiss – and she shakes her head and cackles manically. The little cowbag!

I apologise to any non-parents reading this – I know! – its terribly boring reading about parents gushing about their sproglet’s latest adventures. It’s something I used to cringe about – everytime someone at work told a story about how their kid did ‘X’ yesterday. I swore I’d never be like that, now look at me. Pfeh.

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!

As it turned out, the work issue was a non-issue, so I resumed parenting duties and let Emma have a relax until 11-ish, when I got called out once more. A real issue this time, at least!

Emma prepared a gorgeous lamb dinner, and we had cheesecake for pud. The Jersey gold double cream dolloped onto the cheesecake was nothing short of amazing.

When we returned from my mam’s yesterday, the boot of the RX8 was chock-full of presents, clothes and all of Aimee’s paraphernalia. _Too_ chock-full, as it happens, as I discovered when I unloaded yesterday to find that a virtually full tin of SMA Progress powdered milk had popped open all over the contents of the boot. Cue twenty minutes today spent hoovering it all out. Bah.

Also fitted Emma’s new stereo to her car. She’s been missing a CD player in her car for ages, so I picked up on her (unsubtle!) hints and bought her a Sony MEX-BT2500 CD player for Christmas. It’s quite a nifty toy – having Bluetooth as well, making it an excellent hands-free phone system in the car, as well as a CD player!

I’m a bit annoyed about the Halfords fascia that I had to buy for the CD player – Skoda, like nearly every other car manufacturer, like their head-units to be uniquely shaped. So when one buys an after-market unit, one has to buy the associated piece of plastic to fill the gap left by the old stereo. This piece of plastic Halfrauds manage to get away with selling for FIFTEEN QUID. Madness.

Had the last of my Christmas beers – an ESB and an ever-dependable Old Peculiar whilst watching the depressing mess that was Spurs’ 2-1 away defeat at Villa. Berbatov looked totally disinterested, as he has done virtually all season, and I feel resigned to the fact that the stories about him being off to the Chavs or to United might bear some truth. I’ll be fucking pissed off if we sell him to another English team. It’s one thing to sell off your star players, but selling them to another team in your league is something that only ‘selling clubs’ do. Being a ‘selling club’ is something Spurs have tried desperately hard to escape from – refusing to sell Berbatov in the summer, and holding United to ransom over Carrick until they coughed up an extortionate fee. I’d rather we sold him to Real for £25m, than to the fucking chavs for £35m. Well, we’ll see. All I ask in the mid-season transfer window is; Juande, Daniel, Damien, whoever is in charge of buying players these days – for Christ’s sake buy us an EXPERIENCED centre-back and someone, anyone, anywhere, with a left foot. A creative midfielder wouldn’t half be good too. Thanks.

I bought myself an Xbox 360 over the Christmas period – it wasn’t a Christmas present, well, other than to myself, but I found myself quite taken with some of the games found on this platform. The PS3 is just too damned expensive, and I already have a Wii – which Emma enjoys, but I find the games a little _too_ cartoony and lacking in depth. Sure, flinging the Wiimote around is fun, for a while, but playing something like Medal of Honor with a Wiimote and Nunchuck is more than a little frustrating. Plus, we’ve got this nice HD plasma TV, and it’d be nice to have something that took advantage of the HD part of the TV. So, I plumped for an Xbox 360 ‘Arcade’, which was _way_ cheaper than a PS3, and does omit a hard drive, but these are readily and cheaply available on eBay. The money ‘saved’ on buying the cheap version was quickly spanked on games – the bundle I bought had Forza Motorsport 2, Viva Pinata and an extra wireless controller – and to that I added FIFA 2008, and pre-owned versions of Halo 3, Elder Scrolls: Oblivion and Dead or Alive 4. Emma thinks I’m mad, and it’s a waste – which is possibly true, but, hey, you’re only young once. Eh?

TTFN.

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.

Mindless chart shit. If it isn’t the latest re-hash fuckup dance remix of a classic tune, it’s some godwawful R’n'B, or it’s whatever is flavour of the month on planet ‘Emo’.

At least with Wrighty and Evans in the afternoon it’s total pot-luck – they really play *any* tune from the last 60-odd years! Sometimes I switch Radio 2 on and i’m treated to music as diverse as the Happy Mondays, or Aretha Franklin or Godley and Creme. Hell, I’ve heard them play Edith Piaf before now! Intermingled with these older tracks, Radio 2 also play new music – take a look at their playlists and I’ll bet that you’ll be surprised when you find that The Killers, Gwen Stefani and the Red Hot Chili Peppers are on there. So, take a dip, grow old, and try Radio 2 in the afternoon – it really is a refreshing change from Scott “My show isn’t a total sketched setup, no, honest it’s not sir” Mills.

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.