Bear blog

I'm round Darren's whiling away my time whilst the boys play on Darren's new PS3.

They may well be highly enamoured of it but, by god, it's ugly. It puts me in mind of a Betamax, so it does.

Clurb: Hello, I'm calling from the library registration department at the University of ---. I've had a lady come in with a reciprocal access scheme card supplied by your university and I just have a few questions about it.
Lady: Oh yes, I gave her the card myself. Go ahead.
Clurb: Ah, right. Well...firstly I wanted to know whether the pink card you gave her was still valid. We stopped using these cards about seven years ago and I didn't think anyone was supposed to still be handing them out.
Lady: No, we've been using them for years. They're fine.
Clurb: Do you have any of the new cards? The ones that are valid?
Lady: No. The pink one's are fine.
Clurb: Fair enough. It's just that it says on the scheme website that they shouldn't be used any more.
Lady: No, it's ok. The lady is a valid scheme user. You can let her in.
Clurb: Right, ok...well, secondly, you're supposed to stamp the back of the card with your library stamp.
Lady: Yes, that's right. I did.
Clurb: Erm..no. No, you didn't.
Lady: Yes I did. I checked it before I handed it out and I stamped it.
Clurb: Erm...well, I've got the card in my hands here and it hasn't been stamped.
Lady: Yes it has.
Clurb: No, it really hasn't.
Lady: Yes it has.
Clurb: Erm. Right. All I really need you to do is confirm for me that the lady is eligible for the scheme.
Lady: Yes, of course she is. I've given her the card. That means she's eligible.
Clurb: Yes, but because you gave her an invalid card which hadn't been completed properly I have to check, obviously.
Lady: I really don't see what the problem is here.
Clurb: You've even spelt her name incorrectly.
Lady: No, I didn't.
Clurb: Yes you-...look, if you just tell me that she's one of your current library users with a clean record then that's all I need.
Lady: She has a card. She's eligible.
Clurb: ... Right, well you've been very helpful. Thank you. Goodbye.

Being around other people is a chore.

I get to do whatever the hell I want during my lunch hour but the weather's rubbish and the building's being knocked down around our ears so the only thing I can get away with is sitting in the common room and reading. Which isn't much to ask.

But then you get people dumping themselves in the seat next to you because they're trying to be sociable. But I'm reading. I don't want to talk to them. They've never got anything interesting to say anyway.

Then the bloke who likes to do the crossword in the paper comes in. He's rubbish at crosswords. Every two minutes he's shouting across the room "Stupid, uneducated-five letters." "Idiot" I reply, in irritable tones.

I also happen to work with the loudest breather in the world. By god, the woman's annoying. I don't think she even realises she's doing it, but she sounds like an asthmatic old man. But then makes a point of whispering if she wants to have a conversation so as not to disturb anybody.

Oh, and there's a sniffer up there too. It's just constant, grating snorting. I've never seen her blow her nose once. In two years. Never.

Bloody plebs.  

If it carries on this way I'll be opting to spend my free time sat with the students listening to what they're going to wear to the pub tonight, or whether Matt fancies Laura more than he likes Becky, and whether they should tell Becky, because it's not fair on her, is it, when she's just gone out and got her hair cut specially. Shudder.

Qualified.

Get in.

Lizzy escorted us to the Outdoors Show at the NEC today. Ooh it was fun!

I've never been to the NEC before. It's rather large. And airporty. They even had travelators for fat Americans. I liked them at first but then I felt sick and wanted to get off. It took us about a million years (give or take) to get from the car park all the way round the building and down into the show. We had to stop off at three different ticket booths along the way because no one wanted to supply Pete with his ticket.

But we finally got there. Unfortunately, we missed Ray Mears' talk. It was probably about eating wood and pooing on leaves. I wanted him to sign my belly. I was somehwat placated by 'Irish music' going on in one corner in the near vacinity of a Guinness stall. They weren't giving away free stuff though so we moved on quite quickly. There were a couple of women who gave us a leaflet about things to do around Bungay. Handy, that. Then we wandered around for a bit picking up freebies and looking at pretty things. By the end of the day we had perfected the art of picking up freebies without being waylaid by the stall-runners. It was fun because it felt like stealing, but with only a small percentage of the guilt. 

I got a pencil from the Southern Uplands Way people, two pens from Craghoppers, an emergency fire starter from a Canadian man in a very pretty t-shirt, lots and lots and lots of mosquito repellant wipes, a random badge, two stickers, and one of those Things that you can snap onto your wrist from a Scottish bloke whose overt enthusiasm put me in mind of Mini. But in a good way. 

Then we watched a Ukranian man fail to climb a wall, and a man called Fat Tony who was commentating on some trial biking. They were jumping and spinning and bouncing all over the place.It was terribly entertaining. Fat Tony didn't believe that you could do it on a uni. Alas, Pete hadn't brought his 24 with him to prove it. Tut. We ate roast pig in bread and snacked on satsumas and Lizzy and I bought some terribly fetching T-shirts (after having spotted them in passing a while earlier and spending what felt like hours wandering around trying to find them again). And then we watched the Royal Marines jump from the ceiling and start fighting each other like professional wrestlers. They were doing the shouting and smacking themselves in the chest and making faces and everything. 

Best of all, spending a day in an air-conditioned building has done wonders for my snotty cold. It's just a pity that we were sampling the delights of life in the great outdoors in a big dark hole on such a glorious sunny day.  

We kicked it old skool last night.

Martin chose to wantonly forsake his wife and child to come and see us again. It was nice to know he's still alive and everything, but annoyingly his five balls is still better than mine.

Then because we hadn't got a room last week and it'd been a whole two weeks since we'd got the chance to throw things around, me and Alan were veritably mad for it and managed to drag out a couple of passable attempts at seven club three count and ultimates. It was a strain though.

And after that I thought it was about time the unicycle came out for its six month inspection. Lizzy lent me out her shoulder for a bit and then I stuck my headphones in and got hardcore about it. And after about half an hour of huffing and puffing and getting mightily pissed off with it all I did a couple of lengths of the hall one-footed.

And then once I'd caught my breath Alan and I gave eight clubs a bit of welly and it wasn't too awful. But by then my arms were all weak and feeble and my legs were a bit wobbly and I was a big sweaty mess and it was time to go home.

The hallmark of a good Monday night is having to have a shower before bed. And fair tuckered out I was, n'all.

We went to the cinema. It was terribly exciting. Peter, Alan, Darren and I all arrived on time and managed to buy our tickets in plenty of time to stand around and look at things. There was a man who looked like Napoleon Dynamite. And a girl in fish nets who looked like Fak. It also transpires that Darren thinks Donatello painted the sistene chapel. The nelly.

Lizzy and Byjoty turned up late. Lizzy was drunk. They cut it awfully fine queuing up for tickets and forced me to hop from foot to foot in an agitated fashion. But then we were in and sat. Hurrah!

Pete and Alan went off to buy nice things and missed the best trailer of the night.

Woman in restaurant: "I'm pregnant."
Man in restaurant: "Fuck off!"

But it was one of those things you had to be there for.

Hot Fuzz was good. Kermode has done a good job, I think, in not raising everyone's hopes. Thusly, it was better than I expected.

I like:
Throwing bins at people's heads.
Beer moustaches.
Gun arsenals.
Darren sitting ramrod straight and perfectly still through all the gory bits.

This is me with my new best friend.

We do everything together, except go to work because there are no power points in the library. None. I've looked everywhere. And my new friend only has about a half hour of battery life.

We're a simple couple, but life is good together.

This is us at Darren's house.

And this is us packing away.

Oh, and this is me being grumpy.