Recently in Anecdotal Category

The Melbourne Zombie Shuffle was a real blast. There's something about a thousand zombies moaning 'Brains!' that is simultaneously hilarious and genuinely creepy.
 
Check out the Flickr Pool for the event and see if you can find:

Shower Zombie
McDonald's Zombie
Zombie Nuns
Zombie Bride
Sweet Zombie Jesus
and of course my friend Bec as beautician Zombie.

It's somewhere between 11 and 12. We've finished reading and turned out the light and I'm kind-of-sort-of halfway asleep, when the phone rings. No-one really knows our number except for our parents, and my Granny has been sick of late so I figure I should probably get any incoming late-night calls. I stumble blearily out of bed to the lounge and pick up the phone.

"Hello?" I say.

"Guess who." It's a voice. Male. Twenties, I suppose.

"Uhm...I don't know. Who?"

"Guess."

"Why don't you tell me?"

"Guess. It's someone you know."

"Well I'm not sure that it is. Why don't you tell me who you are and I'll tell you if I know you."

"You have to guess."

"I don't want to guess, just tell me."

"I'll give you a clue."

"Who is this?"

"It's a cousin of yours."

"I have lots of cousins, I don't really remember them all. What can I do for you?" Keep in mind, I'm actually trying to remember who it is at this point, with no hope of success. I'm a little sleepy, so you can understand why I didn't immediately jump to the right conclusion.

"Did I wake you up?"

"Well, you got me out of bed, it's almost midnight."

"Have you guessed yet?"

"No! Who is this?"

"I'll give you another clue...it's a younger cousin."

"I don't know who this is. I'm not going to guess who this is. Tell me who you are!"

"It's Michael." He is sounding, I must say, immensely pleased with himself at this revelation.

"Oh. Uhm, I don't remember you. How do you know my number?"

"Wait...who is this?"

"This is Daniel, and I think you've got the wrong number."

"Oh...oh God."

"Have a good night buddy."

[click]

I go back to bed. I'm like: "It was a wrong number."

Aiden's like: "God, I thought it was a serial killer taunting you from the window."

"What, like in Scream?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah I guess I could see how it might sound like that from only one side of the conversation. But no, just a moron playing a guess who game with a complete stranger."

When my family moved to Hamilton at the end of 1989, we had a housewarming party. At this party, two kittens from down the street wandered into the yard and we fed them some little bits of sausage from the barbeque. From that moment on, we could not get rid of those two little kitties. We would frequently pick them up, walk them back to their property, and by the time we got back to our house, they had somehow beaten us home and were there waiting for us, mewling for more food. We tried everything we could to dissuade them from pestering us (our own cat, Tiger, attacked them relentlessly, territorially), but they just would not give up. I think their original owners moved away and they were still just coming over to our place. I remember the exact moment when they went from being 'the annoying cats from up the road' to 'our cats'- we'd just gotten back from seeing The Hunt for Red October in the cinema (this must also have been the week I discovered I needed glasses because I remember not being able to read the subtitles and being confused), my brother walked through the door, picked up one of the cats (the black-and-white number you see above, who we later discovered was originally named 'Mittens'), looked it in the eye and said: "Your name is Ramius." and we never tried to kick him out again. The other kitty we named Asrael, and she died of a hole in the heart in 1994.

Ramius and Tiger continued to fight over food and territory every day of their lives, which we think contributed to Tiger's remarkable longevity- she was the oldest cat I've ever heard of, she must have been at least 22 when she passed on to kitty heaven a few years ago. Ramius went through some tough years once all the kids had left the house, mum continued to look after him, but didn't let him in the house or give him the sort of pampered attention that kids can, and that he was used to. But in the last few years of his life he was adopted by my mum's boarder (and member of the family, really), Michael, who pampered him and loved him more than he'd ever loved before, brushing him for hours every night, letting him sleep in the same bed, and generally treating him like cat royalty, which I suppose in some ways he was. Which just goes to show: You can go through some dark years and think nothing is ahead for you, but then something you couldn't foresee happens and you spend the rest of your life in happiness. The last few times I saw Ramius, he was a little dribbly, a little doddering, but every morning you'd hear him try to form the word 'Michael' out of meows (I am serious! He really did). Michael said he was losing his memory, but he seemed to remember me when I gave him a hug.

Yesterday the vet said that the kindest thing to do would be to put him down, and Michael held him and stroked him while they did so. Then he took Ramius' body home and laid it on his bed while he dug a grave outside, under a tree where Ramius liked to lie.

He was the last of my cats, and I'll miss him.

I do regret writing a blog about the weather, but seriously, the wind outside is nuts. My work is normally situated in a sort of Euston-Road wind-tunnel anyway, even on a very calm day if you walk over to the Pret for some sushi you get an annoying gust of grit into your eyes. But today, when apparently the wind is knocking lorries over on the M6, it's a whole `nother deal. The building I work in is made primarily from glass, and has a secondary outer shell of glass outside it, a sort of atrium deal. The wind is blowing so strongly that this outer-layer is actually rippling disturbingly. Some moron decided to open one of the doors (to 'experience the power', no doubt), and the venetian blind was torn out of the building and is now smashing about loudly, a tangled wreck, on the outside of the building- no-one can figure out how to get it back in.

One of the glass doors in the lobby was caught by the wind and swung back on its hinges, shattering both itself and the glass wall it rammed into- the lobby is now howling with wind, little shards of glass chasing themselves around the floor. I went and stood in the courtyard between our building and the Pret. Normally the wind tunnel effect annoys me, but it was so powerful today that it was just fun to get blown around. Most people hurried by, struggling against the wind, but there were a few others like me, huge grins on their faces, just letting themselves be pushed about. Above us, a piece of paper was dancing along the rippling glass, getting pushed this way and that above us, and I wished the wind would pick me up and dance me along the glass, as well. It'd be scary, but well worth it.

I spent the last two days at a conference, so I spent a lot of time doodling.

Bethan was up speaking. I liked Bethan, she was an ex-teacher and her job now was trying to encourage new ways of teaching and learning.

"You may not realize this," she was saying to us all, as I continued to listen while I doodled "but they have now identified up to eight different learning styles, with everyone possessing different combinations, yet we continue to teach students using only one teaching style. For example some students may be kinesthetic, or physical learners. They have trouble just sitting and listening. They need to do. They need to touch.

"In fact we have a kinesthetic learner among us right now," she said, scooping up my doodle and holding it up for all to see, walking as she talked. "Perfect example of physical learning. He makes patterns while he listens to help him concentrate." My boss glanced at me, not sure if I was being rebuked or praised.

"Kinesthetic learners have trouble just sitting still and taking in information, yet we appraise them by making them sit in an exam hall for three hours to regurgitate what they have been taught. Thank you Daniel," she slipped my paper back to me; "please continue." I went right back to doodling while she moved on.

As one, every engineer and architect in the room grabbed their pens and started doodling.

"No-one ever died wishing they'd spent more time at work."

"Hmm...what if you were a health & safety inspector and you died in a building collapse that could have been prevented if you'd spent more time checking it out for structural defects? Then you might wish you'd spent more time at work, y'know, as the building was collapsing on you."

"..."

Hey Team,

Well I have been a very busy bee lately- in the last week I think I?ve only spent one night in London, the rest of the time I?ve been jetting all over the place taking care of business.

Let?s see, it all kicked off a week ago when my work had our summer ball, so I got all dressed up in a tux and had a very pleasant evening with my co-workers. Check out some photos of me looking fancy here:

Then from the ball to more work-related stuff, I went on a three day course in Horsley (near Guildford) called ?Managing Project Relationships?. The course itself wasn?t very helpful (pretty much teaching you how to deal with irritable people- like I didn?t learn that in Teacher?s College), but the location was fantastic- we were housed in a castle/manor called Horsley Towers- it had a gym and a spa pool and a lake and it was in the middle of a forest- it was like being on holiday- the food was good (and free, heh) too.

Then I went directly from Horsley to Hamble (near Portsmouth), where we did a training run for the PFI Challenge, which is a sailing boat race that my company participates in every year. This was my first time helping to operate a boat and it was a lot of fun- I even slept overnight in my own little cabin on the boat (which was a Bavarian `37, if you want to know what sort of boat I was in). What was most impressive to me, and I think you?ll enjoy this, was that if you have the same class of boat, and your crews are operating at roughly the same level of competence, and both boats are using the same wind, the only thing that determines who the winner will be is the decisions the captain makes. Like, the captain has to determine a course based on the conditions he observes, and he directs the crew how to best exploit those conditions, and whoever makes the best decisions will be the winner- everything else is just an extension of the captain?s will- quite apt advice for a management training course, really. On the downside I did get quite badly sunburned and I also took a boom to the head but both were well worth it!

After a quick jaunt back to London on Friday to shoot a music video (!) I was back in the country by Saturday morning to camp on a small island (isthmuth, actually) called Portland, which is just west of Weymouth. I went out there with some friends to do some rock climbing, and it was gorgeous! Absolutely beautiful, it was like being on a Greek island- the sun was shining, the water was crystal clear, the coastline was lovely. We did something called ?sport climbing?, which means one person ?leads? by climbing up to various notches, setting the rope on each notch as they do so, and then someone else ?seconds?, by climbing to the top (just like in regular climbing) removing the set-marks as they do so. I mostly did seconding, but I did my very first lead (which is way scary as half the time you?re not supported by anything) on Sunday. It was a lot of fun and I can?t wait to go back and do some more climbing.

So as you can see the last week has been very eventful, loads of stuff to do, it feels like a month has gone by since the ball. Would love to hear about your adventures too!

YTMD,

d

So the people who do my printing took me out to the the races in York on Wednesday. I told my boss they were having an 'open day' rather than specifying that they were actually taking me to the races, and I've been avoiding him since then in case he asks me how it all went.

How it all went was they broke out the champagne on the train to York and didn't let up until the end of the day. The box we had was pretty amazing- not only right by the finish line but permanently stocked with food, snacks and drinks- in fact there was a waiter who kept refilling my glass without asking. I think they were trying to get us drunk but I've no idea why.

The races themselves didn't really interest me. I like horses a lot but the whole place reeked of upper-class ridiculousness (several people arrived by helicopter). I saw maybe five women the entire day, but the place was jam-packed with fat rich white guys making £16,000 bets. I myself made a £5 bet on every race. Most of the people in my box were spread-betting across three different horses but I always bet on the nose- I felt like if I spread-bet I would telling at least two of the horses I was betting on that I didn't think they were going to win- and if you're not going to get behind your choice, what's the point?

I went down to look at the horses on parade before the race, and one of them neighed at me, which I took to mean "Bet on me, I'm going to win." As it turns out, neighing is actually horsey for: "Don't be on me, I'm a big dead loser." I also was quite excited to see that one of the horses was being ridden by D. Nicholls, but sadly D. Nicholls seems to be about as good at riding horses as he is at betting on horses ridden by his namesake. So no big wins for me I'm afraid, although free food and alcohol is always a big win as far as I'm concerned.

I wasn't originally going to tell ya'll about this because frankly it's not a story that puts me in a particularly good light. However it had a kind-of odd epilogue yesterday which has prompted me to reveal all, in spite of my shame.

So the other week Ade and my two wonderful flatmates all went to see The Pipettes (who were delightful, as always- if you haven't seen them, do check out their video). Aiden and I stopped off at an ATM in Golder's Green to get some casho. We both had vodka IRN-BRUs in our hands (this is my drink of choice for tube journeys- I don't know why), and each went to a different machine. So, I stick me old card in, punch in the old PIN number, £40 please.

While I'm waiting for my card to come back, some pimply motherfucker in head-to-toe white tracksuit with some insanely retarded bling steps right up to me, and says:

"Have you got a PIN for me?"

I say: "What?"

He repeats: "Have you got a PIN for me?"

I say: "No. Now step back from the machine."

He laughs and steps back, goes and stands with his mate next to the crossing. I was a bit distracted by all this so I took my card out of the machine and hurried along my merry way to the tube station. You may have figured out which highly important step in this process I missed out on by now, but I myself didn't twig to the error until it was my round at the bar, and was more than a little suprised to discover that my wallet had no money in it...because I'd never taken the money from the machine.

Now I'd love to say that this guy pulled somekind of Derren Brown inspired chicanery on me. I'd even feel less stupid if he was just distracting me while someone else took the money. But that's not the case. The guy was just being a jerk- I saw him walking across the street as I left the machine. He didn't take the money, I was just an idiot. It's not the first time. And it wasn't that I was down £40, I would have spent it anyway- it was that my own stupidity was the cause of it.

Anyway I chalked it up to dumbness, beat myself up a bit for few minutes, readjusted my budget, no harm no foul. And that would have been the end to a fairly uninteresting story, except that yesterday I got this letter from my bank:

Pretty cool, huh? Except here's the thing: I didn't dispute anything. I didn't even mention to my bank that I'd been an idiot and left £40 in the machine. They just figured it out for me. Isn't that neat? A friend of mine said she thinks that if the money sits in the machine for a few minutes, it retracts back inside, which does explain things, but who would have thought £40 could sit unmolested on Golder's Green High Street?

I'm struggling to find an aphorism that suits this situation. Fortune favours the indifferent? Good things come to those who don't really bother? It's just nice, is all.

d

ps- in related good luck news: price I paid for my Radiohead tickets? £32. Price they're currently going for on eBay? £215. Not that I will profit from this information, but it's nice to know.