Spinning Stephenson!

Over the latter part of last week my car started to have a funny turn for itself. Not only did it refuse to turn over but once finally started it began blowing billowing clouds of thick condensation out of the fans obscuring vision. The windows refused to demist unless they were all wound down. This made driving up and down the motorway to work rather difficult. So difficult in fact, I decided it needed to go the car doctors so he could look at its tummy and make it all better again. It turns out that it's nothing to do with the car's tummy (they don't have tummies, apparently...) but it was the air flow matrix. It was as fucked as fucked can be. It would cost as much to buy a new unit and replace it as the car cost in the first place. It was a cheap car but I'm not doubling the cost of it to keep it on the road. So the poor old block of cheese has been assigned to history. I'm not sure what to do with it yet. My choices seem to be, sell it on eBay and hope the buyer doesn't notice the clouds of condensation or the misted windows, sell it for scrap or parts or my personal favourite, set fire to it and roll it down a hill. Time will tell.

Time to claim on the insurance...

So as a consequence of this situation, further confounded by the fact Tim and Cath won't allow me to stay at their place anymore (I am still confused as to why the cat was in my bed, dressed in a pink tutu), I have had to turn to the HILARIOUS VAGARIES of Public Transportation. Since owning a car I have been able to bypass this mode of transport favoured by peasants and the clinically insane, but now I've been thrown back into the circus like a Christian facing down a lion. My story begins as most public transport critiques do, with complete incomprehension as to how the entire system is handled. At my local bus stop there are NO buses in the morning except on a full moon when Scorpio is in the ascent. And only then do they come once every three hours and seventeen minutes. How does First Buses think people are going to get to work every morning? But of course! Public transport isn't for the employed, they can afford their own vehicles. Only the bottom feeders and dole scum use the bus to go and sign on. We don't need buses in the morning, we only need them to start running after Jeremy Kyle's finished.

'Have we finished here yet? I need to go and sign on'

An aside about buses: When I lived for a while in Dublin the bus stops had the timetables written up, so you could see when your bus was about to arrive. Except it wasn't that simple, no, you get nothing for free in this world, the timetable would only tell you what time the bus set off from its origin. I'm sure you can already see the MASSIVE FLAW in this system of operation, what if you had no idea where the place of origin was? I mean where the fuck is Ballickmoyler and how far away is it from this bus stop that I'm standing at? How long will the bus take to get to me, even with a strong tail wind? The timetables were less than useless. Just think about that for a second.

Whilst you're thinking about useless Irish things, think about this; this man is still alive. Where is the justice in the world?

Anyway, as I was saying, as there were hardly any buses before 9.30 I had to choose one that would get me to the train station before the train left that I needed to take to get to York in time to meet Berny for a lift to site. It happens that the only bus that was on offer was one at 5.17am. It got me to the train station about an hour and ten minutes BEFORE the train I needed. Talk about lack of communication between various transportation executives. So I get to the station nice and early, at which point I noticed that the information that I'd gleaned from the National Rail Enquiries site was actually wrong about the trains departure time and kicked my heels until the ticket office opened. When it did I was told that there were no trains running for the first part of my journey to York, between Rotherham and Doncaster. Cursing Thatcher for privatising the rails, I ran like a demon back to the bus station and jumped on a bus to Doncaster instead. I got there just in time for the train to York and endured the quiet carriage surrounded by the Canadian-Asian guy blabbing into his telephone about 'just having to get to London today' and using the word 'so' as punctuation and the girl who talked incessantly for twenty  minutes into her phone and ended the conversation with 'OK, gotta go, call me back when you get this message.' It made me feel like screaming; IT'S THE QUIET CARRIAGE YOU IGNORANT CUNTS!!! But I would have been breaking the carriage rules myself.

The sign is there for a reason you twats!

In other countries, public transport is an exciting way of seeing the world, in European countries you marvel at the double decked trains and the impeccable sticking to timetables, in Japan one can watch in awe as the team of cleaners take a bow to the train before cleaning it spotlessly. In Africa you can wonder if the bus will make it round the next hairpin bend at 200mph whilst weaving around the corpses of the passengers of the last bus that tried it. It's exciting and adventurous, in Britain it's a fucking grind where as many people as possible are packed in to the carriages after paying extortionate prices for the pleasure of smelling someone else's armpits or listening to strangers mobile phone conversations. And that's if the fucking train turns up in the first place. For fuck's sake, Britain invented the train. How can we get it so wrong, so many times? In the end I did make it to work on time, but this was my misfortune as we were forced to work in -12 degrees, breaking rock hard ground. Just like a North Korean labour camp.

You work now!

There's sick in my hair

I woke up in someones guest bedroom, with a head which felt as though Thor was forging hammers in it, a mouth that felt as though a tramp had broken into the house during the night and shat in and vague recollection of violently arguing about the validity of executing soldiers in the First World War. IT MUST BE FESTIVUS!!

It all began on Tuesday when Tim, Cath and I had a Festivus meal at their place. All the elements were there, the pole, the feats of strength and the airing of grievances. Mainly about leaving the toilet seat up. If only this had been mentioned three months ago, it would have been fixed instantly. But oh no, Timmy likes to wind himself up and take the silent moral stance. We even had crackers, stuffed with middle class cracker trinkets. A hair bobble, a tiny roll of sellotape for pixies and a set of six dominoes. Seriously? Six dominoes? What fucking use is that?

Should you ever need to tie your hair back, play a very short game of dominoes or wrap and tiny parcel...

Anyhoo, after I wrastled Timmy to the floor and won with three submissions to one I went to bed with my tiny mind swimming in alcohol.

Festivus, where the fun never starts...

The next day at work was a grind, with gulag like conditions and Wincey being unrepentant and unheeding to my hungover needs. Like a lie down in a nice bed. Or a big sleep.

'FASTER!!'

'But I've got a headache!'

The evening saw me back in the bosom of the ghetto for Elmet's Festivus celebrations. During this one I mainly gossiped with Colin about the current state of British archaeology and slagged Dane off for punching above his weight. We were wowed by the barman and his David Blaine impressions. I had to take it quiet this time since I was still suffering from the previous evening and had to drive. But I still had a good time.

Fuck Christmas

Then Friday rolled around and Onsite had their annual party held in what appeared to be the kitchens of Pizza Express in York. Berny and I dropped a massive bollock and arrived after everyone else, this led to us sitting on the kid's table for the meal. We blocked it out by sinking as much wine as humanly possible. A quick repair to Thomas' bar after brought a reemergence of a two day long argument that Barry and I were having. He claimed he'd won it. I claimed he was a cunt. Kate tactically moved away and left us to it. I finally got to bed at about 4.00am only to wake up in the state described in the opening sentence of this post...

No one parties like the jerks at Onsite...

As usual this week I have had my fair amount of ridiculous text messages from Herr Docktor Clay. This latest one came in last night during a discussion about what would be better than watching the Morgana Show:

I'd rather be raped by a gorilla while sucking off another gorilla which was on fire, with lots more gorillas stood around laughing and jerking off in my face.

Not a fan then, Clay?

More shit for your dumb eyes

In other news, yesterday saw the sad death of Captain Beefheart. The word Genius is used a lot these days and generally comes no where close to describing whomever the epithet is applied to, but I think in this case we have lost what could be described as a musical genius. Why is it always the good ones? Why couldn't it be Elton John or Paul McCartney?

The Freezing Moon

This has been a week that has seen massive student protests and riots against a LYING TWO FACED coalition government and their ridiculous plans to destroy several centuries of education in one swift swoop. But I'm not going to dwell on this as it just makes me angry and depressed. Instead, come with me on a journey of Polar exploration, a magical trip to the land of ice, a tundra landscape dotted only with rocks to serve as navigational points. Come with me to share the joys of last week's work!

Nov 6 1912

Broke camp on Ross Ice Shelf. Bade a sad farewell to Chef and Patty. They take four dogs with them and small amount of supplies. -14 degrees recorded by thermostat in automobile. Not sure it's working correctly but bloody cold anyway. Camp at base of glacier, the men are in high spirits. Sense of adventure is high, everyone happy to be here.

Farewell Patty!

Every journey begins with one step...

Nov 7 1912

Glorious day of bright sunshine but still sub zero temperatures, storm moves in by afternoon. No land marks causes hard going but we push on and make six miles today! Last of the dogs die in the evening, finish the day by pulling the sledges by hand. Camp still in good mood despite the hardships.

Nov 8 1912

The men are tired. Scrump has come down with a fever and Jonty seems to be having fitful sleep. They show me a brave face though. It can't last. Finished off the last of the dogs, a stew with the precious few vegetables we have. No tinned food left and all perishables are now rotten.

 

 Nov 9 1912

A storm brought fresh snow fall and collapsed three of the tents. Tick-Tock and Old Captain Merry took quite ill. Kept the party awake for the duration of the night. Merry announced he was going to attend to his ablutions and walked outside. No sign of him since. I pray that the furnace will hold out. Had to find alternate food sources all of which were unsuccessful.

Nov 10 1912

Lieutenant Farington and Corporal Tubes along with Tribby and Slack, the stokers, found dead in their cots. Froze to death over night. Terrible business. Storms getting worse and visibility down to nil. No hope of rescue coming. Not even sure where we are, all compasses are frozen solid. Had to burn the last of the sledges to keep the fires going. Damn this place. One last toast with the remaining brandy: Gentlemen, The King!

'for God's sake look after our people'

Death would freeze my very soul, Makes me happy, makes me cold!

OK, here is the obligatory snow post. As my UK readers are aware the country has been under the ICY GRIP OF WINTRY DEATH for the past week. Chaos has reigned as people have taken to digging out their basements to use as shelters and storage for canned goods for the forth coming apocalypse that is always heralded by the arrival of the snow. In supermarkets up and down the country people have been seen fighting pitched battles over the last bottle of HP sauce. The BBC has a 24hr 'grit watch' in the form of updates every ten minutes. We need to know which councils are unprepared for snow after all their money sunk in Icelandic bank accounts a couple of years ago. Old folk are freezing to death for fear of spending some of the money stuffed under their mattresses on fuel bills. Abandoned cars litter the streets where only ghostly figures move like spectres seeking shelter from the grim fist of cursed white.

Looks like I'm not getting to work tomorrow...

I'm loving it. I love snow, I even love the chaos it brings. Nothing delights me more than watching idiots struggling in their cars to get to work because the cracker factory would really fall to pieces without them being there at their workstation. I've not been at work all week, on Monday I did attempt to get to York from Rotherham and made fifteen miles in three hours. I decided to turn back see what would happen if the sun came out and melted the stuff. It didn't and more fell so I've not been able to move the car all week. It does make me feel a little guilty that the guys are all out on site working whilst I'm sitting here on my fat can in the warm drinking tea and eating biscuits. But the feeling doesn't last very long.

How I left site on Friday...

...and how it looked on Monday, photo courtesy of Logan Josh

What has pissed me off is that fact that last night I missed seeing Wolves in the Throne Room play in Leeds. I'd had the tickets for ages and even rung the venue to see if they'd cancelled the gig themselves. Turns out they were braving the weather and played. I should never have called... But taking advantage of the inclement weather; Dave, Jon and I set out last night to get some promo photos for Abwehrschlacht. I keep getting asked for band photos to illustrate interviews but we have none, so last night we took advantage and headed into the woods. Jon came along as official photographer. He used to work as a gig photographer for the Corp back in the day, so he was a great choice. We stood in the woods, he snapped some pics, we walked through the woods, commenting on how warm it was, he snapped a few more pics. We said 'let's go up on top to where the field is.' We did and instantly wished we hadn't. The icy winds that whipped across the open fields threatened to blow us back into the trees. Mind you, this is Black Metal and it was grim enough for good photos so we took it. They've turned out excellently, here's a couple that have yet to be farted about with. Jon described them as photos from a serial killer's family album...

To celebrate the snow, here's a few Videos for your delight:

To the Lifeboats!!

To be honest not much of any real interest has occurred since the last posting. Wincey has not been on site all week as he's writing a report at home, this still didn't stop him driving all the way across York in Monday morning rush hour traffic to tell me that we would only need one pump as there was only three of us on site. As though I couldn't count for myself. I've organised sites with up to sixty students on them, I don't think working out what three people have to do for a day is going to be much of a problem... But still he felt the need to take nearly two hours to get to us and then get back home to point out the pointless. Apart from that minor infraction we have had a pretty blissful week of it. So with the lack of humorous tales I will have turn to my text messages again. I received a set of texts from the good Herr Docktor starting at about nine o'clock on Tuesday. I guarantee that every one of these is genuine and are still on my phone. I just hope Interpol are not monitoring my text conversations.

For a joke this morning i'm going to phone every primary school in d***** and tell them there's a bomb somewhere in the building
23 Nov 2010 09:02

At this point I told him not to and mentioned the fact that North Korea were rattling sabers by dopping artillery shells on civilians. This just drew out the racist in him.

That's a coincidence, i was actually going to put on a chinky accent when i phoned the schools, now i can tie it into the korea thing to make it more convincing, i'll say i'm calling from pyonyang
23 Nov 2010 09:35

I did the calls now there are lots of police outside my house, what should i do
23 Nov 2010 12:01

I'm hiding in my bathroom with a box of pork scratchings, they keep shouting they're going to bash in my front door
23 Nov 2010 16:33

I told them i had the whole house rigged to explode, that made them think twice about bashing my door in! Maybe they'll be gone in the morning, i'm going to sleep in the bathtub now, good night
23 Nov 2010 21:24

I've been very clever, sometimes i use a chinky voice, sometimes i use my normal voice so they think there's two people in the house and the chinky is holding the other one hostage. I ran out of pork scratchings though, not sure what i'll eat tomorrow.
23 Nov 2010 22:23

I told him I thought that was a good idea, using two different voices. It would confuse matters. Despite being racist.

Yes i could say the chinky shot himself and i burned the body in the bath and washed it down the plughole which is why nothing is left. Then i'd be the hero.
23 Nov 2010 22:30

There's a helicopter outside and police so i cut off my own finger and pushed it out through the letterbox, not sure why i did that, i think i panicked, it really hurts, there's blood all over my phone
24 Nov 2010 07:56

I'm feeling faint alex, there's all these guys standing around me shouting and pointing lights but i don't know if they're real or not
24 Nov 2010 09:35

Yes i'll fall asleep and they'll probably forget about me
24 Nov 2010 09:47

That was the last message I got from him until he texted me telling me he was going to make it clear to all his students that if they joined the anti-cuts demos he would automatically fail them. This is exactly the kind of shit I have to put up on a daily basis. I am generally up to my eyes in filth and have to reach my hand through about eight layers of clothes to find my phone only to find this kind of shit waiting for me.

Homeless for Christ's Mass

So over a nice meal last night which lulled me in to a sense of false security, Tim and Cath announced that they were going to throw me out just before Christ's Mass. Yes, that's right, deep in the Heart of Winter they are going to turn me out into the streets. Talk about Christ's Mass cheer, talk about the season of goodwill to all men! I will probably have to find a bridge to sleep under and turn tricks for Sailors to get by.

$15, any ting you want...

They claimed it was something to do with inappropriate behaviour with Hüsker the cat. They said I'd been caught looking at his 'thing'. This was never proved, the cat was in my room but I am innocent of all indecency charges. But don't worry, I've been getting my own back all the time I've been here. I've been stealing their clothes and jewelry. I burnt all of Tim's Motorhead t-shirts and pawned all of Cath's necklaces. The fucker's can't throw me out without a fight.

Say goodbye, shitbag!

A GTO from the Stars!

Last night I went to see Monster Magnet and I know this won't amount to a hill of spit to 99% of the people reading this and I don't give a shit, but even better than that we (Kate, Dave, Rhys and I) got to go back stage and meet the King of Mars himself, Dave Wyndorf! You have no idea what this means to me, I've been following Monster Magnet for twenty years and this was the equivalent to discovering life on another planet!

 Lord 13

What did I say to him? Fuck knows, I was drunk, I was gabbling like a drooling tard. I recall asking him why he'd not played Spine of God. Whatever, it gave me a big old grin, right across me face for the rest of the night!