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Musings on a world I am no longer sure about
Today is my watch’s 12th birthday
Today I am 12 WARNING
Long reminiscy dribbly post follows.
Today is my watch’s 12th birthday
I remember its birthdate well. It was my 21st birthday. We spent the day much as we always did back then, dossing in the dropout centre. I had no job back in those days save for a one night a week stint at Autotrader laying out the car adverts. Owen was still at uni, just getting into the swing of the new term. The evening was special though. The evening was ours. We met with friends at the Tap and Spile and had a good drink. The landlord bought me a pint. Mum turned up for a bit with Andy and met everyone. We had a rowdy evening of fun and candlelight which just didn’t want to stop, so we brought the pub back to our little flat in North West Norwich. Beer flowed, we had guitars, singing ensued. I was serenaded. Slowly people passed out or left and we went to bed. A marvellous birthdate for my watch.
In its short lifetime, my chronometer has seen its owner go through bad times, good times, unemployment, homelessness, relationships, break ups, deaths, births, jobs, the works.
Back then, life was simple. We were poor but happy. Little did it know, but just before its first birthday, my watch would accompany me on the biggest adventure of my life, the move away from sleepy Norwich to the bright lights of London. Times got hard. I got lonely. Owen moved too and we were left to rely on the goodwill of friends to keep a roof above our heads. Slowly things got better, Owen had a job offer, I got one too and we got our first flat in East London.
By the time my little watchlet was two, we’d acquired a Salvador, living contentedly on our sofa. I’d left the world of technical support and moved on up to web development. Owen was working hard at the agency and we were starting to sort out the awful financial mess we’d gotten ourselves into moving to London.
By it’s third birthday we’d met a lot of people we still know now. Back in the days of IRC and web 0.1. Fruitbat had entered our lives, enriching us with tiny bottles of gin. Barcode was our place to be, with the IRC crew. Every Friday was spent getting so drunk we didn’t mind the concept of GAY and every Saturday was spent being so hungover we didn’t move from bed. Our house became a dosshouse, random strays would stay with us from time to time, we were the constant in many lives.
Aged four, still swinging happily from my wrist, my timepiece was present for both my resignation from web development and brief foray into operations management and my signing away my life for a new flat for the three of us. Sal was bored, we’d decided when hungover to pop to Ilford shopping on account of the fitness of the population. Strolling randomly along Cranbrook Road I spied a flat in the window of an agency that was just a little more than we were currently paying, but three bedrooms. We enquired about a viewing and were promptly taken 4 doors down the road to a large 3 bedroom flat that many of you are familiar with. Only back then, it was clean, freshly decorated and empty. I borrowed a large sum of money and put a deposit on it within days. Owen didn’t even bother viewing it, he noted my enthusiasm and simply said “ok”.
The turn of 2000 happened. The world did not end. Life kept cruising on, my watch passed its fifth birthday and then its sixth. And then my world was turned upside down by someone who had no idea why he had that effect on me. I left Owen. I left my old job. I saved money, I put down a deposit on a new flat off Mile End Road, it fell through. I roamed leytonstone, Hampstead and West Ham looking for other places to live. Eventually I settled on a two bedroom flat in Limehouse. I left my job and went back to development. I took up cycling again. Life was good for
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Bloogie
Today I feel like I need to be more awake than I have been lately. But I am not more awake than I have been lately so I feel unfulfilled. Outside the world is grey, a meandering hopelessness fills the air. Rain spatters the pavements as people plod on, staring at their feet. A week ago the gorgeous sun warmed our hearts and lifted our eyes to the skies. A week ago. What a lot can happen in a week.
Both myself and Mogs seemed to magically have eaten something that made us quite ill over the weekend. He cured his by getting wrecked on Sunday night, I came home and felt shite without the aid of alcohol. He probably had the better idea as I hardly slept at all. Bah. Monday off work as I wasn’t really feeling up to it on account of lack of sleep and grumbling bowels. Nice, huh?
Limped out on Monday evening for drinks with Liam. Non alcoholic drinks. Well, mostly. He was a little drunken apparently and texted me in the morning to apologise, I told him not to be silly 
I probably shouldn’t have gone out but I’m glad I did. He’s lovely.
Yesterday was also pretty knackering, back at work but still overtired. Bits of the Elders to do, new press release and bizarre Mozilla issues. Damn open source software =P
Fixed that by moving the border-bottom to be a text-decoration. Less pretty, but it’ll do. Bunged up a new press release too.
<< The Elders’ first mission will be Darfur
Due to the urgency of the conflict and immense human suffering in Darfur, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Chair of The Elders, announced today that he will lead a delegation to Sudan, on September 30th – 5th October.
The delegation will include Lakhdar Brahimi, Jimmy Carter, and Graça Machel. The Elders is a humanitarian initiative founded by Nelson Mandela and Graça Machel earlier this year, which brings together a historic group of world leaders to contribute their wisdom, independent leadership and integrity to tackle some of the world’s toughest problems.
The group will meet in Khartoum with government and opposition, civil society and international organization representatives, and will then travel to Darfur to visit local community leaders and persons displaced from their homes.
As Elders of the global village, they hope to help strengthen and deepen the framework for assuring a permanent peace in Sudan, by listening to, learning from and reporting on the views of the people in Darfur and others concerned with the crisis.
Independent of any government or international organization, the Elders are consulting widely, including with leaders from the United Nations and the African Union, and have lent their support to the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1769 approved on July 31, authorizing a UN/AU peace-keeping force and the UN-Government of Sudan Joint Humanitarian Communiqué of March 28, 2007.
Desmond Tutu said: “We want community leaders in Darfur to feel that they have been heard by us. And to the extent that we could then communicate their aspirations, their longings, particularly the women’s groups, we will do so. This is not just a quick trip for The Elders – we want the suffering to end – and we hope to contribute to that.”
>>
I wait with baited breath to see if they’re going to actually manage to get anything to change.
Thursday is Flikk’s birthday but I don’t actually have any money so may not be able to make it. Sorry...will snog you later to make up for it 
And next week I’m 97. Urgh. Maybe I should lie about my age and say I’m 33...
I blame Sunin.
Dragged Liam out again last night for a wander around the South Bank. He protested unconvincingly, so we wandered up to Dali and then down to Bankside. Both of us forgot Peter Seller’s name. Wandered to a pub for eats. Pretended it was free. Not actually too much of a bad burger considering. Was asked if I’d prefer the Chelsea match or the Liverpool one, replied “neither”. Discovered that if I’m near a telly I can’t help<
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Lick it, bitches
I appear to have boughted a new bike. Evens it gets nicked in the first year of me owning it. At work we’re members of the tax free cycle scheme, so you buy a bike and the repayments are taken out of your salary before tax over the course of a year. Which is pretty great for me I reckon
www.specialized.no/index.php?cat=70586
It’s a bit fucking nice it is.
Accidentally watched Pan’s Labrynth and then followed it with Labrynth. Why? Because we had to, really.
Pan’s Labrynth is very beautiful and frankly horrible in bits. Like all good fairy tales. I really liked it lots and even TJ got over his initial dissapointment at it being subtitled and got into it.
I’d forgotten how amusing and silly Labrynth is. Watched the making of feature too, was a little disturbed by David Bowie effusing about Jennifer Connelly’s beauty, he’s like 90 and she was 14 or something, but hey. Little known fact, every single person who made Labrynth had a beard. Some even had two.
Miles popped over Tuesday evening, I’m lending him one of my baby laptops as he’s puterless at the moment. Silly Miles left his laptop in Edinburgh, see, because it wasn’t working right, forgetting that clever Scott can mend computers...
Stayed up too late as we decided that it’d be fun to watch the cartoon version of Lord of the Rings. Gave up being awake and collapsed into bed at about 1am. Not so good considering I was on an early that day and had gotten up at 6am.
Ulf came to visit yesterday as he was bored and not working again until Friday morning, so we decided to do XXL on a Wednesday for shits and giggles. It was immensely dire. Collapsed on a leather sofa for most of it and watched the live action porn unfold before us before giving up at around 12:30 and heading back home. Via Beirut or something because we took a wrong turning. Ah well.
Ulf has nice leather seats in his car. I want one. Leather seat, that is, not Ulf...
Had a meeting in the work “Ideas room” thing today. It’s like a little living room with huge plasma TV, sound system, X Box 360, Wii, Sky box, huge widescreen Dell, leather sofas, rugs. It’s very odd. This company is at times amazing. Also got invited to the company christmas do, told to invite friends too. Fun!
Found some horrible bugs in the groups stuff that I’d not noticed. They’re now fixed, people can make public groups again. I made Cyclegays for shits and giggles. Hopefully get some interest and then will organise a bike ride in London for a few of us, punctuated by pub stops or picnics or something. I’ll probably make a facebook one as well...
My “Campaign to blame Anita Roddick’s death on the McCann’s” group seems to be doing quite nicely.
TuffCub accused me of being tasteless when I put “Scott is wondering who to fly his plane into” as my status on Sept 11th. Psch. I’m lovely, me.
Been chatting to someone called Liam rather a lot of late. He moves to London on Saturday and I’m being all exciteable as to actually meeting him. I suspect he’ll like the freaks as he’s been all the way through quotebot and already decided he wants to marry Sunin. Or something like that 
This weekend will mostly be pretending to code I think. Tonight I’m meant to be going for a beer with someone who hasn’t texted me back, so I’m sulking. I might actually have an early night as I’m currently half asleeeeeep. Bah.
Need to fix my facebook app. Well, by fix I mean “rewrite in dotnet”. And then create an amazing freakcity quote one.
we’re looking at adding some new and exciting stuff to www.theElders.org — I’ve requested that we do a facebook app, then I can get paid for messing about with it. Which’d rock rather a lot
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Blogquette
Went to Charlie’s Bar last night. Sorta gay, sorta kitsch, sorta cool. And a very very VERY fit barman. Yay for being shallow! Mogs was pissed when I got home and I was bored and thought it’d be good for a laugh. Unfortunately I soon caught him up and we ended up rolling in wankered at about 2am. And then deciding to watch Eddie Izzard. I woke up on the sofa at 5:30am and crawled into bed. Only an hour late for work today, tho that was partly to do with me giving up on my bike a bit. Grr. I shall be sick as a dog later
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Ponder
I ran over a dead squirrel on the way to work, and as it colourfully burst I pondered the pointlessness of life. If all you do is look inwards, then who will care when you’re dead? What, indeed, is the point of life? As I wiped squirrel off my face, I pondered a few things. 1) we’re something to do with stars, we are. Every single bit of us was born within a star. Which is kinda cool. 2) If, as postulated by Mr Dawkins and others, we solely exist to procreate and further our genes, what of free thought? Why? What evolutionary advantage do we gain from angst and horror and pain of the soul? Surely there’s more to it than that. 3) Are we just the software run on the hardware of our bodies, do we vanish when the off switch is pressed? I think the answer is less simple than we’d like....
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EmoBlog
Urg. First day back at school. For all the little shits that is, not for me. Today on the way to work I had to navigate hundreds of cars driven by mothers who haven’t gotten in one for 3 months. Gingerly travelling at not more than 5 miles an hour as they try and remember which pedal does what whilst their kids fight it out in the back seat. Joy. And this on top of Bob Cunting Crowe’s amazing tube strike which means that there’s more cars on the road.
Sometimes I just want to take a gun to people.
slowly making my way through the month of hell with no money. TJ should be giving me a bit of rent tomorrow, hopefully, so that’ll help, but overall it sucks. That’s the last time I randomly buy a laptop
Am seriously considering taking advantage of the work cycle scheme. I may sell my old one and then get a shiny new one that’s a bit more hard wearing. I took my bike in for a service last week and was told that the fork suspension is a bit buggered because “they’re not meant to last that long”. I’ve only had it 3 years. Sillyness.
Keep meaning to find the time to ebay lots of stuff. It’s rubbish. I think “I should do it” then I think “but I won’t get the money straight away” and then days pass and if I’d have done it days ago I’d have the money.
Slowly summer is slipping away. What little summer there was. SAD will kick in soon. This autumn will be heavy with suicides. So be thankful, dear readers, it won’t be you.
Kris Searle is getting reviewed and played on Radio Kent on 14th Sept. Dominic King show, 6pm. Fuuun.
Boris has announced he’ll “change the congestion charge”. The hippy stoners and stupid gays will vote for Brian Paddick. Could this be the end for Ken? The cynical part of me can see a plot to oust him. Splitting the left vote, forcing a strike when there’s no reason to (Bob Crowe is not a socialist, he’s a rich businessman, nomatter what the press’d have you believe), watching his support dwindle. Sucks. I think Ken is better than the rest of them and should be protected as a national treasure.
EmoShort:
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