Terrine de bicyclette

Luvvly!

Am I possibly the only straight guy on the planet who watches Pan Am, the glossy and somewhat slightly camp soap opera set around the lives of five air stewardesses in the early 60s? If I am I don't care, because a) Karine Vanasse who plays stewardess Colette is the most exquisitely gorgeous thing I've seen on TV in a long time, and b) there may actually be a story in there somewhere beneath the layers of glitz and soap opera involving espionage and dried fruit...actually the script might also be crap, but at only two episodes in I'll give it a bit more time, if only to gaze wistfully at Karine.....
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They're going to make a film of Dr Who. Woop-di-do! Two and a half hours of garbled nonsense instead of fifty minutes. Actually if they got Matt Smith to slow down and talk normally they wouldn't have to write any more script than they do for the TV episodes. And Karen Gillan on a big screen must be worth seeing. Not all bad then, but pleeeease, no Daleks!.
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I've been a bit under the weather this week, which is probably why I ended up watching Pan Am with B last night. Also, in between bouts of...no you don't want to know, really...I've been attempting to wipe the hard disk (it's all that bonobo porn obviously) of an old computer before I scrap it as it's too old to give to charidee. What a bleedin' palaver that is I can tell you. Looking at various websites, I downloaded a piece of software that supposedly does the job. You have to burn the software onto a CD, and reboot the 'pooter using the CD and it blitzes C drive.

Except it took me ages to work out how to alter BIOS so that the 'pooter boots from D rather C drive, and even then the bloody thing doesn't work, it still boots up from C. This all took an inordinate amount of time as the 'pooter is very old and very slow, and umpteen restarts took forever. A waste of an entire afternoon.

Scott, if you read this......HELP!
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Isn't the whole point of email spamming to get the gullible to open emails so that all sorts of malicious software infects their computer allowing said spammer unfettered access to their hush hush collection of bonobo porn? In order to do that surely it has to be enticing in some way, and probably not advertising itself as coming from "Sophia Fink." Hoho.
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I quite like playing Mexican Standoff with pavement cyclists and so far I've not been hit, either by a bike or a cyclist's fist. Today, by sheer force of will, I made a young bylaw busting cyclist get off their bike by walking into the only remaining gap on the pavement, the same gap she was headed for, coming straight at me. As said cyclee pushed her bike past me on the road no less (wahey!), I asked her if she knew what a pavement was actually for. Cyclee completely blanked me, got back on the pavement and pedalled off. Strangely I resisted the urge to shout "Idiot" or stronger after the ignoramous. Perhaps it was Sophia Fink?

Waiting for the end of the world

Last night a DJ saved my life....well actually it was a Chinsese vegetarian buffet restaurant, as raging hunger and rising impatience (who, moi? Surely not!) at a seemingly endless wandering about nearly got the better of me, but those who were there (and PW was just as peckish as me but kept quiet) had to admit that the grub was in fact, surprisingly good! So all was well in the end, even if it took me being a bit of an arse to arrive at said conclusion. Apologies to all concerned.

That intro may be a tad cryptic for some, but if you read Phill's blog, all will become clear! Suffice to say that karma reared its head today, and made me inwardly smile. Arriving at at 1:55pm at NGH for my post-op appointment with my consultant at 2pm, I checked in at reception and was told to go and wait in the usual place. Forty five minutes later folk who had arrived after me had been seen and I hadn't been called. Something odd here methinks, so I go to the nurses' station to find out why I had not been called. "Oh" says the nurse, looking at her computer screen, "We've got you down for 3pm. Didn't the receptionist tell you that?" "No" sez I, reiterating that the letter I was sent said 2pm, and that was what I had said to the reptionist. There not being a lot I could do about it, I figured I may as well go and wait some more as it's now nearly 3 anyway.

Some ten minutes later a different nurse pokes her head into the waiting area, a corridor with plastic seats either side that is now rammed full of people, sticks a piece of paper on the wall and walks off with out a word. The paper reads "Mr Scalpel's appointments are running at least 60 minutes late, so if you do not want to wait blah blah....". That would mean sitting around until at least 4pm, probably longer given the backlog. Sod that for a game of soldiers, so, most of an afternoon wasted I headed back to work.

That bit above is only part of the karma...arriving home I re-checked the appointment letter and find that the appointment was for 3pm after all, I'd entered it on my phone calendar incorrectly. Actually made me laugh out loud, that did! I've since found out that my phone, which has to be manually adjusted when the clocks change has the annoying side effect of altering calendar appointments at the same time. So, when I changed the time back an hour on Sunday morning, it also put my appointment with Mr Scalpel back an hour too, making me turn up an hour earlier than I needed to. Really useful that, doncha think!

This is the second time this has happened recently, the first being my 10am appointment to have my cast removed after the op. Another 45 minute wait and a chat with a nurse revealed that they had it down as 1pm! Someone had lost a zero somewhere. Luckily that time they managed to fit me in there and then, so no harm done.

I theorise that time acts differently when anything to do with Government services is concerned, you have to develop a thick skin and the patience of...well, maybe not a saint, but certainly someone holier than moi!

PS - Can anyone give me a tenner, I've lorst me wallet and five of me fifteen ankle biters haven't been to McDonalds since lunchtime....and my Granny needs a heart op....and the dog's got mange...