Category: Personal

Troma Night regulars (plus Sundeep) only invited to an exclusive cinema screening of 9 Songs tonight at 10:30pm. Send me a text message – or meet me on the RockMonkey ChatRoom – for details (times, places, arrangements).

BYOB. No pizza though.

As Sundeep recalls, last night was fab. We lit a fire and tried to hold back the tide with it; then, just after high tide, it started coming in again, wildly, and threatened to extinguish our fire, so we moved around the coast a little way. But we ate cheeseburgers and waffles and things, and drank beer, so it’s all okay. The rain even managed to hold off.

Claire – would you mind stepping in to Charlies’ today, for me, and picking up a pack of ammunition for my glue gun. Also, if I’m to fix your camera, could you also check that we have some of those ear-bud thingies.

Lots to do.

As you all know, Bryn’s nemesis and everybody’s favourite pseudolesbian are having a birthday burning and unchristmas party on the beach tonight. More details here, here, and here (can you tell they’ve been planning this awhile?).

Anyway; in order to make sure that people know, I’ll post this message here: I’ll bring all the barbeques you can eat, and people (by which I inevitably mean ‘me’) can cook things on them. If I can get the help of one or more people with cars, I can also arrange for a large quantity of burnable wood to be deposited on the beach, too, which is always a good thing.

Hope to see you there.

I’ve just seen haggling taken to a new level. A marketing company called us up and offered us 100 executive-type pens, branded with our company information, with no commitment to buy. They delivered them, and they’re… okay… but they really don’t fit the company image. The total value of the pens is £290, and we’re not paying that much for a design that doesn’t suit us. But the marketing company knows that they can’t re-print the pens, and they want to make some money on them (or, at least, lose as little as possible… and it would cost them money to have their courier pick them up). And so, over several phone calls, co-worker Gareth haggled with them, as follows:

Them: £290?
Gareth: free.
Them: £150?
Gareth: free.
Them: £100?
Gareth: free.
Them: £75?
Gareth: free.
Them: Really, we can’t possibly give them to you for less than £75.
Gareth: Okay then, you’ll have to send a courier to pick them up. (I’d suggested that he also say that our office hours are 9am to 9:30am on Monday mornings only, unless it’s raining in which case it’s 4:30pm to 5pm) Wow… how much is that going to cost you, out here to the West coast of Wales?
Them: Look, go ask your director – £75?
Gareth: (background noise) free.
Gareth begins to get bored.
Gareth: Okay then, £40.
Them: £50.
Gareth: £45, and you can throw in a catalogue and we’ll read it.
Them: Done.

You’ve got to love any haggling where you start at ‘free’ and stay there for as long as possible. They’re not bad pens, but we’ll be using them here rather than giving them to people…

Tried to post from my mobile, but it lost the post. Tried to post a summary from my mobile, but that died too. So here’s the short, short version:

Just witnessed frustrating argument. Not least because I felt ‘banned’ from it. That may be for the best, because if I’d have participated I think Claire would have felt persecuted… all participants were getting rather defensive before I left, which wasn’t helping any of them.

Despite a couple of (probably accidental) attempts to backstab, Andy earned himself a respect point tonight.

Lots of points that shouldn’t have been overlooked, but were, but I’m not typing them again.

Fuck it.

Alec and Suz are visiting Aberystwyth at the moment, in a hunt for a place to live next year and possibly over the summer too. Suz has a final year to go in her degree (having spent this academic year, and the next few months, traipsing around Europe as part of her course), and Alec is hoping to be accepted onto a UWA PGCE course, giving him an excuse to come back after his year-or-so of absence. In the long run, almost everybody comes back to AberWorld, it seems.

So, Alec and Suz joined Claire, Andy, Sian, JTA, Ruth and I in curry at Cafe All Spice and drinks at The Cambrian (where we were also joined by Katie and a friend of Suz’s, Jo). Finally, we retired to the flat to watch 40s public information films, including:

• Molly Grows Up – “It’s okay to swim, so long as you don’t do it on the first few days of your period, and if you wash your hair you must dry it promptly to avoid catching a chill. But strenous activities like horse riding and square dancing are to be avoided.”
• Easy Does It – “In this sped-up film, it’s easy to see that the little woman walks over four miles every day… from sink to refrigerator to dining table…”
• Perversion For Profit – “Psychologists believe that exposure to this kind of pornography…” [demonstrates] “…by even normal men… can turn them into homosexuals.”

Alec & Suz are crashing at the Flat these few days.

In other news, Andy K is pissed off and nobody knows why, Paul & co’s Birmingham Egg experiment is mentioned on Viking FM yesterday morning.