Rambolic

Sunday, 13:37. I’m minding my own business when my phone beeps.

“U briten up my day 2 lol xoxo”

Ugh… I hate txt spk. Anyway, I text back saying “Who’s this?”

“Danielle hus dis”

I don’t know any Danielle, apart from one girl from school I’ve got on Facebook but not spoken to since I was about 12, and I don’t think she has much of a reason to text me.  I explain that I’m Alan, and get the obligatory “sory . . Didnt mean 2 txt u” and so I think nothing more of it.

Well, later I get a another text…

“Hey xoxo”

Um… okay. I understand people make mistakes, but twice in a day is a bit odd… but I correct her anyway – “Still Alan ”

“I no ”

FFS, learn some english! Anyway, I’m bored so I ask who she is.

“Its a mystery. . . Where u from?x”

I explain I’m from Bradford, and return the question.

“Newscastle. . . Wanna get dwn n dirty?”

Haha… Well, that takes me back a few years when everybody was cyber-sex mad, and I’d sit there explaining how I’d accidentally nudged the table and knocked the candle over and set the curtains on fire, to be greeted with some abuse before they blocked me. But… I don’t know anything about this one – for all I know she could be 14. So I ask, obviously. People don’t lie. Do they?

“21 wbu?”

21… explains a bit. It probably explains she’s 17 or something. I tell her I’m 28. No point in lying here. She carries on.

“Send me a dirty txt!”

I want to be in charge of this conversation… I don’t want to be merely an entertainment device for a group of mates, so I tell her.

“No . . Im on my own plz”

It’s not enough for me, so I tell her to set the scene. Could be interesting…

“Alone in a club. In da bathroom.. … Wot would u do 2 me when u find me?”

Alone in a club? What kind of scene is this? Erm… “Sounds like a shit club to me…”

“Amateur!”

I must be really bored to have transcribed this. Sorry.

About a year ago I took on the responsibility of opening up at work and became a key-holder. Not long after this my hours changed from 8:30am-17:00pm to 8:45am-17:15pm. I found out about my change of hours when I got a letter with my payslip – nobody actually informed be prior or asked if it was convenient. To be honest, the change of hours doesn’t really bother me, but the fact that I wasn’t consulted does. On principle I started turning up at 8:45am.

Now, I’ll be honest… I’m not reknowned for my timekeeping! Since I started opening up I’ve been punctual, but my colleagues still take the piss out of me – force of habit!  But recently I have been arriving on or up to 8:45am.  When I open up I have to unlock the gate, unlock the bollards, put the bollards down (a mean feat!), open the gates, unlock and open the shutter protecting the fire exit, de-activate the alarm and camera monitor, turn on all the lights, open the staff entrance shutter and unlock and open the gates… by which time it’s maybe 8:55am… which is when I clock in.

Now, the powers that be don’t seem to like this 8:55am clocking in business, and my manager has, on occasion, emailed me if I have a problem arriving for 8:45am, and I’ve replied saying no, I haven’t.  Other people start at 8:45am, which my arrival time has a knock-on effect on.  If someone just asked me to turn up 15 minutes earlier all this probably wouldn’t have happened.  Anyway… I digress.

Anyway, one night I was round at my manager’s house and she forewarned me that I’d be getting a letter re: disciplinary about timekeeping.  Sure enough, the next day a letter was presented to me with the time and date of said disciplinary.  I turned up at the time mentioned to meet a manager (not mine) and one of the directors of the compay.  I was a bit peeved that it had got to this stage without anyone really discussing it in any detail with me to be honest.  I was asked what I had to say about the matter, and I told them that I don’t quite understand why I’m in a disciplinary for timekeeping when I’ve been turning up on time… and that opening up does take a few minutes, hence my clocking times.  This immediately got my director’s back up and she went on the attack saying that I should have the building open and be sat at my desk by 8:45am.  I added that opening up is part of my job, so that should be accounted for.  She told me that my manager had given me a formal chat about this and discussed it prior to the disciplinary, and waited for my confirmation.  I told her that I have had no formal chat, it had been mentioned in an email, and I’d been emailed a document to sign and hand back.  I was asked if this had happened any other time.  As it happens, the day before I’d received another email and document to sign about not checking voicemails one day (it was super busy and we were short-staffed – maybe I’ll explain our staff situation in more details another time!)  The director looked puzzled and asked if I’d signed them.  I hadn’t.  To be honest, the first I’d forgotten about due to how busy we are, and the second I’d just not got around to it at that time.  The meeting was adjourned.

At this stage my manager was called down to the meeting room.  Now, I can’t really comment on what was said as I wasn’t there, but I’d hazard a guess that she was being spoken to about not doing formal chats correctly.  I’ll point out here that I don’t really have a problem with these issues being emailed as I’m generally really busy and don’t really have the time in the day to be sat around in meetings.  I was then called back into the meeting room.

Faced by my manager and the director, my manager went on a rant about how gutted she was that I’d brought this issue up, that she’s not done anything wrong, that she’s lost my trust and possibly friendship, asking why I hadn’t come to her about it previously, yadda yadda.  I could have sat up and been on the defensive, but as I mentioned, I didn’t know what had been said to her and I didn’t want to dig any holes… or make the one I was in any deeper.  I basically just listened, and then the director took over.  She said that she thought I was deliberately being awkward, petty and big-headed.  She said she thought it was foolish of me to bring these issues of the formal chats.  I pointed out that I hadn’t actually brought this issue up, and that I’d merely answered questions that I had been asked.  I’m not going to lie about something if it didn’t happen.  This went on for a while, and my director was saying that I said that I start at 8:45am and finish at 5:15pm and that’s what time I will arrive and leave.  I defended myself and said that I actually said that I start at 8:45am, and I’ve been arriving at 8:45am.

This went on for quite some time, and I was told that there were three people, my manager, the other manager, and herself, that thought I had an attitude problem.  I was also told that the managing director also has issues about my attitude.  Truth be told this was a small misunderstanding that was resolved in about a minute, which my manager backed me up on.  Nevertheless I figured I’d better back down a bit and just tried to calm things down, despite how furious I was at being told I’d said things that I know I didn’t say.  We decided to adjourn for another week to cool the air.

To be honest I was quite upset by all this, and I know my manager was, so I asked her for a meeting directly afterwards.  Understandably she was quite confused, having been told one thing by my director, and then another by me.  The things that were said were practically the same, but it was the wording and delivery that was completely different, and she didn’t know who to believe.  Anyway, we chatted for over an hour and finally left feeling slightly better about things.  Not much, but enough to remain professional.

The week after my director called me into a meeting again to discuss where we go from here.  Quite honestly I think we were both too tired to argue, and I was asked if I have any issues, and I said I hadn’t, and that I’d been arriving earlier.  She said we should just put it down to poor communication by all parties and mis-understanding.  I agreed and we left the room.  Everything’s fine in that respect as my director and I, while we enjoy a joke, are not particularly close friends.  My manager and I, however, are… and this has obviously had an impact on that.  My manager came back from her holidays for a week, and I know she was still concerned about the whole ordeal.  I was the same, and we had another chat.  We talked about management and friendship, etc.  Difficult talk – nobody wants those, but it has to be done.  Anyway, I think we ironed out a few things, and while we’re not completely right I think we’re a big step in the right direction.  I think we need some beer to resolve this one.

That was a story and a half – congrats to anybody who got this far.  I know my shortfallings here, so it’s a lesson to be learned.  I’ve dropped a podium and I need to climb back up.  At least I do still have some mutual respect, which I thought I’d lost last week.  We live and learn!

Well, it seems I’m missed – I disappear for a day and I come back online after having my Mac exchanged and I’m inundated with messages asking me where the hell I’ve been.  It was 24hrs guys – calm your passion.  Either that or my Mac was playing up more than I knew.  Anyway, I’m back, with a new Mac… and this time it works.

On a side-note, I’m thinking of changing the title of this blog since I’ve not really said anything of unreasonable stature.  It’s more… rambolic.  Rambolic isn’t even a real word, although I strongly believe it should be.  Comments?

I’m sat listening to Tommy Emmanuel after being out with my parents to the local pub.  It’s completely not my kind of night out, but they keep asking me.  I saw an old friend, Allen, and spoke to him about our love for listening to and making music.  He’s 67 now, and is always singing.  He’s good at it too.  I also saw my old schoolfriend Nichola who I’ve seen just a couple of times since I left school.  That reminds me – via the gift of Facebook I’m back in touch with my old schoolfriend Antony so we need to get together, play Pro Evo and down some beers or something.

I had a text from Michelle earlier tonight telling me to get over to York and I wish I’d done that instead.  Sounds like she had a top night, and I could’ve been kipping in a two storey suite!  Damnit…  Hey well.  York’s one of my favourite places to be so maybe we’ll go some other time.

Friday night was spent at Ste’s playing Rock Band with Jodie and Gregs.  It’s about time it had a release here.  At least they gave us the full back catalogue to download.  Was an awesome night, mostly pissing ourselves at Gregs’ “singing!”  Ste lives in North Yorkshire though, so I lose half a tank of petrol if I go… the state of the price of oil now it’s an expensive do!

I’ve got the week off now.  Michelle quite rightly pointed out that it’s James’ last week and since the new guy’s not up to speed now’s the only time in the near future I’ll get time to take holidays.  It also buys me some time to finish the task I was given at work.  It seems I annoyed the directors at work with that.  I was told that I was arrogant and self-righteous, and to get my head out of my arse.  Sometimes it seems that my opinions aren’t valid.  No, actually… it seems that they aren’t even considered, which is strange because after said argument the itinery changed to the one I suggested.

Champions League Final was an awesome match, what I saw of it.  I was hoping for a blues win.  Both sides played well.  Things got a little out of hand in extra time, but I think everybody was tired and bitchy.  I’m too tired to go into details, but it was a good match.  It’s a shame it went to penalties as I don’t believe it’s a good way to determine the winner.

Well, it’s late so I’m offski.

Does anybody else move their arms above and below their waistline to watch the blood run to your veins and back out again?  Maybe it’s just me.

I’m getting slack again with the blogging.  Hey well.  A brief history in time (a book I’ve not read but keep meaning to, after I’ve read the book currently on my bedside cabinet – The Fabric of The Cosmos… going slightly off-topic) would involve me explaining the themed international housewarming I went to a week last Saturday.  Clare’s just bought the house she was renting so she decided to throw one of her infamous themed parties.  I had weeks of notice but ten minutes before leaving I still had no idea what to go as, so I went as Baghdad.  As Tom said before I arrived, “wouldn’t it be hilarious if he turned up covered in bags and pictures of his Dad??” which just so happened to be what I did.  It was a bit of a late affair, the latter of which I don’t recall.  Anybody who has me on Facebook will see the pics.

No more gigs have been watched, unfortunately, and I’m staring to miss live music again.  I need to pick up my guitar more often.  The Mac’s still broken and I want it replacing, though that’s increasingly unlikely.  I still need to order the warranty.  I must sort that.

I’ve been playing a bit of GTA IV this week – recommend it to anybody – it’s a great storyline and very amusing!  The map it huge and I bet I’ve only seen about a quarter of it.  I also saw Iron Man last week – excellent movie!  But then I like most of Robert Downey Jr’s stuff.  Can’t wait for Tropic Thunder!

Today I ordered pizza and the delivery guy turned up and pointed at my t-shirt (it has an Edimax logo on it) and proceeded to converse with me.  He was deaf, so it kind of reminded me of working with Bijan years ago.  It was kind of odd to be honest.  It’s not often you stand on your doorstep talking to random delivery drivers, but to converse with a deaf guy when you don’t know any (British) sign language… well, it’s tricky.  I really should learn to sign.  Maybe I’ll look into that.  He was a sound guy anyway.  Oh, talk about unintentional bad taste pun of the week.

Last night was PUSA night and, as one Kerrang! journo described a friend’s band a few years back, it was bouncier than a bare-backed bonkers convention (please bear in  mind that Kerrang! journos are rejects from the usual music press crowd that sit in a room with a Chambers thesaurus trying to lay way too much emphasis on cheap puns and one-liners.)

Support came in the form of very, very, VERY Japanese Electric Eel Shock – three kids, while managing to play their respective instruments to ridiculously high ability (as only the Japanese know how thanks to super-pushy parents) insist on writing songs that only consist of two chords with radio-friendly titles such as You Bastard.  Actually, I think I counted three in one song.  Not that that was any detriment to their entertainment factor – top class!

Next up was a (probably quite brave) Kid Carpet – a guy from the South-West armed to the teeth with sampling equipment, a Casio keyboard, more kiddy toy intstruments than I care to acknowledge exist and a microphone.  I’ve gotta hand it to this guy – he had more guts than an exploding whale.  It was a very fine line between musical genius and absolute tosh, and I think he achieved the former.  Very mixed reaction from the crowd here which probably helped the odd heckle.  “Thanks to the Presidents for bringing me on tour with them!  It’s very cool of them to do that – they didn’t have to!” to which one guy yelled “They shouldn’t have!”  It was all taken in good faith and fisty-cuffs didn’t break out.

The Presidents rocked as always, playing a couple of lesser known earlier tracks which everybody seemed to go down better than most of their later stuff.  Not that their recent albums are bad at all (some songs are genius) but I guess we were all twenty-somethings reliving our youth.  Notes were taken of kit I am required to purchase for our venture into the tribute world as The Prime Ministers of The United Kingdom.  Oh yes.  It will happen.  At least as soon as I can afford a guitar that I can afford to deface.  I was watching the guitbassism closely.  It’s a talent I shall soon master.

Well I’ve been knackered all week and I have no motivation to do anything productive. My Macbook Pro has been getting on my tits. The wireless has been as dodgy as a kid playing British bulldogs. It disconnects and the only way to fix the damn thing is to restart. I have Vista installed on here too, and streaming a movie the other night almost made me want to cave my head into a wall, given the number of times it decided to disconnect. It’s a good job WordPress auto-saves your drafts. I’m wondering whether to send it back to Apple for repair or to get a replacement from work. I don’t think work would be too chuffed though, since the guy at the disty gave me a stupidly good price on it, and work would be losing out on a few hundred quid if they replaced it for me. We’ll see.

I saw Stewart Lee on Thursday – semi-famous comedian from Fist Of Fun, This Morning With Richard Not Judy, and a few other TV comedies from the mid-90s. We saw him a couple of years ago in some pub in Headingly. Apparently last year he was voted 41st Best Comedian Ever in one of those shitty 47hr long Top 100 shows. Apparently, as a comedian, you only visit Huddersfield twice in your career and one of those times is on your way up… and this is his second time. The show seemed to be a whinge about his declining popularity and failed ideas for TV. Quite amusing but I couldn’t help but think that there’s some truth in there!

I was at Carl’s last night and we watched a movie and a couple of episodes of Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – awesome TV show!

In other news: my colleague announced he was leaving yesterday. I have two weeks to interview and train somebody. I don’t think there’s anybody internally who would be suitable, and I can’t say I’m particularly looking forward to training somebody from scratch. I fear that’s the direction in which we’re moving though.

After a decade of waiting (no, really) I finally saw Portishead play live tonight!  Absolutely amazing.  I’ve seriously never seen any singer mean and feel the words they’re singing like Beth does (or she should be an actor… that said, I saw To Kill A Dead Man.)  The sound was spot on, the songs were brilliantly executed, and visuals were great.  I was worried about the sound since the support band (Hawks and Hacksaws or something?) were quite tinny and you couldn’t hear them properly.  I was pleasantly surprised when I felt my clothes vibrating with the bass.  I fucking saw Portishead!

My friend Rachel was accepted into Oxford Uni today, so congrats to her (if she ever reads this!)

I’m hungry.  Somebody feed me.

Rik refuses to believe my theory that if you bang your head on your pillow seven times you’ll wake up at 7am.  He’s obviously a fool to himself.  When the next power cut hits town and he can’t find his mobile phone to wake him up who’ll be laughing then, ey?  Me – that’s who.

Wednesday was sheesha night. Nando’s then sheesha. Markaz is still open, but they’ve had to hide the smoking area in the sheesha lounge – no more smoking in the areas you can see. Presumably this is still against the law, despite the fact you wouldn’t be there if you didn’t want to breathe smoke. Anyway, was good to see Waz again. We had Nando’s too, which is always good. We questioned the intelligence of the girl who took our order though. Not content with us ordering the same meal at once, she insisted on taking our orders separately. I’m not sure how, since we told her about five times that we were both having the same meal, but she managed to get one of them wrong.

Last night I spent out in Leeds, first in Jongleurs comedy club, and then into Bar Risa (their counterpart) for Michelle’s birthday. The comedians were… okay. Everybody else thought they were shit hot. I guess I’m hard to please when it comes to comedy! Which brings me around to my other area in which I’m a snob – Bar Risa were presenting a band. To be honest, they were good. What annoyed me, apart from their slant toward generic pop/indie genres, was their sound and kit. The guitarist, while being evidently talented, had a PRS guitar shoved through a myriad of fx pedals, plugged into a half-decent amp and mic’d up to a shitty cab. The drummer seemed to have a 3/4 size kit with some cymbals so small I’m surprised he had the accuracy to hit them. They also had the kit mic’d up which, for the size of the venue, was pointless. All you could hear was drums. I guess the sound guy didn’t even know since he was stood in the wrong place to actually hear what everybody else was hearing. Again, everybody else I was with thought they were great. They were talented, but I guess they’ve not seen many good bands.

Today Rik and I went car shopping. I took him to the biggest car place here which has apparently been closed for months, which I only learned today. We went to Batley and looked around one place… the sales rep seemed pretty pushy so we had a quick look and then left. I need to find out where all the dealerships went.