Mathew Browne

My stupid laptop decided to go into an infinite loop of rebooting at the Windows screen yesterday. Six hours, 10 frantic phone calls to Liam and the technical support people, and four additional Windows installations later, I managed to get into safe mode to back up all my work. And what happens when I turn the laptop off and reboot again? Fucking works perfectly doesn’t it. Quite what the sodding problem was in the first place, I don’t know.

I spent the rest of the day preparing a 25-page defence to my ex-landlord’s counterclaim. (Granted, 15 of those pages are merely documents I’m including, but still) I have written confirmation from the letting agent that I never signed either inventory, and they also sent me copies of visual inspections done during the tenancy which basically say that everything was in good condition. They’re also working on providing me a reference of good tenancy, which should surely work in my favour. Feeling a lot better about the case now, but not resting on my laurels that it will go my way.

The missus is shelling out £8 a day to get a peak hour zones 1-3 travel card, seeing as the goons at TFL (that’s Transport For London for all you provincial types) have failed to deliver her student card. How nice of them.

This is now officially the longest I’ve ever been away from Wales. Over six months and counting. In my late teenage years I grew to hate living there, but going back to visit is nice. Plus, there’s the obvious benefit of Mum’s cooking. Mmm.

My Mum always cooks far too much on the off chance you’ll be hungrier than usual, and takes it personally if you don’t try to eat yourself to sumo proportions at the table. Kinda like Mrs. Doyle from Father Ted. She once cooked 20 chicken drumsticks for 4 people, along with a huge amount of vegetables and about two pints of gravy. It was lovely though. I’ve made myself hungry now, and it’s only just gone 9 in the morning.

Read the previous message.

Now Louise’s laptop refuses to come out of sleep mode. Karma, no?

And then I stepped on a staple. That wasn’t much fun, let me tell you. surprisingly little blood though, despite the depth of the wound.

The entry in my Outlook calendar was:
“October 7: Your 2 year anniversary. Forget this and Louise WILL kill you to death.”
Thankfully I have remembered.

Still waiting for my solicitor to send me a draft of the letter he’s sending to my ex-landlord.

Also, got my Flash Advance linker for Louise’s Nintendo DS. If you don’t know what one of these does… then I’m not telling you. Just know that it rocks. As do I.

Today I have my completed “allocation questionnaire” to return to the court, along with 11 (count ‘em, 11!) supplementary pages of invoices, emails, statements of truth etc that say the landlord is a grade A pain. Sent a copy to the court, a copy to him and a copy to my solicitor, who’s sending a letter to my ex-landlord tomorrow. Fingers crossed he throws in the towel now…

After much pestering, I got the maintenance people at my former letting agent to send me a copy of all the emails we exchanged while we were living at my old flat. Basically, about 60 emails of:

Me: “This has been broken since we moved in. Fix it.”
Them: “Soon.”

Turns out I’ve been royally screwed on the inventory too - the check-out inventory basically slates the flat as being in a poor condition. Helpfully, they included some photos with it, which, if you compare them with the photos we took when we moved in, show that the statement is a load of bollocks. They also claim that there’s rubbish left on the kitchen floor… which isn’t in their photo. Bright.

While going through these emails I found that one of them had been CC’d to my ex-landlord. Now tell me, how much fun can we have with that?

I just got off the phone with my lawyer. Wow, I’ve waited a long time to say that. Apparently I have a “fair” chance against my ex-landlord. I just had to pay a stupid sum of money just to get them to send a letter to him trying to settle out of court with both parties dropping their claims. Unfortunately, if it goes to court, my legal fees will far outstrip any money I stand to gain. Shit. So it’s either:

1) Pay my ex-landlord a pile of money that’s claiming unfairly

or

2) Defend it in court and have to pay huge legal fees, with the risk of having to pay the landlord money anyway, plus his legal fees.

Not impressed.

Barney (a friend I met at university) posted a message to his blog cursing his “British skin”. He’s on holiday in Mexico and managed to get sunburnt, you see. Well you’ll get no sympathy from me, sunshine. (See what I did there?) Try being a redhead. I once managed to get mild sunburn on a mostly cloudy day in Wales. Wales! Surely Barney your impressive fluffy head of hair would have served as a makeshift sombrero?

While we’re namechecking people off my course, Marek is also on holiday at the minute. He’s living it up in Japan, and seems to have a radar for punk/ska bands playing in parks and such. Also, has developed a penchant for traditional Japanese bathrobes, it seems. Curious.

Not to leave anyone out… Liam is doing a PhD, something to do with peer-to-peer networks, so will eventually be officially the doctor of piracy. I have kindly requested that he makes me a super-user on this new-fangled network, allowing me to leech as many DVD-rips as I can. I will then burn these to disc. Despite asking me every day for about a year, I most certainly will not lend these discs to anyone.

Today’s fact of the day is: Canary Wharf tube station has more tossers per square inch during peak hours than anywhere else in the world. Stop getting in my fucking tube carriage, harping on about Mike in Accounts and your 5-grand Golden Hello! I Hate Canary Wharf. At least at rush hour. During the day (when the suits are being fisted by the corporate machine) or at the weekends (when they’re in their warehouse conversions, snorting charlie or having heart attacks/nervous breakdowns aged 27), Canary Wharf is quite pleasant.

Tying in nicely with this mini-rant, here is an actual conversation overheard (read: “eavesdropped”) on the Tube sometime last week. I am providing a transcript here (as best as I can remember it) for your amusement, though nothing will do this justice really…

Setting the scene: Two suits get in at Canary Wharf, carrying briefcases. Both are aged late-20s/early-30s. One (let’s call him “Tosser”) is about 6′2″, wearing so much aftershave my eyes sting, and has one of those faces you’d like to punch. Permanently smug. I can imagine him being told he has cancer and still looking like Mr. Big. He doesn’t walk, he strides, and is almost certainly called Piers. He is accompanied by a shorter, portly guy. We’ll call him “Bored Colleague”.

Tosser: “So, yah, Edward says I’m on track for the third quarter bonus. To be honest I was there at the beginning of August…”
Bored Colleague: (Staring intently at the floor and not moving his eyes up to acknowledge the conversation) “Really?…”
Tosser: “Oh yah, yah. Should go towards the motor that Carrie’s been after. Women, eh?”
Bored Colleague: (Feigned laughter) “Yeah…”
Tosser: ” Yah, so, er, yah. So, David’s off to pastures new, then. Think I’m in with a chance there. I could do with the extra 20k a year” (Guffaws to self)
Bored Colleague: “I don’t think so.”
Tosser: (I couldn’t see the guys face, but I imagine it dropping) “What do you mean?”
Bored Colleague: “He’s offered it to me.”
Tosser: “Oh…”
(Silence for the rest of the journey)

How’d you like them apples, dickbag?

So the Missus just calls me while I’m at work to cry down the phone at me. Seriously, it took me about 10 minutes so get any sense out of her. What is it with crying women? That scene from Friends got it so right.

Turns out that one of the diamonds in her engagement ring fell out. That’s what you get when you buy jewellery from Argos. (Predictable punchline I know. I just couldn’t resist making that joke…)

Seriously though, it’s no biggie. Math was smart enough to insure the thing. Problem is, I now have to go back to Ernest Jones on Oxford Street and, presumably, fill in a shitload of paperwork. Fun.

I remember when I bought the ring in the first place, the guy serving me went out of his way to assure me that I could bring the ring back “if it doesn’t fit, or for any other reason you no longer need the ring”. Translation: “No woman would ever marry you, you ginger freak”. Prick.

For years, I had a crippling fear of lifts. I mean panic attack-grade fear. However, working on the 5th floor and being a thoroughly lazy bastard, I have found that recently, laziness has beat out my phobia. Ditto the fact that Goodge St tube station has lifts or 130-something steps to ascend.

Unfortunately, an incident on the lift at UCL today has done some work in resurrecting the fear. Four people got on the lift on the ground floor, pressing the button for the 2nd, 3rd 4th and 5th floor. Here is a poorly-written transcript of my journey after that…

Doors close. Lift starts moving.
Voice of the lift: “Second floor”
Doors open. Person leaves. Doors close. Lift start moving.
Voice of the lift: “Third floor”
Doors open. Person leaves. Doors close. Lift start moving.
Voice of the lift: “Fourth floor”
Doors open. Person leaves. Doors close. Lift start moving.
Voice of the Lift: “Third Basement”
Lift stops moving. Doors don’t open. I’m alone in the lift and shitting myself - not literally but nearly. Door finally opens, and the lift is about 18 inches above ground level. I leap out and scuttle off.

Third fucking basement?! The building I work in doesn’t even have a basement.

I’ve got 137 of 150 stars on Mario 64 DS. I should never have started playing it - all other games I ever play on it will seem crap by comparison.

Saw the new WWE Ultimate Warrior DVD tonight. Unlike other DVDs that WWE puts out, the sole reason they’ve released this is to bury the guy. A generation of guys like me grew up watching the Ultimate Warrior on Saturday mornings, and everyone of those will tell you he was awesome. Or that he knew a good pharmacist.

To the uninitiated, the Ultimate Warrior was this massive wrestler in the WWF (as it used to be called before the pandas and wildlife people took the initials back…) who used to have this killer rock entrance music, wearing war paint, leg it down to the ring, beat the shit out of his opponent, and leg it out of there. All in about two minutes. The guy only ever lost once that I can recall.

Of course, I’m older and wiser. I realise that, for a wrestler, refusing to lose is not good business - it makes everyone else look weak. Especially when you beat each of them in the time it takes your Average Joe to make a cup of tea.

Also, his interviews were longer than hs matches by a considerable margin and made fuck all sense. Actual quote: “I only breathe the air that smells of combat”. Indeed. Sounds like an Iron Maiden lyric. Maybe his arm bands were cutting off his circulation that day and making him feel a little woozy. Or maybe it was the daily fistful of steroids he chowed down.

So, this DVD I’m watching tonight tells the “other” story of the Ultimate Warrior - that he was a self-confessed steroid abusing homophobe, who was such an screwball that he actually changed his full, legal name to Warrior. No surname, just Warrior.

EDIT (24-Sep-05): I read on the Wrestlecrap message boards that he has a daughter called Arizona. Arizona Warrior. It must suck to have a fruitcake for a Dad and a name that sounds like a shit Western.