Mathew Browne

My early present to myself was seeing Guns N’ Roses at Hammersmith Apollo on Wednesday night. In case you don’t know this, and in which case you’ve probably never talked to me, Guns N’ Roses are my favourite band. This makes my disappointment at their show two nights ago all the more palpable. You see, they appeared on stage 2 hours late, thus ensuring that the tubes would be closed by the time they were finished. Furthermore, the 2 hour wait was exhausting, given the heat of the venue on what had been a boiling day. The only saving grace is that I’d had the good sense to get seats for the show – two rows behind Brian May, Roger Taylor and Elle McPherson, no less. So I ended up getting home at 3am Wednesday night/Thursday morning, only to have to get up again 4 hours later as I had a presentation to give at Hammersmith hospital the next morning. I’ve always been one who values his sleep dearly, so I was incredibly gutted.

The show itself? It was pretty good actually, but by the time they’d come on stage I was already looking forward to announcement that the gig had been cancelled so I could just go home at a decent hour.

My plans for tomorrow were to go and have some drinks with friends. Unfortunately, most of these friends are football fans and insist on watching England’s match. I won’t watch it on principle – I’m not sacrificing one minute of any day to watch that shit, let alone on my birthday. So I’ll join them later and make sure we only venture into pub without a telly, in what may prove a vain effort to avoid football altogether.

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in work recently. But that’s a good thing – it’s all been freelance web design work. In addition to the NHS forum I’m setting up, I have completed a site for a photographer in North London. Unfortunately, good web design practices didn’t fit in with the minimalist style of site she wanted so it really isn’t suitable to be showing in my portfolio. I did try to convince her to adopt some good web practice (i.e. not having a splash screen, not making your links invisible on hover) but she was having none of it. And the customer is always right as they say…

The sites I’m still working on are for a wedding photographer, a cleaning company, an event planner and a communications company.

But it’s only in the last 24 hours that things have really picked up – an estate agent and a big media firm have asked me for quotes. I realise that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ll get them, but I am pleased that I’ve made a sufficiently good impression that they’d ask.

And now comes the unwelcome burden that is tax self-assessment. Although given the nature of my work tax shouldn’t have to be taxing. My records should look something like this:

Date – service: website design – cost
Repeat.

I hate the taxman.