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 disappointing. 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.

…is this.

If I was to say I had 2 tracks from “Chinese Democracy” by Guns N’ Roses (over a decade in the making) on my playlist, you’d probably call me a liar. You’d be wrong. God bless CD leakers.

Here is an abridged version of what I’ve been up to lately:

Saw the Superbowl with a bunch of friends from halls. Unfortunately, the owner of the bar acted like a self-indulgent prick who kept giving his own horrendously one-sided commentary, given he was a Pittsburgh Steelers fan. (And I was supporting them too, thanks to a £20 bet)

Saw the Wales-Scotland rugby match with a friend I went to school with, which was nice.

I have to make a presentation about a database I’m working on. Snag is, I haven’t done anything yet - in fact, thanks to a slow moving tech support group I don’t even have the server to play with yet. Unimpressed.

Work is plodding on. I suppose I’d enjoy it more if I had the certainly of a permanent job, but thanks to the glacier-like progression of grants within the funding system, I still have 3 weeks to wait until I know either way.

Generally, life is a little boring. Need something like a lottery win to spice it up. Having said that, I did win £32 on Euromillions last week. (I bought a ticket despite the fact that - according to the bookies -  Elvis Presley is more likely to crash a UFO into the White House then you are to win the Euromillions jackpot. I think I believe them.)

My 48-hour foray into the world of gambling is over. I discovered betfair.com, an incredibly addictive (once you grasp the rules) betting site where you can get the latest odds as a game is in progress.

Through a series of well-timed small bets on the darts final and the ongoing Masters snooker tournament I was able to “beat the bookie” on several occasions, meaning I had bet on each competitor with such odds that either way I’d win some money, or not lose anything at least. That isn’t to say I didn’t lose money, but my net profit was about £50 as of this evening.

Being an idiot, I didn’t quit while I was ahead - I then got my fingers burnt betting on the outcome of a frame of the Peter Ebdon V Stuart Bingham match. Ebdon was ruling the match and the current frame, so much so that his (decimal) odds of winning that frame and the match at the time were as low as 1.02, meaning for each £100 you slapped on you stood to win just £2. I, however, had stuck £30 on him when his odds were 1.80. But it was all for nothing as his opponent made a miraculous comeback and cost Ebdon the frame, and cost me £30.

I console myself with the fact that I eventually quit with £20 that I didn’t have before, and the fact that some poor bastard was so sure of Ebdon’s victory that 2 before he was beaten, he slapped down over 2 grand at 1.02 (where he would only have won about £40 had Ebdon won). Silly bastard.