Mathew Browne

What with work-work and freelance-work book-ending my waking hours for the past few weeks it’s only as it winds down I’m finding myself with some free time to post here. I’ve made myself a tidy little sum, however I have no tangible evidence of that, thanks to a hefty council tax bill, renewing my travel card, and an impulse purchase.

I got a new Pentax ist DL2 digital SLR camera the other day. It is the proverbial dogs bollocks. Brand new art-wank photo galleries coming soon…

My effort to shift some of my paunch has withered into nothing, again. It’s just too hot lately to exercise! Comfortable and bellied beats knackered and toned.

I had a work experience kid start this week. Less said the better. On his second day he got me into trouble by arriving early, then going to find my boss (interrupting a big meeting) and asking if he’d log him in. Which made me look like a total schmuck.

I am going home to Wales for all of 30 hours this weekend. The Joe Calzaghe fight I’d booked to see was put off (but the rest of the card wasn’t). I managed to cancel the tickets but my seats on the coach there and back were non-refundable. So I figured I’d go home anyway, seeing as I’d paid for them…

I was in Tesco this lunchtime and observed the 2 minute silence there. Not the most tasteful location but there you go. I could have gone to Russell Square or Tavistock Square (as both are about 5 minutes from my office) but I’m knackered and look a right state, so didn’t want to be an unwitting extra for a live Sky News/BBC/ITN/CNN broadcast…

Actual quote overheard:

Person A: Why kill innocent people? They should bring back the death penalty.
Person B: For who?
Person A: The bombers
Person B: The bombers died
Person A: How?
Person B: They were suicide bombers [long pause] that means they blew themselves up too…
Person A: Ohhhhhh riiiiiight.

For those of you who watch Big Brother, there is an unintentionally hilarious photo of Nikki (a few moments prior to entering the house) doing the rounds at the moment.

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.

So my visit to the Planetarium was enjoyable but brief. Louise and I then got some of those new Creme Egg bars, which were as excellent as they sound.

It seems I successfully negotiated to keep my rent at it’s current rate for an extra year, saving myself the princely sum of £520. Unfortunately, that’s only two-and-a-half weeks rent. Such is life.

I’ve recently been fuming that someone I know has dared to schedule their birthday party on my (actual) birthday, which conveniently falls on a Saturday this year.

I am incredibly annoyed.

Is my fury childish? Perhaps. But ask yourself this - even if you had nothing planned for the day, would you really want to spend your birthday at someone else’s party (someone who doesn’t even share your birth date, rather, they have knowingly nicked yours this year because it falls on a Saturday)? Exactly.

I splashed out a whopping £10 on a haircut this morning, marking the most expensive haircut I’ve ever had, and the first haircut I’ve ever paid for. Joyous.

I’ve been steadily offloading all of my old CDs and DVDs via Amazon. In the process, I discovered one of my old Buckethead CDs is now out of print and actually worth twice as much as I paid for it in the first place. Back in the drawer it went.

My website was hacked a few days ago by some Turkish script kiddies. Thankfully they weren’t destructive - all my original files were intact - rather they renamed my index files and uploaded their own, which pointed to a suitably humiliating “Ha ha. You’ve been hacked” -esque page. Given my profession I feel suitably punked.

I picked up my guitar for the first time in months yesterday. Within half an hour I’d torn up my fingertips with the strings. That’ll teach me for letting my musical instrument get dusty…

I managed to escape April Fool’s Day without being pranked, thankfully. I was, however, amused to hear that a radio station near my parents (and by “a radio station”, you know I really mean “the radio station”) had broadcast an announcement that people were panning for gold in a stream behind a pub in Llangennech. Brilliant.

The open day on Monday was an exhausting affair. Rather than doing anything particularly noteworthy, I had to lug tables, chairs and assorted equipment up and down stairs and in lifts. In the process, I nearly tipped over several hundred grands-worth of scanning machine. Close call. I got home at about 9 and slept for nearly half a day…

I had restrained myself and did not read the Wrestlemania results in anticipation of watching the event on Tuesday evening. I shouldn’t have bothered - some shoddy (and not at all crowd-pleasing) outcomes really ruined the experience, and helped me easily knock on the head any notion of flying to Detroit next year to watch Wrestlemania 23 at Ford Field…

For the record, Louise and I scored evenly when it came to our predictions. 6 out of 12.

All of this isn’t to say that the show didn’t have it’s moments, particularly the over-the-top entrances and the stuntwork. In fact, the Edge-Mick Foley match made for uncomfortable viewing, given the obvious real pain that their stunts were inflicting. The accompanying photo is of Edge rugby tackling Mick Foley through a flaming table to seal his victory. Edge (the one not wearing a layer of clothes for protection, no less) had been dropped in a pile of drawing pins moments before. Other highlights of the match included both men visibly drawing blood on camera, and Edge’s missus getting twatted in the lip with a stray coil of barbed wire (then bleeding all over herself). Clearly, they are all pussies and just know how to fall.

Thanks to CD And DVD Bargains I got an email last week alerting me to the fact that Amazon had listed the 7-disc Nightmare on Elm St DVD set for just £6.97. Shortly after snapping up said title they changed their misprinted price to £16.97, but they’re honouring the orders anyway. Lovely!

In unrelated news, an old friend from my schooldays is visiting London in October to perform at the Royal Albert Hall as part of a championship brass band ensemble. How posh! We then remarked how Carmarthen (one of our local towns) seems stuck in a time warp, as those who didn’t move away haven’t moved on. So true.

Yesterday I met a friend from my first year of halls at lunch. She divulged in some quite explicit detail her recent bout of food poisoning, and the drunken toilet habits of her former flatmate. I was glad I wasn’t eating at the time; my lunch - much like the most shocking part of the anecdote - was liquid.

Today I met Henry briefly to shock him with my £3k win and to ask how St. Paddy’s day went. I had bailed on going out with him and some old friends that evening thanks to my tardiness in leaving the event at King’s College.

Said event (a National Science Week event to promote medical physics at university level) was so-so. It was a bit mismanaged and my ineptitude at public speaking was apparent. But I did meet a Nobel prize winner and in terms of making me look good it did the trick.

My Missus (who is a King’s student) was hanging around all day to score brownie points from her tutor for looking like an enthusiastic student, along with poaching the free food on offer and swooning over me in my suit like a ravenous schoolgirl.

Yeah, it was terrible.

An excerpt about UCL from the Financial Times’ Lucy Kellaway in an article about university management. Make of it what you will…

Increasingly, universities are run by people who are trying to embrace what they see as modern management techniques. This can be catastrophic. They import third-rate management fads that the private sector has already junked and implement them badly. University College London got into a mess last year when it spent £600,000 ($1m) rebranding itself as UCL. Its staff were not amused by a 51-page booklet telling them how to use the new logo, containing edicts that all images should be “vibrant and aspirational” – such as two people jumping into the sea. They were also given two dozen words including “challenging” and “liberalism” that they were encouraged to use when communicating with the outside world. All of which would have been insulting to the intelligence of a humble office worker, let alone an esteemed academic.

I’ve had my parents staying for the weekend, which has been nice. Despite being our guest my mother has insisted on cooking, then criticising the weight I’ve put on in recent years. Joyous.

I was pleased to hear that a good friend of mine (and reader of this blog) has finally plucked up the courage to ask out his crush, and is waiting eagerly for their first date. How very Dawson’s Creek.

My father and I were out shopping on Saturday, passed a generic electrical retailer and were rather pleased with ourselves at Wales’ 8-0 lead over Italy. We weren’t so pleased when we got home to find we’d drawn the match 18-18, at home no less. We were equally unimpressed by today’s cack-handed performance by England against the French. What a load of bollocks this Six Nations tournament has been. However, it must have been great for the bookies.

Speaking of sport, rumour has it that Joe Calzaghe will headline a monster night of boxing in the Millennium Stadium, sharing top billing with Ricky Hatton. Looks like I’ll be in Cardiff on July 8th then… Of course, barring a sudden lottery win or the abolishment of airport taxes, this will certainly put paid to my plans to see Guns N’ Roses in both Dublin on June 9th and Paris on June 20th. Nevermind. Speaking of Guns N’ Roses, Gilby Clarke is playing in London in May. I must get myself a ticket.

On Friday I’m at Guy’s hospital manning a stand promoting the site that I’d made for work, in the company of a Nobel prize winner, no less. I also need to somehow find the time to get the medical image database up and running, which is a tall order considering I know fuck all about databases or web servers, and my go-to guy leaves his job on Friday.

Ooh, and I won a Wrestlemania T shirt. If good luck comes in threes, then I’m due my third soon…

In the last few minutes the EPSRC has confirmed the grant funding that secures my job for an extra TWO YEARS!!!

WOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am moderately pleased.

I have been spitting venom all morning because - for the second month running - UCL have screwed up my monthly salary. Resultantly, I hurriedly arranged a bank transfer from my parents to cover my rent (due tomorrow) and various bills that have been piling up. I got through to the HR department a few moments ago and asked them to put the money in pronto. I won’t hold my breath for it.

Wales v Ireland was a depressing affair…

On my way in to work I was stopped by a Frenchman (who couldn’t speak a word of English) requesting directions to Rotherhithe from where he was (near London city Airport). My A-level French finally came in useful for something. That, or I told him something like “The library is open. Grapefruit. Go there under car. Ice cream. Eric Cantona. ”

I watched the first 8 episodes of Family Guy series 4 last night. Easily the best cartoon series ever shown. “Quick! To the Hindenpeter!” You haven’t seen it? Bah, the reference is wasted on you.

I was forced to get the Jubilee line to work this morning. It goes through Canary Wharf. Thankfully, rush hour had been and gone, so there weren’t as many mergers-and-acquisitions types about, guffawing about the “bullish second quarter performance”, and how Piers in the next office “only drives a Jag”. That isn’t to say there weren’t any (there always are at Canary Wharf), but their comparative absence was heartening. Did I ever mention I really don’t like Canary Wharf? Not the buildings themselves, but some of the people who occupy them. They’re such… Oh, I did this already…

I have to give a presentation tomorrow, which I am not looking forward to. It’s all about this database I’m supposed to be implementing. Except I haven’t yet. So I’m hastily throwing together some mock-ups in preparation, then making a powerpoint (and working out just what I’m going to say) this evening.

Guns N’ Roses (my favourite band ever, if you’ve never noticed) are going back on tour this summer. I notice that they’re currently scheduled to be playing in Dublin on June 9th, and at the Download festival in Derby on June 11th. I’m crossing my fingers and hoping that they schedule a London gig in-between, which would also happen to be my birthday. ROCK!

My tickets for the WWE Smackdown taping at Wembley Arena arrived yesterday - 11th row! Woooo! (Tumbleweed rolls by). Speaking of Wembley, just how fucking stupid are Paddy Power (the bookmakers)? They start taking bets on whether or not Wembley Stadium will be finished in time for the FA Cup, and what happens? A steady stream of men in hard-hats in the Wembley area place huge sums of money against it. Oh, and they don’t receive a SINGLE BET on it being completed on time. And they’re paying up! Excellent job, Paddy Power. By the way, I have some magic beans for sale, if you’re interested…

Can’t wait for the weekend. 48 hours free of work and stress. Looking forward to the boxing on Saturday, though I fear the Skelton-Williams match will descend into a shitty hold-and-grab contest. On Sunday my friend Tom is visiting to watch the Wales-Ireland game. Should be a good’un.