Wide Load

For some reason, the people in charge of the trains have reverted to using the older style carriages in the morning. This is actually a good thing in a way - the older trains have more seats, for one thing. The only problem is that the seats are roughly 3 inches (that's 7.62 cm, metric fans*) too narrow. Not such a problem if you're at the window seat, but if you're the next one along, 3 inches of your seat is already occupied by overspill from the person beside you. And if you're the unlucky sod on the end, 6 inches of your seat is already taken. Which means that you're left to perch on the end in a position so uncomfortable you'd probably be better off standing. At least the newer trains have armrests to prevent others from encroaching on your territory.

* Talking of fans, on the train home last night I saw something I don't think I've ever seen before. A guy using a fan. Not one of the battery-operated ones, one of the little paper ones that you can fold up or, uh, fan out. You know you have a weight problem when you need to use a fan in Scotland in February.

The day the music (almost) died

Over the course of the weekend, I made an interesting and unexpected discovery.

It seems that an iPod can survive being submerged in water for up to twenty seconds. I'd rather not go into the specifics of how this discovery came about - suffice to say that I had been drinking.

A Complaint

Just for a change.

I can see the point of having announcements on trains, particularly for people not familiar with the route. It would be quite handy to have someone telling you which station the train is approaching. Or if you wake up and it's dark outside, and you think 'Where the frick am I?'. Quite useful, I suppose.

But there's a limit. What you don't need is a 3000-decibel spiel informing you that you're now approaching Pigsknuckle, and a few seconds later that you have now arrived at Pigsknuckle, where you should change for routes to Bonefuck, Arsecandle and Shithole. Oh, and the station has a no-smoking policy. Oh, and mind the gap when alighting from the train.

Mind the gap? In case of what? How many people in the history of the world have ever fallen down the gap? Not many, I'd imagine. The gap is about 3cm (that's an inch and a bit, imperial measurement fans). You couldn't even fit Kate Moss through that. At least not without a lot of effort.

And now the train has left Pigsknuckle. The next stop for this train is Shutthefuckupdammit.

Hey Kirk

I used to enjoy reading this guy's blog. But it's almost a year since he updated it. Perhaps he just lost interest... who can say? Shame though. I just hope he's OK.

Uncle Ian

Last night I received the sad - but not entirely unexpected - news that my Uncle Ian had passed away. He'd been in poor health for quite a long time following a very nasty accident at home.

Ian and my Dad came from a family of five brothers - Ian was the last one remaining after Dad shuffled off the old mortal coil in 2002.

This is the most recent picture I could find of the two of them together, taken (I'm fairly sure) in July 1997. Ian is the one on the left of the picture.

Sick

I came down with a cold over the weekend, and had to take the day off work today. If nothing else, it gave me plenty of time to catch up on some movies, namely Borat and Team America: World Police - the latter of which I've been meaning to watch for quite a while - and the latest episodes of Prison Break, Heroes, The Simpsons, Family Guy and American Dad.

Feeling a bit better this evening, but I'll wait and see how I feel in the morning before making a decision about going in to work. After all, still got a whole pile of stuff to watch here.

And we're back

After everything that happened, getting my job back was a mighty relief. When I returned to work in September, it was on a six-month contract. The arithmetically talented amongst you will no doubt have calculated that a six-month contract commencing in September 2006 will expire in March 2007.

It was nice, therefore, to be offered a permanent position starting from the middle of February. And it's good to be back amongst a few of my colleagues from my first tour of duty. Heck, it's good to be anywhere other than that place.

Big Bother

Pardon the intemperate language, but you know your country is fucked when the top story on the evening news is Celebrity Big Brother.

The Bollywood star Shilpa Shetty has been the subject of a hefty amount of abuse from fellow housemate Jade Goody. Accusations of racism are flying about all over the place - particularly bad news for chancellor Gordon Brown, currently in India to promote, well, Gordon Brown mostly.

Now, I can't say for sure if Jade Goody's behaviour is racially motivated. After all, I don't know what goes on inside Jade's head (if anything). But it's certainly bullying. Prompted, as bullying so often is, by jealousy. Jealousy brought on by the fact that Shilpa is a talented woman, with a successful, identifiable career - not to mention a great deal of class and no small amount of beauty. Whereas Jade... isn't.

I was going to add that Jade is a no-mark, reality TV-created, non-celebrity with a face like a pig's arse. But I don't think that would be helpful.

Suggestion Box

Rooms in hospitals should be soundproofed. It's a tad disconcerting for the patient waiting to see the consultant, to be able to overhear the conversation between the consultant and the medical students in the adjoining room. When said persons are discussing the aforementioned patient's case history. And laughing. The patient might have to start coughing discreetly to drop the hint that, if the people in the next room can hear the patient, then the reverse is also true. Some patients would prefer only to hear the good news, or - at the very least - the diplomatic version of the news.

In other news, I didn't get to see the orthopaedic surgeon at the hospital today. He was off work with a broken arm, after falling off his bicycle (more than likely the wind blew him over).

Big Al gets the morning train...

...he works from, er, 10 till 6:30.

After three weeks off, going back to work wasn't the most attractive proposition. Three weeks which, I might add, passed at the speed of what seemed like three days. I hate when that happens. Anyhow, while most decent, respectable people* are back at work, those workshy layabout students appear to still be on holiday, judging by how quiet the trains are. It's great. Lots of empty seats, for one thing. A bit of comfort for a change. Hurrah! I don't expect it to last too long though. Back to the usual game of sardines next week, I suspect.

I've taken to downloading episodes of The Simpsons onto the iPod, and watching them on the train home. The journey home takes about 40 minutes, which is conveniently roughly long enough to watch two episodes.** Actually, I hardly ever watch TV on TV anymore. Only on the computer or the iPod. Which is a great way of filtering out all the crap the TV companies constantly churn out.

* And me.
** No adverts - makes all the difference.

Happy New Year

Better late than never, right?

Once again, the weather succeeded in buggering up the New Year celebrations around Scotland, particularly the big outdoor events in Glasgow and Edinburgh. You'd think we'd know better than to organise street parties at the end of December.

Couldn't we move New Year to, say, the end of July? At least there would be an outside chance of some half-decent weather.

Christmas

In the midst of all the festivities, and the TV specials, and the tinsel and the turkey, it's easy to overlook the true meaning of Christmas. Presents, of course. I got some pretty good ones this year. A couple of good books. Not the Good Book, you understand. A presentation set of Lagers Of The World - which begs the question, 'as opposed to Lagers Of... where else, exactly?'. Well, it does to me, anyway. Oh yeah. And some socks. Always with the socks.

The kids* fared better though. iPods, robot dogs, battery-powered monkeys (and by the way, you don't want to know where they had to insert the batteries). And what the hell has happened to Lego? I know they have a lot to compete with, but Jeeeeeeezzzzzz. Wasn't like that in my day. I was impressed when I managed to build a wall out of Lego.

*My cousins' kids, that is. There are no Little Big Al's**
**As far as I'm aware.

Bruce and Melissa

For no particular reason, except that it's great...

Hair

Christmas shopping all but done. I blitzed it in just under an hour, which is pretty good going really. I also took the opportunity to get a haircut - which, somewhat disappointingly, took a very short amount of time. I'm sure it used to take the best part of hour for a haircut. Now it's done and dusted in about six minutes. It takes more time now to tidy up the hair growing out of my ears than to trim the hair on my head.

I wish my body would expend as much effort in growing hair in my bald spot as it does in growing hair down my nose and out of my ears. Hell, I'd happily lose all my pubic hair if it could replace some of the hair on my head. Provided, of course, that it didn't grow in quite so curly. Or so ginger.

Yule Be Sorry*

Hurrah. I'm now officially on holiday - right up until the 9th of January, in fact. Not bad going, I reckon. Today was also the end of my three-month probationary period at work, and just for good measure, my three-month appraisal. Which went OK. Other than the fact that it cut into time when I was supposed to working, thereby somewhat buggering up my planned half-day.

Anyway, I'm not too bothered. Just looking forward to the next three weeks or so. I don't have any major plans for Christmas or New Year yet, but I'm pretty damn sure it has to be better than last year and the year before that. It wouldn't be difficult though. Christmas 2004: In prison. Christmas 2005: In prison. Christmas 2006: Not in prison. It would have to be a real stinker to be worse than the last two.

First things first. Tomorrow I'm considering making a start on the Christmas shopping. And if I get around to starting to tomorrow, with any luck I'll finish it tomorrow too. I hate when these things drag on too long**. My original plan had been to buy a lot of stuff online, but in true Big Al style, I put it off until it was way too late - as a consequence, I find myself in the dreaded position of actually having to go into a shop. Or perhaps even more than one shop. Good grief.

* I know I am.
** Generally speaking, any longer than an hour is 'too long'.

Peter Boyle

There goes another one. Peter Boyle died a couple of days ago. I guess he was best known as the cranky father in 'Everybody Loves Raymond'.

He appeared in two of my all-time favourite movies. In Taxi Driver, he played the character 'Wizard'. He also appeared, to glorious effect, as the monster in Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein.

Most recently he was the gleefully obnoxious Frank Barone on ELR. A show that I have a particular fondness for. It got me through some rough times, while I was in chokey. 'Raymond' was, and still is, on Channel 4 most mornings. There wasn't much incentive to stay awake after the insanely early wake-up, but a half-hour in the company of Ray, Debra, Robert, Marie and Frank made it a little easier.

Anti-Social Club

Friday night was the company's official Christmas night out. There was also an unofficial night out, attended by a group of eight of us who fancied doing our own thing.

First port of call for the Anti-Social Club was the Republic Bier Halle, for some tasty lagers and equally tasty (not to mention jaw-droppingly overpriced) pizza. Fortunately we had reserved a table in advance - turned out this was a wise move, as a group the size of ours would have been hard-pressed to get in otherwise. After that it was round the corner to Buzzy Wares in Princes Square, until chucking-out time.

From there, the remaining four of us headed over to the casino where the official night out was taking place. We got there around 1am, just in time to see most of them leaving while we were standing in line to get in. I think they were a little surprised - and in some cases, possibly a tad miffed - to see us there. Anyhow, we had a few drinks at the bar before heading downstairs to where to the action is. 'Action' being the usual casino stuff. Blackjack, roulette, slot machines, hookers. You know the kind of thing.

I didn't take much to do with the gambling - after all, I'm not the kind of guy to let gambling stand in the way of some serious drinking. Somehow we managed to pass the time until about 5am before going our separate ways. If I'd known I was going to be out until that time, I might not have bothered booking a hotel room for the night. I'd checked into the hotel at Central Station. By the time I got back there it was almost 5:30am - another half hour or so and I could have taken the first train home. But I figured that since the room was already paid for, I may as well use it, even if it was only for a few hours. Three and a half hours, as it turned out. Still, at least I managed to sleep for most of that time.

Big Al

A propos of nothing, but us Big Al's have to stick together.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Beware the casual rail traveller. The everyday commuters I don't mind quite so much. Obviously, I'd prefer to have the train to myself. Actually, I'd prefer to be in a car, but that's not really an option. Anyhow, the people who get the train day in, day out - I don't mind them so much. They get on the train, sit down, and either put their earphones in their ears* or go to sleep. Personally, I fall into the latter category in the morning, and the former category on the return journey. If I have to get out of bed an hour or more before I'm ready to, I figure 45 minutes shut-eye on the train shouldn't be too much to ask.

And on a good day, I'd get it. On a good day when everyone in the carriage knows the rules. You get on the train. You shut the hell up. You do not sit right next to people** who are trying to get some much-needed sleep, and talk in the loudest possible voice for the whole frickin' journey about a whole lot of crap that no-one else is even vaguely interested in.

Sorry to sound grouchy. I'm just not a morning person.

* Best place for them, really.
** i.e. me

Mr Mercury

It's hard to believe that it's fifteen years since you left us. We think about you all the time. We miss you. Rock on.