The fuck up faerie appeared!

Yes, at the end of this long and arduous day (ahem) the phone goes. A customer. Who says they have sent in an important bit of paperwork to us along with an application form. Did we get it. I cant remember because we get so much crap here so I say I will check and get back to them.

Well. From my records it seems we didn't get it. But they need the bit of paperwork - the ORIGINAL important bit of paperwork returned to them after the form is processed. The form we never got.

So.

That is going to be a fun conversation tomorrow morning isnt it.

Eeeep.

That little nagging voice that is saying

"You have not done enough work today!"

Little bastard.

FUCK OFF!

I will not let it bother me. Oh no. Imune to its little voice I am. Gone all Yoda have I. Hmmm yes.

In other news.

Tonight is a Pagan festival I cant spell. So there. It is supposed to mark the first harvest of the year I believe. It's pronounced loonessa, but the spelling would (and does in fact) make a dyslexic panic - so go look it up.

So some mead will be quaffed later. And thanks given.

So tomorrow will be another in a long stream of highly productive days. You know, those things I am renowned for.

Ahem.

My amplifiers, by Nick aged 44 and some bits.

1st one was an ickle transistor job that came with my first electric guitar. About 5 watts output – sounded like crap. So I would (in the pursuit of a more rocking tone) put a bit of old cloth between the speaker cone and the metal speaker chassis. This would muffle the speaker and make it distort. Mmmmmmmmm distorted fuzzy goodness. Then the speaker died – for some strange reason so I replaced it with one from an old stereo. Then a friend of mine built me a box of tricks that boosted the guitar signal and made the notes go all swooshy or blippy and all sorts of groovy things. I spent hours on my knees with my guitar in my lap fiddling with this device (almost said box but that would have been far to open for smutness) till my legs went numb up to my hips and would then lay on the bedroom floor in agony as the blood flowed back into them. This is why my knee joints are fucked up.

2 – a huge wooden box of a thing built as an experiment by another friend of mine. Also all transistor, also sounded like crap but it was louder.

3 – we started to rehearse in a band but had to hire amplifiers from the studios so we would not get A – drowned out by the drummer and B – laughed out of the building. These were generally HH100’s – again all transistor but sounded a bit better. And they had control panels that glowed green! Which we thought was well cool. Didn’t hide the fact that we couldn’t play but there ya go.

4 – after some time with some more rubbish that escapes me, the band I was in invested in two Sound City 120w valve heads. Huge heavy things with speakers to match, loud as hell but not big on rock distortion. So distortion pedals where needed.

5 – my first Marshall. A 50w valve amp with two 12 inch speakers. A classic non channel switching rock box.

6 – My first and only Marshall stack. Can be seen in the header picture on Old-Nick blog. That bastard used to move some air!

7 – Ahh the rack! We all had them in the 90’s baby. Marshall JMP 1 Pre amp, one multi effects unit and a Marshall 20w per channel power amp, all in an SKB moulded flight case. Still got all of it, but now it is in “storage” around the house. Sounded great and was the rig I gigged most with.

8 – two Marshall 50w amps (exactly the same as the one at No 5) one of which I still have and use, the other I think is living in Brighton with a guy called Jim Clarke, who teaches at the Brighton Music Institute. So it is technically still mine although he has been borrowing it for over four years.

This does not take into account numerous effects pedals and other bits and bobs stuck in front of, or added to them to make them noisier.

And that just about killed enough time for me to go to lunch.

You can wake up now.

Has been the arrival of "The trolley" pushed by little Gary from the canteen.

You can tell its not being the most productive and exciting day so far eh?

The trolley is loaded with sarnie goodness and fizzy drinks and such. I have got my self a bottle of coke and after a few swigs can now let rip with basso profundo belches when ever needed. Which pleases my female co workers no end. Mr Charm after all.

Gary is a geezer of Greek extraction, and he makes the best home made Scotch eggs I have ever tasted.

He had some on the counter of the canteen once and I asked him if they were his, he said yes, so I just had to bite into one.

Yeah, I know - you can have fun with that last prargraph if you want, my gift to the blog nation as it were.

Sooooooooooooo.

Busy busy busy.

I have an unrivaled skiving opportunity today and can blog when ever I choose.

Can I think of one single interesting thing to say?

WELL CAN I?

no.

So no change there then.

Oh bugger it, coffee time.

About all this wet weather has been that my hayfever has not bothered me too much.

Now I am starting to remember what a joy it is to have a runny nose, itchy throat and (on a bad day) itchy ears! My ears itch because the irritation in my throat speads to my ear canal. It is soooo annoying because it is impossible to scratch. Unless I rip my head open, which I do get tempted to do after a time.

Can't we have some more rain?

ahem.

Now for reasons that I will not and cannot go into here, our office is totally free of managers today.

Not one. All gone.

And we do have a lot of stuff to be getting on with as well.

But.

Exactly how hard, on a scale of 1 to 10 do you think I will be trying, with 1 being "coffee and blogging nonstop" and 10 being "a blur of well planned working fury"

Hmmmmmm?

You know your not actaully working to full capacity when you spend half an hour getting a report out of the finance system, filtering the information, making up the spreadsheet and comparing said information to the area your working on, then realise the reason nothing matches up is that you have in fact, entered the totally wrong area code and there is no way the records that you have been hurting your head with are EVER going to match up with what you had in the first place.

Je suis an llwnt.

innit.

Can I go to bed now please?

cometh the pub.

In an attempt to wring some life out of this beffudled zombie of a body that I inexplicably have been given to work with today, I am taking my copy of Classic Rock magazine and defecting to The Angel Puplic house.

Purely medicinal and desperate I asshure you.

That is all.

In other news.

I am a twat of the highest order.

The sun hit my retinas like a salvo of nuclear weapons this morning as I stepped outside Cassa del Nick. Basatard thing has no consideration for people of a delicate disposition.

Lets just say I should not be opperating any heavy machinery today shall we.

Now the state of my internals does not bode well for a long hard day doing whatever it is I am supposed to be doiong, but I do have a lot of it to do.

So I am going to.

Honest.

Soon.

God I need a pony.

and a coffee.

I feel like 10lbs of shit in a 5lb bag.

Happy Monday everybody.

(and in the voice of DLR doing one of his famous two note screams)

HhhhhhhheeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaHH!

Well

Fuck it and good night.

None of which, my dear 0.5 of a reader, will ever be mentioned again in this post or any of those little particles that you try to crack open with a hammer when you find them in your navel after a night on the alcohol express.

What?

OK, that's just me then.

I find myself sat here, which is pretty easy as I am after all sat here, so do not have to get up and go look for me - as I am sat here. As I said earlier.

Erm,

Anyway.

What were you saying.

Ah yes, I remember - something about your grandmother sucking eggs.

Well, I think you said grandmother. And I think you said eggs. Eeeeep.

In other news.

Someone has been stood up in a gay bar. And decided to text me to tell me they were pissed. Then of course made the mistake of telling me where they were.

So. Everything is going EXACTLY as per normal then eh?

Remember one thing pickles - If you can't trust yourself, Hide your money!

Yesterday evening when Sarah and Jo were cleaning out Sarahs pet snails (look it was them or a puppy or a blue whale or a Griffin) Sarah made an exciting discovery.

You may remember that when we put them in to this enclosure box thing that Sarah asked why two of them were "cuddling" I told her they were having sex and she was Ok with it. Well they really were at it as the discovery was six tiny teeny little baby snails loose were before there had only been adults.

She was dead pleased.

But I think it has addled her brain.

When I got home this evening, she was busy at the table making something out of a shoe box. "Guess what I am making daddy!"

"A mess on the table that you will refuse or forget to clear away before dinner?"

"No, a house for my boyfriend. I'm going to marry him"

"Oh good" said I thinking it was time to call social services "Who is this boyfriend then?" (and how the hell will he be able to live in a shoe box!)

"here he is!"

And she held up a tiny, little, hand made out of plastiscene, SNAIL.

Called, wait for it "Snail, not Mr Snail yet because we're not married"

I thought insanity skipped a generation.

I love her but she is clearly nuts.

Went to the British Museum last night (yes I know I told you already! sheees calm down!) with Jo and Sarah.

We were all a bit soggy on arrival thanks to the wonderful British summer, and squelched into the main entrance and headed for the Egyptian Galleries.

The entire museum seemed to be filled with boy scouts and other strangly uniformed young people from all over the world! Could hardly move in the galleries for people trying to take pictures.

So we moved around the painted caskets and some of my Egyptology course came back to me, so I told Sarah why there were eyes painted on one side of the coffins, what the canopic jars were for, why they put little model boats and such in the burials, what the little shabti figures were for. Sounded almost educated I did!

She of course loved the unwrapped mummified body and the arm that is so dry it looks like it is made from wood. We even saw the mummified cats, bulls and food!
I think Sarah understood why these items were put in the tombs when I explained it, but you cant ram information in there by force.

After this we all headed off to Wagamama for some noodles and sutch, which was great (I recomend the Chilli Chicken Remen) I like the fact that the food is good but reasonably priced and its all just benches at tables and no pretence at poshness. Just good cheap food.

Then back home to put a sleepy little explorer to bed.

For some unknown reason I have just eaten a twix bar AND a packet of malteasers. Pig boy rides again.

Well sometime you just gotta have choceeeeeeee!

Anyway, tonight after work I am going to travel in the oposite direction to home and meet up with Jo and Sarah to go to the British Museum. When this little trip was suggested to Sarah she looked doubtful, till I reminded her that the BM is where they have the Mummies!

Oh yes, nothing kids like more than genuine dead bodies in glass cabinets.

Mind you, put one in there bed just for a laugh and you never here the end of it!

In other news - go on, if you havn't already.

http://www.myspace.com/klickettyelephant

Well we were drunk. We had some vauge musical ability. So Kizlode and I borrowed a fourtrack, got legless and recorded a song. It was a cover of "Somewhere Else" and it went on for ages. Actually it was called "I left my lyric sheet - somewhere else"

We played it to some friends. They said - "lets start a band doing cover versions with silly lyrics!"

We had another drink and said "Yeah fuck it, why not"

So we did.

Go here to experience the above mentioned bedroom recorded epic drunk stoopid song and poor quality live recordings of a bunch of drunks, and remember we where just having fun!

http://www.myspace.com/klickettyelephant

Called Dusty. Repeatedly stabbed in fact – I even lost blood, but not much.

Yep Dusty was the guy that did my tattoo, and a very nice bloke he was too.

Yesterday was a bit of a trip back down memory lane as far as nerves go. Yes I was nervous, and as the day wore on it got worse. It reminded me of the feeling of excitement and fear I used to get before a gig, but this was the grade of nervousness felt before your second gig – not as bad as the first gig nerves but pretty bad. I realised that what I was in fact worried about was not how much it was going to hurt, but if I was going to make a complete tit of myself and pass out or go wobbly! I’d look such an arse.

In fact the only way I could make the nerves go away was, erm, well, to think about sex basically.

Hey it worked, so sue me!

After work I got off the tube at Bond Street and moved in a cloud of nervous cigarette smoke towards Selfridges. On the way I found somewhere to sit and munched away at my chicken (how appropriate) sandwich and found I had a deal of trouble swallowing. Next up, or down, was the Mars bar – you have to have eaten in the last hour before getting a tatt to keep you blood sugar levels up and prevent fainting.

Another nervous ciggie was consumed and I went in. I was a bit early but I knew there were forms to fill out, so I got sat down and started on the paperwork. You basically have to tell them if you have any medical conditions, indicate on a little body outline where you want the tattoo, write a brief description of the design and the artist will sign a box stating that all is agreed and so on, so if afterwards you go “hang on! That’s a flying pig not a dragon!” you have no come back. You get what you asked for basically.

The advantages of this place being in a big department store are that it has to come up to a high level of hygiene, the disadvantages are having to listen to Amy Wine-lake singing “Rehab” as it is too close to the girly clothes department! Thank god for MP3 players.

So the buzzing in the booth stops and out comes a satisfied (and still conscious and not at all crying) customer. Then out comes Dusty. Now they say, “Never trust a skinny Chef” so for tattoo artists it should go “Never trust a tattoo artist with no tattoos” Thankfully Dusty had a very plentiful covering, like a walking catalogue basically. He smiled at me and laughed when I made an “Eeeeeep” face and told him this was my first Tatt. “Nothing to worry about – its just fear of the unknown”

So in we went, he scanned the design then tidied it up and made a transfer, chatting as he worked, we had a couple of goes getting the positioning right and it was time to do some inking.

Dusty assured me the ink gun had a bark worse than its bite and he was not a heavy-handed worker. By now I was relaxed, as we had been discussing music, bars, tattoos and having a laugh so I was ready to let him do his worst. So he did.

I can honestly say that I have been scratched by people and its hurt more! It just felt like someone drawing on you with a pen and pressing quite firmly – no little sharp stabbing pains at all! I started to laugh at one point and told dusty what a twat I had been getting all nervous.

The actual ink to skin process took less than 15 minutes, and afterwards Dusty talked me through the care regime as he put one of those clear plastic covers over the new ink.

As I left, we shook hands and he said, “See you again?” with a little knowing smile on his face.

IF

And it is a big tall if with spotlights on it and huge granite letters, if I ever get another one, I would want Dusty to do it. He was brilliant, and a very nice chap.

For a Geordie like.

Sitting here having a quick squint at blogs before shutting the pc down, after a very hard day at work (well hard-ish, 8 hours with no lunch break, just a quick sarnie at my desk)

I have a large Ouzo and coke in one hand.

And a new "Tripple Goddess" Tattoo on my left upper arm/shoulder.

(Friends can see it in my media)

Some how, having a tattoo makes you feel just a leeeeeeetle bit more "Rock n Roll"

I know some of you have loads more than just one - but ya gotta start somewhere right?

Details tomorrow.

G'night.
x

The toilets in this new office are small, so in the gents there is only room for two cubicles (or Garry Glitters as I call them) and two washbasins. No urinals – this means that the chaps have to pee into the toilet.

I am amazed how many blokes can’t get there head round picking up the damn seat before they start peeing! I am not cleaning someone’s piss before I can have a pony!

And even if they do have the brainpower to think to pick the seat up, they seam to have no sense of aim at all, almost like they are in the grip of some disease that makes their hands shake and send little droplets of wiz all over the place!

Christ my aim is sniper accurate compared to some people apparently!

In other news,

Enjoying your lunch where you?

Is what I wanted to say to the young guy that sat next to me on the train this morning. A huge cloud of stale sweat smell billowed out as he dropped into the seat next to me!

God I hate that, and people say smokers smell bad.

OK we do, but I hope never to atain that level of stench!

That has to be one of the worst things about public transport - The Public!

In other news, loads to do today here at work with more unrealistic requests coming in from our totally out of contact section boss. Over 300 records checked and corrected by close of play yesterday, from a system that wont give us a report that we can work on? Certainly your madship. Like fuck.

Anyway, onwards and sideways.

Or so it would seem.

When sitting listening to my mp3 player through my in ear headphone things, I have to adjust them periodically to get them back into the optimum position for full frequency response. Basically poking them back into the ear canal. Now just after this delicate manoeuvre, I often hear a loud “Beeeeeeeeeeeeooooowwwwwwwwwzzzzz” sound in my left ear!

Just like the first note of “Tom Sawyer” by Rush (only classic rock fans will know this one)

That note was made, as far as I know, by the Taurus Bass Pedals of Geddy Lee.

It is actually just the sound of the rubber ear-plug vibrating as the air pressure changes in my ear canal when my jaw moves, but its quite odd.

It makes it sound like some roadie has come into the studio to pass another freshly peeled Groupie with her navel stuffed with Skunk and her nipples dusted with cocaine to the lead singer, and he has drunkenly put his foot in the wrong place on the equipment strewn studio floor!

Which I have actually seen happen at rehearsals.

Bloody lead singers get all the perks and all the keyboard player gets is some fat tattooed ex bike gang member standing on his equipment.

Here I is.

Despite a rather insane and interesting Grand Prix, the Sunday feeling of bored brain stagnation is creeping in.

Had a quick catch up on some blogs, good to see certain people back, sad to see certain people doing certain things. But hey, whatever.

Sarah is feeling a bit perkier today or appears to be. Might be able to get away without having to get her to the doctors. She has been playing the piano and drawing, is now dancing round the kitchen to the scissor sisters as Jo cooks.

Tonight I will be sad however, as the last episode of Rome is shown. Damn I love that show. I have a horrible feeling that one of either Verenus or Pullo may die. Hope not. Obviously having a vauge grasp of Roman history I know who is going to win the main punch up, so Mark Anthony only has about half an episode to use the C word as much as possible!

Other than that I think maybe the odd glass of something to relax with, and another dull-ish sunday will have slipped by.

Just got back from that there "The London" with Sarah and S&F.

Sarah now has two gold studs with blue "jewels" in the ends that match her eyes. She is very happy with them. We went to selfridges to get it done as you know. Sarah was looking a little nervous about it but I gave her lots of hugs and told her if she didn't want to do it she didn't have too. But once she spotted the earings she wanted, a look of determination appeared.

Up until Sarahs turn, the chap doing the ear piercing was a big bald headed, tattooed biker type called Dave. He came out and asked who was next and there was little Sarah. "Ah, OK - just hang on one second" and he went off to summon Steph, a teenage girl with black and blond hair, some facial piercings and quite a few nice tattoos.

She was great, and explained everything to Sarah as she worked, was very concious of cross infection and changed her gloves for a new pair after marking Sarahs ears but before piercing them. Sarah didn't cry or even get teary eyed. "Is that it?" she asked when Steph was done. "Yes darling, you have pierced ears!"

I watched all this as I stood next to her holding her hand, Sarah I mean - not Steph.

But if she'd asked me to......

ahem.

Then off for a quick shop in Hamleys and then lunch in China town.

Sarah is now earinged up to the gills and a little sleepy now, but looking foreward to showing them off to mummy when she gets here. And of course showing off the battery powered hamster in a ball that she got in Hamleys.

Right.

Sarah and I are (Ok, have been and will be again as soon as I stop doing this) curled up on the sofa, with a happy purring Cleo to one side of us and a happy not yet snoring Shipscook to the other, watching old Dr Who dvd's.

She is feeling much better and yes, she is here. My "darling and always in possesion of all the facts and not prone to confusing all and sundry" mother in law was wrong with her claim that my daughter was swimming in that downpour earlier.

Sarah just did not feel good after swimming. Sore throat and such. But after a sleep and a rest she decided that she was up to coming over here.

And I am so pleased to have her sat by me giggling and laughing as we make fun of the costumes and creatures on the tv, as she makes Mr S laugh with sayings like "I swear by the scab of my knee!" and such.

I feel much more relaxed now.

So, I'm off back to the sofa.

Talk to you all tomorrow or some when.

Right now I should be sat on the sofa with Sarah here at S&F towers watching the simpsons. Sarah would have been dropped off my her grand parents, and we would have settled down for the evening with some food and conversation with S&F and maybe a worry of the cats for good measure. Then bright and early-ish tomorrow it was off up the London to get Sarahs ears pierced.

But.

I got here and called my in-laws to say it was OK to bring Sarah over. But I was told that Sarah was feeling ill and was laying on the sofa. She had apparently had a swimming lesson at school today in the heated outdoor pool that her school has - IN THAT RAIN! and now is a bit hot to the touch and not feeling up to much. I called back in an hour and she was asleep, so I am going to call back in another half hour with a revised plan. Basically leave her there for the night if the in-laws don't mind (carting a sick child all over the place is never a go