Having yet another brief pause in my “hectic” working day outside, I saw the one and only John Hurt walking by.

He of the exploding chest in the film “Alien”

He of the excellent “The Naked Civil Servant” (a role he will apparently be reprising soon)

And what was he doing. Well walking down the street obviously, but laden down with two very down to earth carrier bags full of various produce and goods. Just like any other person. Why do we think all actors lead such glamorous lives? Why does the thought of someone we have seen on the TV and the “silver screen” doing something so mundane as shopping for everyday stuff seem so odd?

Must just be me.

But as he walked past he saw me looking at him and glanced back at me a couple of times.

And as I was thinking “blimey! It’s John Hurt!” I could see him thinking “Blimey, if Francis Rossi shaved his head – that’s what he would look like!”

I nearly nutted the C*nt!

Have you ever been somewhere and been listening to a song about the place you are in?

For example, in Ireland last weekend we were being driven down the “N17” road. Bradders turned to us and said “see, the N17 – as made famous in the song”

“Er, which song?” said I, being all hip with the music and the glavin.

“The one by the “Saw Doctors”…. called “N17”, they come from the next village”

With that he put the song on, sort of mid tempo soft Celtic pop, the song being about driving down the road of the title as you go to leave Ireland, and it was odd driving through places that were being named in the tune.

So have you been anywhere and heard a song that mentioned the place you are in?

No?

Oh well.

I have been beset by that vile thing “work” this morning. Oh yes, it happens to the best of us at least once a year. My line manager and I were running through the list of instructions we were given that were supposedly an easy guide to manipulating loads of important data using a very complicated programme. All went well until a certain point at which it all went rather bandy.

We retraced our steps and still ended up in the same state of bandyness. Not good we thought. So we phoned the “whiz kid” who wrote us the guide only to discover that he had left out one minor bit of information. Although it was obvious to him what the next move at this particular point was, what with him being able to use this system in his sleep, we didn’t spot what we were doing wrong so were stuck. But he put us on the right track and we did what we had to do. Yay team work-for-a-change!

In other news,

Yesterday evening I saw one of my soon to be ex neighbours standing outside his house chatting to someone. He is a builder by trade and was standing there shirtless in the sun and he had already gone that shade of red that only builders can manage. We have hardly had a week of sun and there he is about to go brown! I know sun cream is not something your average builder takes to work but don’t the all pervading tentacles of health and safety have something to say about this regarding skin cancer and the like. But you know what builders are like, “We don need yos steeenkink sun creams”

Well OK, maybe Mexican builders……..