Catmachine

Why have 12 people looked at my blog today? I haven't written anything in it since August... This is not a real blog entry, written for the sake of writing a blog. It's mere displacement activity and what's more, it's displacement activity once removed from whatever it is I should be doing in the first place. You see I should be doing some freelance work - even though I've just finished one client's work there's another that has been hanging around since January like a bad smell in a pub toilet, plus there are some more snapping at my heels. At some point when I actually get some time to properly relax and do nothing (as opposed to doing nothing whilst feeling guilty because I should be doing something) I'll put together some strict terms and conditions and send them out to everyone. Plus I'll have the time to update my own website instead of other people's! But the freelance work isn't what I'm avoiding by writing this. In order to avo...

For some reason - probably being busy or at least as busy as you can be when actually on holiday - I didn't get the time to complete this aide memoire whilst still in Edinburgh. So I'd better do it now before memories fade but the scars still linger... Saturday 19 August I think this is where I left you. Made my way over to the Gilded Balloon to see Hils Barker - a show I had not only done the poster for but also designed some fake chicklit covers for: Anyway, I thoroughly enjoyed the show. Friendly, chatty standup with just the right level (for me) of annoyance with the world and some amusing musical sequences too. I then made my way over to the Pleasance Courtyard and saw Star Trip - a comedy-mime-music-dance science fiction show.Very odd. The second half of it was pretty good though. Afterwards I suddenly discovered that we would be doing a Gonzo show after all... Sunday 20 August Up latish and into town as per. J and I met up with M and made our way over to the Baby Bel...

And so on and so forth... Got back into town the following day just before J's show. Hung around the courtyard for a while then had a drink with J,P,D and D's brother & friend before making my way across to the Smirnoff Underbelly to see Gary le Strange: Beef Scarecrow . Another great show. Very different from the previous ones and somewhat disturbing. In a good way. Then it was off to Brookes for the rest of the evening. So - so far two days and two shows. Not a good rate as I'm only here for a very few days. I'll have to do something about that today.

Another in the occasional series of not-so-much-a-blog-as-an-aide-memoire-to-prevent-myself-forgetting my holidays... After a flight which involved a lot less hassle with the security than I had imagined (I actually turned up to early to check in) I arrived in Edinburgh. It was raining. I walked from the bus stop to the Pleasance Courtyard which didn't seem to have changed - odd to think that it doesn't actually exist as such outside August. Met up with J, D and P, hung around for a while and then went to see their show ( Bad Play: Second Coming ). Which was excellent. Would definitely like to see it again and not just because it's family. After that it was off to Dolphinton for a relatively early night and ten hour's sleep, which was greatly appreciated as I was a little the worse for wear after the apparent "excesses" in Brighton the night before.

Once again I find I've disappointed myself by not writing anything here for simply ages. And once again I must insist that it's not a case of writer's block – I haven't even got far enough to discover whether I'm suffering from that particular ailment. No, the problem is that I'm still under the thrall of a spell of extreme busyness (as opposed to business). Luckily things now seem to be easing off – just ever so slightly. Nevertheless, this has been one of my busiest periods ever, especially regarding the freelance workload. I had – well actually still have – a couple of largish projects on the go which were taking up most of the time I normally allocate to this sort of stuff. And then, all of a sudden, after a silence of over two years, old clients came crawling out of the woodwork en masse like an infestation of termites demanding further work and updates to projects I'd created for them in the past. So what brought that on? The odd thing about this is ...

After a couple of weeks complaining about other things I am returning to the subject of two earlier blog entries as I just can't leave it alone. And of course because there is still more to say. Yes, I'm going back to talking about travelling on the railways. So far the majority of the negative things I've been saying about train travel have been to do with fellow passengers. This isn't surprising, as Other People are generally responsible for 95 per cent of trouble, irritation and annoyance in the world. However the third and final whine in the railway trilogy concerns the attitude of the railway people themselves. A while back the railways - who were probably all one nation under the flag of British Rail at the time - stopped calling their users "passengers" and started calling them "customers". I seem to recall something of an outcry at the time, complaints about over commercialisation and the inappropriate application of a business model to a pu...

Today is the anniversary of me being single. Being on my own in this way is really starting to have a deleterious effect on my quality of life, and I'm not just talking about gloomy solitude or lust frustration. I feel that in order to meet someone I have to look my best, which means that I have to lose weight, which means that I have to exercise and diet. Exercise is never any fun (no matter what the steroid-freak body nazis at the gym might say) and even though I'm no foodie, a strict diet can be annoying and unpleasant. But I persevere in the hope that - in the face of all the evidence - it might make a difference. But no matter how much I try and make myself more attractive, the problem remains that I'm not meeting enough eligible women for there to be a chance of it having an effect. The people I'm surrounded by - be they friends or work colleagues - are all firmly in long-term relationships Probably hanging on for dear life if they've spotted what it's lik...

This still isn't very good. It seems almost impossible to get me to write this thing on a daily basis. I've already offered up my excuses; despite this I am rather disappointed in myself. Its almost as if writing on a weekly basis is my limit. The easiest thing for me to talk about would be the weather were I to conform to the British stereotype. So I won't do that. However, I will use it as a jumping off point. It's been exceptionally hot of late, and whilst I'm more than happy with the long days and the amount of light (which amongst other things prevents SAD), the temperature makes me want to hide in a cave. How lucky am I then to work in an office with brand-new, kick-arse reinforced steel air conditioners. Very lucky, that's how lucky. Except... since moving into these offices a couple of months ago I've had more colds (or respiratory disorders as I call them when I want to sound high falutin') than I have in the past couple of years . I'm sure ...

Well this isn't very good is it? Only a few days ago I was going on about how I'd be trying to write at least 500 words a day and then I write nothing for five days. In my defence I would just like to mention that it's not as if I sat down at the computer to blog and then discovered that I had writer's block. It's more that I've been busy. Lame excuse perhaps, but true nonetheless. Last night, a work night, I got home and did nearly four hours of freelance work. That's a whole 'nother half day. Still, enough of that. Despite the lack of action, I did actually have a rough idea of what I was going to write about. It all came about when I was reading an online advert seeking to fill a position. One particular phrase stuck in my mind. No Time Wasters This strikes me as a very odd thing to say. As if someone reading the advertisement is going to say to themselves, " Ah. I was going to apply for this post in order to waste their time and mine, but I see...

I'm attempting to use this blogging tool as a way to practice writing. This is in the hope that if I flex my brain's creative node often enough, I'll be able to start (and in one or two rare cases finish ) some of the short stories that are lurking in my head. I have already been blogging approximately 500 words weekly on Myspace (the posts from which I'm going to start sharing here from now on) but I am beginning to suspect that it's not nearly enough. I'm going to aim for approximately 500 words a day on here. Wish me luck. So here I am wittering away about nothing in particular. I doubt that anyone is going to read it. Which is lucky really - reading this kind of thing is liable to be the literary equivalent of watching a very unhealthy flabby person's first visit to the gym in years. Which is something else I should really be doing. If only there was some kind of shortcut to all this - if I could get back the physical body I had fifteen years ago I pro...

In theory I can drive as I passed my test; however I have never owned a car. As a result it's around thirteen years since I last found myself behind the wheel of a large automobile. I've probably forgotten how to do it. The thing is there's no space for a car where I live at the moment and the advantages of sticking to public transport or cycling around far outweigh the disadvantages. Not that you'd think that from the way I whinge on and on about it. But the important thing to take on board is that there's nothing wrong with cycling per se or travelling by train per se . The problem is that you have to engage in these activities alongside members of what sometimes seems to be the planet's dominant species, Homo Stultus ("Stupid Man"). Queuing to buy a ticket behind a member of this species can drive you to premature distraction. However, the problems don't cease once you've bought your ticket. Firstly, Homo Stultus always has a problem with ...

This is one of the new ticket machines on Brighton station. Not bad really. A nice touch screen, which means that there are less moving parts to break - and that the interface can easily be updated by installing new software. It takes credit cards, which means that, what with the new chip-and-pin system, buying a ticket should be quick, easy and painless. Its cousin - not pictured - takes coins and notes as well as cards, so there really is no excuse for not being able to buy your ticket now. Finally, something that will free us forever from Ticket Hall Hell - where belligerent morons use the fact that they're buying a ticket from an unfortunate cashier to make the rest of us wait in a frustrating, interminable purgatory. You know the types. Firstly, the kind of person who doesn't know where they're going, when they're travelling or what a train is until they arrive at the ticket window. They then proceed to use the hapless ticket clerk as a sounding board about what ro...

The world of advertising is an odd one. However it seems that when you can advertise yourself though your own media then even the normal rules don't apply and it all starts getting surreal. I started thinking about this the other day when I saw this self-promotion on the back of a bus: Yes, I know it's a quote from Little Britain , but I don't understand the relevance to the Park & Ride scheme. Am I being obtuse or does it just make no sense? Did the advertising "creatives" get stoned and watch a L ittle Britain DVD? I suppose we're just lucky that we didn't end up with: "Park and Ride... The only gay in the village" It gets weirder when you get on the bus though - that's when you come across the posters inside. Originally they used stock photography of middle aged men and women photoshopped into a bus driver's uniform. The same bus driver's uniform. Which was boring and not particularly well done, but not really that odd. Howev...

It's not that long ago that the possession of a mobile phone was still relatively unusual, but it's surprising just how indispensable they have become over the past seven years. Accidentally leaving the thing at home is almost like having your left arm cut off. And yet, despite their twenty-first century ubiquitousness, there's still a surprising amount of negative feeling towards them and their users. Of course you can understand where this antagonism originated . In the 1990s many a smarmy sharp-suited businessmen used his leatherette-encased-brick-a-like mobile as a status symbol, showing off in public by bawling into the mouthpiece that he was on the train but would be home in five minutes. Who wouldn't get annoyed with that sort of behaviour? However, the tenacity of this mobilephobia - hanging around into an age when we've all got one and have all had to use it in public - is totally bizarre. It's not as if you even need to shout into the things any ...

I try to cycle in to work; mostly because it's likely to be the only exercise I get all day what with the largely sedentary day-job which has me sitting in front of computers from nine to five. OK, so there is a gym here but it's at the top of a hill for god's sake! Unfortunately, when you cycle you somehow end up becoming a third class citizen of the streets, sworn at and abused by car drivers and pedestrians alike, despite the myriad roadcrimes they themselves commit. This is even if you stick to the cyclepaths. Car-drivers seem to assume that cyclepaths are intended for use as additional parking space, meaning that you have to swerve past them into the motorised traffic - and get sworn at by the other drivers for your trouble. This gets even worse when they park in the cycle lane and then open their door into your path when you're already swerving to avoid them (and getting sworn at by the other drivers for your trouble). Then there are the drivers emerging from the ...

The problem these days is that there are so many separate online services to sign up for that your online personality ends up shattered with bits of yourself scattered all over the internet... You know the kind of thing you mean. You have a MySpace account, but then one of your mates has one on Friendster so you join that too. Then you get an invite from a friend to join them on Hi 5 and another to start mapping your friends on Frappr . In the meantime you're uploading all your photos to Flickr and collecting all your favourite links on del.icio.us . You have a blog at Blogger , but then again all these other services offer them too... Some of these services are new and innovative whilst others are attempting to emulate the ones that are. But how can you tell which is which? You have to sign up for them all and end up with your identity schizophrenically splintered across cyberspace. I'm going to try to do something to gather my online self all back together by creating a p...

The first in an occasional series when I can remember and be bothered to record them. Somehow I had got Siouxsie and the Banshees to do a gig for my birthday on the top floor of Dream RIBA. They'd also stayed at my flat the night before and in honour of that they ad libbed a song about my cat (the lyrics of which just consisted of Siouxsie making cat noises). Some of this appeared to be happening in Dream Central London. At some point soon I'll expound on my observations of Dream locations and landscapes .and how they're consistent from dream to dream - but remarkably different from their Waking World equivalents. Also about how there seems to be dream continuity - someone in one dream can refer to an event in a previous dream and it makes perfect sense as it happened in the same "world". Lots of other stuff about packing up the band's equipment and a related segment which also took place in Dream RIBA - me and several colleagues from my current place of work ...

This is something that has been annoying me for a while; however my recent return from LA where I used the buses quite a bit has brought it to the fore again. In my local area there's a flat fare for a bus ride. It's rather high - 1 pound 50 pence 1 - but fair enough. In addition, they also use driver-operated buses. This means that it is impossible to get on the bus without either paying your fare or having a valid pass. Again, fair enough! The corollary of this situation - namely the combination of the driver operated buses and the flat fare - is that it is completely impossible to fare dodge by riding too far on your fare. Why, then, do they employ ticket inspectors? And they do - I've been on more buses troubled by a ticket inspection in the few years I've been here than I have in decades living in London. Don't they trust their drivers to do the job properly? If I was a driver for this company I'd be insulted by the implication of employing ticke...

Just to finish off a short account of my week in Los Angeles. Sunday. Drove with Samantha, kids and D&G to Snow Mountain for sledding and general cold white activity. Impressively high up and deceptively ultraviolet; it was cloudy and so I didn't wear sunblock. As a result I ended up with bad sunburn. At least it's physical evidence I've been away somewhere climactically different. After a while the snow started vanishing. Still an impressive scene though. Monday I got the bus all the way to Santa Monica. I'd been before, but this time it seemed more crowded. Despite being basically a tropical beach it had something of Brighton about it, despite everything being ten times bigger. I visited the pier, the beach, the pub and Borders bookshop. All of which of course you can indeed do in Brighton. But it was more interesting doing it here. Tuesday was generally a chilling out ish day. Met Samantha for lunch and then went to watch Darcene's ASL lessons for the child...

This isn't really a blog entry, more an aide memoire for myself just so I know what went on whilst I was away and when. And why. Arrived Tuesday evening (18 April) after almost 24 hours solid travel. Stayed awake at Samantha's until 1am, and so forced my bodyclock into the new timezone... Wednesday went with Mark and the kids to Darcene and Gordon's. Gordon gave me a lift to Samantha's work around lunchtime.Met her for lunch. Spent the afternoon wandering around Hollywood Boulevard, meeting Samantha again as she finished work. Thursday. Mark dropped me off in Griffith Park around mid-day or late morning. Spent the next few hours walking around the park which apparently contains rattlesnakes and mountain lions. I didn't see any although I did see a lizard and a scarab beetle. Walked all the way out of the park down to Los Feliz and then got buses back to S&M's house. Chilled out for the rest of the evening (well it had been a long walk). Friday. Got bus to me...