Avaragado's blog

I’m watching the opening ceremony of the Olympics, as is my custom. It seems that, this year, to be part of the procession of athletes it helps if you are in fact an old fat man.

Yeah, I know, coaches and officials. Maybe that’s what I should do. I’ll become an old, fat official for an easy-to-officiate obscure Olympic sport, like archery, and then I can take my rightful place in Team GB. I’ve always fancied being waved at by politicians.

Oh my god, Bjork’s on. Miming and dressed as an unkempt duvet. Very Olympic.

Enter bathroom fully clothed, close door, turn on hot shower (don’t get in!), wait five mins.

That’s approximately the feel of Cambridge today. It reminds me a bit of the Maldives, but without the sand, sea or strawberry milkshakes.

Today’s junk mail in full:

• Thinking of hiring a skip? Think again!
• Flat roof problems solved permanently with Rubberbond EPDM Roofing Systems
• Fed up painting your roofline?
• Preparing for emergencies: what you need to know

Yes, my copy of HM Government’s all-purpose guide to bee stings, fire/lift incompatibilities and terrorist attacks has arrived. Naturally there’s already a spoof of the real thing.

I now know I have to go in, stay in and tune in if there’s an emergency. Hang on, isn’t that what I do most nights anyway? Is an emergency just like any other night, but with an extended News?

I’m back on the Cambridge Business Park for a few weeks, in the same building as Bob but on the ground floor. Courtesy of the newly de-chipped Bovster I’m working on a demo web site for Ant. Interesting project, and working for a browser company should be fun.

“Will meet again” – Your Spectrum, September 1985 (scan of first page)

18 months later, they paid me £25 for my contribution to this article. (I’d written a complete article, and included a map; I think the only thing that remained was the general flow of my text – all the words had changed… I think I’ve still got my original somewhere, in dot-matrix format.)

Yesterday Chris and I tootled down to London to see “once fey indie misfits” (© The Guardian) Belle & Sebastian at Somerset House.

Not your usual venue, Somerset House is where you normally go to hunt birth certificates or to say hello to those nice people at the Inland Revenue. The gig was in the central courtyard. By the magic of walking-down-the-side we wormed our way to the front and had a perfect view, much to our surprise. It meant that my camera phone could devote more than a pixel per person, at least. Had I thought we’d be that close to the stage I’d have taken my proper camera.

Avaragado’s rating: One cuckoo.

A bunch of us went to Chilford Hall last night for Bob and Karen’s wedding bash. I took photos on my new camera phone (hence dodgy quality).

Now available on Amazon!

As part of the fallout from my parents’ house move, and because of my extreme laziness over the years, I need to register a change of address with one or two organizations. Yeah, even though I’ve lived in Cambridge for ten years a few places still have my parents’ address.

Today I thought I’d sort out Britannic (I’ve got some investments with them). I soon found that they have one of the worst web sites I’ve seen in a while, which fails to work properly in Firefox. (And try the “printer friendly” page while one of the stupid scrolly things is stupidly scrolling: it still scrolls stupidly.) “Our asset is our team” they say. Well, it’s certainly not their web site. Change of address? No help here (I refuse to run IE just for this).

I dug through the most recent paperwork and found a phone number for their “helpline”. It rang long enough for me to start thinking I’d got the wrong number before they finally answered. Hello, yes, I’d like to change my address please.

“Oh, no, you can’t do that on the phone. You have to tell us in writing.”

I’m contemplating buying a big scratchy fountain pen and writing in my best flowery 1950s language. “I should be obliged…henceforth…I remain, sir, your obedient servant”.

It was Bob’s stag night on Saturday. More of a stag day/night.

In the afternoon we punted to Grantchester in the rain, had a barbecue in summer gales and the rain, and punted back in sunshine.

On the way back Chris punted us into a bush, which retaliated by grabbing his glasses and flicking them into the water. As we scoffed he took off his DMs and socks, eased himself in, and rummaged around with his toes. To our amazement it worked!

Mikey demonstrated his superior ginger scottish mountain goat abilities by successfully performing the bridge jump thing.

Back at the millpond we sat in the sun for a while, and were gatecrashed by an unrelated and entirely unsober hen party. They claimed to be from “upmarket Essex”, proved by acts of a chav nature plus some casual racism. We scarpered to our next venue, the Kingston Arms.

From there to the Golden Curry, where the staff knew it was a stag night and consequently seemed to spike Bob’s food without any prompting. They also gave him an Indian cocktail, the complete ingredients of which were kept secret but included cherry brandy. I can confirm that it was disgusting.

After the meal, Bob’s other mates revealed the secret plan: a set of challenges. Completing challenges earned Bob more booze and the right to assign some challenges to others.

Via the Live and Let Live and the Locomotive most of us ended up at Coco, the nightclub formerly known as Toxic. Bob was paralytic.

Oh, yes: photos!