Journalistic licence

I've just finished reading Crack House: The Incredible True Story Of The Man Who Took On London's Crack Gangs And Won. It's a great read, really enjoyed it, very well written, and right up my street. I love a bit of true crime, me, always have done ever since getting a load of books from "The World's ... " series, eg The World's Most Infamous Murders, when I were a nipper. (They weren't all about crime -- think the first one I got was The World's Greatest Mistakes -- but a lot of 'em were. I used to hunt for them in the second-hand bookshops in North Camp, and it was while so doing I found a first edition of James Herbert's The Rats for something like 40p. Seemed like a big deal back then.)

Anyway - before I finished Crack House, I was chatting to my bro on Yahoo! Messenger about it and sent him a link, in a typical "I'm reading this at the moment..." conversation. The page I sent him was this one, from what appears to be the site of some company officially associated with the book (though I can't see them mentioned anywhere in/on the book itself). Either way, it has a long bit of spiel about it, and contains this sentence near the bottom:

Every single one of the UK’s most tragic, appalling and senseless gun murders since 2000 are crack related.

Kevin picked up on that. I think his reaction was "fucking hell", and quite right too. But... on the way home last night I finished the last chapters, and something rang a bell. It was this sentence, on pages 249 and 250:

It seems as though every single one of the UK's most tragic, appalling and senseless murders since 2000 have been crack related.

Now, hold on a minute here. There's a big fucking difference between they have and it seems as though they have! That's bloody outrageous; and here was me thinking integrity is non-negotiable...

radio darrenf

EDITED AFTER POSTING: holy crap, loads of this is virtually identical to a post I wrote in August! Oops. Ah well, if you did actually read my blog back then, just skip to the bottom where I'm trying to drum up listeners. Ahem.

I think I've always wanted to be a DJ. Not a club DJ, or a between-sets-at-gigs DJ, but a radio/broadcast DJ. Someone who talks between and about the music they play, and has a listenership. This probably stems from growing up listening to the radio a lot. And wanting to be popular, of course.

When my bro' was first given licence to stay at home at weekends (where previously the whole family would up sticks and head to Mytchett), I was given the same licence. So while he was 18 -- or was it 16? -- when our folks gave him keys, I earned it 4.5 years earlier purely 'cos he was there to look after me. What I remember most about those weekends is having Capital Radio on all morning.

GLR/Radio London was on a lot -- Sunday evenings had a dance music show hosted by a fat bloke called Steve, from whom Kevin once won a bunch of vinyl. One of the albums had This Brutal House by Nitro Deluxe on it, still one of my favourite dance tunes. Straight after, or maybe a couple of hours later, there was Krusher's rock show. I remember him having Tom Araya on there once, picking his favourite tunes to play, and being aghast as he chose The Doors and other stuff like that. He claimed he didn't listen to metal: there wasn't much point, since he was in the best metal band around, so it would all be worse than the stuff he played each day. Fair point, Tom.

Another Tom, Tommy Vance, used to do the Friday Night Rock Show on Radio 1. I used to fall asleep with that on after coming back from the local rock club night in Morden, though more often I would set a D90 going to record it and then listen to it on my walkman the next day on the way to working in the Co-Op. Christ, what a lifetime away that was.

Charts. We used to listen to those a lot. The official chart show, or the network chart show -- think we flip-flopped over then the latter was invented, as the show seemed a bit more fun than the somewhat staid Radio 1 presentation of the former. But maybe we just kept swapping? That's just the weekly chart though -- not the best chart of the year, which was the Christmas countdown on Capital Radio. If I recall correctly, they used to play 500 songs as voted for by the listening public as being their favourite songs ever, each day between 0900 and 1700, for about 3 weeks(?) leading up to Christmas Day or Boxing Day or New Year's Eve or summat. In the years I listened to it, the top 10 seemed to have a few stalwarts - Layla, Hey Jude, Me & Mrs Jones, ... - and at least one piece of toss that had been pretty popular in the last year.

Sunday mornings for a while involved listening to Chris Evans, again on Radio London/GLR. He was outrageously funny, the sort of show where you didn't want to get up and out of bed because it most likely meant you had to turn the radio off and miss some of it. Russell Brand was that funny a few years later on 6music; Russell Howard's similar, but just not quite as good (which is probably why he's only progressed to Mock The Week, rather than full-on international stardom, so far).

Damn it. I started writing this just to boast about being a DJ in my own right, finally, thanks to the time-shifting wonders of the internet, audio encoding, podcasting, ubercaster, and specifically mixcloud.com. But instead I've veered into a huge reminiscence about how much radio means to me, and that's taken me by surprise. It still does mean a lot to me as well: I bought a DAB last year and love listening to the BBC World Service (knowing the shit that's going on in the world keeps my feet on the ground, I feel; more recently it's been a handy way to find out what's going on in Islamabad. I'd really rather it wasn't, though). And this in turns makes me sad, because I work for Global Radio right now. This is the company that owns, among others, my childhood friend Capital Radio (sorry - I mean 95.8 Capital FM). I finally work in radio, in music, so having been made redundant is not something I've taken lightly. Oh well.

So, back to boasting. Like I just said, I'm now a DJ! mixcloud.com -- if you can get an invite, as it's in a private beta mode right now -- is a site which lets you publish and/or listen to DJ mixes, shows, etc: anything with 5 or more songs really. It's mostly aimed at the dance crowd for now but I'm attempting to infiltrate that, starting with my debut grindcore/death metal show called PORK. I made one episode last weekend, loved it, and have had universally positive (if somewhat limited) feedback. So I'm going to make another one this weekend.. hopefully.

Will more than about 10 people, most of whom I know personally, ever listen? I'm not sure, but I'm also not sure I care.

Him outdoors

Found it again, finally
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

I left the house today.

That shouldn't be worthy of a mention by and of itself, but unfortunately it is. Almost every weekend, and certainly those while Ruth's away, I spent almost the entire time in the house. Farting about on the internet, watching Sky Sports, or playing on the 360. And every time I do those things -- which I enjoy, don't get me wrong -- I chastise myself for wasting the plentiful opportunities Saturdays and Sundays afford me to get some exercise (because even more frequently than that, I chastise myself for being a fat fuck).

And so, today, after chatting with Ruth for a bit on Skype, I left the house and got some exercise. Specifically, I went out to give the Thames Down Link walk a bit of a go.

The route map, and other write-ups I've read, are all in the direction of Kingston to Box Hill. Muggins here knows better though, and decided to do it in reverse. I figured I didn't want to get to the end of the route a horrible sweaty mess and piss people off on the bus back, plus I coudn't really control what time I'd finish and didn't like the idea of waiting up to an hour for the bus home. So I got the bus there instead, "there" being Box Hill.

Plenty of other people had the same idea. It was a nice morning, after all. Though as it happens, despite my prediction only 2 other people got off at the same bus stop as me, one of them being the muttering drunk of indeterminate gender (by the end of the journey I was fairly sure it was a bloke).

That said, I got off one or two bus stops too late, right next to the biker pub at Box Hill. There were shitloads of bikers around, and I struggled to find the start of the route. I started off up the hill itself until I got about halfway and thought, hold on, this is really knackering and it might actually be too steep to come back down sensibly, unless someone rolls some cheese maybe. I descended gingerly and took out my two GPS phones to give them a run against each other. The Sony Ericsson c905 wouldn't even try to get a signal so it loses. The HTC TyTn II got a signal after a couple of minutes.

Into the biker pub car park. Which was the wrong way to go. So I crossed the road a 3rd time and consulted a map, which showed me where the start was: a bus stop's distance back towards Surbiton. Headed along the pavement to the junction where it was and realised my calves were hurting. Really hurting. Not good. I was really worried I'd fucked them by not really warming up, and heading half way up that hill a few minutes ago. But I also thought that they'd sort themselves out, and I persevered.

They killed for the next 40 minutes. I kept stopping to rub them, stretch them, rest them, try to make them stop hurting despite not really having a clue about how the body (especially mine) works. Oh dear. But, slowly, as the track levelled out and I adjusted my pace the pain went away and I started to feel decent: worked up a sweat, heart going a bit faster than normal, lungs nice and open, this was what I was after.

Most of the first 3 miles were uphill. I wasn't really prepared for that. I figured a route from a hill to a river would, well, be mostly downhill. Oh well.

I hadn't taken a map with me, because I don't own one nor a printer, and because everything I'd read said it would be well signposted. And so it was, for a while, until I got to Ashtead. The path became a pavement along a road full of really really posh houses, but then the signs disappeared. There were 2 bridleways, the signpost for one had a Thames Down Link sign pointing back the way I came, but there was nowt around showing me the way to go. Bollocks.

Thankfully I was near Ashtead town centre, which I know my way around. and I'd remembered that the route goes through Ashtead Common, in which I went the wrong way. Big style. There are loads of paths, I didn't find one displaying the logo, and I failed to follow the one I'd meant to stick to anyway. Unexpectedly, I emerged on the A243 to Malden Rushett. The 465 route. I was expecting to be in the Epsom/Ewell borders, near the entrance to Horton Country Park. Sigh.

This is where the walk stopped being fun really. Not that it matters too much -- I was out to get exercise for exercise's sake, not to see anywhere or anything special, but still...once I made my way back onto the route -- about an hour later, FFHS -- there were plenty of signs. About every 25 yards for a while, in a place where you really don't actually need them because there's not much choice. Thanks for that. Then, when I reached the loos and information centre I found (and photographed!) a big sign about the very walk I was doing, complete with YOU ARE HERE market and a route map.

As soon as I turned away from that sign, I went the wrong way. Spent the next half hour or more strolling along roads and around pavements. I suck SO MUCH at using maps. I did eventually find my way back into the park, but still no signs, and wandered along paths I thought were in the right direction. Once again I emerged nowhere near where I wanted to be. And that was it: time to do a Paula Radcliffe.

Using public transport in London

St Helier station
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman

Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner, but I love London so. And I've been a regular user of public transport in London for as long as I can remember.

When I was a very small nipper I was regularly hauled up the Northern Line from Morden to Oval (I think) to get my eyes seen to. Once I came back with an eye-patch, and not long after that I started wearing glasses.

A few years later I was getting buses from Raynes Park to Wimbledon, and then Morden, on the way home from double games on a Wednesday afternoon. At least a couple of times my bro' and I fare-dodged our way down to Ash Vale -- we started at Morden Road as it was an unmanned station, unlike St Helier which, at the time, had a ticket office and everything. These days St Helier has fuck all, just a huge exposed staircase. It is still right next door to a huge estate for disabled ex-servicemen and their families, however.

I remember when bus tickets cost 15p or 20p depending on how far you were going, and when the Capitalcard existed. That one meant you could use trains, unlike the Travelcard which only allowed tubes and buses. I think the latter was 70p. I also remember getting the 88 bus from Mitcham to Acton Green just because it was a huge, massively long bus journey which started locally to us. I was about 12, and pretty sad even then. Though not as sad as whoever wrote that Wikipedia page about it, fucking hell.

Early technique for visiting central London was another route learned from Kevin: bus to Wimbledon, tube to Earls Court, change for another tube to Leicester Square and hey presto, the West End. Why didn't we start at Morden? I don't recall, though the Northern Line was pretty shitty.

Once I became flush enough to use the Capitalcard, or perhaps when they abolished it and added trains to Travelcards, I started starting at St Helier, and my days out would include the odd fast train from London Waterloo to Surbiton (and back), for 2 reasons: it was the longest non-stop journey in my quarter of London, and Surbiton station had great bannisters you could slide down. I was about 15, and still pretty sad.

Since then I've gone into the centre shitloads of times. Before university it was to go to gigs -- I went to more than 70 in 1991, at the Marquee, the Dome, the Astoria, etc. During university it was to get to Victoria for the coach, or Euston for the train. And since university it has been to drink, to go to gigs, or to work: I've worked in (or beyond) central London since October 1997.

That's a whole lot of travelling on public transport in London. Here are some of the lessons I've learned.

1. "Seek assistance" is London slang for "if at first you don't succeed, try and try again, and again, and again, and again"
2. When you get on a train or tube, there is no-one behind you. Stay near the door, surveying the whole carriage for a suitable place to sit or stand. You are not blocking anyone.
3. If the tube driver is standing on the platform having a smoke and a chat, they're going to leave imminently, so run and barge people to get to your favourite carriage. Hurry!
4. The words on the front of buses are lies. You should always get on the bus and ask the driver where they're going.
5. "No exit" means "exit", especially when written on the steps at a busy station. People getting off trains are more important than people getting on them, so ignore anyone trying to battle past you to get on the train you just left.
6. It takes, ooh, a good 5 minutes, surely, to walk the length of an 8 carriage train, so you really need to run along the platform if it's less than that 'til departure. Hurry!
7. Waiting 10 minutes for "the fast train" is an efficient use of your time. The timetable which says that one arrives just after the slow train you're not getting on is a lie.
8. The "please don't use your mobiles here" posters and announcements were drawn/made with a little wink. Just keep your calls down to 15 minutes or so, no-one'll mind.
9. On crowded station concourses, do not under any circumstances face the direction in which you are travelling.
10. A queue of 50-odd people at a bus stop will only take around 2 seconds to board, so if you're over 50 yards away you must run for it. Hurry!
11. The buttons at pedestrian crossings do not make the lights change. No-one knows what they do do, and it might be bad, so don't use them.
12. Bicycle lanes are for pedestrians.

I might look for a job I can walk to.

Parkway: latin for 'is quite a way away'

DSC00622
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

If the dice says M, and the list asks for 'excuses for being late', I don't think I will ever hear a better answer than 'masturbation'.

Scattergories over and a couple of Guinnesses to the good, I went to bed perpendicular to Ruth. Actually I'm getting ahead of myself here -- before that we watched a couple of episodes of Moving Wallpaper, an ITV sitcom neither Ruth or I had heard of before. It has Jim-from-Neighbours in it, and therefore wins. ITV seem to think it's a contemporary drama. They are wrong.

The perpendicular sleeping arrangements were two single beds in a small room. Ruth was going to put her feet next to my head until I complained. I found it pretty amazing that there was a spare room at all in the house, but there it was. Oh, and we had internet access (having put the laptop onto the wireless earlier when Ruth was showing off some Pakistan and Grand Canyon photos) which meant we could fall akip listening to the world service. I love the world service. Such a humbling radio station.

Sunday morning meant bacon. Yum. It also meant a game of Monopoly (Europe edition) which only lasted long enough for everyone to pass Go just the once. I was very much in last place and was glad it was interrupted. Soon after breakfast most of the house went off to church, with just Simon hanging back to give me and Ruth a lift to Bodmin Parkway.

This was our first Parkway of the day. Simon had picked us up from it the day before, but I hadn't really taken much notice of how long the drive was given the newness of everything and the football+relatives diversion. This time was different, and the truth became apparent: Bodmin Parkway is fucking miles from Bodmin. Nowhere near it. You would be a fool if you decided, perhaps if you were in possession of a rail rover ticket, to just get off and explore Bodmin. Also, though I admit this may be unrelated to the distance from the town, the weather was fucking appalling. Tipping it down, blowing a freezing gale, we at first went into the small coffee shop (diet coke; coffee; bakewell tart; lemon cake) and then shuffled from foot to foot on the bridge over the lines for a while.

For more than a while, in fact. We'd arrived in plenty of time for the train, but it was late, and the bridge provided respite only from the wet, not the cold. BRRRR.

The train was about, I dunno, 15 minutes or so late. So we'd already missed our connection at Plymouth, onto a rail replacement service due to engineering works between there and Exeter. I don't really mind about having journeys somewhat disrupted by engineering works at the weekends -- I understand that far fewer people use trains then than do on weekdays, and that most weekend journeys are optional (rather than commutes), so no problem there. But having been sold such a tight connection, and then having a train running late on a line with a reduced service, well that's just a pain in the arse.

So we missed our bus. And the next bus didn't fit us on. The 3rd bus was OK, but full, and slow, because the route to Tiverton Parkway had roadworks on it. And the weather was still shit pretty much all the way (for 90 minutes!) until we arrived in glorious sunshine.

So, then, Tiverton Parkway. 8 fucking miles from Tiverton (though google says it's 4). No signs of life anywhere near. I mean, the surroundings are nice, if you ignore the motorway, but there's nowhere to just pop out and have a wander around other than a fishing lake (private property) and a conservation walk through fields. No shops beyond the one in the station, no pubs, no nowt. Useless if you've got the best part of an hour to kill, which we did.

graffiti
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

Our ticket was for the 1pm. Actually no, our ticket was for Tiverton Parkway to London Paddington, but our seat reservation was for the 1pm service, and the two were only valid with each other. That said we were planning on paying the tenner each to upgrade again -- having spent precisely no money in Bodmin or Perranporth apart from the provisions mentioned above -- so it didn't matter too much. What mattered most was the hugely crowded station, lack of anything much to do, and 50 minute wait 'til the next service.

That's what mattered to us. What mattered to the woman sitting near us was the fact that First Great Western hadn't held the train for her when it was obvious the bus would be late. Oh no! Hadn't they, and indeed everyone, realised who she was? Never mind that this is rail-based transport which doesn't exactly lend itself to having other services overtake the ones being held up. For fucks sake.

Ruth got the laptop out and did a bit of studying. I went off for a walk. The fishing lake was quite pretty, the graffiti in the tunnel under the motorway was interesting, but the wind was cold. Back to the station, bought a drink, train came along, got seats in First Class, etc etc. Another nondescript journey.

At Waterloo, on our ascent from the Bakerloo line, yet another very very important passenger thought it appropriate to use his suitcase as a means of carving out space in the crowd. Space behind him, mind, since he was pulling it on wheels. He and his luggage barged into Ruth and didn't even look round, let alone say sorry. I got fairly close to him and tried to shove my toe under a wheel to make it bounce and spin but just about missed. He carried on his way, ending up about 4 people ahead of us.

At the top of the escalator, he hurried a bit more, heading round the edge of the otherwise orderly mass of passengers, cutting in to a barrier a good 5 or 6 seconds earlier than he may otherwise have done. Then he put his ticket in the slot, the machine beeped, and up came Seek assistance. As is normal in London, he didn't seek any assistance, but just put the ticket straight back in. Thing is, he was next to a member of staff who was providing assistance anyway, and in this instance said employee took the ticket out and had a look at it. As we passed through the barrier next to him, we heard the words 'This ticket isn't valid on the underground, sir. You need to buy a ticket.'. Glorious. Fuck you, you fuck.

At home, my rehabilitation from Wednesday night was completed. I had a medium Domino's pizza, covered in grease and vaguely hot stuff (peppers etc). My stomach thanked me. I was glad to be back, in both senses.

In the bleak mid, err, spring

Chapel Rock, Perranporth
Originally uploaded by Darren Foreman

Well, come on, what else were they going to feed us?

My pasty was cheese and onion. I could instead have chosen steak, but cheese is the cheese. I was over the moon at having been fed the perfect "welcome to Cornwall" nosh. In fact, I figure eating a pasty counts as tourism. But I guess the main part of our tourism for the weekend started after the two girls got back from their Saturday jobs. Time for the beach!

I love English beaches, but not so much in hot and sunny weather. Yes, I'm a bit odd, but I find something really intriguing and attractive about a bleak and miserable seaside town with few souls out. An unseasonably shitty day in the middle of the school holidays doesn't count because there are still loads of people about, hiding from the weather and taking up all the space in the boozers/arcades/etc. That's bollocks. I've been on holiday to the Isle of Wight in November -- I like towns where it's hard to find accomodation because most of the B&Bs aren't operating, when the locals are in the majority and the wind and clouds give the sea a foreboding look.

Last Saturday was just like that. The weather was bloody awful. It was blowing a gale and freezing cold. Nonetheless the 8 of us headed to the beach, even taking a football, and walked up to the sea. We were at Perranporth, on the North Cornish coast, and it has a huge expansive beach -- especially so with the tide out. It also has a seawater swimming pool, similar to those I've seen in the beach suburbs of Sydney, only annexed to a big fuck off rock with the Cornish flag flying from it rather than a bit of a cliff as in Oz.

Christ it was windy. And cold. I could barely feel my hands as I was taking photos. Perhaps I should have been a bit more active, taken a few kicks of the ball, though that was soon given over to a couple of dogs anyway. While we were at the rock Jack had kicked the ball into the path of the mutts, who decided it was their favourite toy ever. Delivering it to their owner (rather than the ball's), they dropped it and waited for a hoof, purely so they could peg after it, play, and run back to start it again. Much like this.

Dogs are great like that. Every day's their favourite day ever and every game's the best game they've ever played. These two fucking loved that ball, so much so that the owner eventually bought the ball from Jack for whatever change he had in his pocket. Win!

Game over, and with the weather starting to piss me off let alone the teenagers, we all repaired to the pub. It's called The Watering Hole, and is directly on the beach. Not opening out to the beach but with a road behind or aside it, but entirely and fully on the beach. The only way to get to it is over the sand. Again, win. We picked our seats (there was a lot of choice, even for an 8-strong party) and got some drinks in. I had an Erdinger, my first alcohol since the stomach incident. By 'eck it were lovely -- so much so that I had a second while we ate. Kate and Simon treated us to dinner which was awesome of them. I picked fish and chips -- pollock, because they're concerned about cod stocks, apparently.

Actually, I'll dwell on this for a tiny bit. Can most people really tell the difference in taste between types of fish? I'm not going to include scampi or anchovy in this, but yer other common types: cod, haddock, plaice, pollock. They all taste pretty much the same to me. Am I strange?

Fish, chips, and beer over, we headed back across the by now dark beach and to the car. The journey back to Bodmin was filled with a cheerful conversation about Nazi race theories and eugenics. The young 'uns didn't join in too much with that one.

Back at the house and out came Scattergories. What a game that is! And how distressingly difficult I found it :-(

Go West

The weekend was on! Staying in on Friday evening and still eating plain food, albeit a proper meal (chicken and new potatoes) meant I woke up on Saturday feeling way better than most Saturdays, let alone the previous two days. I was still harbouring the psychological effects of having partaken poison pie, but the food -- and a bottle of Diet Coke -- having stayed down gave me enough confidence to venture out. A long way out, actually. We'd booked, several weeks previously, rail tickets to Bodmin in Cornwall, where one of Ruth's brothers lives; quite apart from a long overdue visit (although we'd seen him and a couple of the kids just before Christmas), it was another item on Ruth's "right, I'm off for a year" social calendar.

The journey out was pretty nondescript really. We left a bit earlier than TfL had told us to, changed onto the tube at Waterloo thinking we were pushed for time, only to arrive in Paddington with plenty to spare. Got out some sterlings, bought some caffeine, and plonked ourselves directly into First Class.

It's addictive, see. It's "only" a train, but we're used to high-falutin' means of transport now. More legitimately, it's only £10 per person to upgrade at the weekends and for 4hrs on the train we thought it was worth it (having spent the initial ticket money weeks ago). Given that being in First Class confers rights to free tea, coffee, Mini Cheddars, biscuits, and Diet Coke, we even got a bit of the spend back in scran. But best of all was the all important feeling of superiority and aloofness that travelling in a very-marginally better class of travel brings. Ahem. I spent most of it reading my book about death in the Grand Canyon anyway.

Shitty weather in Devon

Quick aside: Ruth's playing PathWords on Facebook as I type this, and she just joyfully told me that it has accepted the word "shat". Awesome.

Ahem again. Anyway. The weather got progressively worse as we went, starting to really tip it down when we crossed the Tamar into Cornwall. I love crossing the Tamar, though I'd only done it a mere twice beforehand. Actually no, 4 times: by ferry at Torpoint and by train, one return trip each. Nonetheless it has a real feel to it, caused by the knowledge that you're transferring from one county to another and, westbound, to the edge of England. Most counties (IME at least) don't have such stark and obvious boundaries, fully formed by something in the geography.

It also helps that the crossings are ace. The ferry isn't a proper ferry, but is on a chain; and the bridge is a huge epic picturesque Isambard Kingdom Brunel piece of awesomeness. I just learnt that it's called the Royal Albert Bridge, having looked it up just so I can link to it. I thought it was the Tamar Bridge, which makes a bit more sense and sounds better, but it turns out that's the road bridge which runs parallel. Oh well.

At Bodmin we were met by Ruth's brother Simon, his wife Kate, and Jack, one of their four kids. Our lift to their house was via Kate's sister's house while Simon picked up the other son, Matthew, from his football game. The poor lad had just been on the wrong side, in the pissing rain, of an 8-1 defeat. Failsome. Onwards to Kate and Simon's via a quick guided tour of Bodmin, as soon as we arrived we were given food.

Pasties.

Fucking have that, son.

Casualty of British Pie Week

I type this while sitting at home with a headache, having eaten 4 slices of toast and a few crackers today. Yesterday all I had was a bowl of rice and 2 crackers. In fact, yesterday more food came out than went in. And it's (probably) all because of pie.

This week has been, and still is, British Pie Week. I love pie. Even the not-really-pie-IMO casserole-with-a-lid types, such as the first pie I had this week: Monday lunch, Porters in Covent Garden, a bedevilled chicken and mushroom "pie".

Pork pie by su-lin via Flickr

My second pie this week was Monday evening. I got home and Ruth had a pie in the oven. When I told her what I'd had for lunch she was a little panicky, wondering if I really would want a second pie that day. Apparently my reaction of shouting "FUCKING EPIC WIN" when she said pie was on the cards was not clear enough. Pfft.

On Tuesday I went for lunch in a pub local to the office with a colleague, and had pie. Game and mushroom this time. Still not proper. This had to change, so on Wednesday I bought a pork pie from the corner shop, plus a packet of "Apple Pie Cookies". They bore no relation to anything pie-like except in name.

Still on Wednesday, I went for (literally) a pint after work, and then home. Prior to having eaten -- in fact, I was unlikely to bother making owt for meself -- Ruth texted me asking if I wanted anything from the chippy. I ordered minced beef and onion pie with chips. It was awesome.

As it happens, the last time I remember throwing up I don't remember throwing up. That's because it was in my sleep. I was at uni, 1993/94. Way way WAY too much to drink one evening, followed by a garlic pizza bread, I woke up the following morning feeling surprisingly fine. Great, even. No signs of a hangover at all. But I also felt wet, and that's because I'd been sick all over the bed and my hair (this was during my ponytail-down-to-my-arse era) and just EURGH HORRIBLE NASTY. I put all the clothes, bedclothes, etc in a black sack ready to take to the laundrette, and had a shower. Walked to uni and ran into a couple of the people I'd been out with, who were both hungover to fuck and angry at how good I was feeling. Granted I could have fucking died, Bon Scott style, but hey.

Anyway, that's no longer the last time. The last time I threw up was yesterday morning. I woke up feeling hungover, which a single pint should never do. And then when I sat and stood up, my guts had a word with me and my head was pounding. Fuck that, I thought. Went and got a pint of squash and logged on to email in sick. Then the loo called. Back to the laptop, and then the bathroom again: that squash did not want to stay in my stomach. :-(

I still felt awful, so I had some more water. Half an hour later that came back out 'n all. So now I was in a bit of a state. I consider myself to have an iron constitution. I suffer from hangovers, but I pretty much never get dodgy stomachs or anything like that. I once went to India (albeit for only 50 hours or so) and had curry for 7 meals running without getting the shits. So this was a bit worrying and I was considering phoning my GP's surgery to get an appointment -- but before that I tried NHS Direct.

NHS Direct's self-help system is great, like the books I had as a kid where at the end of each page I had to choose what I wanted my character to do, and my decision determined the page I had to turn to next. And just like those books, when the first series of answers I gave came back with a large, bold GO TO A&E message I thought I'd start over and see if I could get a better answer. Mercifully the second attempt gave me some "it's safe to treat this yourself at home" advice that mostly involved drinking very little, eating fuck all, or very bland food, and getting some stuff from a pharmacist.

I went to the pharmacist, slowly, feeling wobbly, just generally not coping with feeling that bad at all. I bought 2 types of medicine, some tablets and some super-rehydrating soluble stuff. They told me to avoid milky stuff, avoid acidic and sugary stuff, in fact just to sip the soluble stuff and take a tablet after each time I went to the loo.

Got home, went to the kitchen ready to make a sachet up when the bathroom called, and that's when I properly threw up. God damn it that's one fucking rank experience. It having been so long I'd pretty much forgotten how it felt and was not that well prepared. Eurgh. After cleaning up I had a shower, made some Dioralyte, and sat on the sofa. That was pretty much it for the rest of the day. I had the laptop open and the TV on but neither were doing wonders for my headache. I dozed a lot. I supped water. I felt really ill. Gah.

In the evening Ruth made me a bowl of plain rice, which stayed down. Then I ate a couple of crackers, which did likewise. But my headache got worse, the paracetamol I took didn't seem to do much good, and Paris Hilton's British Best Friend came on TV so I went to bed. Didn't wake up properly 'til about 11 hours later, which is a huge amount of sleep for me. Didn't feel much better though. Well, I felt/feel less sick, but still dehydrated, a bit weak, and hungry but without much of an appetite. Worst of all my head still hurt.

It got a bit better this morning and, as I opened with, I felt well enough to try some toast at lunch time. Eating it seemed to make things worse -- thankfully not my guts, but my head for sure.

I wish I'd never had that beef and onion pie.

Oh baby on board

"Would you like some fizzy?"

That's how Ruth was greeted when we flew in business class to Sydney last year. Her jaw had only just come back from the floor and her eyes were still pretty wide; she'd only two minutes previous asked me in hushed tones "am I allowed to be here?" after we'd gone upstairs on a BA 747. She was outwardly expressing how I feel every time I've been lucky enough to fly that way. Business class rocks.

For our first time in First class, by contrast, we were a little more circumspect. We knew in advance it wasn't a huge leap from business class, the main difference being the privacy of the seats and cabin, and the better service which comes from a similar level of staffing over 14 passengers (tops) as there are over 38 or so further back. But we were still offered fizzy, and we accepted.

First class leg room

(I actually accepted a bit too much. Other than during take-off itself, my glass wasn't empty for the first 3 hours or so of the flight -- and this came back to haunt me in San Francisco)

That's not to say there's no difference in the seat, mind. It is a little wider, and a fair bit longer. Where in business there's a footrest with a "NOT TO BE USED AS A SEAT" sign on it, in First it's explicitly meant to be so used. They refer to it as a "buddy seat", and you can get someone from elsewhere to come up and join you for a drink mid-flight. Like sending back for your PA or whatever, I guess. You can also ask, if travelling as a couple (or presumably if you pull onboard) to have 2 meals served on one table, the two of you sitting facing each other. We did this on the way back.

That being possible should make obvious the fact that the table is also bigger. And they lay it properly: out comes the tablecloth, the metal cutlery, the proper plates, the starter, the main, the dessert, the wine, the cheese, the biscuits... it's just consumption of epic proportions. You can have it whenever you want, as another benefit of First over all the other cabins is precisely that: instead of have the food service when you're told, they let you pick a time that suits you. Perfect if you've already overindulged in the lounge beforehand and want to wait. Alternatively, if you've overindulged beforehand but are a fat greedy scoffer such as me, you can have it at the start of the flight. Ahem.

Prior to the food service I went through my normal onboard routine, which basically consists of skim-reading every magazine and looking at all the entertainment listings. I didn't know that First class had its own magazine, so I started there. As with the business class magazines it was full of stuff I can't afford, am not interested in, and probably wouldn't care about even if I was minted. I was amused to discover the ads for discreet addiction treatment clinics though. These fat cats and celebs just don't know when enough's enough, do they? And as for the special 'luxury collection' stuff at the back of the shopping magazine -- who the hell spends £140 on a fucking pencil???

Lunch arrived and I have no recollection as to what it was, even though I'd pored over the menu beforehand. I blame the fizzy. Oh, it turns out from checking Flickr that I had the sea bass. And then there was a posh dessert, and cheese and biscuits. YUM.

The rest of the flight was actually pretty uneventful, with nothing being particularly first class or notable about it that I haven't already mentioned. The movies and other entertainment options are the same in all cabins, and the service wasn't monstrously attentive. Most people just want to relax with their headphones on, or sleep (even on a day flight) and the staff weren't buzzing round much. I watched a few comedy episodes, plus Righteous Kill and Dog Day Afternoon, both pretty good. I like Al Pacino, which helps.

Champers, washbag, jimjams.

At some point we were handed our kits of stuff. They're a different design to the business class ones but as far as I could tell the contents are just from someone else rather than Elemis. So you get eye wakening cream, lip balm, some flight socks, etc etc. They also hand out sleeper suits/pyjamas, though I didn't bother unwrapping mine. And there was more champagne.

San Francisco is an awesome airport to arrive into. Immigration is a breeze and the luggage seems to come off much quicker than most other airports I've been to. Previously when travelling for Yahoo! I had managed to get to my hotel room in central San Francisco about 75 minutes from being allowed to turn my phone on (still on the plane), and we managed it in about the same speed this time. However, staying one block further north from my old haunt meant I arrived sweaty and out of breath, because that one block is a bastard hill. They laughed at me when we checked in!

We were given room 911. And we thought: God help anyone in another room that, in an emergency, panics and leaves off the 9 for an outside line before calling for help.

A First Class airport experience

We got a cab at about 0915, if memory serves. The flight wasn't until 1425 but we wanted to enjoy the airport experience as much as possible. Airports are lovely if you have access to the right places.

The cab driver was a strange bloke. Really nice; I think I may have had him drive me to Heathrow before, when he had to stop for petrol en route and told me a story about how he bought a house in Thames Ditton directly from the vendor: having happened to notice a for-sale sign being erected while he was in the vicinity, he waited until the erector buggered off, then knocked on the door and made a cut-out-the-estate-agents offer. Nice job, if true, and it made me wonder just how much cab drivers earn. The conversation this time did nothing to reduce my wonder, since he told us about a close relative in some shit-hot ballet school in Richmond (albeit on a scholarship, I think), plus numerous yearly trips abroad to Greece and beyond, and he just carried himself with the air -- and voice -- of someone a bit well to-do. Perhaps he's independently wealthy and drives a cab in Surbiton to avert boredom, or just for the love of meeting new people all the time. Or perhaps he was just a liar.

Whatever he was, he got us to the airport sharpish. Heathrow T5 is great (though I say this having only been there twice before) and most of the time there's no real need to use any "fast track" check-in desks, because the queues and process at the regular ones are so negligible. However, we were determined to make use of everything our ticket entitled us to -- the benefits are not lessened if you "paid" with miles -- so we headed all the way to the First Class check-in zone at the end.

The entrance of this zone is manned by staff who confirm your eligibility to be there (thankfully not taking into account the way you're dressed, or your accent) and kind of half-escort you to a check-in desk with no queue. There are loads of desks and loads of staff: there's supposed to pretty much never be a queue, and if there is one there are some very comfortable and swanky chairs you can park your arse in while you wait. They come get you when it's your turn, and they're very apologetic -- I know because I saw it happen on our way out.

While we were checking in a group turned up at the desk next to us. It wasn't difficult to overhear their conversation because it was loud (not rude or obtrusively so, just naturally, with the added factor of the whole zone being a fairly hushed environment). They actually failed to check-in though, because their flight had just left. They'd misread the flight time on their ticket/itinerary as the check-in time. Oh dear.

I've probably spent more time writing the last two paragraphs than we actually spent checking in, because it was a breeze. They asked us if we knew where the lounges were and we did, because having had a Gold Card previously we'd been to the First Class lounge in August 2008. However! There's an extra, super-exclusive lounge called the Concorde Room, with even stricter entry requirements. A Gold Card isn't enough, you have to either be flying in First Class or have a Premier Card -- which are invite-only, dished out to people who head companies (or travel budgets) that give significant chunks of cash to BA each year. Or, alternatively, be a celeb who BA think would be a worthwhile recipient. Anyway, we had First Class tickets, so we were in...

Concorde Room dining booths,
by Gary Bembridge via Flickr

... or so we thought. The route to the First Class lounge is a real trek in T5, but the Concorde Room entrance is directly after security. We queued up behind the people being turned away, and when we got to the front handed over our boarding passes. Seats 1A and 2A in a 747: undeniably First Class, yet we were told to hop it. In fact, everyone was being told to hop it. Doubtless some, perhaps most, were right to get that treatment, but we knew our rights so perservered. Eventually she took our boarding passes inside, then came back out with an apology, and held the door open for us. Damn right!

There's an inner desk where they actually scan the boarding pass, and the woman there explained where things were: the left luggage shelves, the showers, the place to have breakfast. One fry-up later, we dropped our bags and booked a massage. There was a 35 minute wait, so we headed out to the terminal shops to get some last minute stuff.

The massage was great. It's on this super-expensive chair that does all kinds of crazy stuff, but at the same time there was a member of staff giving a hard (requested -- could have had soft if I'd wanted) head and shoulder massage. Win.

Back into the lounge again, this time to the bar. This is where it started to get seriously fat cat: we ordered champagne and a cheese plate, and were told we'd just missed Tom Jones. Jordan and her 3 tits were in earlier, and Ewan McGregor was sitting just over there (he was 'n all). The champagne came in huge glasses, and was lovely, and I had 2 and half glasses. Hic!

We left the lounge a bit too early. Being unfamiliar with "T5B", the kind of extra bit of T5 you can only reach in a sort of light/monorail thing, we overestimated how long it would take us to get to the gate. But it was OK, because it meant we could take advantage of the Business Class lounge there.

And here's where it started to get a bit ... dangerous. Y'see, business class lounges rule. You get free beer, and food, which typically includes a lot of cheese. You avoid the scrum, there are TVs to watch, did I mention the beer was free? Because it is. And they're wonderful. But being champered and pampered already that morning, this lounge felt a bit, how can I put it ... pikey. Rubbish. Which betrays the fact that we were feeling above it, we were feeling used to the trappings of First Class already. And that's what's dangerous: it might make all future trips -- the vast majority of which won't feature a lounge of any description! -- a disappointment. If I hadn't seen such riches I could live with being poor and all that bollocks.

Anyway, the lounge was fine. The beer was free (not sure if I'd pointed that out yet), and it was close to the gate. And once the flight started to board, our passes meant we could use the fast track queue and have zero fuss getting to our seats, because the cabin is on the left of the door where you get on, and there's fuck all seats in it. Just 14. And they're lovely. Huge. Spacious. Awesome. And we had 11 hours in them ahead of us!

Front of the bus

Been meaning to say something about having flown first class for the last week and a bit, ie since we got back. Yes, you read it right (and I'm still amazed by it myself): when Ruth and I went to San Francisco on Jan 31st, and came back on Feb 8th/9th (overnight flight), we flew in BA First Class. Fucking incredible! This is how we managed it.

The 4 word version is "an obsession with miles". Basically ever since Yahoo! flew me to Taipei in March 2006, in the eye-opening experience that is business class, I've been trying to earn miles with BA (and BMI) as much as possible. I owe pretty much everything to the people who hang around at flyertalk.com -- those guys and gals are experts at how best to earn miles, how best to spend miles, and how to maximise the experience of flying in something beyond economy. Taking in all the advice from there I set out to experience luxury travel, and have managed it in ways far beyond my original plan. It would never have been possible without the good fortune of a decent pay packet and work travel, but the main thrust of what follows is value for money: I haven't paid anything like the going rate for this stuff.

BA's Executive Club scheme is a loyalty programme which very much works both ways: the more you fly with BA (and to a lesser extent their partners, eg Qantas) the more miles you get. And the more miles you get, the further you can go, and/or you can fly in more comfort. Flyertalk taught me that the best value for money happily involves flying in business or first class, due to the amount of cash you have to pay alongside the miles you redeem. More about that at the bottom; it's not important unless you can get hold of the miles in the first place.

First and foremost, I have flown. I earnt a bunch from that Yahoo! trip which sparked it all off; I earnt a shitload from my epic round the world once-in-a-lifetime (or so I thought...) holiday in Sept/Oct 2006 and May/June 2007; I earnt a load more by being sent to California 3 times in 2007 by Yahoo!; and I earnt still more from occasional holidays (Istanbul, Amsterdam, Wacken).

Then there's the miles I've "earnt" on the ground. Since August 2006 I've had a BA American Express credit card and have pumped shitloads of my spending through it. That's 1.5 miles per pound spent (3 miles whenever I buy something from BA, eg flights). I've made us shop at Tesco to earn clubcard points, availed myself of as many bonus point offers as I could get away with, and we had our electricity from E.ON for a year. E.ON give you clubcard points, and clubcard points convert to BA miles. And since BA launched an affiliate shopping scheme, I've used that a lot too (even got 3000 miles too many from a purchase in the first week). Oh, and I've been known to top the account up by just straight out buying miles too.

The penultimate piece of the puzzle is another benefit of the BA Amex card. As well as miles for each quid spent, I also get a 2-for-1 voucher if I spend £10k in my billing year (which runs August to July). It's a fairly restrictive voucher: it enables you to get 2 seats instead of 1 so long as you (a) pay with BA miles (b) fly with BA, no codeshares, no partner airlines (c) start in the UK. But since we live in the UK and want to fly BA as much as possible, the restrictions don't bother us. As it happens we already used one voucher to go visit my bro and sis-in-law in Sydney in April 2008, paying 200k BA miles instead of 400k to go there in business class.

That was very fucking winful. It was also pretty much the only voucher I ever expected to use, and the last benefit directly attributable to that 06/07 round-the-world trip. Indeed, booking it in June '07 cleared me out of miles -- but that was before two of the California work trips, the Istanbul holiday, the affiliate scheme... the miles started to stack up again.

I earnt another voucher, but it still didn't look likely that we'd be able to make good use of it. In November 2008 I had ~125k miles, and then the final piece of the puzzle fell into place. BA had a "sale", whereby they were charging 50% (in mileage terms) of the normal "price" for any flights anywhere on their network. The same as a 2-for-1 voucher, then, except you could combine the two. And that's how we managed to fly First Class:

• Normal mileage required for 2x London-San Francisco-London: 300k
• Mileage required if using a 2-for-1 voucher: 150k
• Mileage required when using voucher in the sale: 75k

Fuckin' bingo.

Finally let me return to what I was saying above, about value for money and stuff. When you pay for a flight with miles there is still an amount of cash you have to stump up as well. These are referred to as "taxes, fees and surcharges" and are a mixture of

• genuine taxes that BA have to pay the government/airport, so they pass it on to the punter; and
• a variable component of their ticket price, based on things such as how much BA have been paying for oil in the last 6-9 months.

The airlines claim these charges are separate from what they refer to as the "base fare", and so you have to pay them even when redeeming miles for flights. Some people bitch about these, and I can see why, but I'm happy to cough up. And the primary reason I'm happy to cough up is this: 2 people with semi-flexible First Class tickets to San Francisco on BA costs somewhere in the region of £8000 each. We paid £780 between us. The real point here is that if we'd spent 25k miles and flown in economy, the cash we'd have had to pay wouldn't have actually gone down by a great deal: the rub is that taxes, fees, and surcharges make up a significant proportion of an economy ticket because they are an absolute amount. They are not relative to the base fare -- if they were, you'd pay zero when spending miles! The amounts do go up (eg the APD figure), but not by much, certainly compared to the fare. You can get the taxes, fees and surcharges figures direct from ba.com -- they tell you how much they are when you go to make a booking (before you pay).

So anyway, yes -- £780. And fuck me did we get our money's worth; hopefully I'll find the time to write about that soon.

Tuesday the 13th

I am having a fucking awful day.

Got up expecting to hear I'm now an uncle, but sis-in-law is going through some kind of never-ending pseudo-is-it-isn't-it labour (written hours ago, and still going on afaik!) that just can't be pleasant. Fingers crossed things are OK.

Ruth had to go to the US Embassy this morning. To get a visa so she's allowed in when we fly to California at the end of the month. A visa for the same fucking passport she flew to the States with in 2007.

The US Embassy in London doesn't allow you to take mobile phones in, nor leave them with security, so she's phoneless today.

This morning, at my work, I attended a meeting where I (along with everyone else present) was told that my job is formally at risk. It's been reported already -- we're going to get rid of 40 staff. That's a lot. It's not company-wide, just in this division/department/whatever you want to call it. We're now in the official consultation period etc. By my reckoning there's a better than evens chance of me losing my job.

Once she got to work, I chatted about it with Ruth, over email. She decided, since she already had a ticket having come up earlier, to come meet me for lunch. But with her being phoneless I couldn't get hold of her when I realised, not 10 minutes after she'd left her office (down in Croydon), that she was going to arrive just as our meeting to discuss the employee representatives for the group was happening. Fucksticks.

She called from a nearby phone box just as I was coming back from getting a Diet Coke. My phone's fucked, which makes the first few seconds of a phone call full of "can you hear me?" bollocks as I struggle with the C key to get the earpiece to work. I just about managed to get the earpiece working and the mouthpiece unmuted in time to hear her say "oh shit, I'm running out of coins, shit, shit". Managed to just about tell her that I couldn't come out for lunch, and went to the meeting.

And then, it lasted just 20 minutes. It was mostly pointless, as our self-organisation had just beforehand been trumped by an official "here's how you elect your reps" letter. Brilliant. But what did happen was people publicising their willingness to stand as reps. I would have stand, and wanted to, but since I've got 8 days off during the consultation period I'm hamstrung and can't. And on that holiday, I'm going to have to try hard to take my mind off the fact that when I come back I might not have a fucking job.

It's only 3pm. There's loads of today left. This sucks.

My name is Darren Foreman, and I'm a software engineer

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Darren Foreman and I'm a software engineer.

There. Phew. Glad that's out in the open. I feel better for having admitted it. Because here's the rub: I don't like software engineering. It doesn't excite me, I'm not passionate about it, it's just a job. And, like most people (I think), I don't particularly enjoy my job.

Software engineering, as a discipline, is about bending a work-to-rule binary slave to your will. When I'm implementing someone else's requirements, it's just translation, from their (in my case) English into my English into whatever language I'm coding in (for me, Python). The satisfaction of getting the end result of some working code is simply the relief of coming to the end of the translation process, and having battled through all the frustrations which ensued along the way. Moreover there is no emotional, social, or human element to the happy ending -- the computer's just doing what it's told, and always does. You haven't had to coax or convince, just tell. It's always frustrating that it takes so long just to tell a computer what to do, but at the end I can at least stake a legitimate claim of power over the bits. I am man, and I have the machine performing for me, mwahahahaha! Well, I'm not interested in power, and so I'm not interested in software engineering.

I might edit or rewrite or write more about this later. With some swearing in it. Or delete it, who knows? But for now this'll do.

Named beers

For quite a while now I have, in certain company, semi-regularly brought up the topic of named beers. That is to say that most beers (actually any alcoholic drink really) have a name -- perhaps yet undiscovered -- which describes them more than just using a number. So more expressively than just "the first beer", and conveying more information than just order. For example, the first beer of the day, if taken at 9am to battle a hangover, is clearly a "straightener" -- whereas if taken at 5pm at the start of what you know is going to be a big session, well that's a "loosener". (If taken at about 1pm on the 2nd day of a music festival, it's normally both)

I think they all end in -er too, or at least I want(ed) them to. I can't remember the terms I and others have come up with in the past, but that's OK, because the reason I'm writing this isn't to publicise them. No, the reason I'm writing this is because today I have brought into work a desk calendar.

The desk calendar is from Schott's Miscellany. It's January 9th, but rather than just rip off the first 8 days I thought I'd have a look at them. This is the entry for Tuesday January 6th, 2009.

------BELGIAN DRINKING LEGENDS------

In the 18thC, it was said that Belgian laborers spent a quarter of their wages on drink-- on ordinary days they took 6 drams, on festal days more. These drams were named:

The Worm-killer......................5.30 AM The Digester............................2.00 PM
The Eye-opener.......................8.00 AM The Soldier..............................5.00 PM
The Whip................................11.00 AM The Finisher.............................7.30 PM

Tesco Finance really can just fuck off

It's 16 days since I requested a signature verification letter. I still don't have it, but I sent one in after getting Ruth to print one out at her work. Yesterday, 2nd December -- about 8 months after opening the account -- I finally got online access to my "Internet Saver" account.

Naturally the first thing I tried to do was transfer the money out. Except I can't. In order to transfer money, I need to add a payee -- and in order to do that, I need a card reader.

Some background: Tesco Finance is essentially a franchised RBS service, in the same way (but on a smaller scale) as NatWest is. In fact the Tesco Finance online banking site is an obvious reskinning of NatWest Online Banking, and this thing about needing a card reader is the same on both systems.

With NatWest I can understand it. I have a current account. Consequently I have a card, which is fairly crucial to the operation of a card-reader. But with Tesco I just have a savings account. No card. So, they're going to send me a "suitable card" as well as a reader. Within 15 days. Right.

I phoned Tesco up, and asked to transfer all the money out and close the account. They said oh, no, because this is an internet saver account, the only way to close the account down is by sending them a letter. Of course! How stupid of me. But, OK, at least please transfer all the money out to my current account... oh. I can't do that either. Because, you see, if I transferred all the money out, I wouldn't have the minimum balance (£1) required to keep the account open, would I? And as they'd just explained, I can't close the account. Never mind the fact I wanted the account to close, I can neither explicitly do that nor trigger it by taking the balance below the minimum.

I swore at the bloke, hung up, and wrote a letter to Tesco. I don't need this shit at the best of times, certainly not when I"ve got a cold. I wonder how long it will take to close my account? Tempted to predict that it'll take long enough that I'll actually earn some interest (I don't have any yet -- it's paid annually, at the end of March). What a fucking colossal waste of time and effort.

American Express shows how it's done

I just got a call from American Express. It came from a withheld number, so I didn't answer it. But I know it was American Express, because this is what happened afterwards:

1. they left a voicemail
2. the voicemail told me what it was about, gave me a number to call back, and referred explicitly to the fact they came from a withheld number: they were going to send a corresponding SMS to go some way to proving it was really them
3. they sent me a corresponding SMS
4. I called back the 01273 number (verifiable on the Amex website) they gave me

And then to the call itself. I was on hold for less than 15 seconds, didn't have to tell them what it was about ("Are you returning our call or is it about something else?"), and got a clear explanation for what happened with PayPal the other day. PayPal had decided -- without telling me while I was trying to make the payments -- to send through two transactions flagged as tests, because it was the first time my card was being used by them. This is apparently a trick scammers use, guessing card numbers and trying to open up access to them with test transactions. So, Amex just wondered if I'd tried to use PayPal and whether they could OK it.

American Express, you are awesome. Can you do current accounts? Savings accounts? Or contract your staff out to Tesco, NatWest, Nationwide, ... ?

Financial institutions and me (again)

Still fucking hate dealing with most of them. Britannia are a particularly honourable exception and if they did current accounts I'd be with them like a shot, but they don't.

◊

When I "switched" from NatWest to Nationwide all my direct debits moved across. I saw them in online banking on both accounts, cancelled on the former and set up on the latter. So far so good, until Kingston Council sent me a letter complaining I hadn't paid the last month's council tax. And then Orange called me up complaining I hadn't paid the last month's bill. And then PayPal sent me 4 emails in 5 minutes telling me a subscription payment had failed to fetch the cash out of the old account.

◊

Went to PayPal. I have a "Backup Funding" credit card set up, and it's a credit card I use all the time. I've used it a few times in the last couple of days, in fact. PayPal claim that my card issuer is refusing payment, however, and that I need to call them. Thankfully a different card worked, but still. Fucks sake.

◊

I'm at home today, because someone was coming round to value my flat. I thought I'd make lunchtime useful, and go to HSBC to close down 2 bank accounts. I had previously been told I could do this by going into any branch, see. Queued up, got to the front, was told I had to submit something in writing. Queried this and they said ah, OK, go upstairs and speak to one of their advisors. Went upstairs. There are 4 little booths with desks in. Only one had an advisor in it, and as far as I could tell she was sat there with her mum. They saw me, but did nothing. Maybe it was another customer, but the snippets I could make out earwigging didn't convince me. Either way, there was no little reception desk to that floor, just a waiting area with a coffee machine. I sat in one of the chairs for ~10 minutes and didn't spot a single other member of staff -- just another customer who popped their head up, saw there was no-one around, and fucked off. After those minutes I fucked off too. So I still have 2 HSBC accounts to my name, neither of which I want.

◊

After spending so long on the phone with Tesco last week I ended up requesting the signature verification form again, in the post, so I can send it back to them. Today's post has come and gone and I still don't have it.

◊

I fucking hate this shit. It winds me up so much that I shake and almost feel tearful, for fucks sake. I utterly dread dealing with any of them, and my experience nearly always vindicates that feeling. They make me feel depressed and angry and helpless all at once.

Tesco personal finance are fucking shit

I opened a Tesco "internet saver" account in April. I ranted about it here in October. I phoned them up today.

Actually I phoned them up about 4 times. Beforehand I'd gone through my daily routine of trying unsuccessfully to login to their banking website, but because I was in a bit of a sort-out-finances mood I took the plunge and called them up. The first time went like this:

Welcome to Tesco Personal Finance. For savings or Clubcard Plus, press 1.

one

For automated service, press 1. For ...

one - thought I'd give automation a go, see if I couldn't transfer money out without speaking to someone

Please enter your customer number.

customer number

Please enter the 3rd and 1st digits of your security number

3rd and 1st digits

This service is temporarily unavailable. Please call back later. Thank you for calling Tesco Personal Finance.

And it hung up on me.

Er. Oh. OK. So I called back. This time, instead of automated service, I pressed 3 to talk to a customer services representative. I had to enter the numbers etc again, but I assumed this was so the person I would imminently be talking to would already know who I was. First line of security and all that.

I was wrong. The same thing happened. Computer said no, click, BYE.

I called back again and listened to every option of every menu. Apparently the only way I could talk to a human about savings was the route from the previous call, but I knew that didn't work; so this time, instead of actually entering my customer number, I did nothing:

You did not enter a customer number. Please enter your customer number.

more nothing

You did not enter a customer number. For help, press the star key.

*

To enter your customer number, use your phone's keypad to type in the digits. To speak to a customer services representative at any time, press the star key.

*

Hold music! Delightful hold music! I was in a queue, they were terribly busy you see, but I was in a queue to talk to a human! Salvation was surely near!

I waited on hold for 5 minutes or so. Finally a woman answered, frightfully sorry to have kept me waiting, she wondered how she could help me today. I explained, with not inconsiderate exasperation, how I'd had an account for 7 months yet not been able to login, and she took some details. Specifically she took my customer number and 2 digits from my security number -- the same details as I enter every day in the website, the same as I'd typed into the phone earlier -- and said she couldn't help me. My account is locked, see, pending receipt of proof of my signature. I swear she'd gone to the fucking website same as I do and gone through the whole thing and was just reading it out. She couldn't do anything for me. No withdrawals, no closing the account, no fucking anything. Great customer service!

I did get put back on hold briefly while, supposedly, she got someone to check all the way back to July (account was opened in late March/early April; not sure why they only went back to July). Of course they found no evidence of me sending them anything my signature on it. Never mind that they've got my fucking money and that I can type in account numbers and sort codes and customer numbers and security numbers and any other details they want: because they've only received about 4 things with my signature on instead of 5 I can't have my money and she can't help me.

Click. Human says no. BYE.

I went back to my desk, back to my laptop, back to the website. Tried to login, failed, clicked on "send me the signature verification letter". The fucking bastards. Perhaps in 2 weeks or so I'll be able to login.

Perhaps.

The Amazon saga continues

Can't say as I'm actually annoyed by the pricing shenanigans any more, but the email idiocy is reaching amazing heights/depths. The date they said they'd respond on came and went, and 2 days later they phoned me (withheld number, so I didn't respond; I've also explicitly asked them to not phone me...) and left a long rambling voicemail. Upshot: they can't figure out how to unsubscribe from their email lists. Good effort, Amazon.

Looking forward to an email from Amazon

Bit of a spleen-vent this one. Move on if you've no time for thinking online retailers should feel obliged, if not legally then morally, to honour the slight pricing mistakes they make from time to time. Lots of them do, but Amazon don't. Indeed, they have a policy which basically says you can't trust their pricing at all.

A few weeks ago, 3 or so I think, I did my daily routine of visiting Amazon.co.uk to refresh my basket and see if the price of what I had in it had changed. It had -- the Sony BDP-S350 blu-ray player was at £129! I'd been waiting for it to drop to £150 or so before pulling the trigger; £129 was an unexpected bonus. Not a huge discount, less than 1/3rd off the £179 price they'd had for a few days previous, just a great deal and better than most other sites. I ordered one, told a few friends, and posted it on the whathifi.com forums.

The next morning someone on avforums.com was saying they'd had their order cancelled. Mine was intact until the afternoon, when it too disappeared from the site. I asked them to reinstate it, they replied saying no, they wouldn't, and if I'd been paying attention they actually have a published and explicit policy allowing them to (a) change the price of any item after you order it, and (b) cancel your order later than you can cancel it yourself. A very biased "contract" (which, to their benefit, is not actually a contract until they've dispatched the goods). Thank fuck I'd not bought a load of blu-ray discs in the afternoon!

Amazon did honour the £129 price for some punters, just not everyone, and despite a sickenly patronising email imploring me that the author personally didn't want Amazon to lose my custom -- for having spent so much with them over the years (it's probably not more than £300 in 8 years, pfft!) -- they weren't going to do the same for me. No fucking dice.

Amazon win out of this: they look good to anyone who saw the price but didn't buy. In the absence of a public admission that the price wasn't honoured, they have given the impression of being a retailer that occasionally has really decent offers. They're likely to attract and retain customers because of that. People will use the site more on the look out for similar offers. And similar discounts are available all the time, 20-odd percent discounts on RRP or the price of items elsewhere are not uncommon. So it seems they can just use their policy to price up any popular item with a slightly bigger than normal discount, honour a few purchases, up it again later, nice zero-cost marketing campaign right there.

I think it's out of order -- they can't have taken that many orders that it would make a dent in their profits; it wasn't an obvious mistake price, the discount was less than 33% for crying out loud; and at least one other retailer offered the same price and honoured it themselves. And surely it's just good customer service? No, it appears not: Amazon just say fuck off. So I was really in a huge huff with them, and opted out of all their emails except the ones they send when you actually make a purchase.

That was all about 3 weeks ago. About 4 days after I unsubscribed I got a promo email, so I complained. How do you unsubscribe if the unsubscribe options don't work? In response they phoned me from a withheld number, so I didn't answer, and then they emailed me to say sorry, sorry, sorry, really sorry, my email is now on not a single one of their promotional lists. Sorry again. Sorry.

A few days later, I got a promotional email from them again. Went to my account to confirm I was still unsubscribed, and complained again. They phoned, left a voicemail, but didn't follow it up with the email they promised.

This morning I got another promotional email from Amazon.co.uk. Complained again. I've explicitly asked them not to phone me, and shockingly they've done that -- they've emailed me to say it's being looked at and I'll get a full response on November 13th. I monitor my spam folder with interest.