How I make extra money playing roulette

Can't believe I'm writing this. Not that I'm going to give away any big secrets or some kind of MAGIC BETTING FORMULA, but just that it's possible to write a post with this title that isn't bullshit. Because it's not! It's true! I really have been making a regular profit playing roulette over the last 6 months, something along the lines of £100-120 a month -- and now I'm going to REVEAL MY MAGIC BETTING FORMULA. Or, err, not. Shall I begin?

Actually, before I begin, let me emphasise some things. First, this is not "how to make extra money playing roulette". This is "how I make extra money playing roulette". There's so much luck involved that it really would be stupid of me to claim, or anyone to infer, that this is anything more than just me recounting my own experience. It's roulette for crying out loud! So please, don't go reading this and thinking you can do the same, guaranteed, and then get pissed off with me if you try it and lose money. I'll probably lose money one day. This is more a story about how I've managed to learn a bit of self-discipline, and have something statistically improbable happen to me along the way.

Right. Here goes. The PATH TO RICHES is paved with the following.

1. I play at bluesq.com.

I'm not "a roulette player". I play roulette using bluesq.com's livecasino. That's the only place I play it, and the only place I have played it the whole time. It's real roulette -- they've got webcams pointing at real tables in an Eastern European casino-cum-sweat-shop. None of this computerised theft going on.

2. I picked a number and stuck with it.

I bet on the same number every time. Every time. My number happens to be 11.

3. I picked a number in the middle row.

The middle horizontal row, that is. Numbers 2, 5, 8, 11, 14, ... you get the idea. And I already said which one I've chosen.

3.1 I didn't pick 2 or 35

I bet on 9 numbers at a time. It's not possible with 2 or 35.

4. I bet on 9 numbers at a time

I put a quid each on the corners of 11, and one on 11 itself. That's a 5 quid bet in total, covering 9 numbers, just under a quarter of the available numbers (there are 37 including 0).

5. I wait for the numbers to come in

If anything from 7-15 comes in the bet makes a profit. Each corner bet is a bet on 4 numbers: 7,8,10,11; 8,9,11,12; 10,11,13,14; 11,12,14,15. So here's what happens

• A corner/odd number comes in (7,9,13,15): you get 4 quid profit, or 9 quid in total. The bet was on 4 numbers out of 36, after all (they don't count zero in the odds), and 36/4 is 9.
• A side/even number comes in (8,10,12,14): you get 13 quid profit, or 18 quid in total. This is because 2 of the corner bets came in, paying £9 each.
• 11 comes in: you get 67 quid profit, or 72 quid in total (with the stake back). This is because you win 4 bets which pay £9 = £36, plus 1 which pays £36.

6. I have a stake and an aim, and I (mostly) stick to them

I put in £20 each time, about 5 times a week. If I make four £5 bets and lose them, I don't chase: that's it for the day. If a bet comes in, I keep playing until I've either lost all the money or made £50 profit (ie, reached £70). Then I withdraw the cash. Do not chase losses! But do carry on reading, as, well, I don't so much chase winnings, but I do behave in a way that can make the possible profit be more than £50 a session...

7. I deviate slightly thanks to a bit of obsessive compulsive disorder

Amounts of money which don't end in 0 or 5 annoy me. So if I have, eg, £32 in the bank, I'll bet just £2 (expecting to lose it) before going back to the normal bet. Generally it'll be a quid each on two corners, covering all the numbers from 8 to 14, for example. £4 will be the four corners, £1 just 11, £3 the corners plus 11. You get the idea.

8. I'm slightly greedy, especially if drunk

On occasion I'll be a bit pissed off, or happy/flush, or drunk, and double up. So £40 in and not quite the normal bet doubled, but instead £1 on the 4 corners, the 4 edges, and £2 on 11 itself. If 11 comes in this bad boy pays out £170! But gambling like this doesn't happen very often -- thank goodness. It would backfire way more often than it pays out if I was doing it regularly, and what's more the corner numbers still only pay £9 so there's no profit made when they come in. The £5 bet on 9 numbers is much safer.

9. I'm also slightly greedy when sober

Numbers seem to come in more than once in 5 spins or so fairly often. Surprisingly so, to me, but there may be a good reason for it. Anyone know? Ah, I don't really care, just happy enough to have noticed it. So sometimes 11 has come in twice on the trot, in fact a few times. Knowing this, I don't tend to stop immediately I reach a £50 profit -- instead I let the OCD drive for a while and treat £70 as the new £0. Does that make sense? It means if I win on the first bet, for example, I end up having £82 in the bank after a win, I'll gamble £2 and then £5 and, well, sometimes it comes in, simple as that.

10. I'm really fucking bastard lucky

Seriously, look at this. How can the above possibly be a useful, sensible way of spending time and money? It's just luck. 11 has come in enough to make me an average profit. I play about 5 days a week, at different times (mornings, evenings, middle of the day, whatever). I stick to my guns, the deviations from the basics are tidy (number 7), tiny (number 9) or rare (number 8), and this is what has happened to me. Nothing more, nothing less. It's luck. Yes, betting on 9 numbers at a time feels "safe", and even appears to be, but IT'S ROULETTE!

11. I do the maths and don't gamble what I can't afford

I've made about £100-120 a month doing this. Compare that with the amounts I'm staking: I'm throwing in about £100 a week! It's a slow profit and it gets nervy, and I'm lucky enough that I can (at the moment) swallow a dry spell -- I frequently go days without winning anything, on one occasion a couple of weeks -- but when the wins come in they tend to be in the £70-120 range. Chasing losses would be catastrophic, and I've learnt/discovered the discipline and patience that has stopped me from doing so. I'm quite proud of that, given my gambling habits of old. It remains to be seen what happens when an inevitable month-of-shit comes along -- hopefully I'll slow down before it goes horribly wrong. Or maybe you'll see me in the gutter.

simple django+yaml file generator

EDITED to change its name.
EDITED to change its name again! What was I thinking? It should always have been called pork.py.

I was trying to write a website for PORK, but I fail massively at HTML, CSS, design, all of that nonsense. And I'm bored, a bit. Watching The Business on Channel 4 HD despite having seen it about 5 times before (I love it). So, rather than do anything useful, I've done a stereotypically daft, over-engineered, off-on-a-tangent avoiding-the-real-problems thing and knocked up a tool -- which countless other people (me included) have already implemented in the past -- to generate what I need... though of course I still need to write the source templates, so it hasn't actually done me any good at all.

Yes, it's another simple static file generator.

This one uses django+yaml to do its stuff. After some cursory investigation it seems there are already a couple of "lightweight static file generators" that do similar things, but frankly none of them seem as lightweight as mine. It's one file, 100-odd lines but ~75% docs, comments and whitespace. It does the job for me, maybe it does the job for someone else. I called it pork.py. Mmm.

Download (or just look at) pork.py here

I don't go for the github way of doing things, and nor do I tend to go back to something once it reaches a usefulness limit to me personally -- so if by some miracle you do like this and want it to do more, just take it, extend it, publish it, put your name on it, I really don't care.

Fuck off. But have a nice weekend!

I got an email yesterday, just after 5pm. It was a rejection email: I won't be working at [some company -- I won't be saying who it was or the names of anyone there]. Great. As if my weekend wasn't bad enough. But really though: why would someone send out a rejection email to a job applicant on a Saturday? That's a genuine question; what follows is an emotional rant about why I think in my individual case it was a fucking horrible thing to do.

First, some context. I've been made redundant, but with a longer than normal consultation period. As soon as I knew the dates involved I formulated a plan: finish work in May, job hunt toward the end of May/in the first 3 weeks of June, then go to Hellfest and Australia, come back, start new job (this plan obviously has some built in confidence/arrogance in it, in that I'll not have any trouble finding a job in May/June).

Then came a spanner in the works. I came across [some company]'s website because I wanted to use their service. I was really quite excited (and I don't get excited very often) to discover they're based in London, and doubly-triply excited to see they had an open vacancy for a role which pretty much read "must be Darren Foreman". The match between the required skills and my CV was (actually, still is) pretty much as good as I could hope for. Add that to the fact it's a company whose product I am massively enthusiastic about and I thought, I have to contact these guys. I can't pass this chance up.

I sent them a couple of emails. In them I was completely upfront about my availability -- I'm not willing to quit during my consultation period, for various reasons. I prodded a friend who, I discovered after sending those emails, works there. He managed to get someone to read and respond to them. So then I had an interview; it was positive, I was even told that my availability matched up with their plans quite well. After the interview I spent a fair while arranging the time to sit a test. I sat the test, and I waited to hear more.

I heard nothing until yesterday. A Saturday. Now, these guys knew full well my eagerness to work there, my wide-eyed enthusiasm about their product and the chance to play a part in it. Yet armed with that knowledge, they rejected me on a Saturday. Why would you send out what you absolutely know is going to be a disappointing message in the middle of a weekend? I honestly can't figure it out, and obviously I'm very fucked off about it (maybe that's a good thing?)

The rejection told me I did not fit a "very specific profile" for the role. On paper the role and my CV/experience are an almost perfect match, so I'm very cynical about that. And with talk of profiles, I wonder why I had to sit the test at all. It seems like I've wasted my time -- and theirs -- and that they got my hopes up for, literally, no good reason.

The rejection also said they'd be hiring more within the next year or two, so I should keep in touch. What gives there? Even given my liking of the product, why would I hang around them waiting for another chance to pimp myself in their directions? If they don't want me when I'm actually available, I can't see why I should or would make myself available for them if they decide to suddenly invent a me-shaped role. And besides, I explained to them in my interview the value I place on stability and two-way loyalty in my career. I like long-term roles. I was at Yahoo! for 8.5 years, and I left to go to another established company with a long-term plan. Of course circumstances change, and at Global Radio they've changed massively and to my detriment, but I am not someone who always keeps an eye and an ear out for other opportunities and roles. I only leave a job if I have to, not because I spy what might be some greener grass. And, crucially, I told them all this.

Yes, I'm emotional about it. It's a bitter disappointment to not get the role, but I can deal with that. I'm a big boy now. But the manner and timing of the rejection just sucks.

I fail at maps, directions, and signs

Golf course, originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

It's true. After my mostly dismal attempt at walking the Thames Down Link the other week, today I tried to walk section 9 of the London Loop. This is, as the name suggests, a "circular" route through the outskirts of London, split into nice simple chunks. Section 9 is between Hatton Cross and Kingston Bridge, and although the recommended route is to walk it in that direction, I wanted to do the opposite, because I'd just seen Ruth off at Heathrow.

So, at 0630, I emerged from Hatton Cross station. I was better prepared than for the Thames Down Link, having done a bit of map reading but also, crucially, printed out the written directions from the official London Loop website. Granted, as said, they were for the reverse route, but surely all I need to do is swap my lefts and rights. Left?

It worked for a bit. I found some signs. They were useful. That was good. Less useful was the rain that started just as I turned off the A30, but in for a penny in for a pound.

I walked next to the River Crane. I followed the next signs. I crossed a road. I carried on next to the river. I went over a weir. I went over a bridge. I came out on a bit of Hounslow Golf Course ... and I was lost.

The instructions say -- "go straight across the golf course, over the bridge, and turn right". Well I'd just turned left, crossed a bridge, and emerged on the golf course, so I went straight across.

I FAIL, originally uploaded by Darren Foreman.

No path. Oh. I walked to the right, through a little clearing, then arriving on another hole. Still no path. I walked down the side of the fairway, near the river. No path. Between the fairway and the hole there was a little bridge and then a path. Over the bridge, along the path, up a hill/mound... no, this didn't match what the directions said at all.

Back to the hole, back to the river, no path. Back to where I emerged, facing it, trying to find a way of standing such that behind me was a path. Couldn't do it. Straight across? At which angle? None of them that I could tell. This charade took a good 30 minutes or so, in the pissing rain, and just annoyed me so much. Where were the signs? Where was the path? Why couldn't I find either? So I walked back down the aforementioned fairway, got to the mound again... and spotted a path next to it that I'd missed first time!

Not the right path. It just took me back out of the golf course onto Staines Road -- the road I'd crossed (correctly) back when I was still on course and hugging the River Crane.

On the road there was a knackers yard and some roadworks. Puddles and rain. Loads of traffic. Just horrible. I walked along it, determined to still walk even if I couldn't do it in somewhat nicer surroundings.

Turns out the directions mention that earlier in the route you cross Staines Road. Since earlier meant later for me, I did actually hold out some hope of rejoining the loop if I just persevered along the road.

At the time, there were two crucial things which I had no idea about -- but do now, having plotted the map of my route. First, my route out of the golf course had been a huge double back. The fact I'd crossed Staines Road earlier was a mystery -- it had just been "a road", and sufficiently further along to look very different. I'd lost my sense of direction, sort of.

Second, there are two Staines Roads around the area. I was on the wrong one.

I figured this out, actually, by the time I got to the outer limits of Hounslow town centre. Here I really thought about giving up properly and just jumping on a bus, but two things stopped me from doing that. I knew where I was (and thus which way to go), and the sun was coming out. The weather being as it was, I thought there was a good chance of a rainbow, and I wanted to photograph it.

No rainbow was forthcoming. Instead I just walked to Whitton, used the community toilet scheme, bought a diet coke, found a park with a "River Crane walk" in it and set off back along that damn fucking river -- though not before spending ~5 minutes staring at the map + information board trying desperately to figure out which way would take me toward Twickenham and which back toward Hatton Cross.

I picked right! But I still got really confused. In a day of pairs, I learnt two things about the River Crane walk. One: there are two routes along it, one "via River Crane" and one via something else. Huh? I don't get it. But anyway, two: the "via River Crane" route hardly sticks near the River Crane at all. I thought I'd been typical me and got lost when I didn't see the river for a while, and especially so when I suddenly found myself next to The Stoop and then in some residential roads. Much to my surprise I then saw a "River Crane Walk" sign on a corner...

... but I didn't care. Enough was enough. It was about 0930 now, I'd expected to be at Kingston or Kingstonabouts but I was just north of Twickenham station, opposite Heatham House, venue of -- perhaps -- Halibutt Sharon's finest ever gig (though the Marquee was pretty sweet too). In the spirit of my old band, then, I stood at a bus stop and waited for a bus. For about 2 minutes. And then I went home and made some pork.

Sydney Panorama

Sydney Panorama, originally uploaded by Auswomble.

Of all the photos my brother has on flickr, this is one of my favourites. That is all. (OK, it's not quite all -- I also think it's a shame it doesn't quite fit in this post)

Identify the sender of my mystery post

I got some post today. Nothing particularly unusual about that fact. What is out of the ordinary, though, is that one of the items addressed to me was an empty envelope. No indication of who it's from. No return address, no proper (stamped-on) postmark, and obviously enough no contents. There are 3 things which could, I guess, lead in some way to a guess at identifying the poster.

Exhibit A: a number above my name. What could it mean? 132 has no signifiance to me.

Exhibit B: a Royal Mail postage paid "stamp" -- on the sticker which also had my address and the 132. What does SWDO 754 mean? Who uses stickers like this?Exhibit C: a not-quite-barcode thingummy. Means fuck all to me.

Beyond the normal cycle of bills and magazine subscriptions, the only post I'm expecting is a couple of replacement bank statements from HSBC. But they aren't due to arrive for another couple of days, should (I expect) be in an envelope with HSBC's return address on -- like everything else they send out -- and would probably not be addressed solely to Mr Darren Foreman.

So. Er. Anyone?

EDITED TO ADD after a request, here are two more photos.

Exhibit D: the full envelope. It's A4(?). That's a pen on it so you get the size and, as requested, "that 'look'". Hi Chris.
Exhibit E: nothing.

Financial institutions and me YET again

Have I ever mentioned how much I fucking hate banks? Oh, yes, I have. Twice. But this is no credit crunch they're-all-bastards-because-people-borrowed-too-much-and-the-media-encouraged-it rant, it's a purely personal rant (again) about how banks seem to treat me like total shit.

If you can be bothered, you can go back and read my previous rants about the fiasco that was my attempt to move from NatWest to Nationwide. Well, this time I'm angry about having moved back to NatWest.

Not that I ever fully left them. Nationwide's team did manage to move my direct debits and standing orders across, in so far as they got them cancelled on the NatWest side. My mortgage bounced -- twice -- from Nationwide though. Sigh. And because of all the other grief they gave me, most particularly lying to me about my credit rating and refusing to give me anything but a Fisher Price "my first bank account" service, I moved back.

The move back had to be manual. I'd never closed my NatWest account, or even moved my salary payment to it. So I had to move all the direct debits back by myself, either online or on the phone. I did them all, I'm sure I did. I remember having a list of them written down and ticking them off as I contacted them. The sooner I got away from Nationwide, after all, the sooner I could stop the standing order which was funding it and close the bastard (not that I've done that last bit just yet).

Since doing so, my Orange direct debit has bounced and I've been cut off with no notice -- on, as it happened, a day when Ruth really needed to get hold of me, from Pakistan (when I finally spoke to her she was in floods of tears). I've now had to set up a direct debit to a credit card instead of the bank, which will cost me an extra £3.50 per month (thank fuck for miles-earning credit cards, though see below for a rant about one of those too).

My Fortean Times subscription has ended, after ~13 uninterrupted years. I'm pretty sure this is because the direct debit has bounced. I've contacted them but had no reply. The password I used to login to subsinfo.co.uk in February (when I went in to sort it out) no longer works.

My TV licence expired and the direct debit to renew it bounced.

My council tax direct debit has bounced. Twice.

Hmm. I'm sure more things have fucked up too, but I can't remember what right now. Too angry I guess. Anyway, I'm fairly certain that what's happened is this: NatWest have seen a bunch of direct debit requests from accounts that were fairly (but not hugely) recently cancelled, and decided to refuse them. But that's bollocks: I've set these things up manually, and it's called a direct debit instruction for a reason. I instruct the bank to do what I fucking say. And at the very least they might want to, y'know, phone me up, write me a letter, send me a message through online banking...

Deep breath. That's enough about NatWest for now. How about we talk about MBNA? Don't get me wrong, mostly they treat me very well (big credit limit etc), but sometimes they do take the piss. My MBNA credit card is an affiliate card with BMI, the airline, so that I can earn miles on all my purchases and then fly in comfort on long holidays. I don't actually fly with BMI at all, but if I did I would earn double the miles on purchases made with them. It's a loyalty card, after all.

In February (or was it March? I forget) I made my first purchase from BMI with my BMI card. Except, oh wait, no I fucking didn't: it failed authorisation. The call centre had to ask me for an alternative card with which to make my payment. And straight after I got off the phone to them, I got a phone call from ... MBNA. Telling me an attempt at a suspicious transaction had just been attempted, so they had emergency cancelled my card and issued me with a new one, new number, new PIN, new the lot.

That's good service, but for the fact that IT'S A BMI BRANDED/PARTNERED CARD AND THE TRANSACTION WAS WITH BMI. For flights! How can that be suspicious!?

I fucking hate banks.

Pay to play

I want to make my PORK shows (and the non-PORK ones I've got planned) available for download. Mixcloud's great, but the few people who listen so far would like an offline version. I want to do this legally, which involves getting a licence.

Amusingly, the costs are (or at least feel) punitive, in that the more popular you are the more it costs. It seems the licensing authorities either want to discourage people from promoting music too much, or encourage them to shove ads in their shows or get sponsorship or whatever. Ho hum. Whatever. I don't expect to be that popular anyway, but it's got my back up that you're essentially forced to whore yourself out (or stop completely) if too many bloody people start listening.

Anyway the upshot is mp3s of my shows will be put up, but only after I'm legal, which means waiting for a response to the email I sent to the PRS's enquiry line, reproduced below. If I get a response I'll probably post that too, though tbh I expect it to come with a huge disclaimer-signature which prohibits me from doing so. And just before the email itself, this is the licence I refer to in it. I think it's going to cost me ~£246 to make the mp3s.

To: onlinelicensing@prsformusic.com
Subject: suitable licence for weekly podcast

Hi

I would like to start making available an online weekly "radio" show -- ie, a podcast, downloadable by my audience (not streamed). Each show would contain 10-15 songs, with speech between most but not all songs (some will be played back to back), and I'd expect a maximum of ~100 or so downloads of each show. I won't be running ads, being sponsored, or charging for anyone to listen.

Am I correct in thinking I need a Limited Online Exploitation Licence, band B? If I understand the information on your website correctly, my plans above require this (rather than the podcasting licence), and correspond to a theoretical maximum of 15 x 52 x 100 = 78000 downloaded works per annum.

As you're aware, your fee structure discourages hobbyist music lovers from promoting music (that they've already paid for) to too many people -- ie, becoming even vaguely popular -- by making it prohibitively expensive above a certain audience level. Because of this I presume you can provide me with some advice on how to ensure I don't reach such a level. I need to stop before too many people listen to the music, as it would only take 450 downloads of each show before I go beyond even a band C LOEL, itself a financial stretch too far. Please let me know the recommended way of doing this.

PS I notice this paragraph on www.fairplayforcreators.com:

"Music creators rely on receiving royalties whenever and wherever their work is used. Royalties are vital in nurturing creative music talent. They make sure music creators are rewarded for their creativity in the same way any other person would be in their work."

Most people in their work are paid a wage or salary, not commission. For example, I'm a web developer, and I don't get paid more if more people look at my employer's website. But don't let that stop you.

Thanks in advance,

Darren
--
http://darrenf.org/

mixcloud invites

Turns out one of the founders of mixcloud likes what I have to say about it. Check the comment on my "radio darrenf" post. Very flattering -- especially the positive comment about the quality of my show(s), which, let me be honest, is a bit of a surprise. I'm well aware of the, shall we say, niche appeal of the music I've so far been playing, and I can't really envisage, based on what I know about the fella, him really getting into a bit of grind. ;-) Nonetheless, a compliment's a compliment and I'm grateful for any and all that come my way. Cheers!

I'm not going to write much about mixcloud itself. There's a more thorough examination elsewhere, or you could just read their own about pages, but the short version -- and what's got me so excited personally -- is this: anyone can be a DJ. Make a mix, or radio show-esque recording, and upload it: job done. Somehow the murky legal world of licensing the tunes you play (the obstacle that has stopped me from doing this before now) are dealt with for you. You create, others listen (online, no downloading).

I can't wait for it to come out of invite-only mode. But while I, er, wait for it to come out of invite-only mode, something else has my way come. From the founder bloke. Not just the complimentary comment, but my own personal 50-strong invite code to give out. As I said earlier on twitter, preference for them should really go to people who actually want to listen to my show -- if not for the music, then for the sparkling banter between the filth and fury (this is an exercise in epic narcissism after all, even if that is at odds with my disdain for self-promotion) -- but since I don't know many people who care much for either of those things I thought, fuck it, might as well just post it on here.

The code itself is gloriously simple and corresponds awesomely with my recent attempt at fashioning a consolidated online identity: it's darrenf. See what's happened there?

So if you fancy:

• listening to death metal, grindcore, and a fat cockney bloke swearing (me, here); or
• listening to dance music of various sub-genres, including "fidget", "glitch" and "wobble" (I'm not making this up -- but I guess it's no worse than thrash/speed/death/technical death/black/grindcore/goregrind/...); or
• uploading your own mixes/shows of any sort of music (doesn't everyone want to be a DJ? no?)

get yerself over to mixcloud's sign-up page and tell 'em darrenf sent you.

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.