Designed By Idiots

Track of the day - Whoooeee! - Zoot Sims & Bob Brookmeyer.

BTman 'installed' the telephone connection last Friday since when we have been without a phone. BTman number 2 turned up this morning and now seems to have disappeared again. He came back at 1:30pm and we are no longer phoneless. Another miracle!

The oven is still working and we have not yet received a bill. It seems that customer service in the UK does actually exist, it is merely slumbering and needs reawakening before anything happens. Having said that, we'll probably get a massive bill in tomorrow's post.

Dear Milt

Why are urine sample bottles so small? It's not as if humans have a built in tap that can be turned on and off at will and I don't know anyone who can stop after 27ml. These bottles are obviously designed by idiots or people with a cruel sense of humour.

Dear accident prone,
You have my sympathy.

Tomorrow I will be posting hints on domestic pee stain removal techniques if you can hang on that long.

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Beef Casserole Break-In

Track of the day - Whoooeee! - Zoot Sims & Bob Brookmeyer.

There's been a break-in at the Hello Sailor bar. The manager told me that whoever did it got in and out again through the kitchen window.

"Did they take much?"
"Not much. A couple of bottles of spirits and a tin of cigars. Nothing else."
"That's good," I said.
"It's not that good Milt. I'd got a beef casserole marinading on the new AGA cooker and the burglar crapped in it."
"That's disgusting," I told him.
"It certainly is. I had to throw half of it away."

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The Party Has Been Cancelled

Track of the day - Would You? - Touch & Go

"Anything you want to watch on tv" she asked.
I'd just come downstairs after scrubbing up and shaving for the 'Fabulous 50's' birthday bash.
"What about the party?" I asked.
"I don't want to go. You don't mind do you? I'm too tired. I've been up since half six this morning. The train journey was dreadful."
So there you are folks - the party has been cancelled, at least our part in it has.
My spending spree to get kitted out was all for nothing. Just as well I decided not to get the pointy shoes this afternoon.

I wouldn't mind but I know I'll get the blame for our not being there. In actual fact I was looking forward to listening to the two live rock bands. The camera was all charged up and ready to go and so was the DAT recorder. Never mind there's always his 70th or his funeral to look forward to.
I'll have to make do with the pub instead.

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Screw BT

Track of the day - Memphis - Chuck Berry.

BTman arrived and failed to connect the phone.
"They seem to have allocated your old line to a new customer. I'll get someone to set up a new line in the box round the corner. I can't do it. I'm not allowed to go in the box myself," he said. "Not to worry. You've still got the Telewest line for calls. When they've connected you in the box round the corner, they'll give you a ring on the Telewest line."
Then he left.

Now I discover that Telewest have pulled the plug on their line so I have no phone at all which means that BTman fixing the line 'in the box round the corner' won't be able to phone. Wonderful.
Why do I need to know when the line has been connected? I need to know because I have to unscrew the front of the Telewest box and screw it into the front of the BT box and screw the front of the BT box into the existing Telewest box. Those were the instructions BTman left me with when he disappeared for his tea.
Sometimes I think that there is a plot being hatched in Bogsville to destroy what little remains of my sanity.

P.S. As soon as I discovered that the Telewest line was dead I swapped the box fronts over. Hopefully the phone will work when the guy connects the line in the local exchange or relay station box or whatever it is.

Saturday Update

The phone is still dead.
I can't get through to BT.
BT's 'report a fault' webpage returns this message -

Error notification
We‘re sorry but an error has occurred on this page.
This is because we are experiencing technical problems with this section of the site.
If the problem continues, please contact us.

How exactly?

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Beautifully Made Though

Track of the day - Your Feet's Too Big - Fats Waller.

John C. was tall. He was very tall. As far as we were concerned he was a giant. He played rugby.
"I haven't played for a month. My boots wore out and I can't get any to fit me," he moaned one night in the bar.
"Why not John?"
"Because my feet's too big. I take size 13 boots and nobody stocks them round here. I have to send away for them," he said.
"Anyway, I ordered a pair a month ago and they arrived this morning."
"You'll be playing tomorrow then."
"No I won't. Just look at what they sent me. Look at the bloody things."
He opened his anorak and there hanging round his neck was a pair of tiny boots.
"Size 13 alright but children's," he said. "Totally useless. Beautifully made though."

Mrs B is away until Saturday but, as you can see, we're coping just fine with the washing up. Beautifully put together though.

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Arriving At Your Destination

Track of the day - Beep Beep - The Playmates.

Tankers with personalised plates - what next?
I had gone off to find a shopping centre full of old fashioned clothes today. It should have been easy with a GPS unit and a post code but I never got there. The GPS unit pig headedly insisted on delivering me to a half built Travel Lodge. After the third time that it announced, "Arriving at your destination on the left" and then blew a raspberry at me, I ripped the damn thing off the windscreen and went home.

On a lighter and much more positive note, someone posted a comment for me this morning.
I was thrilled to bits, tickled pink and over the moon as they say round here.
No, it isn't there now. I wiped it because it recommended that I should 'play bingo online pure hoodia patch'.
It didn't make a lot of sense to me either, especially as a natural appetite suppressant is the last thing I need. I only eat one meal a day whether I feel like it or not. If I ate any less I would probably disappear up my own 'hoodia', which is precisely where I wish all spammers would disappear to, not I hasten to add up my 'hoodia' but up their own 'hoodias'.

Mrs B has disappeared orf to Scotland and in troo Scots' style I'm trying to rip a pair of troosers apart, not to turn them into a kilt but to try to make them fit. Ripping them apart is one thing - sewing them up again is a lot more difficult but it passes the time. Tonight I will seek solace in the nearest bar. It's raining too heavily to go anywhere else.

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A Wife With Subtitles

Band that destroyed my hearing Rudy - Supertramp.

I spent most of today trying to work out what my wife was saying to me.
What I really need is a wife with subtitles.

Not only did she have yesterday off but it now transpires that she has today, Tuesday and Wednesday off.
I'll have to go and buy one of those bull-horn thingies or we aren't going to manage much in the way of conversation. At least if I get her a loud hailer the neighbours will be able to come round and explain what Mrs B has just said to me.
She's off somewhere or other on Wednesday for the rest of the week so that rules out further conversation problems.
This morning we had a long drawn out and very complicated chat about horses -

"Mmm mmm son riding lessons mmm the car park in Aberdeen."
"Which car park was that?"
"Mmm mmmm Duthie Park in Aberdeen mmm."
"What about the Duthie Park car park?"
"I said that I got as far as the camber."
"What's wrong with the camber in the Duthie Park car park? What you're saying doesn't make much sense to me."
"First you trop, then you camber mmm then you mmm to the gallop."
I was trying very hard to make sense of this but I had to give up in the end.
"Ok. I got, son and Duthie Park, I got car park, I got camber and I got gallop but the rest doesn't make any sense to me at all."

She explained to me very patiently that she hadn't said 'car park'. It was Duthie Park where she had had some riding lessons so I could forget all about a car park. I forgot the car park and she explained that riding lessons started with a trot, not a 'trop', then progressed to the 'camber', better known as a canter and finally moved on to a gallop which is what she apparently failed to master.
Yes - a wife with subtitles would certainly help.

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Beer And Sex In The Early 1960's

Track of the day A Picture Of You - Joe Brown.

I woke at 8:10. The clock radio had already switched off.
"Shite! We've slept in again," I thought.
Mrs B. was still fast asleep so I made sure I woke her up because if there's one thing she doesn't like it's being late for work.
She pointed out that it was Sunday.

I'm starting to get cold feet about this whole 50's party thing. I mean what is going on? The guy is younger than me and I wasn't old enough to smoke legally when 1960 arrived. He was either a painfully precocious thirteen year old or is a deluded liar or both even.
What do the 1950's mean to him except a pile of records that he listened to and bought in the years after 1960?
It's a well known fact that beer and sex were invented, in that order, in the early 1960's, probably no earlier than 1964 in his case and a lot later than that in my case - or was it earlier?
I've never been any good at remembering times or dates but then nor were the girls I dated, come to that.
I'll go to this party thing as a 'child of the sixties', drink loads of beer and keep my fingers crossed that no one is hoping for anything other than social intercourse.
Where did I hide my winkle pickers?

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Wind Turbine Havoc

Track of the day Windmills Of Your Mind - Noel Harrison.



According to a report in the Independent on requests for renewable energy in the home

"Local authorities are becoming more receptive, not least because they have their own renewables targets," says Mat Colmer of the Energy Saving Trust. . "But 'nimbyism' is still a problem and people often object to neighbours' applications for wind turbines."

I'm not surprised. They play havoc with tv reception.

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Nerve Engine Gig Photo Gallery

Rock 'n' Roll Party

Track of the day Rip It Up - Little Richard.

Milt's been invited to a party. The kid's just sixty years old and a Rock 'n' Roll freak. He's got two bands playing if the zimmer frames and wheel chairs'll fit on stage and there'll be oxygen tents and viagra for the rest of us.
I'm getting worried about what to wear because all my clothes date from around 1959 anyway so no one will think I'm making an effort. They'll probably be right. I'll have to get the sewing machine out and knock up a pair of drainpipe trousers.
The guy on the ticket is Ed Kookie (Lend me Your Comb) Byrnes, one time tv actor in a series called 77 Sunset Strip and co-performer with Connie Stevens of what must be one of the worst pop songs ever.

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New Pipes & A Faulty Resistor

Track of the day Midnight Special - Little Richard.

The barman came over.
"Another pint of ordinary Carlsberg?"
"Yes please," I said, "but I have to agree with you that the last pint was pretty ordinary."
"It's the pipes," he told me knowledgeably. "They're brand new and haven't had a chance to get yeasted up yet. Once they get a good coating of yeast, you'll notice the difference."
I didn't say anything. It was obvious that it would be a total waste of breath.

The result of drinking pints of his 'unyeasted up' larger is that my innards are now in turmoil. Perhaps he should try cleaning his damn pipes before they 'yeast up' further.

Ovenman visits Bogsville

On the subject of innards here are the innards of our gas oven as exposed by ovenman who came this morning.
He tested everything and replaced just about everything, including its 'motherboard' and still the oven wouldn't work. The cooling fan wouldn't operate and without an operational cooling fan the oven won't fire up. Eventually, after a phone call back to base, he tracked the fault down to a resistor (indicated by an arrow in the above picture). With that removed and the connections shorted out, the cooling fan sprang into life and all functions were restored.

Not quite all functions were restored. He didn't have a replacement resistor, one has to be ordered, so he's coming back next Friday to fit it.
Until then I'm assured it's ok to use the ovens.

Ten minutes after ovenman left, postman arrived with the razor sharp Weapons of Mass Destruction. They are exactly what it says on the tin - razor sharp. It won't last - nothing does round here.

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The Lambretta & the BMW

Track of the day Over The Rainbow - Bill Frisell.



Fed up with waiting around in case the cooker engineers phoned to offer an earlier visit I mounted my trusty steed and high-tailed it out of Bogsville.
First stop the dentist's. I seem to spend more time there than anywhere else these days but I'm growing addicted to the smell of rubber gloves. Unfortunately she has signed me off. Disaster! I'll have to seek solace in one of the local bars.

Trusty steed and its GPS unit took me from there to the Merry Hell shopping Centre. They shouldn't have bothered. Merry Hell is even more hellish than the last time I went, more cars fighting for car parking spaces and more clueless people wandering around peering at maps of the place.
There might be a lot of shops there but they sell the same garbage that they sell here in Bogsville. I won't go again. I was lucky to escape this time because I couldn't remember where I'd left trusty steed.
On the way home to Bogsville a young kid riding an old Lambretta with a Learner plate hanging off the back, squeezed between trusty steed and a BMW in the outside lane. He didn't look to be in complete control as he dodged round the traffic but eventually he shot off in a cloud of exhaust smoke and gave BMW woman the finger as he went.
I can think of a few drivers who would have followed him to prove a point and left tread marks on the offending finger - perhaps she did. I wouldn't have blamed her.

Back in Bogsville I found voice messages on the phone.
"Please get in touch with the oven company".
Been there, done that so I left it for Mrs B. to do the necessary. It transpires that they've cancelled Friday's visit by sub contracted engineer and have arranged for one of their own engineers to come out tomorrow. I just hope the post doesn't deliver my new, razor sharp, Weapons of Mass Destruction before he arrives.

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Weapons Of Mass Destruction

Track of the day Over The Rainbow - Bill Frisell.

Round here it's impossible to get kitchen knives that a half decent chef would include in his tool kit.
Given the fact that the cooker is broken and out of commission until Friday at the earliest I'm not likely to be cooking anything but I'm fed up with not being able to cut anything without shredding it.
I've tramped the dreary streets of Bogsville but found nothing so I googled knives and kitchen knives and carving knives and came up with an interesting piece about kids and knives and then somehow came up with a link to Urban Dictionary where I found an interesting piece about kids and guns. I'm not sure what it's doing on Urban Dictionary but it's there anyway.

I had thought of visiting Birmingham to see if they sell good kitchen knives but perhaps I'll stay bored but safe in balmy, backwoods Bogsville and order my Weapons of Mass Destruction from the web.

WMD - A female with out of control enormous breasts.
"Oh good lordy Papo. It don't take General Powell to find those WMD's on that girl. We should invade."

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Nerve Engine Gig Photo Gallery

Stoves Q720GRF Problems

Track of the day Over The Rainbow - Bill Frisell.

How long should a modern double gas oven last? Ours will be six years old next January and has so far broken down three times. When it breaks down neither of the two ovens nor the grill will ignite.
Everything was working fine yesterday until it got part way through roasting a chicken. At some point in the cycle the burner went out - terminally.

This morning at 8:20 am I contacted Stoves customer service department.

"I can't give you a service callout date I've got to contact the engineers. Yes we have your telephone number."

I sat back and waited for a return call. I was still waiting at 12:20pm so I phoned again.
"We've passed it on to the engineers. They will contact you within 48hrs."
"48hrs! How am I supposed to cook in the meantime?"
"You've got a microwave haven't you?"
"No."
"Well what about a hob? You can cook very good food on a hob."
"Yes there's a hob. Luckily it's another make so it's still working."
"The best thing you can do is phone the engineers to find out when they can come out to you."

I thought that was why I was phoning Stoves but apparently not. I phoned the number she had given me but the number was engaged.
Eventually I got through.
"Sorry, we don't know anything about it. The best thing you can do is phone Stoves and tell them we haven't received the job details. If they get awkward with you tell them to phone us."
"Hello, it's me again. The engineers haven't received the job details from you."
"They have. We've faxed the details. They haven't entered them in their computer yet. You should hear something in the next 48hrs and the last person you spoke to shouldn't have given you the engineers' telephone number."

I pointed out that as the engineers were subcontracted and weren't 'their engineers', I would have been better off finding a repairman myself. It was explained to me that Stoves were only interested in getting my problem sorted out as quickly as possible because sending engineers out to a recall was costing Stoves money. Strangely enough I have the same objection to them sending engineers out. It costs me £60 or £70 a visit before they add on the cost of the parts.
Added to which, 48 hrs with a very expensive and very pretty but totally useless oven sitting in the kitchen sounds like lousy customer service to me.
The unit is a Stoves Q720GRF-DO though in Homer Simpson parlance that should probably read Q720GRF-Doh! They no longer make that particular model - I wonder why?

At 14:20pm I received a call from the engineers.

"Hello, I'm very sorry about this but we are fully booked until Friday. They've got it booked as a recall but we haven't been out to you before. I don't know whether you want to get back to Stoves about this to see if they can get one of their engineers out to you sooner."

48 hours have now turned into a week. If the oven hadn't cost so much, I'd write it off and start again with another company. In the UK it seems to be sales that matter, not customer service. It's about time these people realised that duff customer service actually reduces sales.

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School Governing Body Discuss Headgear

Track of the day Over The Rainbow - Bill Frisell.



Teacher Ned Kelly explains to the governors of Bogsville Primary School that he only has to wear the tin hat when men are present in the room and that none of his pupils has a problem with the headgear, except for little Jimmy Sourd who is a partial lip reader.

Worried about your hearing?

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Nerve Engine Gig Photo Gallery

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Herd Emissions Test Centre

Track of the day Over The Rainbow - Bill Frisell.



The Bogsville herd is tested regularly at the local MoT test centre and has a clean bill of health on methane emission levels which is more than can be said for its owner, Bumsleigh 'Stinker' Trump, who regularly empties the bars well before closing time.

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Nerve Engine Gig Photo Gallery

A Perfect Day?

Track of the day Perfect Day - Lou Reed.

This is anything but a perfect day because the first research results are coming out of Scotland following the smoking ban in pubs and bars and everywhere else. Guess what? Asthmatic bar staff are healthier whereas bar staff who are smokers are still - well smokers I suppose.
'Asthmatic bar workers also had less airway inflammation and an increase in quality of life scores'.
No mention in the report of the foul methane these poor people are inhaling, produced by the customers swamping their bellies with all that lousy beer.

I'm joking of course because humans don't produce significant quantities of methane. Correction, they do produce methane but are too polite to admit it.
No, the major methane culprits in the UK are apparently the two million cows that produce 500 litres of methane a day, each. That's a lot of methane. Methane is a far greater cause of global warming than carbon dioxide so the answer to our global warming problems is to find a way to stop cows farting.
Why stop at cows? We should all put our own digestive systems in order before we ask the cows to solve our problems for us and then fewer people would have to wear a gas-mask.

Which reminds me for some reason of the story about the Danish farmer who found one of his prize cows suffering from an unbelievably bloated stomach.
He took the cow into a barn and inserted a hollow brass rod deep into the animal's rectum, hoping to rectify the situation.
The technique worked fine and as the methane rushed out, he struck a match to burn it off.
The ensuing jet of flame destroyed his barn.
Urban myth? Hooey!
I remember reading the original news report right here in the Bogsville Gazette. Most urban dwellers wouldn't know a cow from a bottle of milk anyway. I was once asked what the brown thing in a field was. As far as the guy asking the question was concerned, all cows were black and white, like the one in his school reading sheet.

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Resident Parking - Nearly

Track of the day Distance - Nerve Engine.

Resident parking is at a premium in Bogsville's west-end suburbs. The residents use all the right terms but invariably stretch the truth. Here's a picture to show you what I mean. Resident parking but only if you have a fork-lift truck and nothing bigger than an old mini.

There are also local disputes about what the term en-suite means. In this case it probably means a three mile hike back from the bathroom along with all the other residents who suffer from weak bladders.

Does anyone know anything about graphic design? I've spent all day trying to fill the white spaces on this page and after hours of messing about on Photoshop etc I've filled the spaces but just ended up with a mess.

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Shoes, Hindu Temples & Spam

Track of the day Once (excerpt) - Nerve Engine.



The plumber has been and the leaky pipe is fixed.
Whitevan man turned up on the doorstep bearing the gift of a new breadmaker courtesy of the young lady in the customer service department at Morphy Richards.
Last night's perpetrator of 350 spam emails seems to have moved on to pastures new, either that or the compromised computer out there has been cleansed - so one way or another I'm feeling much perkier than I was last night.

Until disaster struck, yesterday had been good by Bogsville standards. Little Chinese dentist and her assistant beamed at me and assured me that they were in a good mood because I was their next patient and wanted to know when I was going to take photographs of them. I made them an offer for next week.
I wandered around a shoeshop and tried on loads of pairs of shoes before walking out shoeless.
Just as well really because I spent the rest of the morning visiting the biggest Hindu Temple in Europe.
I watched Police draining a canal lock and finding nothing and then I bought some recordable DVDs.

It was the DVDs that did it. Everything went downhill rapidly from that point on. Buffer overrun messages on the computer screen and recorded DVDs with nothing on them. A change of software later I was still having problems with overruns and then the landslide of emails started.
It got so bad that I had to unplug the modem so that I could get rid of what had come in so far and check that I hadn't got a bug in the computer that was generating all the traffic.
I'd got part way through doing that when Mrs B. brought the good news of a flood of hot water in the kitchen.
I eventually bog eyed and stiff necked my way to bed at 1:15am and fell asleep thinking about little Chinese dentists.

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A Leaky Joint And A Trojan

Track of the day Once (excerpt) - Nerve Engine.



Someone out there with my email address in their address book has a trojan bug in their computer. So far I've had over 350 emails tonight telling me that mails I am supposed to have sent have been rejected as spam.
My computer is as pure as the driven snow, it is virgin territory, it is locked up as tight as a shark's ass and that, as any shark knows, is watertight. The spam is not coming from my computer but the bounced emails are coming to me and it's driving me round the bloody bend.

And that's not all

The pipe connecting the kitchen tap to the hot water supply chose this evening to spring a leak from one of its soldered joints. I think the technical term is an elbow.
Mrs B. opened the door to the cupboard under the sink and the water rushed out.
After much cursing I managed to get a latex glove (a couple of Trojans would have done the job) wrapped round the leaky joint and so far it hasn't sprayed any more hot water.
The plumber is coming to fix it tomorrow and I'm going to take a crash course in pipe fixing.
The last thing I need is a 'leaky joint' without a Trojan wrapped round it.

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Nerve Engine Gig Photo Gallery

Big Shirl's Publicity Shots

Track of the day Get Away - Georgie Fame.

Whatever happened to Big Shirl? The last time I saw her she was staring in disbelief at the end of my camera lens and trying hard not to laugh.
I'd got a phonecall from a guy asking me to take some publicity pictures for Big Shirl as she was affectionately known. She had entered a competition to become Miss Beans Industries, whoever they were, and needed some photographs to submit with her entry. I was very keen to help the lady out in any way I could.
I don't know if she ever became Miss Beans Industries but my little lens had a great time chasing her round the trees at a local beauty spot.
Unfortunately, as you can tell by the length of her dress this was all at least 30 years ago so Big Shirl must be pushing 50 now.
As far as I'm concerned Big Shirl has been Miss Beans Industries for the last 30 years and always will be. Anyone recognise her or know where she is?
I thought not...

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Ça Plane Pour Moi

Track of the day Once (excerpt) - Nerve Engine.

What this illustration on the door of a gents' toilet is supposed to signify beats me. I think it's something to do with maypole dancing rather than pleasuring guys in wheelchairs.

Belgium was best known here in Bogsville as the birthplace of saxophone inventor Adolphe Sax, the home of of the Manneken Pis, the Atomium, expensive chocolates that occasionally appeared at Christmas and WW1 war graves but a 1970's pop song changed that.
I don't remember why Ça Plane Pour Moi by Plastique Bertrand got recorded on one of my reel to reel tapes but it did and it has stayed there, hidden away for the best part of 30 years. So for all you "kings of the divan" here's a chance to listen to most of it.
If you want to sing along or need a translation, here's a link.
Within a month, thanks to Renault, millions of people will be humming it again.

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The Breadmaker Stopped Working

Track of the day Willow Weep For Me - Buddy de Franco.



Yesterday the breadmaking machine decided to stop working. All it wanted to do was beep a warning message at me. I phoned the manufacturers' help line and they took all the details and then pointed out that the machine was out of its two year warranty period and they wouldn't replace it. I thought I'd only had it 18 months but I was wrong.
Added to that I lost another contact lens, that's two in a week. I knew spotting those thirteen magpies last Sunday meant trouble.
This week we've had Mrs B. ill and in bed for two days, a broken breadmaker, two lost contact lenses and rain. And Jack Straw thinks he's got problems!

Today, things are looking up. I have an offer of a heavily discounted new breadmaker from the manufacturers, Mrs B. is up and gardening, the optician has replaced my lost contact lenses and the sun has reappeared. If only my little Chinese dentist would sort out my bottom front teeth so I can eat and play my saxophone again everything would be perfect.

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