Tale of the Topbox Terror 2

By 5:30pm, the thought of scavenging the busy A331 for relics to throw in a box and dump on their porch seemed a little less appealing, especially now that it was rush-hour, the sky was dark and storms were fast approaching...

Plus the realisation that I would have been the lone random geezer, picking up junk from the hard shoulder of a busy dual carriageway held absolutely no romance nor appeal for me... like some despondent old hobo rooting around the roadside debris for his supper, or a few pieces of loose change, maybe something of little salable value to glean the coins for a can of Special Brew...

But no, it was me, little old Lever, just looking for stuff, for fun, to drop on his friends' doorstep... In honour of their tale of the topbox terror...

So I grabbed some random roadside-like items from the house...

• beach towel
• old car license plate
• empty water bottle
• glove
• showerhead
• tennis ball
• newspaper
• busted golf club
• old pair of boxer shorts

The note was scribbled...

"Hello, I believe this stuff is yours.
You left it all over the A331"

I turned up, deposited the box of tat on their doorstep, rang the bell and ran away...

Tale of the Topbox Terror

So my friend's laughing, telling me about what just happened...

They were driving to Guildford, along a 2-lane carriageway at 70 mph when this car pulls up alongside them. The woman driver is making gestures. Nutter. If they ignore her just long enough she may go away and stop bothering them.

She continues to drive alongside, still frantically gesturing.

For god's sake, what *does* she want?

She mouths the words...

YOUR+STUFF+IS+FALLING+OUT+OF+THE+TOPBOX

ALARM. Check rear view. OMG. PANIC. Stuff. Falling out of the topbox...

So they drive up to the next roundabout, double-back, head back down the road and then loop-back again.

They pull over and stop to rescue all the crap that flew out of the topbox.

"Don't worry about anything I just want the kid's wetsuit back"

"No, no, you can't just leave all that stuff lying at the side of the road"

So off they go, on foot, back down the busy A331 picking up beach towel, shoes, another towel, kids' kite, flip-flops, bucket & spade, aha - wetsuit.

So they finally get to Guildford, a 15 minute journey, in just over an hour. LMAO

She gets home and has a go at hubby about not closing the topbox properly. He swears he shut it proper. So there's some reasons why it opened then...

1) He really didn't close it properly
2) Somebody's been snooping
3) There's that pigeon that hit the topbox yesterday at 80 mph...

So he swears it had something to do with point 3) which is funny in itself 'cos just after the bird-strike these cars kept driving past with people gawping out the side windows at them... "WTF you looking at? Weirdos." And when they got home there was this dead pigeon wedged under the topbox...

I'm seriously considering going down the A331 tomorrow to pick up some random crap (probably a hubcap, newspaper, rubber glove, banana skin, one old trainer, bit of tyre...) put in in a bag or box and leave it outside their house with a note...

"You forgot to pick these up"

E=Action Figure Squared!

Check out Einstein

Now I'm not a man of science but I thought this Albert Einstein action figure absolutely Rocked! Better than that new pansy Action Man with his dayglow consumables, and infinitely more useless than the obligatory NHS specs held together with a band-aid... this little buddy will keep your kids... er... bemused...? for hours :S

In the same range of figures there's also Moses, Jesus (really! - Not my bag but still funny nonetheless), Sigmund Freud, Beethoven, some bloke by the name of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Billy Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and that Wagner chap (no, no, not Robert Wagner...)

My personal favourites have got to be BlackBeard and Alexander the Great (my kinda heroes) but if they did any more I'd request that they made an MC Escher, Salvador Dali, Carl Jung and a (Sir) Tim Berners Lee (THE main man - respect!)

Wonder if they do a Dr. Stephen Hawking action figure (with all terrain tyres)?

Devon Capers

I called my dad last week and arranged to visit him in Devon over the weekend. Hadn't seen him in a few weeks and it was also his birthday and father's day too.

He called back to tell me of my timing...

*Unfortunately* I'd inadvertantly arranged to visit at the same time as the Axminster Beer Festival... *tsk* just my luck aye?

So the traffic was typical hot day M3/A303 - very, very busy and it was a case of window down or air con on... made the 130 mile journey in under 3 hours, turning up with just 5 mins to spare *whew*

The beer was good - all local stuff - Otter Brewery, Branscombe Brewery, O'Hanlon's Brewing Co... Being used to having the Farnham Beer Festival just 5 miles away from my home, the Axminster Beer fest was nice but could have done with some better merchandising... some ales to take away, t-shirts and stuff... they'd have done a roaring trade and spread the word too I reckon...

There was some live music - a little jazz saxophony, some local yokels singing country, a young lady doing some sweet ballads...

So, after the beer and bacon rolls we hit the pub and that was Saturday over and done with... until I dozed off just before 11pm and my phone rang at 2:30 in the morning...

"Hello?"
Damn, no f'ing signal.
That's what you get for being out in the countryside. Not bad for some peace & quiet but when you *need* to talk, it's a bit of an issue...

So I walked out into the country lane and hiked up the hillside toward the farm until I got a signal, returning the call and getting my daily fix

So, there I was, alone, at 2:30am, on my phone, in the countryside, clear skies, twinkling stars, in a dark, narrow lane, when I heard voices... getting closer...

Random Geezer: "Good god I nearly shit the bed. Who's that?"
I had to explain to 4 people WTF I was doing walking down the darkened track to their farm at 2:30 on a Saturday morning... They were coming back from the club and I was randomly milling around to get a reception for my phone. They were happy when they found out my dad was in the cottages down the lane (all the locals seem to know eachother 'round this part of the world) and we bid goodnight.

5 minutes later I had to dive into a hedge when a car thundered up the lane, then dust myself off and continue talking, only to have to dive back into the hedge again when the car came bombing back down the track.

So... all that in the space of 10 minutes and Becky had heard the whole episode on the phone. LMAO Who wants to come next time?

5 down, 5 to go...

Getting stuck in a pokey little office when you're used to the luxury of a studio is... a bit depressing to say the least.

It last happened back in January when I spent a day in a different box...

And nothing much has changed apart from it being a little hotter...

1. Small, lonely, pokey little office. No pot plants or nothing.
   
2. It's dark too - can't work without horrible artificial lights on
3. The view is rubbish - well actually the council tip *is* just up the road, but the view is just plain boring
4. It's too far to walk to the front door to get my ass outside, though it will be done to escape at some stage...
5. The only pen is a leaky biro that got all over my hands
6. For an office that consumes more paper than Sweden has trees, there's a distinct lack of stationery... pens & the like, apart from the leaky one of course... I was doing some expense accounts the other day and couldn't find a flipping red pen...!!! Grrr
   
7. The laser printer has seen more miles than Forrest Gump's trainers - it needs a service and it squeaks - annoyingly.
   
8. When flatfoot, from the unit next door, clumps his way past the office door, my monitor wobbles. It's like the time when I lived in an 18th century cottage next to a busy main road and freight trucks thundered past at 4 in the morning...
9. Non-ergonomic keyboard, non-wireless mouse, Win NT therefore no USB ports, 733 pentiums with 128mb ram (about 5 years old - can't handle multi-tasking i.e. dreamweaver & fireworks plus some MS office apps at the same time - slows and hangs-up quite regular too) and a server that's so loud you have to raise your voice to talk over it's drone and it kicks out more heat than Dante's Inferno...
   
10. Enforced musical deprivation - When a music CD is loaded into *any* one of these clunky old coal-fired PCs they crash and show the Blue Screen Of Death... and they only got 1 pissy little speaker... I can fart louder!
    
11. Office chair with no arms, doesn't recline and isn't made of leather ;)
12. No Tea... Can you believe it? No frigging tea! And there's a really crap kettle that randomly switches itself on once in a while and has dubious looking electrical meltdown marks on it...

Normally you have to balance out something this dreary with something good... but I couldn't find anything of note... and then the sandwich van turned up :) OK, the serving wench was nowhere near as nice as my girl, but I did get a bacon sani and a choc chip cookie...

Camouflage

OK, no clues...
...there's something in this photograph, all camo'd up...
...can you see it...?
...can you tell what it is...?

Have you ever tried...

...finding a chippy in Oxford?

No, not a carpenter... a fish & chip shop!!

Me & Becky landed in Oxford, via Stonehenge ("see, I told you it was just a big pile of rocks" ) just in time to drop our kit off and leg it in to town for a gig we'd booked to see.

We had to be at the Zodiac Club by 7:30 so taxi dude to dropped us off slap-bang in the middle of Oxford's Cowley Road. He was kind enough to point out numerous places to get food here, so we got out and strolled...

Chinese, Polish, Thai, Lebanese, Indian, Vegetarian, Cambodian, more Lebanese, Italian... there was everything in this road apart from ye goode olde English fish & chippe shoppe...

We hit the Chinese and grabbed two quick portions of HOT HOT chips, sat down and tried to enjoy them. We had eaten better, so maybe it was down to the rush and the absence of sauce. Sorry sweetheart *apologetic shrug*



The Zodiac was a nice, dingy (sp?) little club with a thin but growing & decent crowd.

First up, the barmaid wouldn't serve us until she'd finished belting out "Let's Come together... right now... ooh... over me"... and then she handed us a couple of pints of ice cold Strongbow. Nice LOL

We then endured Mike, whoever he was, doing some solo acoustic & vocal numbers... vaguely reminiscent of numerous classic ballads but all penned by himself he reckoned... yeah we believed him, I mean who else could sing a ballad about his nephew and get achingly soulful over the name Brian? Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with the name Brian, it just doesn't strike me as classic hit material... (there's a challenge for ya - gimme a list of songs with girls names in them, song title or lyrics...)

Then came up the act we'd come to see, The Casbah Club... Drummer Mark Brzezicki & guitarist Bruce Watson of my childhood heroes, Big Country, with master bassman Bruce Foxton of Stiff Little Fingers & The Jam and Simon Townshend, brother of Pete Townshend & recent member of "The Who", on guitar and vocals.

An interesting line-up they played a mix of Big Country & Jam classics with a dash of Who thrown in for good measure plus a couple of their own tracks featuring a mix of all the band styles... "In A Big Country", "Wonderland" and "Eton Rifles", "Down in the Tube Station at Midnight" (woah oh oh oh, oahoh), "Town called Malice" and a great version of "That's Entertainment"... they went down a storm. Hell, I even started getting funky with my lady (Hey, I don't dance, right! *stern look*)

We strolled down to the Cambodian take-away. This time it was Becky's choice of supper, and a proper one at that... coconut chicken curry & rice (aah, bliss) and we charmed the owners (as ever) into letting us stay and eat from the takeaway dishes with wooden forks whilst all the other drunkards got turned away. How romantic

---

This post is dedicated to the memory of Stuart Adamson, RIP (1958-2001) as is Tony Butler's track Dreamboy (5.14Mb mp3)

Trojan Rabbit

Monty Python & the Holy Grail, Scene 10...

Bangs, crashes, noises of construction coming out of the woods...

I swear my next door neighbour is building a Trojan Rabbit...

Dude(tte), Where's My Car?

So yeah, belly-aching and back late from a disjointed tube journey, we waltzed across the car park at midnight, only for me to notice, or rather not... where's my car?

I asked Becky if I was seeing things or not? Nope. The car was definitely gone.

Normally I'd get angry but an amazing calm pervades my life of late and we strolled into the hotel lobby, looking for a reasonable explanation.

None was forthcoming, but we were assured the car was NOT stolen. Great, thanks, that's some comfort - the car's NOT there, you DON'T KNOW WHERE IT IS but you DO know it's NOT stolen? Go figure.

So there they are, milling around, trying to find out why my car has disappeared but is NOT stolen. Hey, nobody steals Subarus right?

My stomach has stopped churning only to be replaced by the turmoil in my head... her things are all in the hotel room, so that's one very good thing, but with the car gone I've lost some shirts, a football, a couple of pairs of boots, my CDs, maps and itinerary, my recently serviced car and how are we supposed to get to Oxford tomorrow? To wherever after that and then back to the airport? Oh god, please, don't let me have to hire a car and find that all they have left is a pissy little Toyota Starlet...!?

Her reasurrance is far superior to that the staff are trying to offer me. She smiles at me. She's laughing. She takes my mind off the matter in hand and I teeter on the fine line between darkness and light... this continues for another hour and she pulls me further toward the warmth and the brightness...

Eventually there is news... a knock at the door, it's now 1 in the morning.

The car got TOWED.

What? I've NEVER been towed. EVER. Becky has though, quite a few times ;) LOL

The weight drops from my shoulders and eventually we sleep...

WEDNESDAY MORNING 8AM: The phone rings, I'm called to the waiting taxi. The home-going nighstaff jump in the cab with me and we are driven to Newham Borough Council's depot, to where my car got towed.

This is why... rewind...

• Monday - West Ham United win promotion to the Premier League. We stay in their stadium hotel 'cos it's good value, convenient, somewhere different and a good laugh. We can park the car in London all day, without charge, and the tube is just a walk away.

• Tuesday - Newham Council arrange a parade - The triumphant West Ham team are driven through the East End in an open top bus and 70,000+ fans mob them on their way home to the stadium. My car is in the car park, if it doesn't get moved it will become a platform for fans to stand on and get a good view of their homecoming team... Newham BC decide to move the car for its own safety. We know nothing, we're oblivious, we're in Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.

So, apart from having kittens and a set of car keys I still had to prove that the car in the lot, amidst the scrappers, stolen recovereds and broken glass was mine... but I got it back eventually and for no cost. (TFFT)

The duty manager even gave us a couple of bottles of wine for our troubles.

Which was nice :)

Welcome to England

She came gently, shy almost, as I led her from her place to mine...

...her life in a bag, we escaped the bustle of Heathrow, to Terminal 3 short stay car park; oooh, how romantic :p

Up the stairs to pay the parking ticket and then back to the car...

...ah yes, the car...

...so...

...who is that, body hunched, low-down, so close behind my wagon? Someone breaking into the trunk? Are they after my hot wheels, the stereo or a sample of my CD collection?

My time in the dojo comes into real-life effect, the spring coils, the tension inward and outward all is calm, ready to react at the drop of a...

Oh, what relief; it's only some random girl squatting behind my car for a piss...

Tuck yourself in and be on your way, random girl; I have guests to these shores to whom your actions do not endear this country we share, our green and pleasant land...

Random girl goes.
Random girl is gone.

I turn to my dearest American friend and apologise for her first experience of Old Blighty, I'm sorry, sweetheart, but nonetheless...

"Welcome to England"

So, M4, North Circular, down the Barking Road and enter the heartland of my team...

...a whistlestop tour of London's East End, talking with random coppers, the backdrop of thunder, lightning and violent hailstorms, she travels the London Underground and the DLR with me.

We do breakfast/lunch in Canary Wharf, we watch the passers-by, talk to some more random people, step out into the air of Docklands, the surreallity of some San Fransisco-esque financial district, replicated & transplanted into a working-class bastion of London...

...she tastes British beer, chips, football and promotion to the Premiership...

...the East End lights up, the crowd goes wild, we celebrate.

That's more like it.

This is the life, this is what we came for...

"Welcome to England"