New verb: Googleblaze

I'm going to try and insert a new word in the web's vocabulary: Googleblazing.

Googleblazing means finding a location with Google Earth by visual reckoning rather than using grid references or addresses. In other words, whatever you're looking for (park, building, patch of landscape) you've got to know a lot more about it than just what it looks like. What its country looks like from space, which part of that country to zoom in on, how to find the exact place using local landmarks like roads. I had a terrific time tracking down the site of Burning Man (below); now I'm going to Googleblaze something I know nothing about: the giant white horses cut into chalky hills somewhere in the UK, and the animal gods drawn on the surface of a desert plateau somewhere in South America.

Remember: to be a true Googleblazer, you must never use a GPS reference, map reference, or address search, although it's OK to look up landmarks you can sight by.

So let's spread the word, and see how long it takes to get the word into the newspapers! If anyone wants to link to this page, use its permanent URL: http://chrisworth.com/2005/06/new-verb-googleblaze.html

If the word catches on, I'll set up a Googleblaze blog where people can post stories of their Googleblazing quests.

More on Google Earth

I've now spent half a day playing with this thing when I should have been working, and it's left me exploding in wonder.

I think Google Earth might be the last layer of the wired world's UI. The thing that connects it all together: geography, infrastructure, communications, civilisations, cities, business. I mean, what's the potential of pay-per-click when you've merged in a virtuality of the entire planet? Local communities connected globally, blended seamlessly by one of the few applications that can legitimately demand both bandwidth and processing power. Not searching the Earth's information, but searching the Earth.

Add real-time, add GPS, and you've modelled the whole world. The applications that can roll off it are endless. Weather forecasting. Climate change. City planning. Imagine London's 500,000 surveillance cameras linked into this thing. It goes far beyond checking if it's sunny in Surrey; you can see if your favourite restaurant has a table free outside too. So many things are going to be linked together by this, creating new opportunities.

Of course I've done the you-can-see-my-house-from-here stuff - living in one of the world's most densely populated cities, the wealth of detail is awesome. And it changes your perspective - literally. When I stepped out for an hour, I felt I was walking on the surface of the earth, not the streets of a city. Having just slow-flown the walk to the supermarket on my laptop, I then walked the same route at street level, passing the same buildings I'd just zoomed in on from space. Mind-blowing.

And the most magical hour of the day? Tracking down one special place in the USA, without a grid reference, just dead-reckoning along the dusty roads I've taken several times from Empire and Gerlach. And when I saw it from 9500ft, after many false trails - I had to search the web for pics taken from the air just to work out which of the mountains it might be near - it made me gasp. Marked by the vague semicircles that form city streets for one magical week each year, the site of Burning Man was plainly visible.

Google Earth: just what America needs?

Just trying Google Earth, and it's amazing - the Keyhole guys who developed it are brilliant. NASA has something similar but it's a 170MB download and extremely slow: Google's offering is as far from World Wind as Burt Rutan's cheapo spacecraft are from the overpriced, overcomplex Shuttle. Spin the globe, zoom in (with unnerving smoothness), see your city (only a few there as yet, but London's on the map) and even see individual buildings. Look at your street from above, starting from space.
And when it comes to integrating the app with the rest of the Googlesphere, the guys once again execute. Maps, driving directions, and local services are all available at a click, turning it from gimmick into application. This Earth app may well tie together everything Google does, an operating system for the planet's whole stock of info.

But there's something bigger going on here. When Americans see just what a small part of the earth their country covers - smaller than Canada, not that much bigger than Europe, and with only 3% of the world's population - perhaps it'll change their perceptions. Perhaps they'll look up Iraq, and see just how small and frail it is. Perhaps they'll spin to China, and see how far away it is and what a vast and varied area it covers. Perhaps they'll look at the poles, see how they've shrunk, and how their own lifestyle is connected to it.

One day, and not too far away, this data and the information around it will be seamless and 3D, and you'll be able to fly a virtual plane around the globe, see the rainbow of civilisation in all its wonderful diversity, from the richness of the rainforest to the electric neon nights of Asian cities. It'll be a great place to be, as information layer after information layer gets laid over it, the big-picture stuff of satellite imagery and weather patterns given commercial backing by small-scale services like the nearest cinema. It already does GPS.

It's an application for the whole of Earth, but in the early years most of its users will be inside US borders. So perhaps Google Earth can make America look at itself with more critical eyes, and see its place in the world in better context. And that can only be a good thing.

ID cards continue to slide

So ID cards get their crucial second reading this week - another fax to my MP is already on the way. It's looking like the British public is finally beginning to realise the dangers of this appalling piece of legislation.

70% of British citizens once thought them a good idea, but this was largely due to apathy - 'Oh, yeah, a little card like that one with your NI number on it'. All were blind to the stuff behind the curtain, the single database that'd provide a one-stop shopping experience for identity theft and the federating of private information that would allow practically any aspect of your life to be recorded, datamined, and assumptions made about you.

For years, whenever someone mentioned ID cards positively I've wanted to collectively bang together the heads of all British adults and scream 'OPEN YOUR FUCKING EYES, YOU UNTHINKING COMFORTABLY-NUMB PROLETARIAN WANKERS!'

This second reading, even with Labour rebels voting against, will almost certainly pass - and in a way, that's good. It means this thing may become Labour's poll tax, driving them out of office at the next election, and the legislation can then be killed by the next Parliament. I live in hope.

Life is a triathlon

It's just struck me that life is a triathlon. Young, mature, and old - the three stages of life match the disciplines perfectly.

Birth-18: First comes the 'swim'. When you're growing up, you often feel you're in an alien environment, constantly pushing against it all. There's so much to do it's hard to remember to breath. Nobody seems to know what's going on with you under the surface, and you're unable to talk about it. The world seems a harsh, cold, unforgiving place, and the whole way along you're in a thrashing pack of people just like you, all trying to find some way of differentiating themselves. The saving grace is, it's relatively short.

18-55: After a life-changing transition of some sort, you get on the 'bike' - and for a while it's plain sailing. It's the longest section, and the part where you make your biggest gains. There are still a lot of people around you, but they're much more strung-out, and you feel more like an individual as you swish through the air flicking up a gear. As long as you can stay balanced, life takes on a certain pleasing rhythm. Of course, to do it you need to pick up some extra equipment - and there'll always be someone with better gear than you.

55-death: The 'run'. It's the hardest part. You've done most of the distance, and this last part is full of pain. A lot of people around you drop out early, including some you didn't expect to. You realise you're not as near the front as you wanted to be. You look back on the race and see things you'd have done differently. Your steps become more hesitant, less confident, and you've a lot less energy than you used to have. In marked contrast to the exhilaration of the swim and the smooth flowing of the bike, you start thinking that reaching the end will seem a relief.

Life's a Tri, and then you die.

Swatting the travel bug?

It's weird just how little I use my passport these days. Since settling in London after a decade of the expat life, I've seen the unsmiling face of another country's immigration official fewer than a dozen times. The USA, Japan, Ireland, France - that's all I can bring to mind, in four years.

But that's not the oddest part. Stranger still is how little I miss it.

It's even a fairly rare occurence that I even leave London - ten weekends a year? Fifteen perhaps? And the destinations when I do , usually packing my bike and a wetsuit - Telford! Salford! The London Docklands! - seem just as exotic as Prague, Beijing, New Orleans. An 'Auld Alliance' tour taking in Edinburgh and Provence later this summer is causing as much excitement as backpacking across an Asian war zone.

Is it that the everyday existence of a normal British person - holidays in France, weekends at the DIY superstore, and The Sunday Times to look forward to - has become thrilling as I head towards my mid-thirties? Or is that living in London removes the need to go anywhere else?

After all, this city contains the whole world within that tarmac border called the M25. While global warming has resulted in an increasingly temperate climate: winters are much milder than they were two decades ago; we've even got a monsoon season now. (Global weather patterns now push cold and hot air fronts together on a line drawn from the southwest UK to northeast; as the gulf stream that's kept Cornwall warm for centuries fizzles out, we can now expect tropical downpours a couple of times each summer along with intense heat and humidity.)

My existence has somehow has its gristly lows and sublime highs smoothed out into a consistent, mostly-positive terrine. (I used to get 60,000 visits a month to my blog; now it hits maybe 5K.) But oddly, life's never felt better.

How to save Africa

OK, hand me some wraparound shades and teach me an Irish accent. As Live8 prepares to divert yet more millions into a few Swiss bank accounts, and the continent itself lurches from drama to crisis in a hundred hotspots, I've come up with a plan that'd make Africa a peaceful, economically strong continent in less than a generation. It's so simple in principle it's bound to work.

Here's the plan - the whole plan - put women in charge of the African continent.

That's it. That's all of it. NATO does some artful bargaining to get China and India on its side, then says 'enough' to this festering scab on the globe and points some nuclear-tipped bargaining chips south. It gets written into every constitution from Cairo to Cape Town: any African leader must be a woman; all MPs, senior civil servants, and village elders must be female; girls get first dibs on schooling, healthcare, access to credit, and control over household income.

Men aren't deleted from the plan; they just can't assume certain roles. They're put under control of the women, which is where they belong. Africa's men have failed their continent so spectacularly they can hardly expect any more privileges.

Putting women in charge would be illegal, presumptive, and against every human right you can think of. In other words, it's about as justifiable as... Iraq. So definitely do-able. And unlike Iraq, it'd bring solid advantages on a short timescale. Just think:

Everybody would eat. Women, particularly African women, have a relationship with food and the earth that men don't share. Women in Africa already do the work of getting good food to come out of the harsh ground; put them in charge, and they'd make sure it got to the tables too.

All wars would stop tomorrow. Mothers don't wage war. (When you've experienced a human being actually leaving your body, you have a somewhat different perspective on sending anyone else's kid to die.) The rivers of blood in the Congo would dry up; Ethiopians and Eritreans would stop glaring at each other across the freshly-drawn border and go home.

Africa would stop running deficits. If there's one thing women with families know how to do, it's balance a budget. With no war, the guns and bombs that swallow what little GDP is left over from the kickbacks would stop. $40bn in debt relief is nothing compared to what half a billion women could do in a year.

Men would learn to behave. Across vast tracts of Africa, it's the women who hold communities together while their feckless menfolk drink hooch and play cards. These men have given up. But women have greater depth of resolve when they're absolutely at rock-bottom; they're more capable of pulling themselves up from nothing. And if women had the power to enforce simple policies of their own - withholding sex without fear, withholding beer money, imposing curfews and requiring work - the worst half of the African population would get its act together.

The era of the Raybanned dictator would be over. Even moderate African leaders get the 'Big Man of Africa' disease when they seize power - instantly they're driving around in motorcades and building million-dollar haciendas out of government funds. Can you imagine any woman doing that? I can't. For all the power she wielded, Margaret Thatcher remained a public servant, unlike El Presidente Tony Blair.

The corruption would nosedive. Let's face it, it can't get any worse: in Nigeria corruption has reached 100%. You simply can't get anything done without cash under the table. And it bleeds opportunity, lets investment slide away, lets infrastructure crumble into dust. But women have understandings. They make - and expect - agreements to be honoured. An African man sees a pipeline heading over the border, and thinks of his Swiss bank account. An African woman looks at that pipeline, and wants to know why everyone's forced to buy imported oil.

The money would start working. In the poorest parts of Africa, women are the breadwinners. The most developmentally successful financial institutions are those making 'microloans' of less than $100, often to buy a single cow that can bring livelihood - and the most successful of these banks lends only to women. The endless gorging of misdirected billions that's a signature of this disastrous continent would stop.

The borders would start healing. Let's face it, much of Africa is a map of convenience drawn up by Europeans. Somalia should be 2 nations, Kenya at least 4, and it's anyone's guess how many nations really exist within Nigeria. (20 at min?) Conversely, plenty of little patches west and centre have no basis for independent existence. Women would redraw Africa's borders to where they really were all along: linguistic, cultural, and tribal groups except where there's a mountain in the way. And because it's being done by women, it'd be peaceful all the way.

So that's my plan. And once on track, there's no limit to what Africa could achieve. The big projects would get a lot easier if political and economic stability could be achieved: : a tiny fraction of the Sahara paved with solar panels would supply all Earth's energy needs, without pollution, forever. And that'd just be the start.

Yes I can, just look at my card...

Hmmm, so a soccer secretary claims she was pestered for sex by the 'Director of Football Affairs'. I wonder if he was misunderstanding his job title?

Is it hot in here or is it just me?

The temperature at today's Windsor Triathlon hit 31C. And that really tells you all you need to know about my day.

Even at my early-morning start you could tell some sweat lay ahead, and when you're jumping into the Thames before 8am, overheating isn't the first thing you're thinking about. But my swim went smoothly: continuous stroking, steady breathing, and only one humorous incident when I veered towards shore and swam into a pleasure boat's propellor. (Fortunately it wasn't whirling.)
Once out of the river, the transition area's a surprising distance away - a 200m run while struggling out of your wetsuit - and with high humidity and no drying wind, I'm still soaked when shoeing up. But my T1 flowed well. If everything's wet, you don't feel the need to dry off.

Onto the bike. I'm feeling great at this point: satisfied with my swim, ready to saddle up. And that sets the tone. I get passed by plenty of Age Groupers one start (i.e. 10mins) behind me, and a few in the start after that, but in general I'm riding in the same pack I swam with, and manage to overtake plenty from the group that started ten minutes before me. hitting 60km/h on one downhill section. The sun's like a blowtorch against my shoulders, and I breathe silent thanks that I remembered to sluice SPF30 beneath the layers of sweat and riverwater back in transition.
T2. I feel okay coming off the bike and wheeling into trans again; not a fast bike leg I fear, but the smoothness that makes Tri a special challenge for me is coming through. Shuck gloves and helmet, switch shoes, and head off for the run.

Uh oh. My legs are like butter. Even partway into the first lap, I'm suffering. A helpful guy with a hosepipe gives me a welcome shower as I pass over into Eton, but the respite is brief: the heat is fierce. St Johns' Ambulance are working furiously. One guy I pass, keeled over with police giving first aid, doesn't look so much unconscious as dead.
The hills are the worst, and there are a lot of little ones. Even Eton Bridge's gentle span seems like rock climbing. Water is available, but it's near-impossible to take on water while running. And every paving slab is plastered in searing, vicious heat. I'm flagging. But I'm not going to slow to a walk. No way.
Ending Lap 1, the temptation is to veer towards the finish line. But I force myself to loop left and pick up my first band. Okay, one done; two to go. The rest of lap 2 is a blur. But I don't stop. All around me, people are bonking (in the athletic sense) - that sensation you get when you just can't put a single foot forward. I'm still among the group I started out with, but lots of men from the next two groups are now passing me.
One great thing about Tri is that hobbyists like me can run in the same races with the best guys in the world. Imagine if at the Olympics 100m, anyone who felt like having a go could line up on the starting grid? That's basically how it is with Tri. The Pros started an hour after me, which means they'll finish around the same time (!) and I get passed by big names: Liz Blatchford, Richard Allen, Leanda Cave (love the swimsuit) and Stuart Hayes, who could pass for Michelangelo's David if he went to Rome and stood still - a giant of a man, long-limbed design study for the ideal athlete. No shame there.
I reach the finishing straight. Relief. But I'm buckling. Can't stop now - and I find I don't have to. Five other Age Groupers are approaching; I break into a sprint for the last hundred metres. It feels good as I cross the line. I stand around for a while, drinking in the atmosphere, drinking in the relief. Drinking in the free isotonic beverages.
And the heat exhaustion? Turns out I wasn't immune: I was just storing it up. Three hours later, on the slow ride home from Waterloo, I start bonking, and barely make it home conscious. But the day's done, and I'm happy.

Eye of the storm

There are some things in life that just make your heart soar while your head stays level. Activities that combine purposeful forward progress with pure inner peace, where there may be frenetic thrashing around yet somehow you feel you're in the eye of a hurricane. Moments of absolute equanimity when the balance between what you're doing, what's around you, and what you really want to do are all in balance. These moments are beautiful beyond belief.

I'm having one tonight. And I can't stop smiling.

Tomorrow it's The Windsor Triathlon, and in six hours time I'm heading out for my race. I've already been there once, for the racking and registering this morning, and the atmosphere's starting to build. Skies of blazing blue and unusually lean people striding around confidently in yellow wristbands. That's what Tri does: you look like gods and feel like kings.

And tonight, fan whirring in the dusk, my head's in that strange place. Pumped for tomorrow's swimbikerun action, yet heartrate steady at 48. Knowing I've put in the hours at the gym, tuned my equipment just right, studied the course maps and shoehorned every bouy and roundabout into my memory. I'm ready.

And the night is singing to me.

My personal Tri anthem ('Floyd's 'Sorrow' from AMLOR) is playing softly to my left. A ritual. To my right tomorrow's swollen bag - the packing list for a single Tri is long, clothing, equipment, and race gear like chip bands for three disciplines - promising the earth.

I haven't even switched on my PC today, and didn't want to - on a Tri weekend somehow the rest of your life gets the volume turned down on it. But somehow I wanted to write a few words, and a blog's as good a place as any. June 18th 2005 has been a very special day.

For the next week the world will just get turned to a lower volume.

Well, well, well

Who'd have thought it? Just as Blair thought he was standing alone against the massed hordes, a Valkyrie rides to the rescue. Merkel may not be Germany's leader yet, but she's the strongest contender - and by admitting that Britain's budget rebate should only be reconsidered in the context of a whole EU budget review, she's just become the Cabinet's best pal in Berlin. Could this mark the start of something many EU wonks have been wondering about for a while - a British-German alliance at the heart of Europe, rather than a French jockey riding the German horse?
In addition, it's looking like Chirac's efforts to portray Britain as the Constitution wreckers haven't worked - the French public have seen through it, and the EU's leaders have quietly laid the tome to rest. ("For review within two years" translates as "dead as a doughnut.")
Credit where credit's due: Blair's made the best of a very tough EU meeting. And boding well for the UK presidency next month.

New Labour's underlying justice strategy

Suddenly, it all becomes clear. You know those moments when you're searching to make sense of something, and all the twigs and leaves of information you've collected along the way suddenly click together into a coherent shape? It's just happened with my attempts to understand current UK security policy,
Here's the big picture: due to its dislike of an independent judiciary, the British Government is putting together its own parallel justice system for use when the courts make decisions it doesn't like. Here are a few examples - see how they all suggest an overarching strategy?
The Prevention of Terrorism Act allows indefinite detention of people not charged with any crime - and when the courts declared it illegal, the Secretary of State said their verdict didn't apply.
ID Cards will put the onus of keeping your private information accurate and available on the citizen. In effect, this'll make doing something and not telling the government about it an offence.
Automatic incrimination. An increasing number of laws trample on the right not to self-incriminate. Innocent until proven guilty is going out of style: the increasing onus is on you to prove your innocent explanation of your actions.
Spread of law use. Many new laws sneaked onto the statute books in the guise of anti-terror are being used far beyond their intended realm. Take the apprehension of terror suspects - less than three months after being passed, the law was used to arrest peaceful students protesting outside an arms fair. Or the extradition laws - intended to let the US get their hands on terrorists, yet over half the people affected have been charged only with white-collar crimes like accounting fraud. And any demonstration (such as this week's G8) can be neutered by a new requirement to inform police of locations, give your name and address on request, and limit the number of people in any location.
Control over public enquiries. Any time something embarassing needs investigating, the cabinet gets a crony to head the team. All designed to protect government officials by letting them define the terms of any enquiry into their behaviour.
Politicising the police. In the last ten years, they've gone from protectors of the public to agents of the State. Motorists, demonstrators, pedestrians all seem far more important than actually catching burglars these days - after all, in a police state it's the quiet ones you've got to keep more on an eye on. And it's rare these days to see an airport cop or event patrol unarmed.
(The police-as-politicians concept is hardly new - Margaret Thatcher did the same thing in the 80s - but back then the unions were holding the country to ransom and the IRA were turning 150 people a year into steak tartare. And the people generally agreed with it.)
Contracting out of security services. While the private sector is better at a lot of things. Private clamping firms have the right to trace any address from a car's registration, so they can collect their private taxes (parkings fines.) Some 75% of these companies are run by convicted criminals. Civilian cops like Specials and CSOs take on more police-like powers every year.
Shifting the blame. Now Customs and Excise no longer has automatic first call on a defaulter's assets, they've pushed through ever-tighter laws for penalties and fines if you're late or make mistakes with your taxes - turning every company into an unpaid tax collector and auditor. There are so many new laws about this that practically every company will be in default somehow.
Once again, New Labour has it wrong. We haven't yet sunk as low as the USA, where obscenities like the Schiavo case have revealed the government now rules by arbitrary statute - but we're on the way. Laws are not created for the benefit of governments; they are granted by the people.
Some day, New Labour will pay for this.

Sprinting: let's slow down a bit

All credit to Asafa Powell for becoming the fastest man over 100m. But when it was only by a hundredth of a second - and the fastest thousand men on earth are separated by just a second - aren't things getting a bit ridiculous?
After all, the slightest breeze, the smallest bump, and the fastest man is back down to number 50 or so. The top 100 world rankings are down to nothing more than luck - and often that luck involves not getting caught with a syringe in your arm. When they're all so closely spaced, what's the point of awarding a gold medal to the one who happened to be a hairsbreadth ahead at the tape? Surely it's not worth millions a year so one human cheetah can stand on a podium - especially when your nation lacks schools, hospitals, and hope.
I call it the One Percent Principle: once you get into the top one percent of anything, the extra rewards of climbing even higher are negated by the time and effort it takes to get there. And if you make it, you'll have worked so hard you won't find it fun any more, and it's only a matter of time before someone takes it away.

This triathlon stuff is killing me

Hmmmm. The course map for Sunday's Tri includes the instructions 'Full distance straight on', 'Half distance turn left', and 'Dead turn in middle of road'. Are they letting zombies compete now? There goes the neighbourhood.

Pacing the bastard house

7 days before my first triathlon of 2005, so I've stopped training - and I never thought it'd be so hard. It doesn't feel like I'm resting my body in prep; instead of relaxing, I'm pacing up and down stairs trying to work off pent-up energy. I'm starting to feel out of condition too, now the endorphins have stopped flowing. Will I even make it to the start line on Sunday?!

Murder in the air....

What's this? A bird's dismembered leg and wing on my balcony? What manner of 'fowl' crime (sorry) was this?
How did it get there? Did the murder take place at this scene? Or was another airborne fiend carrying away the evidence of the crime, and happened to drop part of his grisly bundle?
Either way, this isn't the sort of thing you want on your terrace. I'm sure clearing it up will make my roast chicken tonight less appetising...

France and Germany: brilliant mediafuck

Seeking an escape from Non-voting French voters, Chirac takes a predictable path: looks around for someone else to attack. As usual, it's the UK in his sights - and due to New Labour's ineptitude, the whole situation's been effortlessly narrowed down to the single issue of Britain's £3bn rebate. (The rebate, negotiated by Margaret Thatcher in the 80s, lets it pay only two and half times France's contribution into the EU budget, instead of 15 times.)
The media's now taking this issue to be the whole story - Chirac's precise intention. I call these 'mediafucks', where the judicious use of terminology turns the whole situation back on the opponent. Bush did one over 9/11 when he used it as an excuse for Iraq, Blair's been doing one after another since he arrived in power.
There's one way out - but Blair's not taking it. All he has to do is start referring to France's £7bn from the CAP as 'the French rebate' - and repeat this new terminology, endlessly. 'I will be in Paris to discuss reductions in the £7bn French rebate.' 'I will be asking the EU to reconsider the French rebate.' 'CAP reform would produce an important reduction in the French rebate.'
Come on Tony. Just remember how you recast public anger over Iraq into a single, narrowly-focussed report by Hutton, how you neutralise any threat to your authority by writing the brief of any public inquiry yourself and populating the team with your pals. Beautiful mediafucks all.

Happiness is....

...being hungry on a working Saturday, and remembering you've got a plate of sausage pasta left over from last night in the fridge.

I just can't stop fucking yooooouu...

Nearing the end of a sorry saga. And the worst thing about it is: I had a chance to avoid it. If I'd just done what I always try to do these days - follow my instincts - none of this would ever have happened. Let's shine a light on the story:
I have a cute little LCD projector, about three grands' worth, casts a nice picture against a white wall. For the last couple of years I've been lending it out to the odd associate with a party to liven up. I got a warm glow from helping a bunch of black funk daddies; they understood that damage gets paid for; all were happy. The odd mistake got cleared up fast.
Until 2004.
One of the funk daddies (the only non-ethnic minority one, as it happens) starting borrowing the equipment on his own account. 'I've got to try some packages out' - as if it were a business proposition instead of his personal hobby.
I drove through Nevada once, past a federal penitentiary, and noticed a big sign saying that if someone flags you down by the roadside, DO NOT STOP UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. The only place they'll have come from was 8' by 5' with bars at the windows. In other words, stopping to pick up hitch hikers is an invitation to a really messy party somewhere southeast of your beltbuckle.
Sometimes, people just start diving into a bad situation, and this is where mine started. Actually, not so much diving as bending double and saying 'lookahere!' in the shower block of that prison. Think of this projector as a prone bar of soap.
***
After one particularly lengthy lend - involving one occasion when I needed it myself, and it wasn't available - it returned, after a lot of hassle. Less than a week later, as if nothing had happened, he asked for it back. As if I was the one doing the borrowing.
And at that moment, my instincts started screeching at me. Don't do it! - if he's asking for it again, four days after returning it, it means he now regards it (however unconsciously) as his own property. The intervals between borrowing and returning have been getting steadily longer; I knew that this time it went, it wouldn't come back.
And for months, it didn't.
As if he'd simply taken possession of it - even telling a fellow funk daddy that 'Chris has given it to me' - he retained it, month after month, without a word. My friendly reminders turned into biting sarcasm, without effect. Whatever problems he's had in his personal life, it doesn't excuse such complete disregard for other people's property - especially when it costs serious money.
And then, after one ultra-sarcastic exchange, I discovered the projector had stopped working.
***
Bulb failures aren't rare in projectors, especially not when they've been used a dozen times in smoky, sweat-ridden party atmospheres. Luck of the draw. Like I said, you break it, you pay for it.
And he said he'd take responsibility for it.
And that's what he did. Say it.
Didn't DO it.
Seven and a half weeks later, nothing's been fixed. Apparently he's spent a month chasing a USA retailer with cheques.
In the end - I said fuck it. Just give me my property back. Even if it's a pile of junk.
More weeks later, it comes back.
On a Thursday. After I'd stayed in all day waiting for the courier. On Monday.
Apparently even a fucking phone call about a courier time is beyond this guy.
I'm starting to get a little annoyed.
***
Many days later - and after calls with a rather strange courier company that apparently uses guys riding the Tube network to deliver things - I visit the office to pick up my property. They charge me £24 for the privilege (up from £16 on Friday), but somehow this doesn't surprise me. (Nor does making the cheque out to the driver personally, rather than the company.) By now being fucked is a natural state for me. Five years in an American federal prison would be a kiss on the cheek by comparison. Big Turkish cellmate called Achmed? Hey bud, let's head for the showers! And bring all your friends too!
***
Anyway, tonight the proj re-enters my house (as opposed to a white wannabe funk daddy re-entering my ass) for the first time in a loooooong time.
OK - there are no batteries in the remote. Par for the course. A cable looks suspiciously like a second-rate replacement. The proj itself seems in excellent order - except for the simple fact that IT HASN'T GOT A FUCKING WORKING BULB, and is therefore an unusable pile of junk.
***
So... here we are. Fucked like a first-night remand guy on the lifer's wing.
I check the net. Within 25 mins, I've got a new bulb on order. It took seven weeks and liason with the USA for him to ... fail to get this far? What the fuck is this guy smoking? Doesn't he know Google has a second page of results?
Ah well. I'm only £300 down on my act of kindness. I'm sure Achmed would understand. He's about 300lb too.
***
And the worst thing of all? None of it needed to happen. If I'd just followed my instincts, which are right every time they shout at me. (Sorry, instincts. I'll listen to you next time.)
This is a guy who's done some work for me, and he had another job - fitting out my bathroom - in the pipeline. It was his job; he didn't even need to quote me. It was his. And now, of course, it's not. Perhaps £2000 of fees I'd have been happy to pay him, now lost to him forever.
***
Small comfort though, when the situation's got so bad and taken so much time and energy to resolve. You try to trust someone, and it turns out they're just another fucker.

Rumbles at breakfast

When at 7am you reach for the muesli, pour it with one hand while switching on the kettle with the other, and realise in a cloud of white powder that you've poured baking flour into your bowl, you get a strange sort of premonition about the day.

Missing movies

I love the cinema, but the last month's been stacked and my movie trivia database hasn't been topped up. Missed The Interpreter at least, probably half a dozen others that could have provided an excuse to sit in the dark for two hours.
At my local screen (one of my criteria for housebuying is to have a multiplex within 10mins walk) there's Sin City, Mr & Mrs Smith, and Kingdom of (Not Troy! Not Alex!) Heaven to choose from - yet even today, a Sunday, I'm not going to make it out. So many client projects, so little time.

The concept of a house

I think I'm finally 'getting' the idea of living in a house. They may be just walls and spaces, but occupying a complete building is fundamentally different to apartment life, and after a year I'm starting to enjoy it. (Even if the renovation cost has averaged nearly a grand a month.) Take these thoughts:
Division of space. For a decade I lived in essentially the same room as my mountain bike. This three-storey townhouse is smaller than my last two apartments, but it seems larger, because with three floors to choose from you can create a real division of use. The ground floor's a shrine to Triathlon, with two bikes and assorted other gear hanging on the walls; the middle floor's for living on, and I go upstairs to sleep or relax on the terrace. Moving between floors I can switch into a different mode, instead of trying to concentrate on everything in the same space. Suits my segmented mind well.
Making it mine. In the last year I've experienced the pure joy of designing and installing my dream kitchen - at least within the constraints of a 1.5m x 3m space. A brand-new five ring cooker, a thick work surface, cool white minimalist cabinets that go all the way up. It's been in six months and I still stroke the worktop every day. It's made me a much better cook (although I admit the only way was up.)
Owning a freehold. There's a real difference between owning a certain amount of floorspace several floors up, and actually owning the land your home stands on; if the house falls down, you've hardly lost a thing. (In London the cost of land far outweighs the cost of actually building anything.) It may be tiny, but it's mine.
Low service fees. This may be a private mews, but even here the service fees are just a couple of hundred squids a year; compare that to any reasonable private apartment, where £2000 a year is just the starting point. It may buy you a pool and security at the gate, butthink what else you could do with £200 a month.
Getting into DIY. In flat after flat I lived in fear of the boiler going phut or the electricity throwing a wobbler; the last place I lived in the fusebox was a hundred metres away. Owning a house forces you to learn more about this stuff. Never manually minded, I can now wire a plug, lay a floor, paint a wall. There's a sense of satisfaction in knowing you can fix stuff yourself.

Erasing the 80s

Isn't it odd how Erasure never made a bad song? Each one perfectly listenable, the same way even a bad burger is edible - as long as you don't do it too often. In fact, the greatest hits CD seems to last unreasonably long, until you realise that it just seems that way because you're paying attention to every one.
I think I break out their CDs once a year at most, and I'm always pleasantly surprised at how great the melodies are. (Just what pop should always aspire to: giant mushrooms and gay guys on spacehoppers.)
My guess: Erasure will be the Abba of the next decade. They're halfway there already.