Alasdair Watson

Anyone interested in going to any of the following?

12/09 – The Go! Team at The Electric Ballroom
20/09 – Skindred at the Scala
29/09 – PJ Harvey at the RFH

Bastard. Must pay more attention in future.

I met him in passing once, at a music and the internet waffle-shop I went to when I was working at Sanctuary – he was there to argue with a man from the BPI about their prosecution of music downloaders – emblematic perhaps of his entire career – arguing against the accepted wisdom of the music industry, and what it considers “good business”. He may not have got as rich as another man might have in his position, but it was obvious that what he cared about was the music. There should be more people like him in the music biz.

I signed up to blog a Penguin classic.

I’ve been given Peter Pan to review. This could be interesting.

This time last week, I was out of books.

By the end of Friday, I had copies of Attack of the Unsinkable Rubber Ducks (Brookmyre) and Crooked Little Vein (Ellis).

By Monday, I’d read them both. I’ve heard of this “delayed gratification” thing, but it sounds like a stupid idea to me.

Both of them I think come under the heading “flawed but enjoyable page turners”. Neither of them is going to shock the pants off you if you’ve read either writer’s work before (although Crooked Little Vein might horrify a few of the more sheltered of you, I suppose), and neither has topped the list of my favourite works by that author, but they both passed a few hours in a pleasant manner, and they both made me laugh out loud.

Wow, that was faint praise, wasn’t it? The reason I sound so lukewarm is that I don’t want to go into more depth, because I can’t talk about what I liked and disliked in each without spoiling key plot points in each of them.

Reading: For the first week this year, I haven’t managed to read a new prose book this week. I’ve run out of stuff to read, and there’s not much in the shops to excite me at a casual glance. Patriot Acts and Crooked Little Vein ought to arrive in about a month, and I seem to recall there’s a new Brookmyre due soon as well, but other than that, nada. Might have to pop to Borders on Saturday morning and rummage around the non-ficiton for a bit. Anyone recommend me anything interesting to read?

Food: Ate dinner at Petrus the other week. Can’t say enough good things about it. Also ate at Andrew Edmunds again, possibly my favorite restaurant in Soho – both times Ewa and I have eaten there, it’s been completely splendid.

Nerd: I’ve cancelled my Warcraft and City of Heroes accounts. I don’t expect I’ll magically acquire a life now, or anything, but since I hadn’t used them in months, it seemed foolish to keep paying for them.

Lardy Bastard: Haven’t been skating this week, which is slightly annoying. Nor have I been out on the bike in ages. Must really make the effort to get back into serious and regular exercise now that the rain may have let up for a bit.

Music: Two promising gigs (Flipron, Amanda Palmer) on tomorrow night, and I’ll be at neither of them, having a prior social commitment.

Vile Nostalgia: Transformers: The Movie (the 80s cartoon) is on ITV 4 right now. Optimus Prime has just transformed for his fight with Megatron. Suddenly, I’m 8 again. I expect to be weeping buckets shortly.

Booze: Bought another case of wine this morning. My parents, as a belated birthday gift, agreed to go halves with me on a case of my favourite Australian red.

And that’s the news.

I have just spent a deeply frustrating 20 mins on the phone with Parcel Force’s computer. Their idea of customer service seems to be stuck in the mid-ninties, as they eschew even the most basic Indian call centre, preferring instead to use a system that doesn’t seem to have any way of connecting me to an actual human.

There is a package I really want to be able to collect today. If I can’t, I face another internet-free weekend. I want to confirm that it’s at the depot, that it will not be sent out again, and that it will wait there until I knock off work early, and collect it.

I cannot speak to a human, and I cannot convince their fucking voice recognition system that I live at 270A rather than 278, so I cannot make certain of this.

Does anyone know a number for Parcelforce that I can use that will result in speaking to a human?

Edit: It turns out it’s surprisingly easy. The options go:

Press 1 for….
Press 2 for….
[pause]
[pause]
[caller presses one of the above, thinking that’s it]
Press 3 for…
Press 4 for…
[pause]
[caller hangs up in disgust]
Press 5 for an Indian call centre.

Still, got there in the end, after phoning their head bloody office.