I’d like to suggest that there’s more than one form of victory available.

Yep.

Got a cab home from work last night (the closer to the next morning it gets, the less inclined I am to stand about waiting for buses), and I wave this clown over right?  As the turn of phrase goes, I say “Hi mate, can ya take us over to Camden Town?”, and he sits there looking at me for a minute.  He then says, “Us?  There’s nobody else here.”.

I know, strictly speaking, that I am a single unit of human atomicity - however I’m also firmly of the belief that at 1:30am one should be afforded a little leeway in one’s grammatical correctness, especially if the questionable phrase is a widely known & used  article of regional vernacular.

I suppose - had inspiration and inclination taken me - I could have (successfully) argued that the “us” in question was a plural, encompassing myself, and the driver of the Hackney Carriage in question: for such a transaction to remain legal according to the local bylaws there must be multiple persons in the vehicle.

However as it was I just wanted to get in the fecking cab.

As if to punish me further, he correctly ascertained that I worked in the Information Technology business (I don’t know if it was the physique or the tan that gave it away), and spent the remainder of the journey asking me whether Windows XP or Vista was better.

Do you think karma will punish me for saying “Vista, definitely”?

It’s possible to read all sorts of interpretations into the gifts that people give you, and I suspect the phrase “it’s the thought that counts” was coined directly to stop any further interpreting going on - it’s always possible to over-analyse, and come to the wrong conclusion.  For instance, were someone to post me an Amazon.co.uk voucher I’d probably wonder whether it meant that they didn’t care enough to spend time picking out something I liked, or maybe my personality is so bland to the outward observer that they couldn’t find any single facet of it to attach a gift to and settled on a “one-size-fits-all” solution?  Maybe the person was ludicrously busy and wanted to make a gesture but didn’t have time to do more?  Maybe they’d heard me talking about something expensive I’d seen on Amazon and wanted to contribute?  Or maybe they just didn’t want to spend loads on posting something large or awkward.  (Nobody *did* post me an Amazon voucher, by the way - it was purely a fictional example…  but you’re most welcome to do so.  It encourages brain activity.)

This year though, one of the arrivals was nothing so open-ended in its purposes and it philosophical implications.  No, this was quite specific.  The new addition to my wordly goods & chattels was a Darth Vader Mr Potato Head.

The questions it raises I think are more to do with the recipient than the sender - I absolutely love it, and so you’d have to wonder “What in the hell does a 32 year old want with a nerded up version of a 1950s facsimile tuber based toy?”.

The question you’re probably thinking of right now, however, is probably very very different to the one that came to my mind as I unwrapped the box because you see - I’ve already got a Darth Tater.

There was no way the generous sender of this gift (who had cunningly ordered from Australia using a UK firm) could have known that my housemate & sometime kickboxing sparring partner Emma had already presented me with one of these potato gems 3 years hence.  So the question playing through my mind was more like “How in the world did I become the sort of person who has 2 Darth Taters?”.  The world is literally awash with warehouses full of gift options, and there are websites and businesses whose entire purpose is to purvey such things: Firebox, IWOOT, BoysStuff.co.uk, Think Geek… the list goes on.  I have had a gift doubling-up since I was about 9, and I was able to put that down to the likelihood that my Mum and the other kid’s Mum probably shopped at the same Big W.  To get 2 of these, 3 years apart is quite a different thing.  I think.

Don’t get me wrong - it’s an excellent present, and I was totally stoked to receive it!

However I’ve checked, and I can exchange it for one of these.

Hello from XXXXXX. Just to let you know we have made some improvements to our network in your area.  So, you should now get even better coverage from XXXXXX.

What interests me is the phrase “in your area”.  It’s a mobile phone, right?  Do they mean in the area surrounding my billing address, or are they basing it on the network cell that my phone is currently in?  In which case, how do they know that I’m going to be there for long enough to give a shit about what the network improvement is like?  OR maybe they’ve been monitoring which cells my phone registers itself in over the course of the past week, and they’ve concluded that the one covering my office is my predominant location…  OH MY GOD, THEY’RE WATCHING ME!

Maybe mum’s theory about increasing the line rental cost of home phones to the point where everybody switched to mobiles in order that The Government can track your whereabouts all the time was right?!

This seems unusual, as prior discussions I’ve had with cab drivers included finding out about The Knowledge, how much the driver would like to move to Australia, what’s happening that evening that’s interesting, and what the driver’s most frequently asked and least favourite bits of smalltalk were - unsurprisingly, The Knowledge, life in London, and what’s going on that evening that’s interesting. At the risk of boring them, I’d sooner discuss those things than sport, religion or politics with someone who spends all day in London traffic confined to a small perspex box.

So I guess what I’m wondering - given that 90% of the time I’ll find myself chatting with the cabbie - is would the 90%-of-punters-don’t-chat rule be accurate, or could it just be that the guy who made that claim isn’t much good at random light banter?

Got a card through the door to say “we tried to deliver a parcel but it wouldn’t fit through your letter box - come & get it!”, so I did.  Well, I nearly did.  I went to the postal depot and handed over the red card.  The bloke went around behind into the parcel section and rummaged for a good 20 mins, then came back empty handed.  Even the little gnomes at Argos have better performance statistics than that!

The guy said “I dunno man.  It’s not back there.  Give us your phone number and we’ll call you if it turns up”.

The other joyful part of the expedition was that I got the bus to the postal depot, but the bus was diverted because of roadworks, and at the point where I was able to get off the bus I was about equidistant to the post office as I’d have been if I’d just walked there from home.  So I wasted another 20 mins, and a quid.  But I guess I can’t blame the Royal Mail for that.

Mmmm…  postal conundrums and public transport - I don’t ever want to hear another claim that you people are living vicariously through my blog.

The chief prompter of this vein of thought is, regrettably, that I recently read about a Hollywood prop auction that’s going on at the minute.  Now, there’s not much that could be any more frivilous than buying props from films - they’re not even real things!  They’re mostly mockups designed to look like things, which are replaced with ACTUAL things at appropriate points in filming, or post-edited with effects to make the pretend things look like they’re functioning like real things.

Additionally, most people would have learned from past experience - I sort of kind of maybe accidentally put a little bit of a bid in on a hollywood auction once before…  Well you know how it is - you go out for a couple of orange sherberts with the lads, then come home & decide that your life won’t be complete until you own the golf club from Dogma as used by Cardinal Glick (George Carlin) - lot 1053.  Luckily someone wanted it more than USD$400 bad.  You’d have think I’d have learned from the Duck Call Incident.

The difference here though is that for a mere USD$25,000 you could own The Holy Grail.  Naturally, not the authentic grail as used in the Bible and quested after by King Arthur et al, but “real” in the sense as it’s the actual one used in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.

This, above all, is probably the reason why it’s a good idea that I don’t have the kind of cash alluded to in the first paragraph.  Were I to be free of such financial constraints then I’d also have to find places to keep The Ten Commandments (although maybe it’d be fun to stick them in a replica Ark of the Covenant ?), an Adam West-ian Bat Radio, a spear from The Wizard of Oz, a pair of C3PO feet, the “Here’s Johnny” axe from The Shining, the priest’s headdress worn by Conan the Barbarian, the key (shaped like a golden weenkie) to the tractor beam belonging to Goldmember, and of course on the side of my shed it would be a requirement to have the airlock handle from Aliens.

Heh heh… Bay 12, please.

If anyone at all has the urge to pick that lot up for me, you’re most welcome to do so - I’ll find places to keep most of it, I’m sure.  And that lot’s only estimated to go for a hundred and seventy two grand!  With the change from 1/4 of a million you could probably pick up Christopher Reeve’s Superman costume, and a pair of James Bond cufflinks as a stocking stuffer.

The thing which has caused my gast to be flabbered on this particular occasion is a website which my boss Paul somehow got in touch with during the course of trying to sell his car.  My understanding of events was that he listed the car in the motor trader magazine, and was contacted shortly afterwards by a representative from this website.

The premise is that they offer a service where they have a list of buyers who have expressed interest in a car of the type you’re selling and if you sign up they find a match with these buyers.  Your listing will remain on their register until the vehicle sells (as opposed to regular classified ads where you pay per appearance of a listing).  The service is just shy of £100, and if you’re selling a car for £2000 or more it probably doesn’t sound a huge expense to expedite the selling of your vehicle.

The bit which tugs the danger-will-robinson-chain is a little tricky to find - at the very bottom of the T&Cs in fact:

They have defined the terms of their engagement such that if a person expresses an interest in purchasing a vehicle of the type you have, or a similar type, then they have fulfilled the obligation.  One wonders what the exact definition of “expresses an interest” covers, although it sounds like what they mean is if you list a Ford Escort for sale, and someone searches their database for all the Ford listings they have, then that probably means they’ve expressed an interest in a vehicle of similar type.  Helpfully, the definition doesn’t refer to the location of the buyer: Paul got an email from a guy purportedly in Nebraska asking him to calculate shipping costs and sending him a bill for the total amount - seems a little far fetched to believe that a serious buyer would ship a car from London to the US based on a brief text description and no photo, however under the terms of the agreement it’s certainly a match.

On first glance one could be forgiven for thinking that the company does all sorts of work marketing and trying to find interested buyers for the kind of car you’re listing.  On immediate thought about it however it becomes quite clear that the “marketing” which takes place is that they place your listing in their database, which is then retrieved should someone come to the site and search for it.  Given that Paul was contacted upon listing his car in the auto trader (a print & web company with an enormous readership and household name status) it seems fairly apparent that a potential buyer is far more likely to find his car through the auto trader than through this other site.

If you pay your money and then get wind of the fact the site’s shonky, well no need to worry about that - the T&Cs cover that as well:

So, you’ve got no right to a refund if you find out we’re dodgy or suddenly figure out how this scam works - and any right you would have had you now don’t have because we’ve specifically referred to it as a term of your agreeing to use our service.

I suppose my point is I just think it sucks that someone can set up an arrangement which is a dodgy scam to take money off people who misunderstand the specifics of what they’re getting into, largely by way of the definitions they come up with for the terms.

Then again I don’t suppose that’s any different to how any other business anywhere operates, come to think of it.  If only I’d thought this through before blogging about it with such incredulousness.  Oh well.

The result of this is that I had the choice of either going commando, or re-using Sunday’s pair (turned inside out, naturally).  To give you an idea of how attractive the latter would be, Richie & I spent pretty much all day yesterday wandering about the Tour de France track in 30 degree heat, and selected periods in the sweaty morass of a summer’s day on the Metro.  So yeah, we’re talking moisture, but nothing an overnight stay pegged to a hotel room balcony couldn’t minimise.

Neither was particularly appealing as far as options go, and I guess you’ll be relieved to read (at least as far as mental imagery goes, unless the damage is already done) that I plumped for option B.

The quandry one now finds oneself in is whether or not it’s worth popping to Marks & Sparks near work to purchase a fresh pair of shreddies or not.  I mean, clean durps is obviously the most desireable outcome, however it’s midday now, which means I’ve had these skanky ones on for 6 hours now.  Surely there’s not going to be much benefit in calling subs in at this stage of the game, is there?

Compounding the problem is that I’ve nowehere to put the tarnished set should I change into pristine shorts - the backpack I took away for the weekend is quite compact, and is currently filled to capacity (with sweaty clothes from the weekend).  There’s not room in there for an extra set of Reg Grundies, so unless I procure a shopping bag from somewhere (increasingly hard to do) I’ll have to be carrying them around on the end of a biro - at least this should guarantee me safe passage through the peak hour underground crowds.

The idea is that barpersons use this list to figure out whether you’re drunk or not, and can then assess whether to stop serving you (not sure what the rules here in the UK are, but in Australia pubs and bar staff can get fined massive amounts for serving alcohol to people who are already langered, on the basis that they could then go out and do something stupid like hurt themselves and it would be the fault of the person who sold them the booze in the first place).

Without reprinting the entire list, I’m a little concerned that were this framework to have been in place 15 years ago I might never have been able to enjoy the cultural enrichment connected with the social fixture of going to the pub!  Apparently giveaway signs of intoxication are:

2. Rambling or unintelligible conversation
3. Incoherent or muddled speech
4. Loss of train of thought
6. Difficulty in paying attention
14. Lack of co-ordination
24. Argumentative
25. Offensive
28. Loud or boisterous
29. Confused
31. Exuberance
32. Using offensive language
33. Annoying or pestering others
34. Overly friendly
37. Drowsiness or sleeping at a bar or table

That pretty much describes most of the people I know, most of the time.
Additionally, they seem to be confusing being drunk with being a foreign tourist:

18. Difficulty counting money or paying

These ones could be symptomatic of being aboard a boat:

7. Unsteady on feet
8. Swaying uncontrollably
9. Staggering
10. Difficulting walking straight
12. Stumbling
13. Bumping into or knocking over furniture and people

And certainly at http://thesussex.com.au/sussex.php The Sussex on a monday night this one was rife:

19. Difficulty opening doors

however that happened before anyone had even started drinking, and was primarily due to the bastard owner putting a pull handle on a push door.

According to the article:

The department said the guidelines were drafted to help bar staff form a reasonable belief that a person is intoxicated. However, it warned that the list was neither exhaustive nor conclusive.

God I hate that expression - reasonable belief.

“Your honour, I had a reasonable belief that the gentleman was intoxicated, as he displayed several of the symptoms outlined in the intoxication guidelines… and I’d sold him 15 Beam & Cokes in the last half hour”.

“Did you actually see the gentleman consume the Beam & Cokes?”

“No m’lud”

“Your honour the defense evidence shows that the Beam & Cokes were purchased by the gentleman for distribution among a party of slappers with whom he was trying to cop off, and he himself does not drink.  In fact the reason the man was speaking unintelligibly, losing his train of thought, fumbling his change and swaying uncontrollably was that he had 14 live rats in his underpants, for the purposes of treating a specific medical condition.  He wishes to pursue damages for your libellous claim against his good character that he was in any way inappropriately intoxicated.”

“But the guidelines said…”

“Interjection - we at the department clearly stated that the list of intoxication guidelines was neither exhaustive nor conclusive, and any judgement of intoxication was purely the responsibility of the person serving the drinks”

“Right, I find in favour of the gentleman - the accused will pay sixty thousand quid in costs & damages, deliver an apology including the words ‘deeply sorry’, and get a big hard smack on the pee-pee.  Court is adjourned.”

“Brilliant!  Drinks are on me, everyone!”

If you were going to stop serving booze to people on the grounds that they were intoxicated wouldn’t it make more sense to measure that somehow, like making them blow in a breathalyzer and not serving them til you get a green light?  Of course it would.  Only once the green light had been given could the person then proceed to buying the 15 Jim Beam & Cokes.  It’s the sensible solution.  Either that, or a system of putting warning labels on bottles.