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Wednesday 2nd February 2005
 Once again, the university term has started, I have work to do, and I find myself getting very easily distracted, hence . . . So, this crazy lot to the left there, yeah? Well, you have to get 'em from one side of the river to the other, see. Only, there's all these rules and the whole thing's in Japanese . . . but even without knowing the rules, it's pretty obvious what's going on, this being some kind of children's IQ test. The source for this said 'Apparently this is an IQ test given to job applicants in Japan' but somehow I doubt that. Anyway, rules/instructions are as follows:
- Only 2 persons on the raft at a time
- The father can not stay with any of the daughters without their mother's presence
- The mother can not stay with any of the sons without their father's presence
- The thief (striped shirt) can not stay with any family member if the Policeman is not there
- Only the Father, the Mother and the Policeman know how to operate the raft
- To start click on the big blue circle on the right.
- To move the people click on them.
- To move the raft click on the red circles.
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Friday 4th February 2005
Well, today there was meant to be a fireplace arriving at my house. It did arrive, but the two guys who were doing the fitting, they didn't have enough tiles . . . for the hearth, or something like that. I dunno. So, instead, M**** and I went to Sheffield to see Rob. The plan was to meet up at the Devonshire Cat (again) at . . . well, some time. That picture to the left there was taken at 14:25. We were a bit peckish by then, so M**** and I ordered some food. I think I got some kind of ham salad hoagie thing.
The menu recommending some freaky drink called something like 'Timmermans Pêche' to go with my sandwich and, yeah, it did kinda work. The ham had some connection with cider . . . what was it? I don't know. And there was loads of chutney, so the peachy flavoured beer seemed about right, yeah. After drinks and food, we went for a bit of a wander around town, me constantly chirping on about getting some decent coffee somewhere and M**** going to all these 'maternity shops' . . . well, that's not really true . . . I mean clothes stores with a range of maternity clothing. That picture to the right there was taken a couple of minutes after the other one.
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So, yeah . . . we got a bus back to Rob's house, we went to Tesco's, we had dinner, Smurf appeared, I exercised very briefly on Rob's cross-trainer (I think that's what it's called) . . . Rob Freeman popped around, then Nicole (but couldn't come in, as she was smoking) . . . yeah . . . it was all good. Then, erm . . . some minutes after ten o'clock we got this odd train back to Leeds. Actually the wrong train, but we didn't realise until it was too late. Wrong in the sense that we were travelling via Doncaster, and that wasn't what we had paid for.
Our tickets said 'Not Via Doncaster' on them . . . but the guy who checked our tickets couldn't really care less. Oh, so I guess that's what these pictures are of. Wait a sec . . . so, yeah . . . I remember. It was a huge train. Like, about seven or eight carriages but barely one person for each carriage. But it was a cool train, though. A proper old style train, where you have to open the window in order to lift the latch up to get out of the damn thing. I like that. Someone must have to come along, shutting all the doors, before the thing can leave. Those pictures in the block of three up there were taken at 22:21, 22:22 and 22:24 respectively. The picture on the right of M**** smiling was taken at 22:25.
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and then . . . more pictures from the train . . . M**** must have taken these ones. The times were 22:28, 22:28, ten twenty eight, 10 20 8, ten 20 8 and 28 minutes past ten. O'Clock. Of the Clock. It kinda passed the time, you know. Taking pictures, deleting pictures, doing the Sun crossword. As you can see, we couldn't finish it. The crazy thing is, the Guardian crossword is much easier.
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Sunday 6th February 2005
   
So, today we wandered along the canal. There wasn't really much to take pictures of. M**** got a bit carried away with the locks. I seized upon the sunlight. Locks still freak me out. Or maybe just canals. I know there must be some kind of resevoir and overflow thing going on at the start and end of these canal things, but where are they and what form must they take? 13:58, 14:07, 14:13 and 14:17, were when these pictures were taken. I'm trying to remember what happened when we got to town. Hmmmmm. Oh, doesn't matter.
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and to the left there . . . towers, more locks, strange buildings . . . 14:18, 14:20 and 14:37. We were told the recall code could occur at any place at any time, but here we were beginning to despair. Excursions into the eleventh harmonic on this planet had so far proved fruitless, and we were longing for a dark orange sun whose movement across the heavens one could actually perceive. "Remember, it's all light," my companion kept saying. That became our mantra.
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Thursday 10th February 2005
Hello? Oh, it's been a while, hasn't? Last thing I knew, I was taking a day off work so that a new fireplace could be, er . . . installed, but then . . . oh no . . . the concrete (?!) block on which the hearth would have been, that was larger than they had been expecting . . . so, instead M**** and I went to Sheffield to see Rob . . . hmmm, yes.
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Saturday 12th February 2005
(19:28, left to right: Helen, Liz, Stu and Anthony) Today seemed like a long day. Maybe it was. M**** and I spent the morning kind of tidying the house up. M****'s mum and M****'s mum boyfriend, Stuart, were coming over, to help us choose/find a decent second-hand car. I think they were meant to be here by about midday, but it was more like 12:30, maybe 12:45 . . . I dunno. There was the obligatory tour, then we sat down for coffee, I realised we could really do with an Atoz covering Leeds AND Bradford, so I moseyed on down to the garage on Kirkstall Road. It was ring bound, the Atoz, and costed me five pence short of £11. Interesting, this transaction appeared on my statement as ESSO-RIVERSIDE 056. Well, it's near the river Aire, but not really by its side. Odd. Anyway . . .
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(20:20, the interior of Maxi's restaurant, The Light) So, perhaps it ended being something like 13:30, and we were getting peckish, so a quick lunch at Fat Chops was in order. Mmmmmmmmmm, sweet Thai chicken panini with sun-dried tomatores. HA HA HA HA. I spelt that wrong and there's nothing any of you can do about it. HA HA HA HA HA. TOMATORES TOMATORES TOMATORES . . . . hmmmmm. yes. After that, it seemed only right, now that we had the map, the directions, food in our bellies and everything, that we should head for Bradford. Stuart was driving. We went up Bridge Road at the Kirkstall Morrison's junction and followed a load of A and B roads towards Stanningley,
(picture to the left: 20:22, Liz and Anthony, Maxi's again)
Pudsey and then Bradford. On the outskirts of Bradford, we headed right (well, actually left, as we couldn't go right off the dual carriageway and so had to turn around at this freaky huge triangular roundabout affair) up Gain Lane. A few more turns, and we were on Otley Road and there was our first port-of-call, Elite Motor House. Mysteriously, the car I had enquired about less than 24 hours ago (I believe), had now increased in value from £2495 to £2595, although we spotted a Vectra for £1800. The next stop was the Central Motor Company, the other side of Bradford, on Great Horton Road. This was a red 1.6 litre S Reg Vauxhall Astra (I think they were all Vauxhall Astra's . . . well, all the ones on our list anyway), going for £2295, although the value of this one was now £2495.
 
We were beginning to suspect something was going on. M**** and I went to the sales office to try to find out. "Hi there. I rang earlier about the red, S-Reg Vauxhall Astra. When I rang it was £2295 but now it's advertised as £2495 and I was wondering if you would be prepared to take £2000 in cash for it." The next bit was hilarious. (two pictures above, 21:34 (left to right, that'll be M****, Stu, Liz and Anthony) and 21:36) The salesman said something along the lines of, "Ah well, when you rang earlier you said you had £2200 cash to spend on a car," and I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. Maybe it was a genuine mistake, but I think it was another awful selling technique, like he expected M**** to go, "Really? Oh, okay, if that's what I said, that's what I said." But I just started laughing about what I just heard from the salesman and turned to M****, "Did you really, M****? That was very bad of you. You know we only have £2000 to spare." To cut a long story short, we asked to check under the bonnet, turn the engine over, that kind of thing. There was loads of creamy gunk under the oil cap, so we made our excuses and got the hell out of there.
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(Maxi's yet again, 21:37) Our next stop was a fair way down Manchester Road, towards where the M606 starts (or ends, I guess). On the way here, we passed somewhere called 'CarNation' (clever) . . . heck, maybe we even went to CarNation. That would make sense. It was Helen who spotted this place, and it was a good job she did. They had a green Vauxhall Astra 1.6 litre something or another, going for £2495 but, as the salesman kept saying, he would "do [us] a deal." I kept saying to the salesman that we had other cars to see yet and if you would not accept £2000 then there was no point in us sticking around, but he just kept saying,
"Sure. Well, we should be able to do you a deal." Finally, the guy had us sat down, filling in some kind of sales form, before it finally sunk in. No, we weren't going to sign anything or hand over any money, although admittedly it was the best car we had seen all day, but we were only about half way down our list. We said we might be back later that day, depending on what condition the other cars were in.
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Next car was a white, V-reg, 1.7 litre, turbo diesel, Vauxhall Astra and, visually it looked a much better car than the last. There were a hell of a lot of miles on the clock (127,000 miles) compared to the last one (47000 I think), but that didn't seem to matter. Besides, it was a diesel. It must have been 16:45 by the time we got to this garage, so there wasn't time to test-drive or anything. Oddly, the engine was running when we turned up, almost as if they had been expecting us. We checked out our last car (at a small garage on Ingleby Road called 'Ingleby Fast Car Clinic'), another red Vauxhall Astra, but this one was very similar to the green one at CarNation. There didn't seem much in it, although I got the salesman down to £1750. I guess we headed home at this point.
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In the evening, we went to Maxi's for dinner and then Baroque for a drink or two . . . then a few more drinks back at home.
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Sunday 13th February 2005
(01:11, this morning) Our car buying not yet over, we headed back to Bradford when everyone was up and ready. I was hungover, and required a shower, strong coffee and a fried egg sandwich (sandwiched between two slices of Marmite toast) before I could do anything. This time we travelled along the M621, the M62 and then the M606 . . . or something like that. It only took about fifteen minutes that way. We first went back to the white 1.7 litre turbo diesel thing. We asked the salesman if we could test drive it but were told he was waiting for someone to turn up with the keys and stuff. Fair enough. So we wandered around Matalan for a while. I got back before everyone else, and the car had its exit cleared and the engine was running. I got in the driver's seat and everyone else piled in.
(to the right there, that's M**** at 01:11) I thought the car was fun to drive, but I guess most cars are. We parked up somewhere, turned the engine off, waited . . . and then tried to start it again. Hmmmmm. It wouldn't start. So, we started to get worried, as we were about two miles from the garage (well, it may have been only a mile . . . it was hard to tell). So I kept trying . . . and trying . . . eventually, it started. We took the car back, I handed back the keys and got the frig out of there. To cut a long and very, very dull story short, we went back to CarNation and, after a little test-drive, handed over our money for the green Astra.
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Tuesday 15th February 2005
Cool. I've made this pointless front-end to doing several Google searches. My script will run the queries and order the results in various shades of purple, depending on how many hits we got on Google. Pointless, absolutely pointless. Click on the 'Mass Google!' link over to the right somewhere to have a go. Index.cgi seems to take ages to load now though. Hmmmmm.
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Thursday 17th February 2005
 Today must have been the day of M****'s second scan. It didn't go brilliantly, as we couldn't see the baby's heart properly or its face . . . nor assess the gender, but that really wasn't a concern of the hospital. They just wanted to check the baby's health, and everything that could be seen and measured was all okay. Afterwards, M**** was feeling slightly light headed so we popped into this cafe for coffee and juice. The picture was taken at 10:20. That's part of the hospital in the background.
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Saturday 19th February 2005
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Hello again. Jonath here. Suppose I should write something. Right now, I'm battling with Java, trying to understand what is a formal argument, and what is an actual argument . . . the difference between. They sound so similar, don't they? Maybe a formal one is very polite, very ordered . . . a proper argument, whereas an actual argument is a lot more realistic, a lot more messy and may involve violence. Yes. Right. Next question then . . . But otherwise, away from the university stuff . . . Having collected the car from Bradford yesterday . . . a fairly painless operation, until my turnoff from the M621 appeared - that was where the queue began. Traffic was queued all the way from there, up until the turn off to Headingley at the viaduct on Kirkstall Road, a good couple of miles. A journey that should have taken 15 minutes took about an hour, I think. I think they were off to see the rugby or something. Today I went to the huge two storey Pudsey Asda with Gav. And, erm . . . that's it, really. Nothing much been going on today. Tell you what though, here's a link to a fascinating article about the processes involved in the decomposition of the human body. Cool. I posted this to Sam's web-site in relation to an ominous package Sam spotted on some kind of waste ground.
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Look's like we went to Harrogate in the evening. I think this freaky bicycle was in the multi-storey where we parked in Harrogate town centre that night. How exciting. That was at 20:23.
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yeah, I remember now. We went to this curry house. It had a six-letter name that began with J. Maybe something like Jinnah's.
That's seven letters. Six, seven, eight . . . whatever. They had a gorgeous ceiling there. I took a few pictures of it, as you can see. We were going to get some beers from an off-license somewhere, but the one in town was shut, so I think, instead, we went to some kind of licensed petrol station thing.
Ah yes, it's all coming back to me. That last picture there, to the left, that's this car that was parked very close to ours. When the woman in the back got out, the door banged into our car, and we were like, "Erm . . . hello?" but they just carried on as if nothing had happened. So I took that picture. The number plate seems to read YB03 OEC. And this was at 22:08.
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Monday 21st February 2005
This must have been the day the fireplace was fitted. Well, fireplace, hearth and surround. This work began on February 4th, when M**** and I took the day off so that the work could be done. When the two guys left, having agreed that it would be better to fit a hearth based on the measurements I supplied the company a couple of weeks back (rather than whatever the standard hearth size is), they sealed the gas pipe with a cracked bit of red plastic, which are what these pictures are of. I just kept these for the record, see. But M**** and I didn't realise this was the source of the gas leak. Heck, I don't think we realised there was a gas leak until the previous week. I told Sam, at the Yorkshire Fireplace Company, but she didn't seem that bothered, but seemed rather more concerned that we pay an additional £20 for some 'extra tiles'. Odd.
   
That's who we got the fireplace through, if it wasn't obvious, the Yorkshire Fireplace Company. So, it took two and a half weeks to fit, caused a gas leak for that period (fortunately there was no explosion) but it's a damn fine fireplace, despite all that. Now we just need to finish the rest of the room. Hmmmmm.
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Sunday 27th February 2005
   
Today we went up to Grassington, I believe it was called. The first pictures there are all a bit samey. Snow, mountains, strange expressions . . . these were taken at 16:02 to 16:11. M**** looks like I've just said some really bad joke and is now going, "Ooo, the pain, my ribs," and I've no idea what my expression is about.
We went for a bit of walk, but it still being winter, there wasn't really a great deal of time for this, not much sunlight remaining. Plus, the fields where the path was meant to go . . . well, it was a bit muddy, so we were like, "Laters to that," and headed back. Hey, M****'s walking for two anyway. I saw this tree on the way back (16:28), and it looked like mouths, see, so I took a picture. Cool. Yeah, but maybe you need to look sideways. Or maybe little fledglings, looking up at their mother, squawking for the worm . . . but not fledglings, whatever a bird is before it acquires its flight feathers, you know? That kind of thing anyway . . . that's what they reminded me of. You know what I mean.
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. . . and then shortly after the tree with its birds mouths, there's some more pictures . . . more of the same. Should birds mouths have more apostrophes there, anyone? Ah, whatever.
Then we went back in to what I guess would have been Grassington town centre, where we went in to this cute little shop that sold a variety of wooden games, toys, puzzles (double nine dominoes) and stuff like that. M****, I think, bought some greeting cards and then we went to a pub (that picture was taken at 17:08) before heading back home.
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Monday 28th February 2005
Strange e-mail number 1: cool idea but no, link and address above
Whenever an enemy threatens you, be it man or beast, simply point the tube and press this button in the handle. An electric current will instantly be directed upon your foe, rendering him wholly unconscious for the period of one hour. During that time you will have opportunity to escape. But the noise and clatter seemed as dreadful to them as Jim's heels, for all who were able swiftly turned and flew away to a great distance.
Strange e-mail number 2 (from Tammy Pace, Penajxav@mcrmail.com):
revision indeterminablearisen bromfield tornalkali
urn butterfatarchetype judicious centriccascara
irremovable banguidanubian morrison cotangentfulminate
caraway circulatecongestion core flashlightsilicone
gratis lizarddogwood
And, finally, my favourite, from none other than Jasmin Fields, Samantha@jobjournal.com, and addressed to me, Midha Nielsen (Mid to my friends): Hello, The defendant, Frank A. Cowperwood, asks that the finding of
about a loan of his, and I'm doing my best to get money from othe
about this exchange floor once more to have made his personality
It's a very ticklish business, this, Mr. Steger, put in the
That's Murtagh, the city treasurer. Say, he don't do anything
way or another. talk with me in a civil way there is no need of our going on any
and if she wants to go back, she can. I will promise to tell her
It was a splendid chance but dangerous. He had better go it alon
Have a nice day.
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February 2005
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That's who we got the fireplace through, if it wasn't obvious, the Yorkshire Fireplace Company. So, it took two and a half weeks to fit, caused a gas leak for that period (fortunately there was no explosion) but it's a damn fine fireplace, despite all that. Now we just need to finish the rest of the room. Hmmmmm.
