Pete Ashton’s Blog

Matt Biddulph approves of my ripping him off. Phew!

Was talking to Mo today and he thought the disturbing search requests I occasionally post, like this one were made up by me. For anyone else new to this game, I get them from here - they’re pages people have come from when they visit the site, so anyone who’s come from Google, etc, I know what they were looking for. Much more fun is to be had at Disturbing Search Requests itself.

Off to Bristol tomorrow for the years big comics festival. Which will entail passing through the dealers hall for a few minutes, going to one, maybe two events (one of which I’ve been corralled into being on the panel of), and spending the rest of the weekend in the bar drinking far more than I’m supposed to. I don’t really go to these things for the comics any more, although that’s a part of it. It’s more the fact that having been to comics conventions and festivals pretty much continuously since 1989 I have a lot of friends at these things. It’s a social thing. And I’m really looking forward to it!

Not much other news. Had a good chat with my boss today and I think my job is going to be pretty enjoyable over the next few months at least. Told him about the depression and he was very supportive. Also met our new area manager (you’ll remember the company fired eight of them a couple of months back for some reason no-one quite understands though we all got rather worried about it) who seemed like an on-the-level chap. Has the appearance of a white South African bushman - you can see him in a floppy hat with a gun warning you about lions or something. Also had the good news that I don’t have a budget for my Travel section, which means I can order whatever I want with no restrictions. Which is pretty fucking unheard of in this line of work.

Other than that, I’ve been surprisingly tired this week - kept falling asleep in the early evenings much to Kate’s annoyance. She’s been trying to crack down on my stupid sleeping patterns and to be honest I can’t really argue back. I have managed to get put on early shifts at work permanently so I finally have a regular wake-up time of 7.15am, which should crack it. Mayhap no more 2.00am entries? You never know.

I decided to widen my culinary repertoire with Spaghetti Carbonara this week using this book by Nigella Lawson, a journalist and television personality by all accounts, which would explain why her books sell so well. Good little recipe, although only a dumb-ass like me needs one for this. It did need some translating though. “100g of Pancetta” turns out to be the equivalent of ham or a few strips of bacon and “Noilly Pratt” can be substituted by white wine. But otherwise it worked. Twice. Go me.

Another from daypop, the Los Angeles International AirportMonitor is waycool, though I think it would be waycooler on a broadband connection. Simply put, it’s a live-action replay of the flightpaths of planes over the airport as they take off, land and taxi as seen by the guys in the control tower. When we were flying to Texas at Xmas (ooh, hark at him!) the plane had a neat feature showing you exactly where we were on the globe and where we’d been. As we avoided bad weather over Houston the plane had to zig-zag around and I was spellbound. Much better than the dodgy movies.

This is what seems to be known as “the website that looks like a classic Mac, and indeed it is. Rather nice and sweet and cute, and possibly with some use, although I haven’t dug deep enough to find it yet.

Via daypop which I’d never really used until now. Think I might use it more in future.

More photos from the CXR closure party. These are mine. Again, not desperately of interest to those who weren’t there but fun if you like looking at pictures of drunk people you don’t know.

I’ve been getting a few compliments on this weblog of late which is nice and I know I’ve been putting more thought and honesty into it over the last couple of months, but it’s got me thinking. Is one of the side effects of Seroxat that it improves your writing? It certainly calms down the brain, being an anxiety / stress drug as well as for treating depression. I could be onto a good thing here…

Heather lent me her photos of the CXR closure party of April 27th for me to scan for posterity, and then I decided to post them up here. Potentially of little interest to anyone who wasn’t there, but you do get a chance to see drunken booksellers at play. It takes place in the decorated basement of the shop (see thumbnail) and the Phoenix bar over the road.

Enough already!

It’s a pelican. Thanks for all the emails…

Currently listening to Humphrey Lyttelton on Radio 2 with his Jazz show. Unfortunately, because of his voice and the somewhat bizarre names of the Jazz bands, I keep thinking he’s setting up a gag for I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue, which is most disconcerting.

Paparazzi Heather at the CXR closing party a month back:

New in Grids

Grid 005

Lots of things to write about, and I’m too tired to do so. Or am I. Let’s see how it goes. I’m tired in a good way, though. Been feeling all hyper all weekend and now the eyelids are closing.

Today we went to see Shockheaded Peter again for the third time thanks to some half price vouchers that appeared in the shop. So Kate and I introduced Heather, Alistair and Stina to the joyful junk opera along with Helen who saw it last year. It was even better the third time, possibly because we had really good seats in the circle. Worryingly, I started knowing the words. We realised we might be becoming saddo West End theatre types who go and see shows again and again, though thankfully this one is the antithesis of Cats, et al. It ends on June 16th. Make sure you get to see it.

Saturday was a lazy day involving a walk around London where we happened upon a stork in St Jame’s Park. Not just a stork, but a stork standing on someone’s coat and cleaning itself.

Kate kept her distance but I went forwards for photos. There was a Chinese guy, who’s bag I assume it was, taunting it by opening his mouth really wide and moving his arms up and down, but the bird was having none of it. It continued to clean itself and then when the guy got too close, opened it’s beak really really wide in defiance. I took this from about 2 metres away.

As I moved around for a better shot, the stork started moving off the coat and towards me. It wasn’t being malicious but it was definitely moving my way. I moved to the right, it moved to the right. It was only when I kicked up the pace after a minute of pursual that I left it behind. Naturally, I took photos as we danced our merry dance.

And we went on our way. As we left the park 20 minutes later, the stork was at the gate entertaining a gaggle of people, completely at home with their presence. I wonder if it had escaped from the Zoo.

Actually, I wonder if it is a stork. It wasn’t in the bird book I consulted later. Answers in an email please.

Then later in the evening, to Tremble Towers for Brett and Sarah’s Eurovision evening, them being big fans. As they are friends of mine, I can’t hold it against them and Kate was well up for it, but myself? Well, let’s just say it’s not my scene and I really don’t get it. At all. But there was good food and plenty of Bucks Fizz (naturally) so a good evening. Shame about the stuff on the telly though.

Friday was a day off after finishing closing the shop on Thursday. Other than doing bugger all save sleep and sleep some more, I had the interview / chat with Adam Reid about this weblog, about more I may write later .

So, to Thursday, then, which was preceded by Wednesday which was something of an arse of a day. For those new to this saga, for the last three months I’ve been closing down the Charing Cross Road branch of a major chain of booksellers, here referred to as CXR. You’ll remember, if I mentioned it, that we had to be out of the store by Thursday and that this was a two week extension on the original date of leaving. We were, therefore, behind schedule. But now it was time to stop chopping and changing plans and to just get on with it. And get on with it we did. Every book in the store had to be allocated to somewhere, be it returned to the publisher, sent to the SEP field of “returns logistics”, whatever that may be, or sent to another branch, preferably one we had a grudge against.

So we zapped books with scanners, boxed books in boxes and lugged boxed books downstairs. This went on for a while and by Thursday lunchtime we had 400+ boxes downstairs ready and waiting for Parcelforce to arrive. By this stage, the rest of the shop was a chaotic shitheap but it was about to be stripped out so who cared. We went to the pub to celebrate finally getting it done, only to discover Parcelfarce couldn’t come but they could do Friday. (When they did finally make it they just sent a small van rather than a truck. Filled to the brim with boxes of books sparks were reported coming from underneath every time it went over a bump).

Refreshed with a couple of beers we went back and basically pissed around for a bit. Andrew and I went up to the attic and hit things with a hammer. For some reason there were a lot of plastercast heads around the place. Not any more. We also threw strip light bulbs into the mysterious bath which was quite spectacular. In the meantime, Heather and Anthony had taken to locking each other in the cash office safe. Apparently it’s very calming in there. I rescued the flag from the front of the shop which may well form part of an art project in the near future. I also rescued a round security mirror for the simple reason that you never see them anywhere for sale or scrap so I might as well have one. Not sure what I’ll use it for, if anything.

Tim can be seen celebrating it all being over in Grid005-01.

As of Monday I’m back at the Leadenhall branch being a normal bookseller running the Travel section and serving customers. It won’t be bad, but I’ll miss the somewhat anarchic job of closing down a shop. If there’s another one going soon, I may well volunteer.

From Tom, a very interesting invention to keep tabs on. It’s called Meta Linker and it can be seen in operation on Tom’s Plastic Bag site. I may well implement it here soonish, once I hae time to figure out the scripting (bit dim in that department, me). Not 100% sure about the [b] links after each post but there’s probably a design solution.

Another weblog by one of the old Oxford based Caption lot, Jeremy Dennis is a small press comics chum who’s comics are here. Like Andy and Jenni she be a good writer

Had a one and a half hour chat with Adam Reed of the University of Surrey today about this weblog. Very interesting to talk about it in such depth and I was forced to answer questions I hadn’t really considered before, as well as refuting and confirming some ideas about weblogs I’d been thinking about. He’s now interviewed 30 London-based webloggers and it’ll be interesting to see what patterns emerge. I asked for a transcript of the interview and should get it in a month or two. Naturally, it’ll be posted up here.

I am very, very, very tired. We leave CXR tomorrow. More later.

oo vudge welcome, and happiness throughout the nation upon this discovery. All the Blue Jam radio programs archived in realaudio on one little site. God bless the internet!

Food for thought on Slashdot - does cheering for the rebels make you a friend of terrorism?

It’s believed that Skywalker was specifically trained by infamous terrorist O bin Wankanobi. Wankanobi, occasionally called “Ben” and easily recognized by his bearded visage and long, flowing robes, achieved near-martyr status among the Rebels after his death last year during a spy mission. His more fervent followers believe that Wankanobi lives on within them today, some even claiming to hear his voice during times of duress.

The attack on the Death Star came shortly after the Empire’s destruction of Alderstaan, a planet whose government was known to harbor terrorists. Responding to criticism over the total annihilation of the planet, Vader stated, “There is no middle ground in the War on Terror. Those who harbor terrorists are terrorists themselves. Alderaan was issued ample warning. The fight for continuing Freedom is often burdened by terrible cost.”

Cheers to Tom for this, and also this little beaut. I wish I could find that piece I wrote years back about how Ewoks are an integral and important part of the SW mythos and should not be derided.

Friday, it was a sunny morning again and Helen phoned asking if we wanted to go for a picnic after work in Victoria Park, then go to the pub. Which was a top idea indeed. So we said yes. Then it started raining, but being British we made our ways to the park and, while it wasn’t actually raining then, had a rather chilly picnic under a tree as the sun vanished. Then we went to the pub.

But the wind was a good thing. As I mentioned before we’d found the key to the roof at work. Yes, we flew the kite again.

If, on Friday at about 5.30pm, you saw a fluorescent kite flying over the Charing Cross Road / Soho Square area, that was Andrew, Heather and me on the roof. It was kick ass FUN and I highly recommend it should you ever have the chance. Which is not likely so if you do, go for it. We left the kite tangled around a chimney pot, as you can just make out in the photo. Hopefully it’ll have blown free by Monday and we can fly it again.

Today, a lazy day, but we did try and see Star Wars. It was sold out so we saw About A Boy which I actually really enjoyed, but then I’m a bit of a soppy git really, as long as it’s well executed soppyness, and this was. Or maybe I just have a soft spot for single parent kids…

Marker pens, sticky tape crack music CD protection: “The process is pretty easy: I took a bit of electrical tape and applied it to the edge of the CD, the ’shiny side’, - just a half inch of the stuff - and aligned it with the very edge ‘data track session ring’ visible on these copy protected CDs. Took the tape out to the outside of the CD and put it in my CD Rom. And guess what - it played, and ripped, with no problems at all.” Which is good news as these things threaten to fuck up my Mac. (via Lukelog)

Fun few days. Let’s ramble.

On the medical front, I went to the doctor’s on Tuesday for a progress report. I’m doing fine. The pills are having the expected result and while she wanted to increase the dose to 40mg, I said I’d rather wait a few weeks. Since the 30mg has only just stabilised I fancied a while of feeling normal before putting more drugs in my system. All in all, though, I’m medically making progress. I am starting to worry about when I’m going to actually deal with the underlying problems that cause this depression. I have a tendency to put things like this off and the fact that I keep saying I’m determined to get to the bottom of it this time but don’t actually make any moves towards that goal is slightly disconcerting. I’ve yet to reply to the guy from the Depression Alliance about joining a therapy group nor contacted Mind on my doctor’s advice about regular counselling. Still, it is early days. I’ve only just started to stabilise after all.

CXR is now in end-game. If you’ll remember I was put in there about three months ago to help close the shop down. After a couple of months of kicking heals and slowly laying the groundwork, we finally started moving four weeks back when we were finally allowed to close the non-sale floors and start returing/redistributing the books. We were supposed to be out of these last week but, surprise surprise, we’re still there. We will be out next Thursday. For definite. Because that’s when the computers leave.

Now, this story is not an attack on my company. It’s more an attack on the mentality of companies in general. A few weeks back a chap at head office, who appears to have a brain, asked us if we wanted post redirection set up. What a good idea, we said. So he put it in motion and sent off the documents to the finance department to raise a cheque for £21 to pay for it. In the meantime I spent a good couple of days phoning publishers and faxing them returns requests for stock we didn’t want to redistribute to other branches. I asked the publishers to post the requests back to the store. Then the landlord borded neglecting to put a letterbox in, so we stuck up a notice asking the postman to deliver to the store around the corner. A week or so went by and we had no post. At all. Talking to the chap at head office today about something else he told me what had happened. In the middle of April sent the application on. On May 3rd he looked into it and saw that the cheque hadn’t been raised. Why? This is the good bit. Because no cheques were to be raised in the final week of the financial year. The company has just been floated on the stock market and they wanted to keep costs as low as possible. So he sent off an arsey email and got the cheque. Six days later. And it takes the post office five days to set up the redirection once they’ve got the cheque. So we’ll get out post about now. In the meanwhile we’ve got the returns manager at head office dedicating himself to our problems and using up his personal favours on our behalf and we’ve been set back a good week or so. And other shops are going to get books they don’t really want. All for the sake of a £21 cheque.

Yesterday we found the key to the roof. There’s a little landing and you can climb up the tiles and sit right at the summit of the shop, five stories up. Heather and I flew a kite, although it was a stunt kite so as soon as the wind got it it did a stunt and crashed into the roof. But it was a laugh. I had photos but they got wiped. Damn. I’ll get some more soon.

Last night went out with Brett-the-insane for the first time in yonks, along with Sarah, Mike, Mike’s mate Doug and Barbara. Mike’s mate Doug was down from Scotland for the second time ever and really wanted a pint of London Pride which, apparently, is the best bitter in the world. So we found a pub with London Pride (not hard) and, yes, it was good. Later on Mike and Doug decided to drink in a posh hotel, which I always recommend doing. Unfortunately Mike’s JD and Coke came to £8.00. Which was not nice. Good night out though.

And it’s been a really sunny day. Finally, summer is here.

Dr Adam Reid of the University of Surrey wants to interview me about this weblog “as part of a wider project on cultures of new media use in the
city and links to sense of place, community and cultures of reading and
writing.” Which is nice!

New in Grids: Grid 004

Added a rather long about section to the site. Can I talk about myself or what?

Jinty had a weird thing happen a few days back when she got bounce messages for emails she hadn’t sent. Reading Haughey’s blog it looks like she might have been an unwitting and indirect victim of the Klez virus. This little bugger not only sends itself to everyone in your address book but changes the From: field to a random address from your list. Which means people get sent a virus from you which appears to come from someone else, while the person who actually has the virus remains unaware until someone who understands the headers that are usually hidden on emails tells them. Full details in the article…

Spent the day cleaning the flat. Very therapeutic. Everyone should clean a toilet on a regular basis, as I do, so it’s not that traumatic. Just went to the local minimart thing to get pizzas and cola for tea and there’s a heavy storm brewing from the west as the sun set. Clear sky above the East End with a huge black cloud over the rest of the city. I could feel and smell the heat of the day being squashed down by the encroaching cold front. It was both oppressive and a sign of cleansing to come. Now there’s a crispness to the night as we await the storm.

Star Dudes does rather kick ass. Most enjoyable romp! (from Lukelog)

Slightly tweaked the look of the weblog. Ripped off the colours from Guardian Film cos they were nice. If it needs a justification it’s not because I’m depressed. More that I tend to wear black most of the time and I tend to post at night. So it’s black. With a bit of orange.

It would be nice to be able to alter your Blogger settings to account for when your day actually ends. As you’ll know if you read my blog often, I tend to post late at night, normally when Kate’s gone to bed and I’m not tired yet, which with my sleeping patterns is frequently. So you’ll often get posts at 1.00am, 2.00am which come under the next day. In my mind, 2.00am is part of today, not tomorrow. I’m a bit iffy as to when tomorrow actually starts, but 4.00am tends to be a good mark since that’s when most bars have closed, the early breakfast show starts on the radio, the birds kick off outside and it’s the very earliest you can reasonably be expected to get up for work. So, I’d like the datestamp to reflect that. When I’m up late on, say, a Wednesday, I’d like my posts to appear under Wednesday rather than Thursday. I ask you, is that too much to want in this day and age? Is it?