Month: April 2004

Often, after a particularly big weekend, I am forcibly extracted from my slumber on the Monday morning thinking that everything would be ok if I could only have another weekend to recover from the one I’ve just had. Over Easter we decided to put this to the test by spending the first two days of the long weekend down by the seaside. When we returned to London, we then got to have another weekend straight afterwards. Great!

Despite it being barely an hour away on the train, I had somehow never been to Brighton before Friday. I’m sure we’ll be back though: it’s like the bastard offspring of Bristol and Southport (or Blackpool, I suppose, to anyone not from the North West), and Sal and I both thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. And that’s not just because of the great company provided by our hosts, Brighton’s newest antipodean residents. Where else, I ask you, can you enjoy a beer on the beach without getting sand lodged in unpleasant places? And when you’ve finished, you can pop up the road to enjoy the best fish and chips in England (apparently).

For some reason, however, most of Brighton seems to have lived something of a chequered life–everything from the hotels (blown up by the IRA), to the historic, but now fire-ravaged, West Pier seem to have had more than their fair share of mishaps. Whatever these people might over-optimistically think (“We regret that due to the deterioration of the walkway, tours of the pier have been suspended in the interests of public safety. We hope that some form of tour will be reinstated in due course…”), there’s not much left of the pier now, but I was amused to find that a number of enterprising locals at their stalls on the promenade near the shell of rusting metal that is left are selling paintings of the dance hall on fire. We decided we probably didn’t want that on our wall, actually.

We also enjoyed marvelling at the impressive grandeur of the Royal Pavillion, itself subject to something of an eventful past: a team of old ladies carried out a decade of reconstruction work on the imposing Music Room after someone had thrown a petrol bomb through the window, only for the 1987 hurricane to destroy much of their hard work as a boulder fell through the newly-restored ceiling and damaged the carpet. If you’re planning a trip, you might want to go sooner, rather than later. Who knows what might be instore for the building next.

Bonus

Our bonus second weekend was mostly spent enjoying the roast dinner & beer combo at Camden’s Lock Tavern. Even with a whole extra Monday to recover watching downloaded new episodes of The Simpsons, and old DVD episodes of Spaced, somehow I still didn’t want to get up and come to work today. Actually, maybe I just don’t like work…

When they aren’t compromising my personal information, Virgin are actually providing our flat with a nice fast broadband connection. Which is great. I suppose it would be rude, then, not to update you on what I’ve been up to recently.

On Saturday, I went on a day trip to Paris with work, which was great. On arrival, we headed over to the Seine for a lunch cruise, during which “a singer and a pianist intervene[d] from time to time to tell original anecdotes about Paris”… and sing in a cheesy club singer-stylee (his rendition of “New Yorr, New Yorr” as we rounded the replica of the Statue of Liberty near the Eiffel Tower was a particularly surreal experience). After lunch, I headed for the impressive confines of the Musee d’Orsay, which has an extensive collection of impressionist art, albeit slightly overshadowed by the exhibition space itself, so much so that you find yourself emerging from a room of Van Goghs, say, and realising you weren’t paying any attention to the paintings, just marvelling at the building. But maybe that’s just me being a bit pissed after drinking lots of free wine on the river at lunch.

After a bit of shopping and a quick trip up to the Sacre Coeur, it was time to head home again. Fantastically, in time to catch last orders at The Porterhouse with Sal and the Australian contingent.

Sunday drinking

On Sunday afternoon, Jim, Rob and Claire joined us for a few gentle drinks on Upper Street, choosing at random to enjoy them at The Parr’s Head, the oddest pub in Islington. Only joking: the interesting selection of couples (she younger, he older and uglier) in the bar led Sally to believe that something untoward might be going on (not helped, admittedly, by the wideboy who kept asking us if we were ok–if we needed any drinks, he said, either we could get them ourselves or he would get “one of the girls” to get one for us.

My Restaurant Rules

Apart from that, this week, I have mostly been addicted to overseas reality television, sent to us on video (long-play E240!) courtesy of Sal’s mum, if only because Sal was once sick in Tayissa’s house. Well, we’re either watching that or American Idol 3 (but then neither of us has ever thrown up in any of the Pop Idol contestants’ houses).

I give My Restaurant Rules three couples representing their state out of five couples representing their state.

Hey, does anyone want to come and see Test Event with me? I’ve heard they’re really good. (I personally love the fact that they felt the need to add the warning “Do Not Purchase” on at least one of these).

[On an unrelated note, there seem to be plenty of tickets for this. Can’t imagine why.]

Like most people who shop on the Internet, I would never buy anything from a website without a secure (SSL) connection. The Internet being an inherently insecure means of communication and all, it seems only prudent to encrypt personal information like your bank or credit card details when sending them out into the network. There’s lots of nasty people out there, and they’ll happily take your information if you’re dumb enough to offer it up to them.

It is with some concern that I discovered this week that after signing up for an account with Virgin.net so that they provide broadband to my flat, they think nothing of “reconfirming my bank details” for my direct debit by email. Email! That’s plain text email, with no PGP encryption or anything, just an unencrypted message that anyone who cares to sniff can have a good long look at. With my bank details in it!

I have already complained to them, but they have so far been unhelpful. It is standard procedure, apparently: “When setting up an online Auddis Direct Debit, it is standard procedure to confirm the details via e-mail.”

Well I don’t care: it shouldn’t be! I feel sufficiently annoyed about this that I want to take it further, but I don’t know how: anyone out there have any idea who I should be complaining to?

Take one hugely popular music festival:
– hype liberally prior to ticket sales commencing
– announce Oasis as headline act
– run a booking system on a hopelessly inadequate OS for the purpose (Win2K)
– use a hopelessly poor web server (IIS 5.0)
– write your booking management code in ASP
– have only 100 phone lines open
– sit back and wait for chaos to happen

At 7.59 pm last night, I clicked refresh and up popped the Glastonbury booking link for the first time, by 8.06 with my details entered, Sally and I had our Glastonbury tickets (and even a confirmation email 10 minutes later). “Great”, I thought. “This is going to be easy…”

Wrong!

Waiting patiently with her debit card to use the computer after us (2 ticket limit per order you see) was our friend Sally.

We participated in the great Glasto booking service human denial of service attack for over 8 hours (I dropped out at 2.30am to go to bed), with no luck. As far as I know out of our friends only Sally, myself, Rob and Claire have tickets. Everyone else has been up all night trying.

Fantastic Mr Eavis. After last year’s debacle, you really sorted out an efficient booking system. It almost makes you want to buy tickets off the touts–I bet they managed to get them with no problems.

UPDATE: According to NME.com, Emily Eavis says: “The phone lines are working really well. Keep trying. We’ve sold 60,000. They’re going at a rate of about 100 per minute. But please keep trying. Nothing has crashed. Don’t worry. There’s nothing that’s not working and everything’s running well.”

Er. No, I don’t think so…