Jimi must be smiling down from heaven

At such heartfelt toilet-graffiti based appreciation

Bought two cookbooks today

I now have 6. Still can't cook for shit, but they look nice on my bookshelf.

Coming to the (Credit) Crunch

Where will it all end? I've been watching the news with the slack-jawed expression of an inbred redneck over the past few days, as one venerable financial institution after another bites the dust in spectacular style.

The whole thing is mental - these gleaming dons of capitalism succumbing to the ordinary rank and file of working class America, as countless defaulted mortgage payments suddenly sees the have-nots calling the shots, albeit unintentionally....

Seeing people leaving Lehman Brothers on TV was bizarre - during my early years I went for a hell of a lot of job interviews with Investment Banks; not to be a big cheese obviously, but for entry level positions that would still have represented a 70% pay rise in some cases. I remember being on the 49th floor of One Canada Square for an interview with Bank of New York, and coming out afterwards looking up at Lehman's gleaming tower block in the centre of Canary Wharf.

Goldman Sachs was my big "what if" during this period - a story I have recounted whilst under the influence many many times, lamenting, "I coulda been a contender, if only things had turned out differently...." like so many other also rans down the pub. The basic premise was this: started work at my current employer on Monday, got a call from an agency on Wednesday saying that they had an interview for Goldmans on Thursday - the job was pretty much guaranteed as long as I:
a) didn't mind shafting the company that had just given me a job by leaving with no notice whatsoever, and
b) just didn't say anything wrong to stuff up the interview.

I did actually debate for quite some time over ditching the people I was working for - at heart I am a moral-ish type, which perhaps explains the fact I am watching events unfold from the relative safety of a retail bank (which isn't called HBOS), rather than trying to work out how to maintain a cocaine habit and penthouse apartment now that my £100K a year job has disappeared down the dumper at a moment's notice.

Needless to say, the first question I was asked at the interview was "why do you want to leave your current job when you've only been there for a few days?". Now, what I should have said was, "because you are Goldman Sachs, and I would sell my own granny just for the opportunity to come and clean your arse". What I actually said was, "because the job's pretty mundane". At this, their faces collectively fell, and they explained that the job they had was also 'quite mundane'. No shit Sherlock - you're looking for someone at 24 hours notice and offering £10 an hour - I kind of guessed I wasn't going to be head of Derivatives Trading or anything.

Alas, my goose was cooked, and I now have the perhaps unusual distinction of being refused a job at Goldman Sachs because they didn't believe I would have the commitment to still be there in 6 months.

Where all this crazy economics is going to end is anyone's guess. I'm going to stick my toe in the big lake of speculative, unfounded opinion and say that perhaps it was inevitable and fitting that a country such as the US, which has flexed its financial muscles repeatedly to dominate the entire world, should potentially be brought to its knees by the collapse of the financial markets.

It will certainly be interesting to see what the incumbent President, whoever it may be, will decide to focus his attention on. Being parachuted in to be leader of a country who's actual government is being threatened with a dodgy credit rating might cause a hasty reassessment of priorities, and perhaps there will be a decision to get their own house in order before attempting to dictate how other countries should be governed.

Finally nailed it

It may not be very quick, and I may be several weeks too late, but I finally managed to go for a run tonight and maintain a consistent pace. I wasn't even too knackered at the end of it. My grand plan, such as I have one, is to maintain a decent level of fitness in the future, rather than failing to exercise for two years like last time. If, as I still plan, I end up running a marathon next year, it can only help. Amazon's weekly recommendations email delivered an abundance of goodies into my inbox this morning, one of which was "run a 4 hour marathon in 4 months". Without having any idea what it recommends, that kind of training plan sounds like it's up my street. Plan for NYC '09, get a place, and not have to start training until July. And, with a wee sprint at the end, come home in 3:59.59. Marvellous.

What's on the menu today?

At least they're honest at the staff canteen....

All's quiet on the South Eastern front

Not blogged much recently... To be honest, it's cos life is so dull that I have absolutely nothing to tell you about. Well, that's not strictly true, although my days seem to involve working and playing on the Playstation of late. Work is actually going alright for once - although I have the uneasy feeling that things are going too well.... It's surely only a matter of time before some reasonably important thing I've forgotten to do comes back to bite me on the arse. But for the time being, I'm strutting about the office in a reasonably cocky fashion.

The real reason for my relative silence is that I have kindly donated my computer to J to write her thesis, after the laptop she bought of Ebay failed miserably to appear. The seller seems genuine, if a little rubbish at giving a shit, but mechanisms are in place for her to get her money back. Doesn't change the fact she's a couple of hundred quid down with no way of writing her project. Thankfully, she has the benefit of my slightly creaky PC to fall back on, hence the fact I have been devoting myself to establishing Hereford as a force in Fifa 08-English football of late.

She only has a few weeks left, so is a tightly wound ball of stress and anxiety at the moment - I'm sure any of you who have been through a similar process will understand. I get the impression that, were I to touch her without warning, she would ping off into the stratosphere like a massive bouncy ball.

She'll be fine though - she's a Geological genius, even though she doesn't realise it. Somehow already having a masters wasn't enough and she's putting herself through all this just to get another one, but this time in a foreign language. Makes me feel suitably ashamed about my sham of a tertiary education. Still, look where I am today! Using that hard won Psychology degree to earn a barely deserved 'Manager of the Month' nomination at the bank. Enquiries as to whether it earns me the first gold star for my name badge are as yet unconfirmed.

Who needs doctors?

When squeezing one's thumb like a spot has the same effect?

21st century cosmopolitan London

I'm currently on the night bus wending my way through central london. Looking out at the shops and people, with the excitement in their eyes that shows they've not been long here, i felt gutted that i don't venture up here more often, and adamant that i was going to do it more regularly. Then some blonde chick two seats behind me chucked up all over the bus, and i just wanted to be at home. Only 40 minutes to go.

Kids today.

I'm sharing a late night bus ride with some entertaining underage drunk kids. You know the kind, obviously from a horribly rich family, look a bit trendy yet a bit dopey, feel the need to share their pre-pubescent half-formed opinions with everyone present. Oh joy! They've got off to be instantly replaced by a gaggle of whiny californian girls. God i love shoreditch at 1 in the morning.....

Thumbs up

I've somehow got my thumb infected and it's swollen to around twice its normal size. In a vague attempt to sort it out, I looked up NHS Direct's website a few moments ago for a bit of advice. "Sore swollen thumb" returned no results, so I just looked for "Thumb".

And the "relevant" pages it found?

How do I use a condom? - Health Questions - NHS Direct

...tip of the condom between your forefinger and thumb in order to ensure that it is put...the soft inner ring between your forefinger and thumb. Using two fingers...

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=841

What should testicles look and feel like? - Health Questions - NHS Direct

...sac containing your testicles) in the palm of your hand and use your fingers and thumb to feel the size and weight of each one. Roll each of your testicles...

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=878

Is it normal to masturbate? - Health Questions - NHS Direct

...Men generally masturbate by rubbing their penis in their hand, or gripping it between their thumb and one or two fingers. Masturbation comes naturally to many men, because they are...

http://www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk/articles/article.aspx?articleId=1684

Not sure any of that is going to help. 

I wouldn't start from here

I wasn't quite sure why I felt prompted to spunk £9 on an impulse buy at Belfast airport the other week, but now I think it may have been fate. After a shaky start (in my uninformed, only-read-10-books-in-the-last-5-years view) which seemed a bit over-written - you know, sentences that are too long, with lots of punctuation and similie, plus a bit of comedy metaphor thrown in for good measure - like a (something something something something...... I am not a writer or humorous and therefore can't think of a comedy metaphor to drive home the point), it evened out into one of the most thought-provoking, entertaining and interesting things I've read in ages.

I actually find myself caring about the guy, which is odd for a journalist-written travelogue around the world's warzones and trouble spots. I even felt for him as he described his break up with his girlfriend. I want to take him out for a beer. This may or may not be because I find myself absent-mindedly thinking that it is my mate Gav who is narrating the stories.

Andrew Mueller is a genuinely interesting, no-bullshit guy, who never over-dramatises, never forgets who he is and where he is, and never makes the mistake of not questing the rationale of everyone he meets. It's made me realise what a lipstick leftie I am. Every single "opinion" I have comes from reading the Guardian, and whilst I have no doubt that a healthy bit of self-loathing is appropriate for the Western World, given the state of the rest of it, it never occurred to me to say: "Hold on. Maybe if you people would stop being such irrational twats you might have a chance of talking your way out of the mess you're in? You can't blame everyone else for everything all of the time!". You'd think, coming from Northern Ireland, that my sense of the preposterous when it comes to sovereignty and politics would be suitably developed.

Anyway - read it - it's chunky to the point that it's taken me a plane ride and two weeks of commutes and I am only just over halfway through. However, being a pint-half-empty man, I am already trying to make myself read it more slowly, whilst wistfully looking at the size of the remaining chunk of pages as they dwindle away. I have an awful gnawing feeling that the next book I pick up won't be a patch on it.... although, to be fair, I think that every time. I am either blessed with lucky book choices, or else am a slut for the written word after 30 years of abstinence.

Islands in the sun

If you follow the comments under my post about St Helena a few weeks ago, you'll notice that a lovely and unexpected thing happened. Obviously the locals are avid readers of all things Saint-related and were on my post in a flash - first of all someone asked about the archeological dig my friend was on, then a chap got in touch to give me some more background on the situation.

We got into a bit of a chat which ended with me flippantly asking that - should he ever meet a smiley lass from Ayr who was working on the dig - to tell her that I and the rest of the London gang say hi. Blow me if that's not what happened - in a nightclub called Bayside of all places (which I must admitted destroyed the mid-Atlantic paradise fantasy somewhat). Apparently he just wandered up, introduced himself and said something along the lines of "you must be Helen". According to both him (Rob - moderator of the online St Helena portal sthelenanet) and her, the reaction was one of general gob-smackedness, which I must admit made me happy. Had Helen turned round and simply said "oh, yeah, guess you guys were talking on the internet or something" it would have been a bit of an anticlimax.

But as it was, I feel all warm and fuzzy at the thought of using the internet for something other than updating Facebook or looking at saucy pictures - it's created a mutual friend between two people thousands of miles apart, and allowed me to send a little bit of cheer to a friend far away.

It also helps me justify the fact that I have been utterly rubbish in keeping in touch with her since she left.

Training. Thunder Storms. Shoddy organisation. Pain. Done.

Yup, the 10K is over and jolly well done by all concerned too....

Sunday dawned bright and sunny, humidity reaching uncomfortable levels as I wended my way northwards to the home of football. Arriving at 4pm, we ensured we were in plenty of time to dump our bags in the "limited" bagging area at Wembley Arena - admittedly, in hindsight, it should have been obvious that there would be more than enough room for anyone who wanted to deposit their stuff.

So, for 3 and a half tedious hours, we waited. And waited. And - yep, you guessed it - waited. There were momentary periods of fun as we ripped the utter piss out of drum n bass nobodies Pendulum as they tried in vain to whip the crowd into a passionate frenzy, with the opposite effect: "Come on! Where's the f***in' atmosphere?!", shouted the soon-to-be obsolete frontman. "Somewhere indoors, not having to listen to you", came the unanimous reply. But by and large, this was - as Euan repeated over and over - 3 hours of our life that Nike had stolen from us and we were never going to get back.

Needless to say, when the thunder storms arrived just as we were finally starting to get underway, it was less of a catastrophe, more of a grim acceptance that someone had obviously uttered the phrase "well, at least it's not raining" at some point when trying to put a brave face on things. We bore the downpour with remarkable British stiff upper lipped-ness.

The one bonus was that it made us all the more pumped up to go out and power our way to the finish line, along a course comprising 17 180 degree turns round the car park of Wembley stadium, a straight line down a closed off access road to a neighbouring industrial estate (where there was room for no more than 5 people abreast, cuing manic sidestepping, stopping, banging into and general carnage as people tried to maintain their pace whilst avoiding everyone else trying to do the same whilst the ubiquitous fat, slow walkers did their best to break the Guinness World record for "curses received" in the space of 1000m. Powering through one of the many massive floods (they were beyond puddles) that put half of the meagre tarmac underwater in places, we rounded a corner to..... a Tesco car park. Marvellous. It soon became clear why the race was run in the dark, as Wembley and surrounding area seems to be one huge failure of ambition and creativity. A massively sweeping generalisation, but hey - forgive me for thinking that if this were untrue, surely Nike wouldn't haven't chosen it to showcase London's beautiful architecture? The remainder of the coure pretty much involved doing the entire course again but in the opposite direction, thereby proving itself good for breaking personal bests, if only because people were so desperate to just get back, get dry and get the hell out of Dodge.

All of this, of course, didn't matter jack once that finishing line was crossed, and all the usual feelings of elation washed over me. The handshakes and smiles and hugs amongst us made us almost forget what we'd been through to get there - although perhaps that was possibly Nike's grand plan all along - the personal victories felt all the sweeter given what we'd endured to get there.....

I came a creditable 39,584th in the race overall - that's across all the races across the world by the way! I don't normally even do so well in the Metro Fantasy Football league. I came home in 52 mins 14 seconds, which is just over a minute off my 'personal best' from 2006. I know it would have been better had it not been for the sheep run at the start of the course, so I am more than satisfied!

All the others - Jen, Euan, Murray, Gav, Im and Simon did excellently as well, and you can check out all the times and things here: Human Race