Jonola14

NOT NATWEST

It was a Saturday morning, I was hungover and I needed to get to the bank. I was in Guildford, which although being my ‘home-town’, it is not currently where I live.

I had things on my mind, what had happened the night before? Why couldn’t I remember those two hours? I walked up the high street, deep in thought, and headed for the bank.

In I went. I reached for my wallet and grabbed the cheques I needed to pay in. But something was wrong. No, something was different. It was greener, and the layout had changed. I focused on the wall and realised my error.

I stopped, in the middle of the bank, hungover, my hands on my hips and with a shake of the head and not realising my own volume, I exclaimed “THIS IS NOT NATWEST”, before spinning on my heels and walking three doors down into the correct bank, leaving the bewildered Lloyds customers in my wake.

Don’t bank after a drinking session. Or during.

A CAR-TASTROPHE

Those of you that have been to the Jottings section of the site may have read an article called P75 BPM, which is a history of the problems I had with my old car. Well, I sold that one when I got a company car as part of the package for joining Renault UK.

Back in September 2006 I left Renault UK and had to give up the company car, which was a rather nice Mégane Coupé Cabriolet - recommended, and I went until October 2007 without owning a car, without having a company car and without even driving a car. I was a train connoisseur. Not a spotter though, thank goodness.

Anyway, I bought my brother’s MGF off him in October 2007 and to date it is the single most expensive thing I have ever bought. It sailed through the MOT test, had a full service and was so well cleaned when I came to pick it up that it might as well have been new. I knew I wasn’t going to do thousands of miles every year, and it hadn’t done that many miles when I bought it, plus with one careful owner it was a good deal.

Although when I was sitting in the cab of the recovery truck, the day before New Year’s Eve, with my shiny MGF winched up and being towed, my car luck really hadn’t got any better. The worst that had happened previously was a flat battery, but nine weeks and a mere 800 miles after buying it, I’d managed to blow the cylinder head and gasket system. Hopefully the last of the problems, but given P75 BPM’s history, somehow I doubt it…

I DIDN’T BANK ON THAT

Ever since it first became available, I’ve been doing the majority of my banking online. It’s so much easier online, you can transfer money, pay bills, pay off the credit card, get your account balance at the click of a button and there are no queues, no branches not open on a Saturday and nobody telling me that I am eligible for an upgrade on my account and would I be interested in speaking to someone about it.

However, paying in cheques is still a problem and until the cheque becomes so antiquated that they became unaccepted anywhere, one will still need to visit the bank to pay it in. Now, like the majority of people, I work full-time so getting to a bank during the week can be a problem. Fortunately for me, my bank is open on a Saturday and last week I went in, armed with a couple of cheques and some bagged coinage and true to form, there was a queue.

So I joined the queue, it wasn’t too long and there were a few people serving, so it’d only be a few minutes before I’d get served. I stood there, watching the bank clerks at work and thinking about which debts these cheques would clear when I became aware of the woman in front of me staring at me. I glanced up and she looked away, then she turned round again. She was old, at least 70, with mad, bedraggled hair and bucked-teeth. I tried not to look at her, but she was staring. Really staring.

Had I got toothpaste round my mouth again? Was there something hanging out of my nose? I didn’t think so, but she kept on staring, I had to look up.

“I wish I had hair like yours” she said, pointing her wrinkled fingers with bitten nails at my head, where my spikey, rather long hair was sticking in all directions. “Ummm, thank you” I said, “you can do anything with wax these days”.

She smiled and turned away, I thought that was the end of that and gazed hopefully at the counters to see if any of the clerks were soon to be available. Apparently not. When I looked back, she was staring again, this time with a broad smile and those bucked teeth glaring at me like two dirty, bulging eyes.

“You’re very handsome” she then blurted out, to my embarrassment. I heard titters of amusement from the rest of the queue and had no idea how to respond. What do you say to an old woman who likes your hair and thinks you’re handsome. All I could do was to say “thank you, you’ve very kind” and pray to God that the bank clerks would pull their collective fingers out and serve her. She was next in line now, surely I wouldn’t have to wait much longer to be freed from my ordeal.

But then she went one better and exclaimed, “I wish I could do that with my hair, but I’m so old and ugly”. I couldn’t respond, the other people in the queue were laughing into their cheque books and doing their best not to make eye contact. This was torture, wouldn’t somebody please help, or the bank clerks at least hurry the hell up?

I had to say something, she was looking at me expectantly and there was definitely no help coming from the rest of the queue so I simply said “don’t be silly, you’re not that old” and before she had time to reply, the automated voice said in its brash tone “cashier number four please” and she was gone.

P.S. Anyone wishing to write me a cheque can still do so.

HOOSIER GUITAR TUTOR?

Back at the end of 2007, The Hoosiers released their debut album The Trick To Life and if you bought the digital version, you would have also received the digital inserts, including a ‘how to play guitar’ lesson with front man Irwin, who is also a comedic genius.

Watch the lesson here, fish chords and all (you’ll need Real Player)…

LUSH COSMETICS

So my mother gave me some new shower gel a while ago, not your conventional bottle of Lynx Arctic Rush or whatever ridiculous name they give it, no, this was a tub of orange shower jelly made by Lush Cosmetics and reputed to help you sleep at night.

It’s a brilliant theory. Shower gel for people who want a bit of assistance getting to sleep at night. But that’s not the brilliant bit. The brilliance is the fact that this stuff is a specialist product and comes at a price, but when you come to use it, it’s a jelly and slips through your fingers at every opportunity and you find yourself frantically trying to pick the stuff up before the shower water sends it spinning down the plug hole. You might as well open the tub and pour it down the plug hole directly. Still, there’s always the chance that you’ll knock your head on the bath attempting to pick up the escaped jelly and hey presto, easy sleep.

NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS

So, it’s that time of year again when people make promises to themselves to lose weight, give up smoking, do a good deed every day, join a gym and other such commitments that the majority will never achieve.

I prefer to set myself objectives and I have a few things in mind, but I am inviting others to make suggestions as to what I should do in 2008 to make myself a better, more successful person.

Here are a couple of mine:
- update this website at least once a week
- have a holiday abroad
- pay off the loan on my car
- give up crisps
- sell a t-shirt

and here’s some that have already been suggested:
- be more selfish (thank you Katie)
- laugh at stress (again, thank you Katie)

so, leave your suggestions as comments - anonymously if you like…

Happy New Year and all that jazz.

TRAY BIEN

Turn your volume up, this is bloody funny:

IS IT BECAUSE I IS BACK?

Yes, people. Three months. THREE MONTHS I’ve been offline and finally, on this beautiful mid-October evening when the rain is drizzling and the air is cold, I am back online. I have just finished hugging my PC and telling it how much I have missed its sweet downloads and juicy broadband capabilities and now I am writing my first post on my much neglected website (it’s this one, in case you were wondering).

So, what’s happened in the past three months? Well, shedloads to be honest. And most of the incidents and occasions I have full intention to write up. Whether or not I have the time to do so is another matter, of course, but here is a brief synopsis of the contents of the past through months:

- been the main feature of a half hour TV show about dating broadcast on ITV1 Meridian
- landed the job I wanted in a record label
- got the letters ACIM after my name after my CIM Marketing exam results
- begun relations with a member of the fairer sex
- bought a sports car (not quite yet but almost!)
- become a Godparent
- won two 5-a-side football leagues
- written a song about Boris Johnson
- been on a stag do to Spain

and there’s a lot more too, but that’s your taster and you’ll just have to come back every now and again to see if there’s more on here.

See you in three months!

BOOK REVIEW: THE BEACH HOUSE (JAMES PATTERSON)

Jack Mullen, a young and talented law student, finds out that his brother has been killed. It is claimed that Peter Mullen drowned, but the bruising and cuts all over his body show otherwise. He was murdered.

Jack then finds out that Peter died with almost 200,000 dollars in his bank account - strange for someone who did odd-jobs and parked cars for a living. He enlists the help of a colleague from his law job with whom he consequently falls in love, and they investigate the sordid web of sex, lies, photography and bribery that enshroud this death.

Due to a corrupt cop, Jack has to take matters into his own hands, particularly when his father dies of a stress-related heart attack and approaches the owner of The Beach House where he is convinced the guilty parties lie.

Eventually, with the help of his new girlfriend and his close friends, Jack takes control and broadcasts a pirate legal investigation on TV.

Another full-flowing Patterson read (with the aid of co-writer Peter De Jonge) and one that allows you to closely associate with the characters, feeling what you think they feel. Not a complicated plot and I’d guessed most of it by the time I got half way through the book, but another good throwaway read.

Jonola rating out of 10:

BOOK REVIEW: CRADLE AND ALL (JAMES PATTERSON)

This book is all about religion and babies.

There are two girls, both virgins and both pregnant. Nobody believes that they are still virgins, despite their protests, except for religious leaders in the church who have had to give events their full attention.

An ancient mythological story about the devil and the Lord being reincarnated keeps cropping up and when people near the pregnant children hear voices commanding them to do things, when birds divebomb people taunting the children, when people go crazy around them, it appears that something supernatural is occuring.

But which one is which? Which child is going to give birth to the devil and which one is going to give birth to the Lord? And what should Anne Fitzgerald, a private detective and also a virgin, do when the children are born? How are she and the religious leaders going to know which one is which? Will one be red with a tail and pointy teeth?

It is a slightly confusing read, with two very similar events happening concurrently, but an intriguing and worthwhile one at that. And I particularly like the ending.

Jonola rating out of ten: