A year ago yesterday, Babel presented me with this website I must say that it was one of the biggest surprises of my life, and it’s taken me most of the year to get over it! Yesterday was once again my birthday, and so my website is a year old and I am a rather shocking quarter of a century (more…)

Babel explained this to me on Monday evening, and it was so helpful that I thought I’d paste it here so that I stood more chance of remembering it. I’m already doing woefully badly at remembering the difference between fewer and less, you and me v. you and I, but I am trying… (more…)

I have just accidentally swallowed a tic-tac. That was not the opening sentence I was intending to write, but literally just as I was on the verge of starting typing, I mismanaged putting a tic-tac in my mouth and narrowly avoided choking I can now no longer remember what my incredibly witting opening sentence was going to be (more…)

My week down south was about as enjoyable as I had been expecting. By the end of Friday, my colleague and I agreed that if we had a choice between voluntary euthanasia and life in Wantage, we would choose euthanasia. And I don’t even agree with voluntary euthanasia. Well, not really.

To be fair, the hotel was alright this time. I could pick fault with it, on the grounds that the milk in my room had gone off, the water came out of the cold tap warm, and it wasn’t obvious how to get water into the bath, but such sins can be forgiven when a place has free wireless The attached restaurant was Italian, which should have been really good, but unfortunately it was too posh to serve pizza, and when I ordered lasagne it came complete with peas (more…)

This morning I have had to get up at 5.30 to go to Wantage, and so I am depressed Forget the fact that Babel routinely gets up at this time to go to work; he’s not human so he doesn’t count Getting up at this time of the morning makes me feel ill, and going to Wantage makes me feel that life is devoid of all possible hope and purpose. Forget sending people to Coventry, Coventry actually has quite a lot going for it when you compare it objectively to Wantage. Honestly, that place is a godforsaken hole. (more…)

Damon just tagged me in this meme. I’m afraid I’m not going to be able to adhere to all the rules, because I can’t think of six people I can reasonably tag, but I shall do my best at answering the questions myself I actually found this rather difficult and struggled to think of any answers at all I could give which Babel wouldn’t already know about me, so I’ve had to settle instead for things which Damon (probably!) doesn’t already know. (more…)

Tiu cxi artikolo en la loka jxurnalo interesis min hodiaux, cxar temas pri mia lernejo. Mi ne volas komenti pri la afero publike, cxar mi konas la dekinfanan familion; la plej maljuna knabino estas bona amikino de mia fratino. Post iom da sercxado mi trovis la blogon de la patrino. La pagxo, kiu rilatis al Clare Short, nun ne plu ekzistas. Tamen laux mi la blogo vizitindas… fakte tauxgaj vortoj mankas al mi, aparte cxar hodiaux mi estas tre malgxoja pro aliaj kialoj… sed kiam mi rigardis tiun blogon hodiaux posttagmeze, mi sciis sendube ke mi ne plu kapablis esti katolikino. Antaux du-tri jaroj, mi konsentis kun cxiuj tieaj opinioj. Hodiaux la tuta afero sxajnas al mi ridinda, fremda, freneza… Legu gxin kaj estu gxoja se vi neniam estis katolika!

You might have thought that, as accountants, we were fairly immune from the credit crunch.

Not so.

Our entire Transactions Services department has just been sent home, on the grounds that there are no longer any transactions for them to service. Some of them have been offered redeployment within the insolvency department which, funnily enough, suddenly has a whole load of work on.

The entire office admin team has also been put on notice, while they decide how many of them they want to keep.

No one has done us the courtesy of telling us whether there are going to be redundancies in audit, so currently we’re just sitting here and waiting to see what happens, whilst unsettling rumours abound.

I must say I hate this job, but it will mess up an awful lot of plans if I lose it

I am almost loathe to write this post, because I suspect everyone who reads it is going to at best disagree with me and at worst be mortally offended. Probably if you’re particularly patriotic or have a relative in the army, you just shouldn’t read this, because I promise my viewpoint is going to be irreconcilably oppposed to the viewpoint of 95% of the population.

Yesterday was Remembrance Sunday, tomorrow is Armistice Day, and I am currently undergoing my yearly ritual of politely declining to buy poppies. I have nothing against Remembrance Sunday as a day, and I am more than happy to say prayers for soldiers on both sides of the conflict. I am actually very interested in the First World War especially, and go through periods of addiction to the literature of that time. But there is no way on this earth that you are ever going to persuade me to buy a poppy. (more…)

Babel and I had a nice time at the weekend when, it being rather wintry outside, we decided to go to the cinema. I don’t think I’d been to the cinema since I saw Cloverfield earlier in the year - that film being so bad that I was rather wary of suggesting we see anything else. But Tim had the idea that we could see the new James Bond film, Quantum of Solace, and I thought that sounded like a plan, because there’s a limit to how bad a James Bond film can be (more…)