Category: Uncategorised

I ordered tickets for Leeds Festival a few months ago. Finally at the end of last week, I got an email saying they despatched the tickets, Recorded Delivery, on the 14th. They should take 2-3 days to arrive.

The 18th came and went, so I checked on the ticket agency’s web page to get the Special Delivery code. Then checked on Royal Mail’s web page. According to that, someone tried to deliver the tickets before 5:30am on the 17th. And they’d informed me that the packet was at the sorting office.

Bollocks. No card through the door and our post arrives at 10:30, not 5:30. It has done since they got rid of the second post that I never received. Prior to that, I actually got my mail before I went to work on about 3 mornings out of 5. Now I find half my mail is little postcards saying “We tried to deliver a package at 10:27 but BECAUSE YOU’VE GOT A ******* JOB we couldn’t”. OK, so it doesn’t have the bit in capitals, but it might as well.

Took the printout down to the sorting office, had a right whinge at the staff and (thank ****) got the tickets after a 20 minute wait. They are on my desk next to me right now and if anyone in the office touches them, I’ll impale their hand the the tabletop with a pair of scissors.

OK, I work for a software company. I’m used to seeing people spend more bloody time trying to break our product than just bloody use it for the purpose for which it was

intended.

It cost one numpty his job. He used to send 10-20 page faxes detailing, with screenshots, how he’d made the system fall over by doing a simple procedure in a completely non-standard way that nobody in million years would do in real life. His bosses got pissed off as he wasn’t doing his actual job and sacked him. I still remember the faxes – “A Big Fax From St.ev.e Mo.nkl.ey” written down the side. He looked exactly like Catweazle and I accidentally called him “Mr Monkey” on the phone once.

Tosser.

Fill in the blanks:

Henman Crashes Out

Tim Henman today failed to get past the xxnumberxx round of the xxnamexx tournament. Losing xxscorexx to unknown xxcountryxx xxopponent-namexx. Henman looked off the pace, having only recently recovered from a xxinjury-detailsxx.

Now, has anyone noticed that Henman always “crashes” out? He never loses, gets knocked out, gets beaten… He could lose to the narrowest of margins after a titanic struggle and the papers would still say he crashed out. Bollocks to it – he gave it a shot, tried his best and on the day the better man won.

Bad luck, Tim. You’ll still be young enough to try again in 4 years!

Not a bad game, but we blew it at the end giving us yet another away draw where we should have won. Boro, frankly, were poor and seemed intent on trying to break our players rather than on playing football. The number of cards they received is some indication of this.

Taking Shearer off, I think, cost us the match. not for any real tactical reason, just that when we were 2-1 up and approaching injury time having just missed a sitter to pretty much clinch it, Big Al would have walked the ball into the corner and sat on it. Our younger guns, out to impress, decided to keep lobbing the thing forward and losing possession. Enough to give one Fat Eddie Murphy the chance to push the ball into the net with his hand and spoil an otherwise good day.

Other quibbles – we’re all supposed to sit down for reasons I have not yet fathomed. I’m actually going to write a letter to Boro tomorrow and ask exactly what the issue is and why they don’t concentrate on stopping people smoking instead. After all, they have bloody big signs telling you not to and then they ignore people who do. It’s also more of a safety and comfort hazard. We did stand for the entire match, though I saw staff making half-hearted efforts to get people to sit down. Only they seemed to be starting at the sixth row, with makes little sense. As if they’re going to park their arses so they can’t see because of the rows in front.

My other was the lack of beer in the visiting end. I couldn’t get a pint before the game as the nearest pub to the ground – the Navigation – is very much home fans only. I thought I’d get one in the ground. No joy. Home fans had as much as they could guzzle. It just seems as discriminatory as it is safety-related.

Courtesy of the Newcastle United Supporters Club, Yorkshire (a.k.a. the Yorkshire Mags), who have once again come through in a time of need, I have a ticket for Saturday’s match.

*Does a happy dance*

I can only hope the rain holds off. It would be rather ironic for the weather to be to blame for us missing a match against the Boro, while we’re suffering a bit of an injury/medical crisis. I of course hark back to the “ooh, it might snow and we’ve barely got a full squad, let’s cancel the match” events of 2 seasons ago.