Photo of the day: Platform 2

"What the hell is going on?" I hear you scream. That's three "photos of the day" in one week! This is absolutely insane. A sheer triumph of quantity over quality. This was taken last night at about five to midnight while I was waiting for a train back to Cambridge after a few beers in Royston.

Photo of the day: Phone box

Here's another "photo of the day". That's two of them in two days folks! This is an impulsive shot of a phone box I took on the way home this evening that I have Photoshopped within an inch of its life.

I have a strange affinity with phone boxes. They are of course British icons and design classics, but I think my obsession with Doctor Who probably has something to do with it. It's a shame there's not a few more Police Boxes around too.

If you have nothing at all to do and want to read up on the history of British phone boxes, then www.redphonebox.info is an excellent place to do so. There's a secton on Police Boxes there too.

Photo of the day: Down the docks

I happened to be in the London docklands today (Royal Victoria Dock). This is a view down the towards the dome and Canary Wharf. Such a beautiful day and it was very peaceful down there. I really like the rows of preserved cranes on the dockside.

Horror Dream Diary: The Man In The Chair

This nightmare is one of the most frightening that I’ve ever had. I dreamt that I awoke in the middle of the night to find that I had disturbing visitor to my bedroom. The next morning it actually took me a while to get my head around the whole thing because it was difficult to work out if it was dream or reality. You could say it was a “dream within a dream”. I actually had this one in 1996 when I was an undergraduate, and I always meant to write it down, so finally here it is…

When I awoke in the dream the house was dead silent and the room was drenched with moonlight that came in through partially drawn curtains. The window was open and a gentle breeze fluttered the curtains. My bed was in a corner and I lay facing the wall. As I turned over and reached for my spectacles I saw that somebody was sitting at my desk. All I could see was a pale bald head above the back of the chair.

I sprang for the bedroom door. It was jammed but I got it open without too much difficulty. On the landing I switched the lights on and calmed down before returning to my bedroom. The chair was empty so I put it down to being a bad dream.

I closed the window and went back to bed. Later that night I awoke a second time. The window was once again open. I looked over at the desk and saw the same bald head. I froze and stared at it noticing that it was embossed with a thick network of pulsing veins.

My bedroom door was jammed solid and opening it required all my physical strength. I glanced back at the desk and saw the chair slowly turning towards me. I got out of the room before I saw the face.

DrGaz's new image

After many months of searching for a new pair of spectacles frames a decision has finally been made. It's gonna be a pair of DKNY 5548s in colour code 1062 (pictured). I "discovered" them in a shop in Cambridge a week ago, and decided to write down the model number and shop around for them (they were priced at £150 in the shop). I found one company on the internet that sold them for £70 in the correct colour. However I decided to check Google Maps to see where they were based and it turned out to be in someone's back garden in Dorset. I had absoutely no luck trying to find them anywhere else, so sadly I ended up going back to the original shop and paid top dollar for them. I tried my hardest to knock them down they would not budge on the price at all. It was a shame that Vision Express didn't stock this model. If you ask for a discount at Vision Express the nice people there will knock of 30% before you can finish the question.

Well that's £150 spent on just the frames! If you wear glasses yourself you will probably be aware that the expensive part is the lenses. Sure you can get the cheap ones, but if you have eyesight like me or my good friend Mr Magoo then the last thing you want to do is buy the bog-standard lenses. They will make you look like a nerd and you will have abolutely no hope of ever pulling a woman. The worst pair of cheapos I ever had was when I was 16 years old and the lenses measured 12mm thick. Therefore, I always go for the highest quality pair of frames and lenses I can afford. I am still shopping around for lenses, but I'm going to have 1.9-index Zeiss ones (glass) which are the highest spec currently available. The best price I have had for them is £350. Ouch!

I paid £450 for the spectacles I'm currently wearing. Most people who knew how much they cost me thought I was clinically insane for spending so much money on a pair of glasses, but I think it's insane to save a few quid on something so important that you wear all day every day. This pair have lasted me 10 years. Thats 12p a day.

Royal Mail Hell

Again this not exactly "hell" - but pretty bloody irritating...

During the last 12 months for various reasons I've had cause to send a total of 5 letters by the unbelievably crap Royal Mail "Recorded Delivery" service. Four of those letters have disappeared into a black hole - two about a year ago, and another two about a fortnight ago. I sent the mail by this method because I specifically wanted to know that it had arrived, so what exactly is the point of Recorded Delivery 80% of your post goes missing?

Fortunately what I had sent was of no actual value - it was just boring but important stuff (changes of address to banks etc) that I wanted to guarantee would get to its destination. After the first two went missing I went to the local post office (the same one I sent them from) and spoke to a miserable git on the counter about the service. He was surprisingly defensive about the whole thing ("not my fault mate" etc) and shoved a couple of forms at me. I explained that it wasn't worth me bothering to fill them in just to claim back £2 worth of postage, and then left.

Another recent annoyance is that a book I sold on eBay went missing recently. Two years ago a £30 John Lewis gift voucher (again sent by recorded delivery) that I also sold on eBay vanished.

Bloody annoying.

2008 Nicola Bryant calendar: June

Here's the June edition for you... Enjoy...

INSTRUCTIONS: Just click on the above image to open the larger 600x600 version in your internet browser. Then right mouse click to save to your PC. When you've done that just make it your desktop wallpaper. Bingo! You now have some saucy pics of Nicola to keep you company throughout 2008!

IKEA hell

Well my current situation is more mildly irritating than "hell" to he honest....

In summary: I ordered a bookcase, chest of drawers and 2 x bedside cabinets from IKEA, waited 2 weeks for it to be delivered. Unwrapped it all and they had the following problems:

1) Bookcase backing was broken.
2) Two of the drawers on the chest had horrible scrach-like marks on the front, and a horrible mark on the front.
3) The quality of everything is generally shite.

I didn't want to wait another 2 weeks for replacements which would probably just have their own defects of some description, so I thought I'd just keep them and demand a discount. Although the defects don't look pretty, the one on the bookcase can be masked by the books, and we'll just have to live with the markings on the drawers.

So I phoned customer "service" where "Dave" gave me the email address of the department who deal with this kind of situation. I sent them an email and some photos. I then waited...

and waited...

A week later and and still no reply. So I rang them and asked them what's going on. I was speaking to "Susan" this time who informed me that a character called "Darril" has definitely got my email and will definitely phone me tomorrow to sort it out. Guess what? "Darril" didn't bother ringing the next day. I rang them back a couple of days later and "Pam" tells me she'll chase everything up and phone me back later. Later comes and still no phonecall from the helpful Pam.

I do want a discount, but it's not all about money - it's more about why I should put up with this crap quality and crap customer service. Why should I just allow myself to be fobbed off by them? So methinks I'll have to get a letter of complaint sent out to them. But here's the catch.... you won't find a single postal address for IKEA HQ on their website!

I've found what seems to be an authentic address on a messageboard which I'll try out.

It's bloody annoying, but nothing compared to the aggro I'm currently having with Vodafone and Barclaycard. I'll tell you about them another time. I simply don't have the strength to even think about those bastards right now!

Gaz on the keys: More tunes for Grade 1

Here are two more tunes I'm working on for my Grade 1 piano exam in July. They are "Allegro in F" by 5-year old Mozart and The Old Cuckoo-Clock by N. Bachinskaya. They still need a bit of work as far as I'm concerned, especially the Mozart one which I only just learned over the last few days. I keep buggering it up half way through as you will see if you watch the video. I'm all fingers and thumbs. AAAArrrrgh!

Gaz on the keys: Andante (for grade 1)

Here's a video of me playing Andante (a tune by some geezer called Henreich Friedrich Enckhausen). I'm going for my Grade 1 piano exam in July 2008 and this is one of the 3 pieces I've selected to play. It's quite short, and this is because I'm playing it without the repeats. You are not supposed to bore the examiners with repeats, you see.



The other things that have to be done in the exam is scales. I've learned all the grade 1 scales now (C, D, F and G major, and D and A minor). D and F major are quite fiddly actually. I also have do some arpeggios which are pretty easy and broken chords which are not too difficult. The hardest bit will be the sight reading test. This is where they give you a few bars of some music you've never seen before and you have to play it. Grown men have been known to turn to jelly under these circumstances. I hope that I won't be one of them.