Rush, Rush, Rush

Maybe, maybe … it’s our kookiness?

I walked down to the local shop to get some tea bags having run out a day or two before and thereby reduced to recycling used bags in ever increasing numbers in order to strain out a semblance of coloured liquid from their soggy paper hides. I was beginning to feel a little like a certain Donald Pleasance character (and I could certainly do with a James Garner type procurer … it would save me the hassle of shopping which is such a tedious chore!) It’s not a long walk to the shop, but it was made memorable by the slow passage of a scrap merchant touting for business. I doubt there exists anything remotely similar anywhere else in the world.

Yes, scrap is universal, and of course people can be found trading in, with and around it … not to mention actually living on it, in it or under it and using it as raw material for the manufacture of everything from shoes to culinary ware (and again I feel the link to that PoW caper that culminates in the lush and sorely missed mister McQueen dangling resignedly in the wrong side of the barbed-wire barrier that separated Nazi Germany from Switzerland’s neutral pastures). However only in the thoroughly urbanised parts of Britland might the rag and bone men have so uniquely developed their trademark business methods. I had thought the practise must surely be extinct, but no. In my neighbourhood, if in no other, there remains at least one family making regular rounds of the streets.

The exact nature of the tatter’s call no doubt varies from area to area (as does the use of a large, and very clangourous, hand bell) but the word iron is an essential part of whatever is hollered. “Any Iron?”, “Old Iron?”, “Any Old Iron?” all might be heard as the vaguely disreputable vehicle makes its stately progress past respectable homes (sadly the transport is no longer powered by a lumpen looking horse of indeterminate pedigree: the archetype of the genus Equus Cartus).

The vehicle in question, a scruffy but sound-looking Ford Transit bore two men, one driving with the crazed but rapt attention that seems to be essential when driving at speeds below the threshold of the speedometer’s register, as if without confirmation from the instrument’s dial that the vehicle posseses a vector, more concentration is required than for other forms of driving. The other bore the heady responsibility of his calling: namely calling out his unique advertisement. It was: bring out your iron, but to write it down is to do it poor justice. For a start no street caller with any respect actually bothers with diction; it’s volume that matters, labial and dental consonants stop the noise and are devoutly to be avoided so the sound was more like:

“’Ring ow’ y’ eye-o’”

I don’t know why, but I really enjoyed hearing it. I admired the way he pushed in the maximum volume whilst inserting the most incredible musicality to the sound. He delivered the phrase as a couplet of two glissandos, the first hitting a crescendo on the second note a fourth higher than the first, the second sound was similar but had three notes so that it crescendo-ed in the middle.

Damn. I just got sidetracked into watching the confoundedly compulsive Deal or No Deal on TV ….

19 September

Parasites Singing on the Horse’s Rump

Oh gawd how amusing it is to feel my spirits achieving escape velocity. If only rocket ships were so easily liberated from the tyranny of the suckiness of Earth’s tera-tonnage. My innate talent for brinkmanship has been sorely tested. So sorely that, now I actually have something to blog about, I have no access to teh intarweb thingus [Sic]. If it wasn’t so fricken apposite (and therefore hysterically funny) it would still be the kind of dumb-funny that has folks like yours truly grinning vacuously as though my teeth are gaudy objects of adoration to be displayed like souvenir scrimshaw at the end of every possible sightline … come on, admit it! You have friends or relatives like that, too!

Where was I? Oh yeah, feeling optimistically maudlin. How long does it take for the wheels of the civil service to grind through the protracted process laid down in law for the purpose of ascertaining the incapacity, or otherwise, of the plebs? I now have an answer: at least nine months. Having a baby would seem to be a quicker and less stressful way of getting hold of a little welfare support … starts to wonder …. Nah!

First comes the form to be filled in (or out, if one is of a transatlantic bent). The initial form is very much the opening salvo in what is destined to become a wearing and wearying campaign (I’m thinking: Paris to Moscow and back again, via Kiev, the return leg to be on foot in winter clad in summer clothes with saddle stroganov for supper — the horse-burger tartare being a fond, but distant, gastronomic memory). The first form is a self-assessment, along the lines of describe why you think you are incapable of working. It is kind of awesome really to contemplate the monumental waste of paper and time involved here. The Social Security gestapo take the form and marry it up with a similar one obtained from the doctor and then utterly ignore everything therein and refer the small molehill of papers up the chain. At each desk the incipient paper mount gains a fresh sheet, duly checked and initialled, to show that some minion or underling has performed a meaningless and pointless task until, in accordance with Treasury demands to reduce the drain on the public purse, the case-file lands on the desk of the individual responsible with saying no.

Of course saying no is expensive. One cannot just gainsay the “client” and especially not her learned medical carer. That would not be democratic. A medical opinion is ordered. This must be seen to be fair so it is an independent medical opinion. No government quack will perform the examination; the whole medical wing is in private hands; it’s a profit-making enterprise. Jesus! My GP charges twenty quid just to endorse a passport application … which can be done with a fountain pen; fuck knows what he’d want for spending half an hour—with a work-shy scrounger who is pretending to have a dreadfully incapacitating syndrome of medical ailments—in a stuffy cubicle of an office that looks suspiciously like the sort of room a civil servant gets when he manages to claw his or her way far enough up the greasy pole to qualify for an imitation leather brief case…where was I?

The medical examination (mine was way back on the first day of March … it seems so long ago, did we travel by pony and trap?) is obviously a formality. Either that or it is a cunning test designed to weed out the genuinely sick, the malingerers, of course, know the correct answers having had lots of practise. Whatever the case the tor of papers reconvene at SS HQ and resume another round of the desks. At some point an junior under-assistant trainee deputy (on the minimum wage plus two pence) has been deputed to number the pages and append an index of sorts. The process takes a fullness of weeks: four of them, a lunar month. Sort of apt in a gruesomely lunatic way, I guess. The decision is made on the 28th day of March and is duly communicated to the client. No more handouts for you, sweetheart, is the message that is delivered to me on the last day of the month. My entitled to the largesse of the taxpayer ceased on the 29th I am told. Handy for the taxpayer, that. The 29th was the day I’d expected my bank account to be credited. I felt a little like I was playing Monopoly … I fancied myself going out and looking for a policeman so I could try to knock his hat off and thereby get to jail. I certainly wasn’t collecting two hundred quid!

The real icing on the cake, a nice touch I thought, was the delivery by mail, on the Saturday morning, of my P45. It was the first of April.

I got pissed. It takes a lot of wine to get me pissed when I’m pissed off.

Afterwards I went into denial. I know! It ain’t big and it ain’t clever. But making like an ostrich is a good strategy. (No they don’t bury their heads in the sand! They evolved in grasslands and they just keep their heads down and concentrate on stuffing themselves on the small fauna to be found on the ground … thus occupied they are not easily seen by predators.) After a week or two I was moved to lodge an objection. Gerry came around and kicked my arse into gear, if I have to be honest ….

An appeal generates an awful lot more paper work. The least of which was the half a ream of form that I had to download from the internet! A form, moreover, whose sole purpose, it seemed, was merely to apply for permission to appeal. The actual substance of the appeal consisted of two enclosures; one being a letter written by me detailing the points I disagreed with in the medical report, the other being a letter from my CPN describing my general patheticness … I read it and immediately felt worse … surely it would help.

I was told that a result would follow in a few days … unless it was felt that a full hearing was needed before a tribunal. Oh wow! I so want to go to a tribunal … NOT. I have experience of too many such event (I was an ‘ornery practitioner who was prone to disagreeing with cheapskate NHS decisions and always appealed … I won better than 66% but that was in a time when I had energy and piss and vinegar … and not winning wasn’t my problem. Oh well.

The summer came and went and in late August I am finally told to present myself, along with representative or counsel, on a date in September. My first choice of companion is unavailable on that date so I tentatively elect to go alone. I have misgivings about that idea but my second choice of companion is eventually not asked because my land line’s been cut off and my mobile has very little credit left and procrastination is easy, well … it is until mañana becomes yesterday. I bolster myself ahead of the ordeal — trial by nitpicking? (and the fine-tooth comb metaphor is too corny by far!) — by consoling myself with thoughts centred around not bothering to go at all. Somewhere along the way a worrying thought germinates and starts to grow through my thoughts like giant bindweed on a chain-link fence. The thought is that not attending may well blow my only chance of recovering my lost benefits. It was hardly worth bothering to go just to get back on benefit; I am fully back to square one already and just gimme a few more weeks and I’ll be back where I was when concerned sister arrived to dig through slovenly domestic kipple in search of mad sibling. No! commencing a new claim would not be problematic.

The “Appeals Service” is also independent. Wahey! It’s a gravy train! Let’s all climb aboard. There is a security guard (read: bouncer) in the reception area which is a wryly amusing datum; clearly some of the ‘clients’ need assistance in finding their way out.…

My tribunal consists of a Queen’s Counsel and a GP. I wonder who’s getting the most money for the gig … my money — assuming I had any — would be on the lawyer. Meanwhile I am feeling a trifle miffed on account of being diddled with a two-man panel. The QC is the chairman so I hope his vote carries the most weight. I kinda like lawyers. At least they’re “honest”; lawyers will believe in anything … depending on circumstances. Most doctors on the other hand are crooks; they pretend to have godlike powers but always begin a consultation by asking you for the diagnosis. As an appellant I have to establish an error of fact, I am not there for a re-examination. I decide to ignore the quack.

Good choice. My appeal is sustained! Now waiting on tenterhooks for a cheque to mysteriously arrive. I anticipate that it will come with a sullen lack of ceremony and fanfare.

Meanwhile the stress of recent months has gratifyingly attenuated and I found myself in nostalgic mood. I have a quite large collection of MP3’s mostly downloaded from download.com, cos I’m a cheapskate and free is always better than not free. One artist I really fell in love with is Ukrainian, Alex Tiuniaev, who had a whole album’s worth of mostly instrumental stuff freely available. One haunting track, Iceland, has a vocal part. I swear the voices are singing: “warbly horse fleas” …. I hadn’t listened to it since early March and then suddenly, this afternoon I found myself suddenly needing, desperately to hear the one about the warbling equine parasites.

4th November

Rub Me Out A Palimpsest

‘S funny, or it would be if it was happening to someone else; only then I would feel shame — and rightly so — if I gave way to the impulse to laugh. More than six weeks after I successfully prosecuted my appeal for the continuance of incapacity benefits I am still mining through the tortured, but otherwise “rich” if you’ll pardon the oxymoronic use of the word, seam of sundry indebtedness that has grown with glacially majestic pace, laying down choice nuggets of financial mismanagement of varying degrees of shockingness over the last decade or so. I hope that I never have the misfortune to win the lottery. With me, money comes in via the front door and passes immediately to the nearest exit at a speed that defies prof Einstein’s laws of physics. If I suddenly came into millions the rate of attrition to my bank balance would risk destabilising the global economy.

I most miss getting the phone line back up and running; more specifically it’s the absence of the wubble-woo-webbage that is most seriously inconveniencing me. I’ll get it sorted eventually, I suppose.

Currently reading The Devil Wears Prada and frankly it is going to be a tedious chore. However I have started it so I will finish it just so I can say (a) how utterly execrable it is on all the significant literary indicators as well as (b) how I found main characters utterly lacking in either likeability or believability. I have read the opening couple of chapters and I was unmoved on so many levels … I prefer to get to know literary characters through their dialogue and thoughts and actions; ninety percent of the DWP’s opening preamble is scene setting narrative and belongs more properly in the writer’s concordance than it does cluttering up the start of a bit o’ pulp fiction. What can I say? I picked it up and having made the error of putting it down I shall struggle to pick it up again … and if I do, I’ll consider it to my credit if I succeed in reading more than a chapter or two before falling asleep (at least I won’t need a bookmark; I like to read in the prone position, propped up on my elbows — I find that my bed is ideal for this purpose — when I fall asleep and drool the page I was reading loses some its papery integrity becoming warped and roughened … nothing that a good pressing with a hot iron cannot fix but what’s the point of trying to fix badly written pulp fiction. Starting from fresh would be the simpler and more intelligent solution. Maybe when I finish the book I should make a palimpsest of it with industrial quantities of ink eradicator and then write a new, shorter and more intellectually challenging bit of fiction.

I know, I’ll write about a woman with no talents except for sarcasm who goes quietly mad because the world has come off its rails and no-one has noticed except for her and precious few others and the real killer is this: the twist is that it doesn’t matter the slightest bit if the world is off-track or not because the future doesn’t exist. Only the past and the present are real and even that is open to debate, but the future is only made, one stitch at a time, like a stocking on a knitter’s pins, and its quality is dependent as much on the flaws left in the past as on the skill of the knitter in contriving to avoid adding more defects as well as in trying to overcome the difficulties caused by past gaffes. So, if the whole mess is now on the verge of catastrophically unravelling, then at least I won’t need to worry so much about settling some of my larger and more scary debts.

Saturday, 11th November 2006

Saving Up Some Ire

Watching the TV show Animal 24/7 and feeling angry. RSPB efforts to conserve Britain’s endangered raptors are constantly thwarted by the game shooting industry whose snipers skilfully exterminate the hens. Bastards! Fines and custodial sentences are not the answer. Instead the law should make the miscreants into the conservators. If a bird of prey is killed by any human within the environs of a shoot then that shoot’s season should be cancelled for the year. The gamekeepers would be under a lot more pressure to follow conservation-friendly methods if their raison d’être was on the line.

Acronyms Force Adoption of Real Keyboard Skills

I have been collecting acronyms for some years now. Casual use of a computer without careful attention to health and safety issues has resulted in the increasingly more troublesome symptoms of some of those unpleasant side-effects that are often found mentioned in the preamble to the instruction manuals that most of us recycle rather than waste time in reading. Keyboards even have irritatingly helpful advice immovably fixed to their undersides … a datum only noticed by yours truly on the biannual occasion of the battery change — I assume that event takes place at six month intervals because the batteries are supposed to have a six month life and I only change them when typing results in a more than usually garbled result.

Touch typing was not one of the skills I sought to acquire in my youth; it’s a deficiency I despise myself for, but until now I always managed to find an excuse not to learn the art. When I started using a PC I was thrilled to see that so much could be accomplished with a mouse. Indeed the only thing I use the keyboard for is to input text. When I bought a proper computer desk with one of those neat, lap-level, keyboard trays on slider so that it can be slid away out of sight when not in use, I soon found a better use for it as my incipient musculo-skeletal infirmities of neglect began to infringe upon the boundaries of my comfort zone. The mouse was too high for the inflamed tendons in my creaking right shoulder and there was no room for the mouse as well as the keyboard on the lower level. The solution was simple. Swap them around.

Excessive use of a mouse can cause all sorts of weird and wonderful inflammatory conditions most of which are acronyms or in some way else unspellable. Carpal tunnel syndrome, tenosinovitis, fasciitis, tendonitis, repetitive strain injury are but a few. Of those I like the last most because it connotes a degree of effort along with a dogged determination and the word injury has a comforting accidentalness about it that helps somewhat in alleviating the distressing truth that the pain is 99% self inflicted.

So I’ve given in, before the damage becomes serious enough to warrant actual intervention with POMs (Prescription Only Medicine) or — heaven forefend — the scalpel. My keyboard is restored to its allotted place and I am taking the trouble to learn all those froody keyboard shortcuts rather than use the mouse to pop-open a handy menu. Funnily enough my typing speed has gone up and my accuracy has improved … who says that old dogs cannot learn new tricks? Me a dog? Bitch more like ….

Meanwhile I give to the literary world a new acronym: AFARKS. Enjoy.

Sunday, 26th November 2006

Tiger, Tiger Burning Bright

It has always fascinated me the way that a single random word or scent or sight can trigger a chain of memories. The workings of the human mind are truly labyrinthine…well mine is, anyway. The other day I was straightening the wine coloured, acrylic fleece throw that I use to cover the foot of my bed so that Little Mad has somewhere to sit and primp. I have been known to refer to this eminently washable item as L’il Em’s Flea Factory but on this occasion a different thought occurred.

Mirelly was already ensconced thereon and I was attempting to perform my make-work efforts with minimum disruption to her decorum. My efforts were successful—in not disturbing the cat, although the blanket was still a little too rakishly askew to qualify for house-proudliness but not raffish enough to quite make the grade as bohemian, a state of affairs that disturbed me in unfathomable ways that I don’t care to examine in too much detail. I was still thinking about the matter for all of a second when the morning sun emerged and blazed though the window like a supernova.

Mirelly Lyra’s silky black fur blazed in the glare, revealing the myriad shades of gold and orange and tawny russets that make up the hidden tiger stripes that her otherwise almost-but-not-quite tuxedo design normally conceals. (Her ancestry is entirely farm-cat mongrel and we both it like better that way; she because her rock solid genetic heritage is proof against the predation of ailments requiring the sharps stings of veterinarian attention and I like it better, too because vets’ bills are more outrageous than dentists’.) So as she languidly licked at a paw while her flanks blazed in all their feral splendour I murmured to myself the corny words: tiger, tiger, burning bright…and damn it! I confess I remember little more, not even the author’s name.

During the rest of the morning tigers continued to occupy my thoughts. As a cat lover I am stupidly fond of all the various species, with my favourites including cheetahs and tigers. A sudden whim had me begin a trawl though my computer files in search of cat images because I suddenly wanted a change of desktop image.

Suddenly I was looking at a small monochrome thumbnail of a former employer, that I’d found and saved from a BBC news item (he’d encountered a little—ahem—legal difficulty). I had saved it because there are numerous memories associated with him, mostly funny ones and a snapshot is a fabulous way to rekindle a memory. With tigers being very much at the forefront of my thoughts it was no accident that the tiny image of my former boss’s frowning visage reminded me of his account of his visit to Harrods, back in the days before it became the property of an Egyptian who would, one day, aspire to be the step-grandfather of the heir to England’s throne.

Thomas (not his real name) was as louche as I was naïve; he was big city urbane and he always cut an immaculate figure in expensively tailored suits with all the trimmings all of which came from the right places. Places like Yves St. Laurent, Ted Lapidus and Herbie Frogg. He was not hugely wealthy, but he wanted for little…except, perhaps for a visible partner and there was that ambiguous side of him again. Was he gay, or not? It was a favourite topic of conversation when he was not present and I was always interested to note that most men declared that he must be a raving poofter because (a) he never showed up with a girlfriend in tow, and (b) he spent far too much money on clothes. Very much a knee-jerk reaction there then, methinks. Rather more curiously most women thought he was gay because they found him oddly and indefinably repellent. I have found that to be more and more curious as I have grown older because, on the whole, women—who do not hold strongly homophobic opinions—find gay men to be highly attractive and personable people who make great friends.

None of which enlarges on the topic of Thomas’ account of his first visit to Harrods. He had begun with describing the gloved hand that emerged from the window of an illegally parked Panther de Ville, to snatch a freshly written out parking ticket from the hand of the meter maid just outside the store’s main door and, after a short and scathing account of the lamentable gentleman’s department (not nearly fashionable enough in his no so humble opinion), he brought us, wet-eyed with laughter at his histrionic and heavily animated narrations, to the Indian room.

Here was assembled an eclectic selection of objets d’art from the subcontinent, both antique and new. Bric-a-brac to suit every taste if not at prices to suit every pocket. At the centre of this 1970s display of grotesquery was a tiger skin complete with teeth and claws and Thomas spared no hyperbole in relating the manner with he was humbled and seen off by a haughty Jeeves-esque assistant after he had the effrontery, first to lift an edge of the hide in the hope of finding a price tag and secondly—with uncharacteristic naivety—to enquire after the price in an effort to save face and to avoid acknowledging that he had either failed to see, or else ignored, the discreet “do not touch” notice. The price of course was irrelevant; the need to ask is the only knowledge one needs: you cannot afford it! For once the joke was on Thomas, although just how keenly he himself appreciated this fact remains a mystery. I always quite liked the chap and—perhaps because I worked with him for several years—got to know him better than most and I fancy that he very much appreciated the fine line he had crossed from the urbane to the gauche.

So there I sat, the other day, with sunlight still streaming across my back in slatted shafts of dust-moted gold as I gazed at Thomas’ enigmatic and sad-looking eyes beneath his decidedly floppy bangs and I wondered again. Even three decades ago I was a cat lover and tigers were my favourite wild cat and although I had not considered the possibility of personally owning a tiger skin rug I was not immediately overly concerned by the idea that such a trade was active. So far as I know, none of those present that day were upset by the tiger skin.… Thomas might have pissed off a few just because he couldn’t seem to help it but not because of the subject of his tale.

So much can change in such a short period of time. The very idea of displaying an animal skin solely for decoration is anathema, not just to me but to most of my contemporaries. I’m no tree hugger and I will not live without meat, although I do avoid chicken (far too much welfare related pathology is visible on 90% of the carcases and even so-called free range, corn fed birds have less flavour than a factory farmed guinea fowl. But enough of my prejudices!) Poor old tiger. How I grieve for thee. Too beautiful thou art; too good to share the land with the likes of us. How fortunate for your DNA that you breed so readily in captivity…what a pity you cannot teach the same trick to your geographical neighbour, the giant panda. Now that would be a neat trick!

Monday, 27 November 2006

Dotting The Eh’s

I was thinking about someone I hadn’t seen since I was ten years old. She’ll be dead now. When I was four, my father got a new job in a town 70 odd miles north of where we lived in Windsor and for a good few months, while houses were sold and bought, he stayed near the new job in a guest house only coming home at weekends. When we did eventually move, his former landlady, a formidable woman with delusions of grandeur, kindly adopted my mother and guided her as to the best schools, shops, doctors etcetera. So far so good. However the poor old dear was soon to become a minor nuisance.

She must have been a little lonely, I suppose. She certainly wasn’t an easy person to have a conversation with, seemingly rarely to pay attention to much that anyone said, and rarely noticing replies to her questions. As my baby sister grew up we used to take great delight in mimicking her idiosyncrasies. She would arrive on a visit and greet us with, “hello! How are you, then? Eh, eh, eh?” If we got three eh’s, mother was apt to prompt us to reply, but that was the problem: the silly old bat left no room for a response. Despite mum’s best efforts to curtail the relationship, ‘auntie’ Dot—as we were obliged to call her—continued to visit practically every week for tea. A state of affairs that did not come to an end until we moved a short distance a few years later…a little further away and up a steeper hill. The first week we were there Dot arrived at the usual time, and in her usual manner: on foot. It was a wickedly hot day in high summer and I had just got home from school. Mum was already there with my sister and the windows were all closed. We pretended we were out. It was a little cruel, I guess, but she never called again.

So the other day I was preoccupied with my keyboard rearrangements and what happens this morning? The batteries died and that was when I found that I had a drawer full of triple As and no double As at all. I was, therefore doing an “auntie Dot” muttering into the drawer “eh, eh”, over and over like a broken record. It would have been funny had it been someone else who was up that particular creek without a paddle, but as it was me I merely felt persecuted by an uncaring material world which strives without pause to place in the way of my smooth progress as many humorous obstacles as conceivable as possible.

The reason it was so risible that my battery supply was poorly stocked bears telling. A week ago I was passing a branch of Currys at the local mall and I was tempted within by virtue of its intriguing new name: Currys Digital. Maybe they renamed it lest anyone pass by in the mistaken belief that they only sell white goods. It was time I sought out a new mouse; preferably one that was ball-less, wireless and rechargeable…the latter feature being essential because the one in use was eating up triple A Duracells at an unconscionable rate. Also, its ball was always getting kludged up with a composite material made from cat hair, household dust and drips of best British tea. I left the store with a nice new laser mouse…underneath it has a warning sticker advising the reader not to look underneath cos laser light can do extreme badness to delicate retinal tissue; amusingly there’s also a red LED next to the laser aperture which—apparently—will light up when it requires recharging. For heaven’s sake! How often am I expected to take chances with my valuable eyesight? I wouldn’t mind but the product was sealed into its carton with tape that carried the warning: Please Do Not Open The Packaging Before Purchase, else I might have persuaded myself not to buy a product of such oxymoronic design. Being too idle and timid to return the item for refund, I have decided to just take a quick gander now and then, using only my dodgy right eye … if that one’s retina gets incinerated by a Star Wars phaser blast I shall still have one good eye to see my way to the phone so I can call a lawyer.

So there we are. New mouse needing no batteries, drawers full of batteries that only fit the mouse and no batteries at all that fit into the keyboard. In my search I did find a box containing a number of old, and otherwise forgotten, rechargeable AAs and after a sweary half an hour I also located a charger. Charging the cells only took two hours; it would’ve been quicker simply to walk into town and buy some, except I don’t really do simple. If there’s a hard way that’s they way I go, every time.

I just remember that my microscopic MP3 player uses a triple A, although I suspect the battery life in that li’l gizmo is probably utterly epochal. How the hell is it possible to fit 20 hours of music into a device no larger than a packet of Tic-Tacs…including the battery? The bloody battery on my first mobile phone was bigger than my MP3 and I thought it was a neat phone because I could clip it my belt and a full charge lasted nearly 16 hours. Oh God! Now I’m talking about progress…won’t be long before I am eyeing up a blue rinse.

Tuesday, 28 November 2006