Adventure's Adventures.

Well, here we go again.

The last few months have been a torrid time, Circumstances have conspired to lead to me being in a rather interesting position.

I am the master of my own ship again.

Working for The Man has run its course and I am now sticking it to The Man by working for The Man (albeit a different Man to The Man I was dealing with earlier in the year). Following this so far?

No? Here's the simplified version.

I was employed by a company directly up until a couple of weeks ago, but now I am employed by my own company again (although a different company to the one I previously owned after having sold my stake in it) and am working as a consultant at someone else's (entirely unrelated and considerably larger) company.

OK, that's not much simpler, is it?

However, the stuff I'm doing now exposes me to engineering that blows my mind. I deal day in day out with engineers that have brains the size of planets* and commercial nous the size of quarks. It's frustrating and inspiring in equal measure. I suspect I'll be a basket case by the time I'm done.

So I am doing my thing for them for the next few months and then I am onto the next part of the grand plan which involves the cunning trick of making a few quid whilst simultaneously becoming more flexible in my working patterns.

And yes, once I have managed that I will go on to invent the self-replicating tenner.

Onwards!

NDC

* - 5 bonus points and a biscuit to the first person who gets the reference.

Happy Birthday

Today is the birthday of my beautiful wife, she is the light of my life, my raison d'être, my compass and the best friend I could ever wish for.

Happy birthday darling, may the road rise to meet you and all your gins be cold.

NDC

LOL Marketing

My favourite kind. I tried that waterproof coffee, but it just wasn't for me.

NDC

Headphones On, World Off.

Some time ago I made a very big mistake.

I was out somewhere or other and had a while to kill before meeting with someone who was doubtlessly going to tell me something fascinating about industrial level products (I know, it's very rock n roll isn't it?), so I went to buy a coffee and a sandwich. I ate them and was still too early to turn up at my meeting so I went for a wander round the shops.

They had a Bose shop and, like a sailor being lured onto the rocks by a Siren, I went in.

Now, I love a gadget but the world beloved of audiophiles has long been closed to me. Sure, it's got all the boxes ticked in that it consists mainly of electronics in shiny boxes with eye-watering pricetags and I can appreciate the difference between the really cheap end of audio kit and the next step up, but try as I might I just have never managed to tell the difference between kit costing £50 or £500. I clearly have £49.99 hearing so I have always been sure that I can go into these kind of shops to fondle the gadgetry and pull faces at the pricetags, safe in the knowledge that I won't actually want any of it.

after a couple of minutes of poking about I tried on a pair of their noise canceling headphones, safe in the knowledge that I would not be able to tell the difference between the shiny £280 items in the shop and the ones I'd bought from the interwebz for, ahem, considerably less a couple of years ago.

Under the watchful gaze of the wildly enthusiastic (and technically astute) sales johnny I put them on and sure enough there appeared to be no difference at all. Until I switched them on.

The sound of the crowds milling through the shopping centre disappeared, and I was just left with, well, silence. It was astonishing. The music sounded great too. I was blown away.

Since then I have spent the last few months telling myself that £280 for a set of headphones that I'll mainly use on flights a couple of times a year is ridiculous and trying to ignore the small voice at the back of my head telling me they're worth every penny.

On Sunday I found myself winning an auction on ebay for a pair of the very same headphones. Oops. Even though they were considerably less than new the Beautiful Mrs A almost fell off her chair when I told her how much. She pointed out that I could have bought a pair of headphones for a fiver at Tesco (her expectation of audio quality is even lower than mine). Although she doesn't understand my love of expensive technology, she gets entirely the want of a thing - see here - so all is well.

They're due to arrive today and as long as they're not knockoffs and are functional I think I'll be quietly pleased...

NDC

Lane 1.

The Boy wonder has a thing or two to learn about tradition.

Around this time of year he has a sports day at school. Every year I offer to run in the dads race. Every year he pulls a face veering between disinterest and horror and says no. Every year I turn up and cheer like a nutcase as he hops over hurdles or throws beanbags into buckets, rounding off the day by watching the other poor unfortunate buggers who's children don't know the tradition have to run in the parent's races.

This time however, when I asked the question 'would you like me to run in the dads race?' he said yes.

Bugger.

So on Wednesday, after spending the afternoon whooping and cheering whilst a bunch of enthusiastic kids threw sponge javelins at each other and did the shortest long jumps in the world, the fateful announcement came over the tannoy:

"Would all those competing in the parent's races, please make their way to the start line of the running track."

Ah.

Now, under normal circumstances I'm a fairly easy going guy but I have to say that I have a competitive streak if there's a racetrack involved and this occasion was no different. As I stood on the startline I sized up the competition. There were seven of us in all, most of whom had at least a decade's worth of advantage on me. At that point I desperately wanted to win.

So the whistle went, I ran at a pace that my mind was entirely happy with, but which my legs were apparently less pleased about. I had a couple of close calls but managed to stay upright and staggered across the line in one piece.

Did I win? Of course not. I was beaten by an eighteen year old lad that was injured because his mate had shot him in the leg the day before with a BB gun and he'd decided to dig the projectile out with a knife* and a chap who'd actually brought trainers with him. But I managed to squeeze past the guy who told me on the start line he finished last in the previous day's race, a fat chap who fell over and a couple of others, so it wasn't all bad.

TBW was genuinely surprised that I hadn't won, he did his best to make me feel better but I reckon that lessons have been learnt and next year tradition will be restored.

NDC

* - He was the uncle of one the lads in TBW's class. I saw the wound and I have to say I believed his tale, I just hope the knife was sharper than he was.

Swings & Roundabouts.

Some days my job sucks. 

Other days it doesn't. Sometimes I get to have a meeting in the sunshine and eat a lunch paid for by somebody else in a place like this:

I have to say that those are the days I prefer.

NDC

These Little Piggies Went To Market (Harborough).

You may remember that a little while ago I wrote a post about clutter and sentimentality and stuff (if your memory is as swiss-cheese-like as mine, it's here), one of the subjects of which was an ashtray with a cone and two pigs.

Well here it is:

The Mum came over for Sunday lunch last weekend and brought it with her as a gift. She told me the tale of it belonging to my Grandparents on The Dad's side of the family. They had both clocked out before I clocked in so I never actually met them and now I have a battered ashtray that belonged to them.

It has been broken in the past (there's a reasonable probability that I was involved) and fixed with araldite that looks like it was applied by someone wearing welders mitts. Whilst Drunk. In the dark. A finely crafted objet d'art it is not.

So now it's been passed on to me. No doubt The Grandparents had some attachment to it and I know that The Mum valued it as a link to them, but emotional links to objects are conferred by the owner and just aren't assignable. I can't help but feel a lack of much towards it which is a shame but is the truth.

Maybe it's the chasm of years and lack of memories of its original owners.

Maybe in years to come this tale will become part of the object in some way and a connection will be formed, but for now this will just be two pigs facing a broken cone.

NDC