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Hello EMI, Goodbye A&M

Or, in my case: Hello BMI, Goodbye BA.

Last Monday, my flight to Newcastle was cancelled and the later one was delayed. When I re-booked at Ticket Sales, I asked whether I could make use of the business lounge as a gesture for the inconvenience caused by the delay.

Ticket Sales said that might be possible and to ask at Fast Bag Drop. Fast Bag Drop said that might be possible and to ask in the Business Lounge.

could do better

Some people might have expected the clock on an expensive Sony digital car radio to automatically switch into British Summer Time.

However, they would be wrong and I will now be forced to try to remember the location of the fine manual.

from zero to hero and back again

I thought this was simply hilarious. Thank goodness, he captured a screenshot for prosperity.

chaos on the streets on Newcastle

The streets of the fine city of Newcastle were gridlocked on Monday. Locals despaired as their normal 20 minute commute took 3 hours 40 minutes due to a series of unfortunate events.

• A public sector strike (against pensions) closing the Metro and a tunnel under the Tyne.
• An attention-seeking individual pretending he wanted to end his life by jumping off a lofty bridge which meant the closure of the bridge, more traffic chaos and 57 social workers being summoned.
• Another (suspicious) fire in the city.

I owe my eternal gratitude to my taxi driver who meekly suggested that I might like to consider walking 10 minutes (instead of sitting for a further 90 minutes with the meter running) back to my hotel.

critical mass

Rapidly approaching the point when I will no longer send amusing emails to my ‘Personal’ email alias but will instead send a permalink to everyone on my ‘Personal’ email alias.

But then again, I only have two friends.

YCNMIU

Two days early. Please, please tell me that this is two days early.

all coming together

The primary DNS server at Malmaison went down earlier this evening for two hours so I called reception and uttered the following question:

‘Ou est l’InterWeb, si’l vous plait ?

The kind lady replied ‘Whay ya say, InterWeb down, aye - we know like, Ha’way. Do you want a canny bag o’ Tudor as compensation, bonny Lad ?’

quotations

Tom Kyte has some favourite quotes so here are some of mine.

Are you still doing what you did 5 years ago ? Yeah ? Well, don’t make a career out of it ? (Mark. E. Smith) All over Battersea, some hope and some despair (Morrissey)

As she parts her greying hair, voices on the stair (The Chameleons)

Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked further than the average American walks in a week (Bill Bryson)

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passion(less)

I just watched Arsenal beat Juventus 2-0 in the Champions League. I don’t support Arsenal. I don’t really care whether they win or lose. I only watched the game to kill two hours on a slow Tuesday evening in Newcastle.

In March last year, however, I was also working away from home in Gothenburg (near Sweden), watching a different game I passionately cared about.

Here is the barstool correspondent’s verdict on Inter Milan 1 MUFC 0.

food for thought

I met a lady from Newcastle who is giving two children from Chernobyl a summer holiday in the UK. She told me that two weeks in this country adds two years to their life expectancy.