Tom's Bits

Danger, Will Robinson!

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Oh no!

I’ve left my nascent blog to languish in the digital wasteground!

So why did I let this happen?

  1. Troubles in life. Frankly, I’ve been having a hard time, things haven’t been easy at all.
  2. I’ve written a lot of the easy stories, and I’m up against expanding the articles I’ve started on the more meaningful subjects. This isn’t easy.
  3. I’ve been watching videos on the train. The only reason I’m not now is that I left my headphones at home…

What can I do about all of this? I suppose the advice I’d give is to choose whether or not this is something I actually want to do or not, and then actually act accordingly. It’s about choice, and this is important. We have a limited number of days on this earth, and each day is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We can choose to do so many things (or at least, those with a level of privilege and freedom can), but if we don’t actively choose we let life just happen to us.

We can choose our direction, and sometimes this involves discomfort and hard work, but if we don’t take these things on we won’t always get what we want.

Covent Garden

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I’ve been tramping round Covent Garden since my mid-teens back in the eighties.

In those days (oh, “when I were young” etc), it was rather a different place. Same buildings (on the main), it’s the nature of the shops that’s changed. Neal Street has but one shop I can identify as having not closed since those days, “The Tea Shop”. The rest – well, that road used to be just small independent shops, and now there’s a multitude of chains. Not all so, but by and large the case.

A few notables that have gone:

The leather bags shop
No, not that one. This had a name of something lime Morris or Morrison, I don’t recall. More often closed than not, had a black chap inside who made good looking and cheap leather goods (bags, satchels etc) who appeared relatively indifferent to mercantalism.

Neal Street East
Enormous barn of a store, over three levels, selling oriental goods. I aspired to buy their kimonos, but generally ended up in the basement which sold kick-knacks, novelties, soaps and the like. Lovely place, now a clothes shop.

Flip
Wow, Flip. American vintage and styled clothes. I think this was a small chain of stores, but the only one I really remember visiting was in Covent Garden. Another barn of a shop, now another chain clothing store.

 

Waiting, lost deep in Moria…

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In the depths of Moria, possibly the lowest dungeon, there waits a lonely soul. He’s been there for years now, in the same spot, currently safe from the Evil Iggy, the Ancient Multi-Hued Dragon, and,of course, the Balrog. Years, still, alone, waiting.

Waiting for me. For me to return, to control, direct, to help him achieve his goal of slaying the Balrog. Does he realise it will never happen, that his quest will never be completed.

Does he know how many times he’s failed, been killed and brought back to life through restoration of a save file?

Yes, this is all about me playing a computer game. Really.

The game is Moria, a classic rogue-like which I downloaded using a Surrey University computer (in the days when you could wander into their lab and use PCs without any check or hindrance) and installed on my mother’s IBM PC. Elena and I would play it, both having our own save files which we’d swap using a small DOS-script I cobbled together. Being the days before I understood how Wrong it was, I (we) save scummed mercilessly, so our characters suffered a fate of perpetual death and resurrection. I wonder now, did they realise they died, or did their memories only reach to the save file?

Anyway, while the PC’s gone, I may have kept the save file somewhere, so there would lie waiting my hero of old. Waiting for me to come again.

Another proposition

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It was on my 21st birthday. I was in a KFC in Oman. Read on….

My father had a job working in Oman. He’d bought tickets for my brother and I to go out there to stay for a bit during the summer, and being a student I had as long as I wanted. Well, only three weeks in Oman as that was the length of their short-stay tourist visa. I’d actually booked tickets to Dubai, and had the plan of staying there for a week and travelling on to Oman.

Anyway, there I was in Oman. My father was working, and I don’t believe my brother had arrived, so I was entertaining myself. I’d travelled in from the outlying town/suburb) to the major town Ruwi (I think) by minibus, and was sheltering from the heat in an air-conditioned KFC. I had my book (War and Peace, don’t-ya-know). As it was my birthday I’d decided to shave my scrappy facial hair, so there I was, clean chinned, pale faced, with my curly hair in a pony tail. Can you see where this is going?

A local chap sat down opposite me, and started to chat, or try to in very broken English. More broken than that – more a highly fragmented English. Being as polite as I am, I returned the conversation as best I could, but really failed to understand most of what he was saying. The big breakthrough in communication was when his repeated “six” was accompanied by gesticulations sufficient to let me know the word was more likely to be “sex”, and the penny finally dropped.

There you go. Propositioned by an Arabian chap in a KFC on my 21st birthday.

Beethoven’s Symphonies

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Now to work through Beethoven’s symphonies, conducted by Karajan.

These are all mp3s taken from youtube, but I have purchased the records in the past. They’re there, with the rest of my vinyl, in a cupboard with my disconnected record player and amplifier. Until those are back together and working, I’ll have to do with computer based music.

Being propositioned (for sure)

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The previous post reminded me of a time I’d been propositioned by a lady of the night in (I think) the Soho area. I was probably 16-18, at a guess. My recollection is that she offered me something like a quick time? There was the concept of speed or short time span about it, at any rate…

Making Money From the Web – Or, “When I Met a Porn Webmaster in Soho”

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Back in 2001 I had an interview with Investors In People as some sort of webby person. Amazing employer, by the way, they really seemed to practice what they preached. Anyway, there I was in London. I’d finished my interview, I think I’d done a spot of shopping, and was sitting in a Cafe Nero in Soho before meeting up with my then lovely fiancee (now lovely wife). I was of course substantially younger then, and as I had an interview, looked pretty damn smart.

So, sitting in the coffee shop, watching people go by. A man sits next to me, after struggling a little with the two mops he has. He swears about them “It’s <something I can’t remember> without these two fucking mops”, and has what I recall to be a slightly clipped Australian accent. We converse, and somehow (possibly following on from talking about my interview?), the conversation turns to web pages and sites. He reveals that the he makes serious money from the web. How? Porn. He runs a couple of porn sites and has the money routed through the US. In the end I have to leave to meet my fiancee, and he wishes me the best of luck.

Questions:

  • I’ve always suspected he was trying to pick me up. Is this vanity, suspicion, or a good bet?
  • Why do I think the sites were gay, I’m not sure he said they were? Is it because of the location and my thoughts about his motives?
  • When he wished me luck, I believe it was actually about my fiancee. Is this likely to be true? Why would he? Did he think I was making her up to get away?

If he had been trying to pick me up, it wouldn’t have been the first time… that happened on my 21st birthday, but is a completely different story and will come later…