I’ve been reading over my recently deceased cousins blog and it’s interesting to see the similarity in the views we hold. On the surface we look like chalk and cheese. For want of a better definition I would say John led an alternative lifestyle. I would say his interests were characterised by a love of Punk/Goth/Metal music, the forgotten and forlorn architecture of Dublin with a loathing of all that was shiny, new and superficial. Over the years he collected old radio’s, electronic equipment from decades past and oft used them in his installations.
I on the other hand love new technology (although recently I’ve become somewhat weary of the bleeding edge and am at an ever increasing distance behind the curve), electronic music in the form of Stephane Pompougnac, Tangerine Dream, cafe Del Mar, Gotan Project and the like.
As John says “I hate TV,as my friend Paul often says ‘I hate TV. I would write a letter to the media complaining about the crap that they put on TV,but then again i don’t have a TV licence’ “
I agree. I live in an apartment with a management company that got too clever for its own good and thus fell on its face. They created their own set top boxes and then tried to run it through a centralised Local Area Network that cant cater for 300 residents. I just didn’t even attempt to set it up so I opted out as I figured I wasn’t missing much on TV anyway.
I bought a projector and subscribed to the DVD service ‘Lovefilm‘ which is absolutely brilliant. I get threatening letters in bogus legalese from the TV licensing arm of the government. They don’t know my name or where I live and address the letters to current occupier. from the outset their letters are threatening and more timid individuals would be intimidated by such correspondence. I AM NOT and because of their attitude I refuse to furnish them with the knowledge that I indeed do not have a TV or receiver box. To quote the vernacular… ‘Fuck em!’
On that position me and cousin John see eye to eye.
YOUNGE (Milltown, Dublin 6) - May 21, 2008, suddenly, John Edmond Chamberlain, aged 36 years, dearly and much loved son of John and Dorothea, sadly missed by his loving parents, aunts Eithne (Mantero), Anne (Chamberlain), Cecily (Lindberg), Pat (Fox), uncles, cousins, relatives and his many friends. Rest in peace. Funeral arrangements later. Enquiries to Kirwans Funeral Directors, 8334444.
My dear cousin John was found dead this week from a suspected heart attack. He was 36 and only 3 months older than me. The reason I’m called Jonathan is because he pipped me at the post in the name stakes. It goes against the natural order of things and everyone on both sides of the Irish sea is pretty shocked.
He was a decent guy. We go through life with a sense that people will always be there and I hadn’t been in touch with him for a few months but when we did get in touch it was as if time hadn’t passed. I had a look round the net last night and found a few YouTube video’s he had done. John was very much interested in old technology in contrast to my love of new tech. He was a prolific artist and held exhibitions and installations of his work around the world.
The world is a darker place without him and we miss you John!
I got home to my parking space tonight to find that some arrogant fool had parked their blinged up Range Rover in my space. (see below)
In the normal run of things I find the people that drive these things tend to be arrogant. If you drive one of these you are saying to the world. I’m king of the hill and I will drive how I want and where I want. I see them parked up on pavements, bulldozing their way through towns and villages and usually blinding other motorists with the high mounted xenon lights.
They tend to be driven by footballers, 3rd rate so called celebs and drug dealers. So we come back to my space. It’s clearly marked out and yes its now my motorbike that occupies the space instead of my car. That said I have friends and relatives that park there when they visit.
The car has an illegal plate S7YLD which I’m sure the DVLA would love to know about. In addition to the space hogging a can of my chain oil had been stolen and at some point over the weekend someone called ‘Tylar Drabz’ had tagged the walls and pillars with my motorbike chain oil. Aside from it being expensive its also very sticky and has made a real mess of the place.
I would say to anyone considering renting or buying a property in Budenberg Haus Projekte… DON’T! There are undesirable elements that live here. residents jam the electric door open in order to let in people you’d rather have on the outside. the low life here dump their rubbish outside the garbage chutes. Its designed for small bags of waste. yet people dump suitcases, ironing boards, punch bags, bean bags, flip top bins, televisions and clothes airers. These fools somehow think that it will magically be picked up or made to disappear by the site staff when in reality it’s other residents that have to trip over their crap for weeks on end.
Added to this, the internet, TV, phone and intercom is non existent. The maintenance company ‘Mainstay’ don’t want to know about anything so smashed doors, broken handles, leaky towel rails and floods in the car park go unchecked for weeks and months. The utility company ‘Ecocentrogen‘ are a fine example of chaos. They bill some people over the odds and others not enough. They provided an internet service which is equivalent to that of a hotel system and thus is not sufficient for the kind of use expected from 300 apartments with an IT savvy demographic.
In summary, with thefts of vehicles and property rife and many undesirables running around unchecked I would say steer well clear of buying or renting in this place. Yes architecturally its very nice but when you haven’t got peace of mind then everything else pales into insignificance.
M&S Money, considering the amount of interest you charge me on my credit card you really could do with upgrading your call centre in a number of ways.
Firstly the quality of the line is absolutely terrible! secondly the Indian staff are way too sycophantic. “Ohh Mr Fox would you be so kind as to kindly let me put you on hold most dearest sir”…. “Do I have a choice?”…. “I’m afraid not my most kindest of gentleman”… WTF…. “then just do it and sort my problem out you fuck!”
Thirdly. Please don’t play Laurie Johnson and his Orchestra (The Avengers theme tune to everyone else) full blast down the phone AT me!
After its been processed through your crummy hold music machine, circulated a few times around the Indian Sub Continents telephone network, bounced off a few satellites and been churned through the over subscribed UK mobile phone network it really does sound SHIT!
I watched the BBC news videocast on a Europe wide initiative to reduce speeding. I don’t have an issue with that. What I do have an issue with is where the speeds are to be reduced and the methods used.
In the UK there is a bad habit of using euphemism’s for things that are unpalatable. In the 90’s the “Poll Tax” became the “Council Tax”. To me it will always be a poll tax. The other one was “Speed Cameras”. They were transformed into the pink, fluffy “Safety cameras”. If you watch the footage above you will actually see that two crashes occur because both drivers in question spotted the speed entrapment van and slammed on their breaks thus losing control of their cars. These two accidents would not have otherwise happened if that van hadn’t been trying to ensnare them.
So did the van permanently reduce speeding on this main highway into Norwich? No. It filled the pockets of the police and caused two accidents which could have resulted in a loss of life!
If the cameras had been setup in town, in a residential area, outside a school I would say no problem! If someone braked hard in town from lets say 40mph to 30mph at worst they may get a rear end shunt. In town nobody should be speeding anyway because of the potential risk of unseen hazards such as kids stepping into the road, dogs, bikes, people reversing out of their driveways and so on.
To use cameras like this on a main busy highway like this one into Norwich the police should be ashamed of themselves. Of course they will retort that the people shouldn’t have been speeding in the first place. While this may be true they are at least in part 50% responsible for these accidents that are shown on this film.
As chair of the Association of Chief Police Officers’ Roads Policing Enforcement Technology Committee it would appear that irony is not without a sense of humour!
The time has come to leave Faecesbook… sorry I mean Facebook. It has lost its fun factor. It is riddled with idiots sending me applications I don’t want and increasingly it’s used as a marketing tool for products and services I neither need or want. I also feel it compromises the integrity of my identity both socially and in a data mining sense.
Remember all that tosh about speed camera’s would only be placed in accident black spots and they would be made visible in order to give you the opportunity to slow down. Well the Fascist dictatorship region that is North Wales led by non other than Il Duce himself Richard Brunstrom is now trying to ensnare the British taxpayer with Speed Camera’s hidden in horse boxes!
I’ve been a visitor to North Wales for many years and the one thing it has going for it is its natural beauty. On the flip side that is counter balanced by poor hotels, bad restaurants, hostile locals, Chav’s, litter, general filth and insularity. If I was the chief constable of North Wales I would be tackling the late night yobbery and local yocal’s in order that people might want to vist the place. If I think I’m going to face entrapment from every horse box, bush, boulder or ice cream van I can do better and go elsewhere. I dont speed deliberately but I would wager that everyone in the country has nudged over the limit by a few mph in their lives.
A few weeks back I was driving home from work and decided to get some petrol as the orange light was on. I went to pull into the petrol station near work and it was closed for refuelling. This was a problem as I was headed in the direction of Wilmslow which was 7 miles away and I was concerned that I wouldn’t make it. I had thought of other petrol stations but in the last few years petrol stations all over the place have been closing at an alarming rate and therefore coverage is not what it used to be.
Anyway I decided I had no option but to take a chance. I was within 1 mile of Wilmslow and travelling up the hill after emerging from the airport tunnels when gravity took over and the remaining petrol ran to the end of the tank and bam… my journey was finished there and then.
Now I see these things as a challenge and somewhat of an adventure. I believe a positive mental attitude is everything in trying situations. I got the warning triangle out and called for assistance and despite it being 1 celsius and raining made sure I stayed warm.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the abysmal attitude of cars driving towards Wilmslow. I had one girl race up behind me despite having the hazards lights on. She was visibly frustrated at being held up for a moment as she wrestled with her phone, cigarette and car… the latter being the least important of her concerns obviously.
I had a Porsche driver blast his horn at me… for no other reason than I was broken down. What a fucking Tosser I thought! I was stuck there for a good hour and pretty much witnessed the same arrogance from people in Bentley’s, Audi’s, Mercedes and other luxury marques. The more dangerous and wreckless the driving the better the car. A BMW driver nearly caused a head on crash into an aggregate truck because he couldn’t wait the 20 seconds for it to pass, so tried to squeeze between myself and him.
My ultimate point is that a lot of people who live in this area are arrogant tossers. I speak with some authority on this having lived in Wilmslow for 18 years.
I’ve seen other people locally that think nothing of taking a chance and drink driving home after a night in Alderley Edge. I saw a woman crash her Mercedes into her gate post having observed her swerving all the way down the road a few years ago.
Don’t get me wrong Cheshire is a beautiful place. The genuine born and bred Cheshire people are brilliant. But sadly there is a transitory population of people from outside the area that wrongly believe the world owes them something and that they have the right to lord it over everyone else.
Something is truly rotten to the core in Cheshire but I believe in Karma and their attitude and arrogant attitude will come back to bite them in the arse sooner or later.
and we miss you John!
