zerolight

At long last an update. I’ve not posted in what seems like ages. Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and Eid Mubarak to all.

Saturday night was an absolute nightmare. There’s a new neighbour in Flat 2/1, presumably renting as nobody saw them move any furniture in. They had a party on Saturday night, to which they appeared to have invited the whole of Glasgow.

Now I don’t have issues with the odd party and the loud music that inevitably goes with it. People don’t do it often, so it’s not usually an issue. But there’s a fine line between annoyingly loud, but your neighbours will tolerate it occasionally, and totally unacceptably loud. Most people can sense where that line is and push their party music to it, but not beyond it. Guilt? Consideration? Morality? I don’t know what it is, but we all know when we’ve crossed that line and quickly step back. Well, OK, not all, just most of us.

On Saturday night the entire block 1 and 3 discovered that the occupier of block 1, Flat 2/1, doesn’t have a clue where that line is. The volume level was exceptionally loud. I’ve never heard anything like it outside of a nightclub. The walls were shaking. The floors were shaking. The doof doof doof of the bass was over powering. It was impossible to sleep through. There’s 2 feet of concrete and a 3 feet air gap between the floor and the ceiling below it. Yet it sounded like we were standing outside a nightclub on a cold Glasgow night getting ID’d. It was just as miserable. It was unacceptably loud.

By 0130 I was starting to lose the plot. Then bliss, the party ended. People left. Lots of people. And the place was silent. For about 10 mins. Then doof doof doof d-d-d-d-doof…

At some point it calmed down again to a quiet rumble for 20 mins, I guess their conscience kicked in for a moment, but it was too good to last, and came back louder than ever soon after. By 4am I thought we were in the midst of an earthquake, or perhaps the music had matched the building’s natural frequency and was about to send us all tumbling into a pile of rubble. The police were called moments later. I never call the police. I just tolerate. But this was just too much. They never came. Finally at 0700 the music stopped. And I got up with Ali. Knackered!!!

Today (and a little bit of last night) I worked on somebody elses website. The site of somebody in the USA who’s been mailing me for help over the past few weeks / months. I transformed his site with a heavily modified version of a free template from rockettheme. Looks pretty good now. The layout of the content could do with a little bit of work, I reckon JD-WordPress, my Joomla blog of choice, would help here.

As I left work the other day, heading through the staff carpark, I noticed the ground was littered with conkers (the seeds from horse chesnut trees). I was instantly reminded of my childhood, collecting as many of these conkers as possible in order to play conkers with my friends at school. There was this tree at our school, a great big chessnut tree, right at the edge of the playground. I can remember spending most of the morning break with my friends, collecting the conkers strewn around it. There were plenty more dangling tantilisingly out of reach on the branches above.

The local bully/idiot, Billy, decided to take a break from beating up his chums, to come over and show us how to reach these unattainable conkers. I should break this story for a moment to tell you about Backdive…

That’s the affectionate nickname that every pupil in our school gave to one of the English teachers. It’s telling that I cannot remember her real name. Her nickname came about because when she was letting rip with verbal abuse at an unfortunate pupil, she invariably leaned so far back that you were sure she was about to dive backwards onto the floor in a fit of rage. I assume this practice was meant to strike fear into the hearts of her pupils, and it certainly worked.

… So back to conkers, Billy, and that tree. Billy decided that a large brick was the ideal candidate for sending the hanging conkers tumbling to the ground. After a few unsuccessful attempts at lobbing the brick skyward, Billy eventually sent it in a graceful arc, up, through, and beyond the tree, across the playground, it’s perfect trajectory terminating on the passenger seat of Backdive’s car (after first passing straight through, and shattering, the windscreen). I’d imagine his subsequent suspension provided the perfect cooling off period for Backdive. We never did get those conkers.

I’ve never felt the need to post about a World Cup match before, but last nights match was despicable. Not the players. Sure there were some dirty moments (Figo’s half head butt being one) but I’m talking about the referee, Valentin Ivanov. He encouraged things to get out of hand by giving out yellow cards like they were sweeties. FIFA President Sepp Blatter later suggested the referee should have been yellow-carded himself.

16 yellow cards. 4 red cards. Yes, you can do the math, 4 players sent off. Most unjustified. You could see there was no real malice between the teams merely by looking at the players who’d been sent off. They were sitting on the sidelines, Dutch and Portuguese, chatting to one another about the nutter that refereed the game.

Portugal went on to win, but they lose Deco from their next game. Deco being by far their most influential player, and top of his game at the moment. Sent off for time wasting it appears. He was grabbed by a Dutch player and thrown to the ground, yet he was the one sent off. Criminal. Costinha sent off. Ronaldo potentially injured. Sven must be overjoyed knowing the excellent Portugal are hamstrung before facing England in the Quarter Finals.