the Moebius @ dgjones.co.uk

The price of victory

Shortly into the 2nd half of the game on Saturday, Cliffy pointed out that I developed a pair of tits. By the end of the match my nips were raw, and I was cursing forgetting to wear a t-shirt. But it was worth it, we won 4-0.

I love payday

...especially when I get paid slightly more than I guessed I would. :)

I'm going to see Love Actually tonight with Georgina & her mum, then tomorrow I'm playing for the Oldboys 2nd XI against Bagshot Reserve at Fortress Varsity.

And the sun is shining. Marvellous.

Merchant Bankers

Today after more than 5 years Natwest twigged that I haven't used my student (now graduate) account since I withdrew their £50 cash gift. They want to know if I want to keep the account, or have the balance transferred to another bank. But I've got three months to decide what to do with £0.04 interest that has grown at an astonishing rate, and they even gave me a pre-paid envelope to put my response in!

Contrast that with the Student Loans Company, who wrote to me today requesting my employment details so they can tell the Inland Revenue to start taking my repayments out of my wages from April 6th 2004. They can't be that keen on getting the necessary information though, because they can't be arsed to supply a pre-paid envelope. Tight-wods.

Jimbo heard today from Detica, who turned us both down for Graduate positions back in the summer, claiming that they had filled their 2003 intake. When they wrote back to us they claimed they would be in touch in October to tell us about the process for applying for job opportunities starting in September 2004. They didn't bother. But it turns out they are now "urgently recruiting for January 2004" start dates, and phoned Jimbo this afternoon claiming to be following up on a colleague "who had contacted you recently". Bull$hit! So he found it most amusing to tell them that he had a job with a rival company just round the corner from their offices!

Meanwhile I'm getting my teeth into an cool project at work now, and surfing a scary learning curve. Payday is Friday thank the lord, and I move into the new gaff next Wednesday.

Come On

Not even 3 days of the most awful weather so far this winter could put a dampener on my weekend. It began at Old Orleans for Vixxi's 21st birthday on Friday night, although my choices on the menu left a little to be desired! If you ever go there, don't waste your time with the Mushroom Bruscietta (sp?) starter, which was probably knocked up in less than 30 seconds (it certainly went nowhere near a grill or oven). And if you opt for the 'Bison Burger', make sure they don't over-cook it until it turns into a tasteless, shriveled slab. I should really learn to complain at restaurants. Everyone else's grub went down well though (when it eventually came) and the Vixx got pissed on Happy Hour cocktails. Bless her.

Saturday morning of course was spent watching England realise the dream of World Cup glory, although the triumph came in heart-stopping circumstances, as is inevitable with any British/English team in a major tournament. Good lads!

Despite the atrocious weather, the UniS Oldboys' 3rd XI game at Shalford Park went ahead in the afternoon and the pitch held up well all things considered. The week-on-week improvement continued and we registered a 1-0 victory over Guildford City Weysiders Reserves, who had been 2 positions above us as we propped up the division. It's pretty unusual for a centre-back to have 3 goal scoring chances in a game (at the right end of the pitch anyway!) but a hat-trick was only denied me by the cross-bar in each half! The first chance came from a header after a corner, but more comical was the second half miss-hit cross which spooned over the embarrassed keeper, came back off the bar and fell to Neil Wilson who managed to clear the aforementioned bar from <6 yards. Finally the breakthrough came in the final 10 minutes when I found myself in the middle of a comedy goal-mouth scramble and bundled the ball over the line from probably less than a yard. But it's the result that counts and it was well-deserved by the lads who coped admirably with the conditions, especially Mehmet between the sticks.

It's getting a bit late now (I can't wait until this commuting routine ends!) so the remainder of the weekend will have to wait until another day. Moloko at Brixton Academy was bloody good though...

Moloko Gig

This Saturday I'm off to see Moloko at Brixton Academy with Georgie, Special & Katie. We haven't been to Brixton since seeing Faithless almost 18 months ago, and I must say I'm really looking forward to our return, especially after reading some of the fan reviews on Absent Minded Friends. There still seems to be some tickets available , as there were for Chicane in the days before the gig in October. On the night though it appeared to be a sell-out so hopefully Brixton will have a similar throng of people this week.

Today I got the ball rolling with the letting agency who manage the 3 bed house I should be moving into on December 4th. I think some negotiating might be in order though, since they want a £75+VAT admin fee for checking my references on top of another £75+VAT admin fee for 'drawing up' (read: printing) a new contract for the three of us tenants to sign. Cheeky basts! And they want my deposit of £450 before I've even signed a contract! I smell a rat, but will tread carefully and get plenty of receipts!

Fetish Night

After a cracking Friday night at USSU I've now got my own photies of Fetish Night up on Gallery. Funky(photo)berry had a marathon snapping session and has also got 8 pages of photies up! Special and I feature at the bottom of page 3 and Georgie and the girlies feature at the top of page 4.

Fancy Pants

A successful shopping session during lunch and again after work means Dr Jones and Mister Special are almost ready with our outfits for Friday, and Georgie has all the accessories she could ever ask for! Now I just have to convince a few more buddies to get involved. Daria has booked me for a chair race for Friday, presumably after the Union if I'm still standing. Or maybe that's his cunning plan?

Oh yeah a tip for all you drivers out there: don't do what I did this evening and sit with your headlights on for more than about 5 mins without the engine ticking over. Your battery will die. You'd have thought I'd learn my lesson after coming within a whisker of flattening it a few weeks ago. But no, this time a call to Britannia was necessary. And I looked like a fool. But within 25mins I was back on the road with my tail between my legs.

House Hunting, The Weekend, Fetish Night & Eco-warriors

After notching up the best part of 500 miles driving since last monday I'm back in Bournemouth again, and facing the prospect of another 80 mile round trip tomorrow. But maybe not for much longer...

I had a look at a couple of properties in the centre of Winchester this evening, the first was a no-no (despite being only 4 mins from the office, just think of the lie-in maximisation potential) but the second place I saw is a definite possibility. It's in St John's Street at the 'bottom' of town, and is 1 minute from several pubs, a chinese takeaway and Pizza Express. A further 2 minute walk and you are in the main high street, leading up to my office on the corner of Jewry Street and St. George's Street. Multimap reckons it's 0.8 miles - although I think that's an over-estimate (because the start and end points aren't precisely on top of the house and office). Either way, it's an ideal location, and the two guys living there seem sound enough (although one of them is the one moving out) and I've gotta meet the other one. They are all friends with someone in my office and they seem to be a friendly bunch, so it all looks encouraging. I've got one more place to look at tomorrow evening, which involves hanging round Winchester until 7pm but my mind is pretty much made up. With a bit of luck I'll be moving in early December :-)

Everything with the job is going well and with the arrival of a new desk tomorrow I should be settled into my own 'space' soon and set-up my new computer (TFT? Fingers crossed!). At least I won't have to keep other people's seats warm for them while they are on holiday anymore, nor live in the fear of breaking their PC's.

The weekend past? I went to see The Matrix 3 with Georgie on Friday. I was blown away by the stupid level of detail in the battle scenes but found the protracted fight sequences between Agent Smith & Neo a little tedious. Nevertheless, I'm sure it will be a sure candidate for a DVD Trilogy screening before long. Saturday afternoon I was an able linesman for the UniS Oldboys Reserves, and came on in the second half, but could do nothing to stop the opposition leveling after we had gained 4-2 lead. Disappointing. Sunday was a very lazy day... which was nice. Liverpools defeat to Utd was less satisfying though, but at least it wasn't a stuffing like Pompey gave Leeds, that put a perma-grin on a few faces of the guys at the office today.

Fetish night looms this Friday and the thinking caps are on for a suitable outfit, although Mr Special has a good idea for us both. I'm looking forward to my first FNO (or whatever its called these days) since graduation but it's a shame I won't have been paid by then. Denied.

Just finally before I get some shut-eye: I found the sight of some tree-huggers rather amusing today, who are pitched up at Winchester's newly extended Park & Ride scheme at St. Catherines. Just so long as they don't get an ideas about letting my tyres down, they can do what they like!

Everything is Good

Day One in the Big Bothered... Er, wrong place.

Everything went well today, traffic wasn't too bad: door-to-door in less than an hour via the Park+Ride. Some possibilities on the accommodation hunt, we'll see what happens with that.

It feels good to be stepping on the first step of the career ladder at last.

And So It Begins

The waiting is over and tomorrow morning I start my new job. Woo!

But I'm not looking forward to the drive up tomorrow morning. I'm accustomed to sailing past Winchester about 35 minutes after leaving Bournemouth en-route to Weybridge or Guildford. Somehow I doubt tomorrow's journey will be as efficient, although I'm aiming to leave Bournemouth at 0730 to avoid the worst of the traffic near me. I've been warned of nightmare queues to get into Winchester from the South though. If the approach looks at all dodgy, I may well experiment with the Park & Ride which is £1.50 a day, and better than the £2.80 charged in town. At £216 for a 4-week pass, the train is looking a very unlikely option, bearing in mind the 4-mile journey to Bournemouth Station from my house and the £3 return bus fare. Then again, 80 miles a day isn't exactly gonna work out much cheaper (if at all) in petrol.

Therefore tomorrow I will tentatively start looking for some rented accommodation in Winchester itself (I like the idea of walking to work). A place all to myself is probably out of the question financially (not to mention unsociable) so I'm considering house/flat shares or maybe even a room in a work-mate's house. A suitable postscript might be appended to my welcome email to my fellow workers tomorrow.

Time to see what Channel 4's 'The Theory of Everything' is all about.