november09words

A few words on the subject

November 2009

The collected

ill-informed drivel

Richard Asplin

A few words on a comedy of error messages

(part one)

16th Nov 2009

Hello playmates. Which is a disproportionately teasing and light-hearted way of beginning and in direct polar opposite to my fucking mood as I type this.

Christ, I am livid. I mean absolutely screaming, raging, sobbing, frickin’ furious. It’s a good thing you’re not here in my lounge, dearest reader, as no doubt you’d get a face full o’ spittin’ rage you most certainly don’t deserve. Also I’ve no food in, so that would be awkward.

Dairylea cheese slice? Well nibble on that whilst I explain.

Tonight has seen my explosive pique peak to the point where I became one of those muttery, talk-to-himself, come-away-from-him-children types on the Northern Line as my choler hit its heights and my volcanic rage splashed magma of hate all over Kennington.

Okay, so it starts two Saturday mornings ago. Picture it if you will. I’ve hauled m’self out of bed, hair a tangle, drooly pillow still stuck to my jaw, blinking and shuffling, bare feet on the cold lino. Adam n Joe are twittering away on Radio 6.

I decide, as it’s been a day or two, to go for a bracing run. Sweats on, trainers tied, stretchity stretch. (My wife is joining in, working up a sweat flicking through The Guide and eating a bacon sandwich, planning an afternoon of papers and Columbo).

All warmed and lithe, I go to my bag to fetch my tiny iPod nano (which I should call my “shuzzbut” it occurs to me now. If you don’t know why, then bugger off to PopBitch where adolescent twit-knuckles like you belong).

However, my iPod is not where it should be.

I begin to panic, checking and double checking every pocket, zip and flap. This annoys my wife so I check my bag instead. I check the clothes I wore last night on my way home. My way home from the pub. Drunk and woozy, careless and stumbling.

Bollocks. I’ve lost it.

So now I’m writhing with muttering stomping anger. Anger featuring

guilt, as it was a gift from a dear friend who couldn’t afford it.

Self loathing, at my dumb dumb dumb dumb self for not being more careful.

Then rising rage at the realisation I’m going to have to replace it, which I can’t afford to do.

Oh and finally, head smacking twatteryness that I’m now not going to go running.

I slam and bash about the flat for a bit taking it out on my darling wife because I’m cross and an idiot. Then it’s out of shorts into jeans and off to Tottenham Court Road, spitting venom and self-directed insults about spazzyness.

20mins later I’m clambering through the crowds onto the wide, expansive and expensive street of WC1. I find what I need – a shiny new 16gig nano – in only 1 store. And it’s pink. Very pink. “Hot” pink, possibly. Maybe “Barbie” pink. Porn pink. “Pinkity pink.”

Pink, in other words. Sigh. But it’s this or nothing so the chap sells me the podulator, plus what can only really be described as a black rubber condom for it. I wander to the Apple store on New Oxford Street and decide that I’ll treat m’self - with magic VISA card money I don’t have – to an arm strap (so I can jog and pretend to be a gay Nazi at the same time) and some nicer headphones.

So something like £160 lighter of pocket (I know, I know), I return home, stinking and sweaty from rushing about too much. Eager to get it loaded up, I plug it straight into my laptop.

Nope. It doesn’t like it. It’s a new nano, so I need to download the latest version of iTunes. Grrr. Steve Jobs. Steve Jobbies more like (he said cleverly).

So I attempt to download the latest version. 9.0, I think. It doesn’t want to do it. Error messages abound. Hmn.

I check.

Oh for fuck’s sake. ITunes 9.0 is not compatible with my operating system.

Now I’m very cross.

A brief rest from this rant to say a fast word about operating systems:

Bollocks.

Okay, perhaps more detail required there, Rich.

My attitude to technology can be summed up by the fact that I bought my laptop in 2001 after I sold my first book. It’s a smart grey Sony VAIO and set me back – well all right, I’ll tell you. It set me back £3000 or thereabouts. (I know, I know). An absurd amount of money to spend on a computer, even then. But see, I don’t come from a “techie” background. My eldest brother had a Sinclair ZX81, my dad spent a year’s overtime upgrading this to a flashy Vic 20 (an hour and a half before the launch of the Commodore 64). And that’s where home computing stopped for us Asplins.

Oh my little brother had himself a Sega Megadrive and I think a Playstation. But not I. My knowledge of all things micro-computer (as I’ve just realised I still call them, for heaven’s sake) stopped, as did much of my adolescence, with The Perils Of Willy. As it were.

I thought computers were like guitars, sideboards or sofas. You went out and got the most expensive one you could afford and then that was your computer for life.

For life, he says. Ha.

So where were we? Yes, my 2001 laptop which is the most expensive thing I’ve ever bought that I couldn’t also live in, has finally reached its obsolescence. (Some tech-types have informed me since that a laptop that lasts 8 years is a fucking miracle so I shouldn’t be too upset). Doesn’t help. I am upset.

So I’m sitting there, all stinky and cross, realising I have not only lost my dear iPod, my new iPod – the one I couldn’t afford – is now just the most expensive piece of pink tin garbage in the world as I can’t load anything on to it. And my beloved computer which has seen me through 3 novels and nearly a decade of typing “Jeff Golblum” into Google Images, is dead.

I ask the chaps at work if I can update my operating system? I mean a three grand laptop is still gonna be a good one, surely? Can’t I just download Windows Vista? Or the new Windows 7?

The chaps at work ask me for the model number of my machine. I provide it. They go online and check it’s “specs” (tech talk for "spectacles" or iGlasses, I believe).

After they’ve stopped laughing (the better part of a day and a half) they point out my aged machine on a website that isn’t called Jurassic Quark but bloody might as well be. It turns out my oh so marvellous 2001 machine has less than 1gig memory.

Yes, less than my iPod. Or less than 1 sixteenth of my iPod.

Someone smart yet achingly tedious once explained to me that technology moves so fast – in the sense of affordability, power and miniaturisation – that if the car industry had kept up, a Rolls Royce would fit on the head of a pin and cost 50pence. Which wouldn’t be much good, would it. Perhaps I’m missing the point.

So okay. Now I’m even crosser than before because this means I can’t update my computer to use iTunes 9.0, and therefore my new iPod. (This is becoming something of an “I know an old lady who swallowed a fly” story isn’t it. Seems extraordinary that it’s not until she eats a horse – a fucking horse – that her death becomes inevitable. Surely the poem should go:

“I know an old lady who swallowed a bird. She’s dead of course”

and only last three lines? I don’t know.

So I don’t do any exercise for the rest of the week, coming to angry terms as I am with the fact I’m being forced to update my home computer against my will.

I wish my story ended happily there. With a new machine and a sunny future.

But it doesn’t. It gets worse.

Much, much worse.

So until then,

Love to all

Richard x

A few words on a comedy of error messages

(part two)

18th Nov 2009

Back again.

A week later, I have calmed down. Not much, but enough. I’ve taken a deep breath, done a bit of research and asked a few people and I know what I need to do. So Saturday morning I haul myself up once more and head off to the Court of Tottenham Road.

An hour later I am £400 quid lighter of pocket, my VISA card is £400 quid heavier of debt and I’m struggling home with a shiny new machine. Didn’t want to spend that much, of course. However all the natty and neat l’il gadgety “web-books” that frankly would do the job for £180 don’t have disc drives. And as the whole fucking point of buying the frickin’ new machine in the first bloody place is so I can plug my new arseing iPod into it and download my cunting CD collection all over again (calm, Richard. Calm now) having a CD slot (or “optical drive” – sneery sneer sneer as they’re called) is a necessi-fucking-ty.

Breath out. Problem solved. I begin, in a manner my dear wife finds nothing short of infuriating, to download my CDs onto our new machine. And blimey is it fast. 20secs a song? Something like that. Like a cretinous dullard staring at the moon, I sit transfixed watching the little bar stutter across the top of the iTunes screen. Look how fast it did “Come Fly With Me!” Wow, watch it download “Miss Chatelaine!” Let’s load up the complete Richard Hawley and see how fast it does that! It’s like Scalextric for the Muji generation! This infuriates my wife as there is only so much wandering to the shelf, getting the disc, popping it in, setting it up, popping it out, clicking it back into the case and wandering back to the shelf in a maddening clickity-beepity-clackity-fiddly-twitchity-pace-ity-aaaaargh just sit the fuck down-nityness any woman just back from Pilates can be expected to cope with. Especially during Spooks.

But 4 days and nights later, it’s done. The whole lot. From A-ha to ZZ-Top. From “A” by Barenaked Ladies to “Zulu – the motion picture score.” The whole house sighs a sigh of “thank god that particularly obsessive mania-induced all-or-nothing exercise is over.”

I “sync” my pod (which sounds like washing a testicle but isn’t. Again, sadly for my wife) and eject…

The iPod screen flickers and dies.

What? I plug it back in. It lights up once more in that ugly sickly iPod light, like a dying fridge. Yep, there are all my songs, from “Ain’t I’m A Dog – Essential Columbia Rockabilly” to “Zoot Suit Riot.” Hmn. I unplug again and –

Black screen. What? I plug it in to the little plastic portable speaker dock thing in the bedroom next to the burnt out tea-lights and tissues. Nope. Nothing.

Oh for Christ’s sake. For Christitty-Christ’s sake-itude.

I am very angry. Again.

Monday. Lunch hour. Finds me in the oh so very white and clean and shiny and virginal and we’re-not-a-big-corporation-at-all-we-make-tech-out-of-faeries-and-raindrops-ness of the Apple Store in Kingston. A skinny twit in an Apple t-shirt, and a goatee (an iGoatee presumably) tests my duff pink tin piece of crap and pronounces it dead. “It won’t hold it’s memory,” he says in a dweeby yet unthreatening vegetarian manner. “Take it back to where you bought it.”

I stomp back to work. Actually stomp. A grey cloud above my head. Muttering like a Sunshine Bus daytripper.

I should wait ‘til Saturday to take it back. I know I should. I can’t possibly get up to Tottenham Court Road after work. And I don’t want to get there and find the shop shut. I’d go mental and start smashing up Heals, The Dominion and Paperchase.

(note: Of course, smashing up the Dominion would at least put a stop to “We Will Rock You.” Not that I’ve seen it. But I have – out of nowt but habit and a dull sense of completion – just read Ben Elton’s new book. “Meltdown.” It’s about the credit crunch. And doesn’t have any jokes in it. Again. Did he really stop being good after Popcorn? Sigh).

But I can’t wait until Saturday, because I’m too cross. This has become a thing, now. It pervades my every waking and sleeping moment. The duff Pod glares at me from my chest of drawers morning and night. And I’ve stopped exercising all together like an idiot.

So Thursday. I sling my trainees out at 4:45pm and sprint sweating to the train station. Onto the northbound train to Waterloo. Off and jogging the 35miles to the Northern Line connection (could these things be any further apart? I mean it’s not the same fucking station surely?) Sorry anyway. On to the Northern Line, rolling and rocking north to Tottenham Court Road. Off, up, out, across the chilly street. “We Will Rock You” towers above me like a big piece of gay crap. Into the store. Breathless. “I bought this last week after I lost my own one. It didn’t work with Windows 2000 so I went out and bought a new laptop with Windows 7 and downloaded the new iTunes and recorded all my CDs onto it which took bloody ages and synced them onto my pod – which sound a bit like I washed my… oh never mind. Anyhow, upshot is, it doesn’t work. Please can I please exchange it for another one please?”

The man looks at me.

At the iPod, back in it’s box with accompanying receipt.

He looks back at me.

“No” he says.

Join me tomorrow after I peel myself off the shop’s ceiling.

Until then,

Love to all

Richard x

A few words not on a comedy of errors today

19th Nov 2009

Hello again dearest. You’re looking tired. Are you sleeping? Really? And eating properly? Hmn, I thought so. Have a lemsip (or rather, as my father used to call them, “Lemsick”) and a sit down. And put the central heating up a notch. It’s a bit parky outside. Very parky infact. Michael Buble is singing with Billy Connolly and the late great Gene Kelly.

Before I complete the sorry and Lucas-esque tale of my iPod – a story to now be ever known as “The something-funny-here-about-technology Saga,” I need to flag up the 26th of November 2009 before I forget.

Now, it’s an important date. Especially if you’re Natasha Bedingfield (hip-hip hooray) or Tina Turner (hip-hip replacement!) as it’s their birthday time again. Also if you’ve been asked to bake a commemorative pink and yellow cake in the shape of some bollocks for the 33rd anniversary of Anarchy In The UK’s release, it’ll be the day to don a pinny. And likewise if you bet your brother you’d get a tattoo of Katherine Hepburn on your inner thigh if you made it to the 67th anniversary of Casablanca, then it’ll be time get the needle out.

But, more importantly than nearly none of those things, it’s the date of the next star-studded

Windsor Fire Station Bookswap.

"Certainly a literary event with a difference... I wouldn't be at all surprised if the Book Swap evening doesn't become the popular way to mix books, writers and the reading public." - Robert McCrum, Guardian

"This is exactly the kind of blog-linked, local event that publishers should be really encouraging, a sort of odd cross between a public reading and a book group." - Emma Townshend, Independent

As I mentioned oooooh twelve parsecs ago, I’ve been invited, along with author of “The Kilburn Social Club” – Robert Hudson. You pay a fiver, you get free cake, you get to add odd questions to the Question Jar, you get to hang out with booky types and – the main thing – is you bring an old book you want to swap for another one. See Scott Pack (the organizer) as a literary Noel Edmonds, you as the literary kids who phone in with an Etch-A-Sketch but wanting Rollerboots. I’ll be Maggie Philbin. Link to the venue here for details:

Link to Master Pack’s blog on the subject (November 09) here

Off the A332. Nearest rail Windsor & Eton Central (40mins from Paddington). Be grand to have you there. And, birthday aside, what the hell happened to Natasha Bedingfield? Christ she was annoying. She wrote some song about wanting to have a man’s babies or something, didn’t she? Oops, did I say it out loud? Something like that? Loathsome, wasn’t it.

A note of thanks for those who have christened my guest-book. The start of something beautiful I’m sure.*

That’s probably enough for today, isn’t it. A shameless plug I know, but thanks for your attention. I’ll finish the iPod story next time. My hackles are rising and my dander is slightly elevated just thinking about it, so I’m going to lie down in a dark room. But not a darkroom. There are hazardous liquids.

Anyhow, that’s that.

Love to all

*I’m not sure at all frankly. But it’s nice to have a two-way. As it were. (That’s enough, Mr Dalliard. Etc)

A few final words on a comedy of error messages

24th Nov 2009

So. You left me standing on Tottenham Court Road with a faulty pink iPod and a surly salesman refusing to exchange it. I know that was a while ago, but the lapse will give you a good idea of the strange, time-bending dreamlike falling sensation I got when faced with this refusal.

“Well, you will,” I said. Bit aggressive, I know. But I was gearing m’self up for a rumble.

“Yeahhh. Nahh. See, it’s after 14 days,” he says.

“Actually,” I say, pointing to the date on the reciept, “it isn’t. It’s 13 days.”

Man looks again at date. He makes a hurumphing noise.

“Yeahhh, just.”

At this point I quite literally rock back on my heels like I’m a Bash Street Kid. “Just?” I mean what in buggering fuck does that mean? Just? As I’m mouthing air like a dying fish, he continues.

“Yeahhh, you’ll have to contact Apple.”

“But it says here on the back of the receipt that I can return any faulty product to you for an exchange within 14 days. So that’s what I’d like to do please.”

“Yeahhh,” he says which is becoming something of a catchphrase by now. “On everything but Apple. See with them…” and he begins to tippity tap on his laptop. Oh didn’t I mention, he’s been distractedly typing into his laptop throughout this conversation. Nice chap. “…you gotta contact them direct. They deal with all the faulty products.”

I take a breath. A fairly deep one.

“But I bought it from you. From here.”

“Yeahhh, see I couldn’t even exchange it if I wanted to because I don’t have any in stock. You need to call Apple.”

So, the cut of his jib firmly measured and disliked, I figure out what’s going on here. He wants me to go away, call Apple, who will tell me to take it back to the store, by which time it will be Saturday. And day 15. At which point I will have to bugger off.

So I am forced to become the most irritating man in the world.

“Fine. Then I’ll call them now,” I say. And rather than leave, I fish out my mobile phone, lean on the counter like I’m ordering at the bar – fixed and not going nowhere - and dial the helpline number. Ha, I think to myself. Apple will tell me to return it to the shop and I’ll ‘ave him. I’ll bloody ‘ave him. I don’t know why I’ve turned into Michael Caine.

I speak to Apple. They apologise. They take my details. And they will mail me a new iPod within a week. Do I take the old one back to the store?

No.

Could I have done all this 2 weeks ago from the comfort of my armchair?

Yes.

Arse.

I gather up my stuff, headphones and receipts and packaging and coat in an embarrassed flurry. I kick over a display stand full of Dell laptops, causing them to smash on the floor loudly in shards of splintered plastic and glass causing £8000 worth of damage (but only in my head) and leave the shop, stomping and fuming and growling.

And now I can’t get on the train at Tottenham Court Road due to the platform being 5 deep with commuters. I wait for 2 more trains, raging and spitting and cursing. I squeeze on. The train terminates at Kennington. (One stop from my house). And I can’t get on the next Southbound train as the platform is 6 deep with commuters. I wait for the next one, screaming, writhing and frothing.

I can’t get in that one either.

Right, that’s it. (I have become a cross between Basil Fawlty and George Costanza's dad now) and I swim against the tide of travellers, fighting my way through to the exit. Fuck it. I’ll walk. It’ll take me half a bloody hour. But I can’t spend another fitting, squirming, crushed fucking minute on this fruitless journey. I'll get the lift up to street level and stomp angrily home.

I get to the station lift.

Out of Order.

At this point I actually do shout, out loud, causing people to turn around. I don't know what I shouted. Something clever and satirical like "Oh Jesus Christ!" I think. Anyway, I wake the dead with my Fee-Fi-Foe-Fum stamping up every fucking stair, bursting out onto Kennington Park Road, shrieking and muttering and reeling. I stomp all the way home and make angry tea.

Six days later, as promised, UPS drop a parcel off at my place of work. It has a nice Apple on the side of it. (Note, I'm still somehow in a bad mood and couldn't get a credit card between my bot-cheeks).

Anyway, I am relieved that the saga is now over, I take it to my desk and open it. I take out the invoice. And the fat booklet marked “Extended Warranty Agreement.” And then spend five minutes trying to work out why there’s nothing fucking else in the fucking envelope.

Deep breaths.

I wait til lunch (time to gather a mix of calm and wrath). I phone Apple.

“Yeahhh,” I say (well if you can’t beat ‘em). “I have a faulty iPod that I bought about 3 weeks ago and I phoned you six days ago and you said you would send me a new one within 5 days and it’s been 6 days and a parcel has just arrived and it’s an Extended Warranty Agreement, rather than a small pink iPod nano, so can you tell me what’s going on?”

Polite, y’see. I’ve worked on phones and I’ve worked in customer service. It does little good to be snipey or sarcastic.

“I am looking at your account. It says here you called 6 days ago and requested a replacement but what the person has done is not send you a replacement but sell you an extended warranty for £24.”

Now is the time to get snipey and sarcastic. I won’t go much further. Just to say that I used the phrases “oh for heaven’s sake,” and “is that what you’re saying?” and – the complainer’s favourite – “so where does that leave me?”

You might be pleased to know that, despite my gritted fury, I was able to say, “well now I’m getting a bit irate, which you at Apple would probably spell with a small ‘i’ and a capital R,” which I thought was pretty good, considering I had burst into flames out of frustration.

Anyhap, I spoke to a supervisor. She apologised. She said she’d sort it out. I slammed down the phone and tried to slow my heart rate, went back to work and shouted at my staff.

As promised, 4 days later, my card was refunded by £24, a new iPod arrived. Still pink. I synced it to my songs over the weekend. And on Saturday afternoon, I strapped it to my arm and went running - just as I had wnated to 3 sorry weeks before - and yes, looked as much like a gay nazi as I thought I would.

Life has returned to normal.

Well, as normal as it can in South London where – and I’ll leave you with this – the following exchange occurred while I was wandering to the co-op to pick up some basmati rice.

Set up. I’m walking down the street. Man walking towards me. A cyclist on the road trundles past.

Bloke approaching (to cyclist)

JULIE!

cyclist turns, acknowledges bloke

Cyclist

Awright?

Cyclist cycles on

Bloke (to me)

She’s a right slag bag.

Hn? Oh, really.

Bloke

She’d do anyone. You could probably ‘ave a go on ‘er if you like.

I’m all right, thank you.

Bloke

Suit ‘cherself

Bloke wanders off.

I buy some rice and go home. Who says no-one in London talks to each other?

Until next time

Love to all