We’ve all been affected by the events of the past few weeks. Well, some people have been affected in big ways, like only affording two lots of ice cream a day instead of three. And of course don’t forget, we the taxpayers are entitled to go to the banks shareholders meetings and have votes.

You have no idea how tempting that is, seeing as I’m not too far from Canary Wharf, home of the major banks in the UK, and ask to see the chairman of that bank, and wonder what value we are getting for my tax money, and perhaps call a vote of confidence or seven to p**s them all off.

Given the state of the shares on the stock exchange, here is some sound financial advice for those still wanting spend their money on the lottery:

But what if you bought £1000 worth of Tennent’s Lager one year ago, drank it all, then took the empty cans to an aluminium re-cycling plant? You would get £214.

So based on the above statistics the best current investment advice is to drink heavily and re-cycle. Sound words to live by, I’m going to start right now.

So after all the hoopla over the wedding over with now, and the nice fact that the Lord of Leisure has returned from the bout of work coupled with Bangalore belly sickness, let’s remind ourselves of some of the events that have been occurring. After all, there have been many things making people cry, and in a strange sort of way, it’s because some bastard in a suit has become the school bully and stolen their lunch money.

The Credit Crunch

Yes, that lovely topical subject, which has literally given all the bankers in the world brown trousers as they hope mummy doesn’t take their toys away. This week of course, we have seen the politicians getting the cheque book out again to bail out more financial f-ups in a vain attempt to get people to start doing the same thing all over again.

The 700 billion dollar pot which is still being decided at the time of writing, as to whether or not to give out, will effectively give over more control of the fund to the US government in terms of assets etc, while safe guarding, err, something.

Europe of course, not to be out done by those pesky yankies, are also trying to conjure up money from thin air. It’s not working because naturally everyone in Europe hates each other, but bless them for trying all the same.

The main problem is: I think it’s not going to solve anything now and what is comes down to is that there is no longer any confidence in the so-called experts who created this mess in the first place, and therefore people are not going to want to place their money in their hands again anytime soon.

People won’t invest, preferring to keep what they have, more money will be insured by the governing bodies of the world, and all the while everything will remain stagnant. Prices will remain high, people do less, and well I guess we will all continue to blame everyone for all of it.

In the meantime, I’ll be at home, playing with myself in various illegal ways as there is nothing I can actually do about any of this, so as long I get to stuff my face full of dirty meat and cider, as far as the Lord of Leisure would be concerned, it’s all good! Only if our way of life is truly threatened, will we rise up. Right now, it isn’t.

Peter Mandelson

Yes, that rat-faced lying t**t is back in office, after our beloved prime minister couldn’t take it anymore and said “I bent over the desk, now take me you manly brute.” Unfortunately I can only think of the undead in this case, simply put, they refuse to stay down, even when they have been killed off more than once for naughty behaviour, just like good old Peter here.

Mind you, this has been more showing up of the whole political system as a whole, forget what you actually did wrong before and how many costly mistakes you make, know the right people and you can do anything you want. The electorate really don’t matter any more except for election time, and who knows when that will be at this rate?

It is hardly surprising nowadays that people have so little faith in what a lot of people are doing who are in power, much in the same vain as above about the whole credit crunch thing.

Don’t you just love politics when it’s shown up for the overpaid boy’s club it actually is?

The Hadron Colander

Remember that great big experiment to find the god thing, where the main scientist thought that if anyone thought the machine would destroy the world, that they were a t**t? Remember the huge rant I had about the entire project, and had the feeling that the experts had no idea what they were doing?

Well, for now, we’ve had a reprieve from the possible abyss of the black hole, thanks to human engineering failing once again!

Yep, the big round thing broke down, and despite calling out the AA to get towed to the nearest garage, the problem seems to be more profound than they thought, and after all the maintenance etc, it won’t be back on until April next year, by which time, they will all be bored, and start wondering why men’s testicles look like the creature from the blue lagoon.

My right foot

And finally, to round off this epic news report, it appears my right foot has gone a bit bad, in terms it dries up and cracks. Anyone got any suggestions on how to fix it? I’ve been rubbing it vigorously but that just gives me dodgy looks on the London Underground.

Has anyone else come across the issue of this little malware being entered on their own sites?

“http://life-tablets.cn/tds/index.php”

basically it’s part of a line of code that gets written to read only files that have index.php, and hell they’ve even just written them randomly around directories on the server. I’ve been trying to keep this under control, even to the point of making the index.php files read-only to all, and still those files get altered.

What I want to know is:

How? and where in China are this f*kers operating from?

This is a genuine appeal, please can someone shed some light on how these people are able to get read-only files re-written?

During the last post about the trip to Estonia and the wedding with various tales of joy and vomiting, you may have noticed a distinct lack of pictures from the momentous occasion.

This mainly due to the wonderful fact that so many people had cameras that it was like a Japanese photographers’ convention. So after about 5 minutes, it seemed pretty pointless to take further photos as I’m pretty sure pictures from everyone else’s cameras would fill up enough for one of those special DVDs with multiple angles, director’s commentary and possible one of those Easter eggs containing a dog humping a toilet.

So if you are truly interested in seeing what went on in picture form, probably until the official account comes out in all good bookstores, why not visit the official wedding web site?

Yes, I can’t believe there is one either.

http://www.steveandkristi.co.uk/photo.php

Enjoy!

Well here we are on day 3 in the icy wasteland formally known as Estonia and once again our intrepid hero is unable to move due to vast consumption of alcohol the night before. Two days in a row and still catching up with sleep from the Wednesday before does take it’s toll on the body and it appears that any movement in the upward direction causes pain.

This general feeling of woe lasted till around 12, when the pain went away just enough to stand up straight, and is instead replaced with a feeling of déjà vu.

“Here we go again.”

And today it was all the difference to move the fat ass out of bed, because today, on the Saturday, Steve and Kristi were getting married, a once (or multiple times, depending on how bad you are at the whole commitment thing) in a lifetime event. There wasn’t much on TV, so why not go?

We ventured onto a handy coach that had been laid out for us to sleep on, or indeed to remark on the Estonian landscape. Lots of people were there, the best man, the families, some other people who I had no idea who they were. And the distinct feeling that we were being driven to the middle of the countryside to be shot like what happened to those chaps in the Great Escape.

Not only that but the sad fact you tend to draw is that Half of Estonia is being rebuilt while the other half is falling to bits. Granted that kind of analysis is cruel to make considering how little of the country I actually had seen, but alas, that’s all I can truly say about it all. And on the plus side, we made it to the country manor without getting shot.

The place where it all took place was a grand place, set by a lake type thing, with lots of trees, paths, it was the kind of place you would envisage Mr Darcy would try to get various ladies knickers off in a ruggish yet long-winded fashion. When we arrived, the bride and groom were busy having their picture taken in the forest, possibly for the police to use as evidence in case the murder didn’t…err….probably shouldn’t have said anything.

We all meandered into the main area where the marriage would take place. It was all done out beautifully, with a three piece, I suppose you say band, playing this grand music out, sort making sure you knew what type of occasion it was.

And then after a while, in which Darren was asked to make sure they hadn’t run away, the happy couple came through, and they both looked a sight. I suppose for the first time, it had actually brought it all home what this was all about. Two people who were going to show this group of people how much they loved each other. It was such a great thing and frankly it was a honour to actually not be ejected from such an event.

Despite the fact no-one knew if to stand up or sit down and therefore there was this odd Mexican wave type thing going before the ceremony started.

I suppose many people would be able to describe weddings in more grand detail, to remark on the grand occasion with more flare, better grammar and perhaps giving this more gravitas than the words here give. But perhaps in the words of this simple man, who has trouble even admitting he has personal habits which make monkeys blush, just the sheer feeling of happiness for both my friends, it was just overwhelming, and you really couldn’t help but smile all the way through.

And then after the dual language ceremony was over, the deed was done. And now the pictures begin!!

Here they were just after, and quite right too, look, that’s what happy people look like!!

And Steve’s family were quite chuffed too…

After being jolly happy, and wishing the happy couple happy birthday due to a lack of actually thinking of anything else, we all made our way outside for many photos, laughing at various things, and at one point looking either scared or something, I wasn’t quite sure. But there we all were, and actually this process did go on for a fair while, so why not have a look for yourself?

Here is a photo of all the Estonian people who were there, or and Steve’s in the picture, well I suppose he had to be considering he was the groom. The throwing of the flowery thing was interesting; you never knew Kristi had such a strong throw.

After all this, we wandered off down a beaten gravel, at which point you did wonder if this was when we were shot, but no. You see in Estonian tradition, they plant a tree to spread roots of the family.

This was also the first time we saw Steve try to do some gardening….

It was also when you discovered why they don’t have a garden in Shrewsbury.

After 17 years of filling in the hole with dirt, the happy couple went up to the nearby bridge and threw in a stone with some writing on, to signify something I forget now. And then after watching Kristi come down the steep embankment in heels, we went back to the house, where the fun went further. (I’m going to skip a part of musical names and get to the good stuff)

You see, it also turns out that there are roles which have to be filled for the wedding. The first, is called a Stamp, and this stamp is a lady who kisses everyone at the wedding, without predudice. Nice. And things became even better for me, because I was the guy who got to judge which lady was the best kisser and who would be suited to the role.

Somebody pinch me.

Yep, the picture needed to be slightly bigger here, such is the level of joy….

And after the lady was chosen, the next role was of security. The bride during the celebration often gets stolen by naughty people who then ransom her back to the groom for something, gold, porn mags, bits of lint, whatever they feel like. Guess who was nominated for that? And having failed miserably at the tasks to decide who should be security, I along with a estonian man, whose name escapes me, became security for Kristi.

It wasn’t pretty.

Other roles included a timekeeper, who shouted out what time it was to do things and a bloke who had to wave a flag around whenever there was something to celebrate, like the bride going missing. The event of which occurred far too many times to the point where I didn’t care, and just danced instead. Oh, there was someone whose role was to make sure people danced, which wasn’t hard actually. Everyone was up for a good time.

Every so often, the Estonians shouted something to make the bride and groom kiss, and it sounded like something else, so I joined in shouting “Ebay, Ebay”. Buggered if I knew what the words actually were. There were things about how much we knew about the couple, a poem type thing to the couple toasting them or something, (There was mention of the groom’s manhood in the first draft, but this was cut because the rest of the table didn’t want it) and there were many toasts, all drunken.

Kristi was stolen a couple more times, all times were ignored, there were nice fireworks which Steve set off, well lit, then ran away from, the cutting of the cake, Steve looking up women’s dresses, more dancing, in fact there were so many fantastic memories that I’m tempted to keep a lot of it all to myself, so at certain points I have a jolly good snigger, and no one else will know.

And in fact perhaps that is the perfect point to leave the party. After such a great day, something which was truly awesome, all this will serve as a reminder that in Eastern Europe, one of the best days two people would have in the couple of people they actually knew was had, and well, who am I to spoil it all out here?

A blogger actually, but we’ll skip that this time.

You know when you get one of those times where possibly your body had been assaulted and perhaps not in a good way, where even the laws of gravity are not on your side. This was one of those times.

Having gone to bed with a mixture of sleep deprivation, foreign booze and a cuddly toy, I was taken into a world of darkness, and would remain there if only for the melodic ringing of the blackberry at my bedside, informing me that either I was entitled to a special ultra deluxe phone package with 4756746773458734583458345 minutes of free texting for the cheap price of £450 a year plus the body part of your choice or someone wanted to talk to me who was in Estonia.

The ordeal of trying to open your eyes was more traumatic than trying to evade capture by the student people on the streets of London. The pain, the suffering, all that had been before was nothing compared to the sheer strain of letting a glimmer of daylight piece the darkness that had consumed me.

Pressed on I did, until one full eye was open, and I found after a few seconds that I could read again too. It was Steve, just wondering if we could meet up at 11, a mere hour from the phone call. You would have possibly had a safer bet on the plumber not over charging for that bit of bent pipe which costs 50p from the Plumb Center.

But never one to lie down for long, I raised my head aganist my better judgement and made my way out of the sleeping world into the waking one. Not a clever thing to do but there we are.

Once I made it out of the hotel into the cool winter air, things were slightly better. Maybe the cold had numbed the pain coursing through my head…

Once we three had met up in the old town, (Steve, Darren who is Steve’s brother and myself, not the three witches.) it was just enough time to wander around some of the newer parts of Taliann, to see all that we could see. And our epic trek into the unknown, lead us down several streets, mainly as Steve had no real idea where we were.

And then, we needed to buy plates.

So here we are in the epic widerness of estonia, doing what other middle class people do, look for funky plates. Now that’s a story to tell your grandkids…What? OK, how would you describe the experience, like the Disney world adverts where the art of buying plates is magical?

After that epic journey to mount till to pay for said plates, with enough useless banter along the way to annoy Steve such as “I wouldn’t pay that much” and “What’s that smell?” with my favourite being “They’re all bloody white!”, Steve and Darren had to go off to a family outing, in which the two families would either bond firmly or kill each other in the attempt at what was only described afterwards as:

a big place with empty old buildings.

Forgive me if I didn’t orgasm at hearing this.

As for myself, the Lord of Leisure, the afternoon was mine. So what’s the best thing to do? Write up the Blog and then collapse to an Episode of “Have I got News for you?” (The one with Brian Blessed in). Basically, if you go for a heavy drinking session, make sure it’s not at a bar with your favourite show on, in a different language.

A few hours later, the alcohol filled sleepiness now fully gone, the next fun packed adventure brought us to the German eatery known as…err…thingy mcbambrook or something, I can’t remember I’ve slept since then. Let’s have a picture to remind ourselves;

Ok, that picture doesn’t really help matters in terms of identifying where we were at the time, but perhaps it will convey the level of joy that all were having at the time.

No?

Ok, let’s go into detail about the event which will drive you to force a bolt through your cheeks to make the pain go away…Now, during the event the table filled with literally people, required a master, one who would speak for us all, to order the drinks, and he (for it had to be a man) was the single point of contact if anyone had complaints, or required medical attention.

That man was Steve.

I’m not even touching that with a barge pole, so let’s move onto the more interesting fact that we find out on this evening that if the happy couple were to give birth to a boy, he would not be called Luke. The reason was, that Steve wouldn’t get to say “Luke I am your father” then wee himself laughing. Shame really, I’d have a good un…

Everyone ate too much, talked so much about things of the day, all the while, this minstrel band of very attractive ladies who played ye olde type ofe musice, which required every word of the sentence to have the letter e attached. It was the done thing back in those days. But they were very good, and all the while it was only polite to overly clap. A man wanted to dance on the tables, but wanted to ask beforehand, oh and before anyone gets the wrong end of the stick, it was one of the best evenings at a resturante I’d ever had.

The food was beyond excellent, and with all the beer and pear cider, it was way beyond anything I had before and frankly it’s very tempting to go back just for the one meal back there!

Right let’s all pile outside for a picture:

Now, you would think that after one night on the razz, with a fair amount of food and beer mixed with cider in the belly, that would be the ideal time to go back to the hotel, to be fresh for the big day. Well, like the contents of a baby’s nappy, you know that’s wrong. The Lord of Leisure with the Best Man went and drank 2 more litres of German beer at the bar from the night before, where it appeared there were two blokes with guitar who wanted to get things going slowly or badly, bugger knows at this point, and at around 3ish, maybe, I had wandered past the heavy metal bar that had decided to spring up outside the hotel and collapsed into bed, all without wanting a wee all the way home.

GREAT SUCCESS.

Sorry dear campers, I’ve been very busy this week with work and then the last few days, I have also been ill, leading to the point of redecorating Popular Doclkalnds Light Railway Station Platform 3 with the contents of my stomach.

I’m slowly getting better and more than likely, the chaos will continue post haste.

One thing’s for sure, when you get Bangalore Belly, you really do get it!

One of the best things of wandering around in another country is taking things the wrong way, so why not keep up that tradition right now?

Upon seeing this sign, you kind of wondered if that execution tape was real, and they did actualy kill him in Iraq….

And here it appears Estonia has a drugs problem, and they are in need of people to help clean up….

After the wonderful night in the Airport, at 4:45am, I was finally able to check-in and move one step closer to getting away from the damned place which forced the perpetual state of drifting in and out of consciousness with questionable amounts of caffeine and Wallace and Gromit saving the day against the were-rabbit.

The entire process was in fact speedy and painless in terms of checking in, however when it came to going through security, that took far longer.

As mentioned on the previous post, where I was still awake at 2:25 in the morning, I had been chatting to some of the staff onsite at Stanstead and they were telling us of the expensive operation they now had in place in order to deal with the less savoury individuals of the world.

Now I had the chance to experience this first hand, having not been abroad since the trip to Prague some months ago, and Liverpool Airport had next to none of these measures in place.

Even at 5am in the morning, the queues were swelling.

You see, now because they can’t trust anything you have on your person, you have to take it all off. Coats, shoes, belts and in one case with a Frenchman, his trousers. It’s not a nice slight seeing a man walk through a metal detector in his underpants.

Your laptops, if you were lucky enough to have one to kill the boredom of cheap flights to various places, had to be out of their cases and placed separately to go through the special scanning equipment.

Any liquid you had on your person must be placed in clear plastic bags, and then these are randomly tested to ensure you have no napalm where you assured the security staff, it’s just Coke gone slightly off. Some of the lucky few, I have no doubt went to a private room to have themselves searched by a big burly woman called Dave.

After a short period of time enjoying that (not the search…), only the departure lounge was the barrier to freedom. And all the shops are a barrier to keeping hold of your money. If you love the toilet water they sell in those silly bottles, you are in for the time of your life. Beer was consumed en masse, expensive cameras were sold by the bucket full, and the flush in the toilets was broken.

So the whole airport experience while being at Stanstead can be summed up as: Crap.

But enough of that debauchery, let’s move onto while I’m typing here instead of getting overly drunk at the Bavarian bar.

The flight was short and actually quite smooth, smoothest flight I had in quite a long time, and this was a worthy point of interest as I hate flying, just the thought that you’re a few miles up in the air with galleons of explosive fuel and the only way is back down.

Flying is the safest form of travel according to various people and the news, but all the while you are smiling and being fine, ear-raping the person next to you, the only though going through your head is: We’re going to die. It might be safe, but when it goes wrong, it goes very wrong.

And after the flight, that’s when we all met up for the first time, Steve along with two of the bridesmaids had met up with us at the airport to escort us around, get used to the place and also for free chocolate which is a welcome bonus.

The first thing which hit you when leaving the airport is: F**k me, it’s cold. It’s only late September and you would expect things to start cooling a bit but not much. But no, as it stands, it’s warmer back in London. And here’s me with my bathing suit.

Secondly, the resemblance to the architecture in Prague is uncanny, just have a look at the picture of the typical street here:

I swear it’s the same and perhaps it’s what it is like in quite a lot of the eastern European countries like scrovonia, volvonia and all the others (believe it or not at least one of those names came up during a tour of the old town) ending in nia.

Now, after being up for close to 36 hours, you would think it would be a excellent idea to stay in the overly nice Hotel room with some free Wi-Fi and just watch dirty movies from the internet, but nope, that was clearly out of the question as there was a tour scheduled by our Butlins Holiday representative, Steve.

And here is a group picture of everyone on the tour:

Err, ok, it’s not the best group photo you ever expect to see, but it’s as close as I’ve got so far. And as for telling you who some of the people are in the photos, I keep forgetting everyone’s names, I know some people are there from back up Telford, some are Steve’s family and the rest….bugger knows.

The tour guide was the last bridesmaid who as part of school learning, had to give a tour of the town to her teachers and therefore was in a good position to tell all about how many times Estonia has been occupied over the years, by Germans a number of times, then Russians, then some other naughty people, then Russians again or something then finally they are free to do what they want, any old time.

Until someone else comes along.

The tour went through more of the old town, and so did the wealth of knowledge we were gaining every second. Estonians invented marzipan and torture hence why they have museums dedicated to both which is nice, and also the KGB building now lies in ruins, but the basement is still fully populated. Think about that one, and then you’ll need a shower….

We stopped for a cup of tea at a nice place up a cobbled hill, and wandered around to what was initially mistaken for a mini kremlin, just in a different colour:

Turns out it was a church, and speaking of churches, there are many places of worships though it appears these buildings are as packed as the other places of worships, those places are commonly known as “Strip Clubs” or in Estonian: Eroticaa Show.

You see, unbeknownst to the Lord of Leisure, it appears Estonia has become the latest place in Europe to become Club 18-30 and about to be married, hence why many Stag and Hen parties come here. And what do they want when on a stag doo, of course, it’s naked people and booze.

If I have the need to watch bouncy boobs, all I have to do is literally walk downstairs, as there is a strip joint built under the hotel where I’m currently staying.

I can only imagine the jealously of certain people back home right now…. yes you know who you are.

We ended with a litre of booze and some food at a German bar where there were great numbers of staff bored out of their skulls, women dressed as wenches with enormous cleavage and men who were feeling huge shame at wearing lederhosen.

After everyone talked about what was going on etc, we parted ways, Steve and his brother Darren was off for a meal with the parents while everyone else went home.

Everyone except me.

I went to another bar and got drunk on more beer while watching Stargate SG-1 in Finnish with Estonian subtitles. Being the geek I am, I even knew all the way through what was going on, and was explaining to my new best friend what it was all about as he hadn’t seen it before. And we even discussed about being a DJ, which was bizarre but hey ho, it’s a living.

And after collapsing in the hotel room, overly tired and drunk, thus ended the first day out in Europe, one can only wonder what’s next…

As I write this, it’s 2:25am on a brisk Thursday morning, and all the while every creature on the earth is stirring if the noise is anything to be believed. I’ve even got to the point where I think the cleaner man is enjoying going up and down the check-out where everyone is trying to sleep, just because he’s stuck on the crappy night shift.

I’ve had to reside myself to the fact that there is not going to be much sleep between now and the now agonising flight out to the forbidden planet, or whereever it is, I’ve forgotten at this point. I suppose it comes from a combination of sleep depravation which has all sorts of funny side effects which come into play at some point, like getting twitchy and hearing more voices than usual.

To combat this, I’ve taken refuge in the Costa Coffee place next to the building site they seem to have errected in the middle of the check-in area, which is kind of daft considering it also appears the workmen are enjoying themselves at this time of the day too.

It was also interesting to chat to a couple of the airport staff, as they brought up the issue of liquids still being disallowed on all flights, in case we have the thoughts “I can’t take any more, goodbye cruel world!!” and detonate the handy liquid bomb we just happened to carry at the time.

Millions of pounds they say it costs, and it will never be changed owing to the fact that the shoe bomber of yesteryear, Richard Reed’s own device was clear liquid, and was not really distingishable from water. Eep. This does kind of beg the question: Would these measures really stop someone who was determined, seeing as it was easy to mix in with something else?

Of course time will tell on that score.

Ah well, those matters are for another time, for now, let’s keep back the wave of tiredness with an overpriced and under tasty coffee drink. Take it easy campers, and sweet dreams.