Lunch was a bit of a misnomer today. We set off at 12:30pm with the express interest of going to The Beehive, which is a pub just down the road from the workplace. So we gathered our coats and Bruno Fountain drove down there. This is when it all started to go wrong.

When we got to the pub, there were no parking spaces. This irked all of us four, so Bruno parked in an ungainly "non-space" in front of a van. The reasoning for this? It would be easier to spot people dressed in van attire, at which point Bruno could move his vehicle to a more comely spot. I think you will agree that this was the best course of action, given the limited resources that we had at our disposal.

So we went inside and got to the bar. There were a great many people from work waiting to be served. These are people that we do not tend to hang around with on a day-to-day basis, so we exchanged basic platitudes and carried on with our waiting. Well, we must have been there for ten minutes, and the queue was showing no sign of easing up. I put this down to a combination of slow service and awkward customers. There, I said it. So with all of us four suitably annoyed, we decided to leave in search of greener pastures.

When we set off again, Bruno noticed that he did not have enough petrol to transport us far afield. Indeed, I can concur that the needle was almost at zero. We delegated that we would go to the fish n' chip shop whilst Bruno filled up his car. This seemed like a good idea, so we did this. We all ordered a cheeseburger with chips. Four of them, that is, not just one to share between us. It took a while, but once we received our goods we went back to work and ate in the canteen.

Now then, as I tucked into my cheeseburger and chips, I experienced a distinctly underwhelming emotion. The food was basically rubbish, the chips tasted like sawdust and the burger was messy. It brought to mind that video of David Hasselhoff eating a burger off the floor and mumbling "I'm making a mess". I wasn't impressed with the level of mess. This is another rhyme. Once it was eaten I mused "That was pretty awful".

Not even the can of Cherry Tango could save it from the depths of food purgatory.

Had a bit of a windfall at work earlier. Why? Here's why.

Last week one of my colleagues in another department decided to have a "friendly bet" between a handful of people regarding the UEFA Champions League matches that were to be played on Wednesday evening. The bet was to guess how many fouls and corners would be awarded in all four matches. My guess was 98, but I was way off. The correct number was 147. The guy who started the bet had won, very well played.

So on Friday the same man decided to hold another "friendly bet", this time on the Saturday matches involving Premier League, Championship, Scottish Premier League and Scottish Division One games. The bet was to guess how many goals were scored in all matches for these leagues. I went for 68, just because it sounded good to me. There were 7 other people involved, which would have brought in the princely sum of seven English drachma. Nevertheless, I got the number spot on. Hit the nail on the head, I did. 68 of the buggers went into the nets up and down the United Kingdom. Yeah, cough up fella.

So this leads me to the weekend that just was.

Friday night was quite alright (it's a rhyme). It'll be alright on Friday night. I went to play some pool and did OK, won a few, lost a few, had a few drinks. "Few" was the featured word in today's sentence. Then we went for a curry. I tried my hand at a meat samosa, then onwards and upwards to Chicken Tikka Masala and Eggs Fried Rice (I say "Eggs" because that's how it is spelt on the menu at the Curry Garden in Redhill). I ordered the Eggs Fried Rice in exactly the same way as it is written. This garnered little response from the waiter, but significant responses from my fellow eaters. Usually I only try "Eggs" Fried Rice at the Chinese restaurants of England, The Year Of Our Lord, but I thought I'd change things up a bit in the Indian restaurants of our great nation. As a result, the "Eggs" Fried Rice was very tasty. They have also spelt "Almond Powder" incorrectly: they put "Almond Power", which sounds like a pro-nut pop group. The lesser-known beneficial properties of almonds.

After the curry I went to The Sun in Redhill. It was proper packed bruv. It was also filled with clones. Imagine "Multiplicity" crossed with "Grange Hill" and you'll be halfway there. Everyone looked the same. The blokes were all meat-heads with fashionable hair, and the girls were all wearing short shorts and leopard print tops. It was like I had died and ended up in the 80's. Again.

So we stayed in The Sun until closing time. After everyone had cleared off to Liquid & Envy we had the place to ourselves. I was holding in a massive dump and large amounts of methane gas, which I chose to expel in strategic locations. At one point I was pretending to grab a drinks menu from a distant table, just so I could blow off. Unfortunately as I tried to break wind it felt spicy, so I sucked it back in, fearful that perhaps more than gas would reveal itself. In not so many words, I thought I was going to soil myself. This is why I retreated the spicy guest back into my bowels. Whew, that was a close one.

At lunchtime we made a little trip, Steve and I, to purchase some speaker cable for his stereo system.

First of all we went to his house, checked out the situation there. Once we were happy that we knew what we would be getting, we set off for Richer Sounds. We bought the cable easily enough. Then we went to a newsagents where I bought a drink. Then it was back to work for us.

I proposed a rota that we should stick to, please find it below, along with notes:

They've only bloody gone and norsed it up, haven't they? Came in early yesterday morning expecting to crack on with my work and knock out a good solid performance during my overtime session, but I was met with a revamped PC and a couple of sheets of technological notes to support. What happened was this:

The IT service department decided to update our computers to the latest "European Image". I'm not sure exactly why they wanted to do this, but now that it's been done I can't access half of the stuff that I would normally have been able to get my grubby mitts on. All this means that I have been professionally castrated, unable to carry out my normal job role. This has left a sour taste in my mouth, and don't let there be any mistake about it. Everything was working so well, why did they have to go and fiddle around with it?

The first thing I noticed was a rather horrible new desktop background. I quickly changed this because it is appalling. And also it was painful trying to read white fonts on a white background. After this, I saw that all my old desktop items had been done away with. This angered me, so I hopped on the bad foot and did the good thing. Sorted.

Then the printer drivers were all messed up, so I fixed that. Job's a good 'un. I also re-organised all my quickstart icons and the like, but it's still not to my satisfaction. You could say that I spent the entire morning session - running up to lunch - undoing all the hard work that the IT department had put into upgrading my PC. I didn't get anything else done.

I also sorted out problems with other people's computers. I should be getting paid more for all this IT support. It's really gotten my goat, as you can tell.

Here are a few things to update you on. Step in time, sunshine.

The Iron Men

I've created a new blog to deal with The Iron Man competition. Please see it. It should clear up any concerns that you may be harbouring. It is here: http://theironmen.blog.co.uk. Pictures aplenty, sailor.

Squash

Played a bit of squash on Monday night. I ran across the court to return the ball, as I sliced it into the opposite corner I took my eye off my course and collided with the wall. I put my left hand out in order to cushion the blow but my arm locked into position, it didn't collapse like I had planned. The result? A severely sprained wrist. My hand went numb for a good hour or so. Nerve damage: The nation's unseen killer. Upon trying to sleep that night, every time I drifted off and moved in my sleep, the pain woke me up. It was awful.

The second downside to this injury is that I had to wrap it up in a bandage whilst at work. Cue everyone saying "I told you about wanking too much...", and other such remarks. I heard this upwards of 40 times just in one day, that's at least once every 11.25 seconds. My reply to each and every remark was "I'm right handed". This tended to shut them up, hopefully making them feel a bit weird. I am currently waiting for Jay to come into work so that I can request his assistance in re-wrapping the wrist.

I will not let this injury put me off. I'm playing again tonight with Marc Haridimou. He's not played before so I'm going to teach him the rules in preparation for the Iron Man event.

Hair

My hair is getting quite long now. I have something of a mullet trickling down my neck, but I don't care. With great power comes great responsibility.

Shaving

Yesterday, one of my immediate colleagues suggested that we have a competition to see who can grow the most facial hair in a week. We are going to do this next week, shaving on the Monday morning and announcing the winner on Friday afternoon. This suits me down to the ground. He says he wants to prove his manliness by attaining the rugged look, but secretly I think he just wants to stroke my face at the end of the week.

Sharks

Yesterday evening I watched an episode of "Planet Earth" called "Shallow Seas". I watched the Blu-Ray version on Patrick Viera, the HDTV of heavenliness. I put this on with the express interest of watching the scene where a Great White Shark attacks a seal. Once the scene was over I switched it off and went on a Wikipedia quest to learn some more shark facts. Two hours later and it was 11pm and time for bed.