Ah, Easter. The occasion once associated with Jesus and crucifixion and rebirth and etc., and now for the vast majority, another Hallmark date. I could witter on about crass commercialisation, but to be honest I’d be a complete hypocrite, ‘cos a) 16 years of a Catholic upbringing brought me to the conclusion that this whole religion malarkey is a bit woolly, isn’t it? and b) I got chocolate eggs and verily, they are good, calorific suicide be damned.

I took an extended holiday from work, so as well as the Friday/weekend/Monday, I’ve had the Thursday, and the forthcoming Tuesday off as well. And you know how many times I’ve thought about work? Once. Just now, laughing at the thought I get an extra lie-in tomorrow when the majority of people are back to the grind. So I’ve been to the cinema (Scary Movie 4, An American Haunting, The Dark - crap, good, average in that order), and may well go again tomorrow to see something that’s not horror or an atrocious attempt at parody of horror. I’ve also been out cycling; only into and around town, but by god, it killed me. I felt good for doing it, though. It’s been raining today, and as I’m a fair weather cyclist the bike has remained locked in the shed, and I’ve had a really lazy day and watched television and lounged around the house. I reckon some activity is in order tomorrow. After the lie-in, of course.

There’s been a terrible crash outside Valley Centertainment. I was cycling back from the cinema and there on Broughton Lane were 2 fire engines, 2 ambulances, a number of police cars and many personnel. A Rover 415 was crushed on the right hand side, and the windscreen was partially fragmented in a circular break. Paramedics had a man lying on a stretcher with a neck brace on, and they were tending to him. A second red car, too buckled for me to tell what make or model it was, lay on its right hand side. It was braced to prevent it from toppling any further, and firemen surrounded it and were inside it. Cutting tools were being brought in, and I assumed there must be someone still inside the red car, but it wasn’t possible to tell. I watched them work for a little while, then carried on home. It’ll probably pop up on the news later.

As I mentioned a few weeks back, my bike was stolen out of the garden shed. I put in an insurance claim, and whilst I waited to hear back from them, I decided to take part in the Cycle to Work Initiative run at work - get a cycle up to the value of £750, and pay it back, interest free, out of your gross salary each month over 36 months. I took a friend who knows much, much more about bicycles than me, and picked out a Dawes Sonoran. I signed off the CTWI contract, and I’m currently waiting to hear from the cycle shop so I can pick up the bike.

In the meantime, I hadn’t heard anything from the insurance company, so I called them up again. They apologised for the delay (admin error, naturally), and said they’d get their insurance replacement company to contact me. They told me their process rule was to replace the bicycle rather than pay off a monetary claim. The replacement company called me that same night, 2 days ago. I was offered a choice of bikes, subject to an excess, and ended up with a Dawes Mojave at a cost of £30 to me. It arrived today and oh my, it’s nice. It’s very nice indeed. The plan is to sell it on. I rode it down to the police station to get it registered, and then to Homebase to pick up several very sturdy locks for it. Compared to my old mountain bike, it’s a dream to ride. The Sonoran I’m waiting on is of an even higher spec, so I can’t wait to get my hands on it.

Here at work, I’ve been going through written post it note comments made by staff in an open forum about improvements for the future. There’s the wide spread of comments and ideas you’d expect in a forum like that, and I’ve been collating them. I was confused and bemused to find a comment that simply said ‘Chelsea or Wigan!?’. I read it out to my office colleague, commenting that some football fan had obviously gotten bored during the forum. Ah, he said, no, that one’s very clever, I like that. He said that in the football Premiership league tables Chelsea were top of the board, spending lots and doing really well, whilst Wigan were further down, just spending average amounts and doing fairly well but weren’t amazing.
He’s right, that is a clever one, but I bet in 90% of cases it’d take a bloke to figure out what that one meant!

Some places really try it on. A while back, I got pounced on in Meadowhall to enter a competition to win a sports car. I don’t drive, couldn’t afford to insure a flashy sports car even if I did, and would be too scared to drive it anyway for fear of crashing it within two seconds. Nevertheless, because I’m a pushover I entered the competition, and in doing so signed my immortal soul away to Next Group PLC. When I die I’ll be doomed to haunt sale clothing racks and changing rooms for eternity, and they’re scary enough places as it is.

A couple of weeks later, a home and clothing Next catalogue of brick like proportions was delivered to the house. Only thing is, I wasn’t in, so they left a calling card to say they’d left it in my paper recycling bin. Yeah, I saw the funny too. Should have left the thing there. Today I got an invoice through the post from Next saying I owed them £3.50 for the catalogue. I was on the phone to their customer service department within 30 seconds, telling them in no uncertain terms that I hadn’t asked for any catalogue, and even if I had, I certainly wouldn’t have agreed to pay £3.50 for it. To their credit, they were apologetic and agreed to scrub the cost from the invoice. I also asked them to remove me from their mailing list and close any accounts they’d set up without my permission. Of course, having had experience in these things before, I’m sure it’ll only be a matter of time before they send me something else in the post and I have to contact them again to correct their ‘database error’.