Chip Dale's A Tart

Okay, I’m going to be a tart again and have a good moan. But does my bloody bad luck never end?

This horrible cold is finally settling into congestion and sinus headaches and has taught me never to have coffee with an old friend who works in an infant school. I swear those teachers are immune to the germs that just leap for the first man that they see wearing a thong. It’s my second bad cold of the year and, despite what you’ve probably heard, there’s nothing attractive about the sight of a wheezing Chipster dripping with mucus as he straddles a bridesmaid on a hen night.

Being ill has, however,allowed me to read and enjoyed 300 pages of the new Harry Potter. Only, Amazon displayed their usual brilliance by sending me another damaged copy, no doubt packed my some ungrateful 15 year old, having their first experience of a job in the big bad world. Last time, my edition was missing 100 pages and I had to rush to the shops to get myself a second. This time, the cover was folded back and ripped.

As to the book itself: it’s more of the same and I won’t spoil it for you. It just reminds me that effortless story telling makes you feel like the thing writes itself. Potter just feels effortless and it just goes to show what memorable (though two dimensional) characters do to a story. It also reminds me how much I enjoy reading and have made a promise to myself to go through my book shelves and fill in all the gaps in my learning.

That’s if I don’t quit my life as a stripper and go and get myself a proper day job…

You see, the problems with my PC continue to get bigger by the day.

This is an appeal to anybody who understands this stuff: I just can’t install Windows XP on my PC. It has three SATA drives, which means that the XP installer won’t recognise them without preloading the right drivers from floppy disk. After days spent searching for a floppy disk that still works (I haven’t used them in years) I managed to load the drivers, only for the PC to tell me that it still can’t see my hard drives.

It’s getting insufferable and I know my work will begin to suffer on Monday. I rarely blog from my laptop and do most of my writing at the PC. The laptop is for revising, where I can be more relaxed and hidden away from the distractions of all Romanians. But I guess I’ll have to get used rewriting to the sounds of chickens being plucked and peasant songs being sung. The alternative is to go out and spend £200 on a copy of Windows Vista. Only, I don’t have £200 to spend on Vista, which itself, makes me wonder what kind of man devotes himself to the noble art of the strip whilst remaining so broke?

Depressing thoughts.

Before I start appealing for anybody who knows any good jobs going in the Bangor area, I’m going to finish the Harry Potter. It might make me change my mind. And I’m also hoping it will cheer me up with a suitably happy ending…