BenPaddon.co.uk

Today has been a day of much larking about, doing bugger-all and generally chillaxing (I actually hate the pseudo-word “chillax”, it sounds like a combined cold remedy and laxative). I went into Dunstable to have lunch with Teri, which was nice. While in Dunstable I’d intended to buy some jeans but decided on a whim to not buy some jeans and to instead pick up Diddy Kong Racing DS. In retrospect, I probably should have bought the jeans. Later I went into Just the Games, a videogame store that sells a cornucopia of PC games from years gone by, only to discover that they no longer sell a cornucopia of PC games from years gone by but instead they sell whatever shit has been released this week. And not much else. For those of you keeping score, that’s Dissapointment: 2, Mirth: nil.

I went into Dunstable’s branch of HSBC, only to walk out again because it was remarkably small and they had a 20-30 minute wait (pah!). And so I hopped on another bus and went into Luton.

An old school friend of mine, Laura, got onto the bus. It was good to catch up - the last time we’d spoken was when I thought I’d be flying out to the US at the end of March - and she told me that she had broken up with her boyfriend yesterday. We got talking and when we got off the bus we were still talking, and I ended up hanging out with her and a friend of hers as they did some “cheer up, Laura” shopping. As fun as it was, I was beginning to feel a bit of a third wheel after a while and so I decided to leave Laura and her friend to it and head on to HSBC.

HSBC didn’t open a bank account for me because they needed a Utility Bill. Still, I have an appointment booked in to open an account next Tuesday and I have ordered a bank statement from the incredible fuckwits at Barclays which, I have been informed by HSBC Person, is perfectly acceptable. So I may well be doing that, then. Ultimately I don’t even know if I’m going to use the HSBC. It seems somewhat of a bad place to keep my money. Don’t get me wrong, they’re a sound bank, but Amy has friends and family who work for them, and I am of the opinion that she is not above asking them to fuck about with my account. The people in question are generally nice people, and I don’t think they would even if they were asked, but it’s still security issue for me.

Anyway, I picked up some essentials - socks, deodorant, Bomberman Land Touch! for the DS, and Batman: Year One and Hogfather from Waterstones - and headed back home. Bizarrely, a piece of spam has just now arrived in my inbox bearing the subject “And indeed, in Ankh-Morpork, too.” - spooky.

I read Year One, as I have been meaning to do for a while, and it’s very, very good. You can see a lot of the ideas that went on to form Batman Begins, but it’s a very different beast. Fantastic stuff. I haven’t yet sat down to read Hogfather, because I’m still reading Soul Music, so Teri is borrowing my crisp, clean copy of Hogfather for now. She wants to read it after watching the televised adaptation that Sky One showed last year, that I have on DVD. I would be lying if I said that DVD had nothing to do with the purchase.

Anyway, I mentioned I’d bought two new DS games, and as they have Wifi capability I’ve added the new Friend Codes to the left sidebar. Feel free to add me, although I can’t imagine I’ll be playing Diddy that much.