Nick Jordan

If there’s anything finer than sitting around on a Saturday morning drinking tea and listening to Home Truths, I have yet to discover it. I’m a simple soul.

Just in case you were wondering, the gas engineer did turn up eventually, after a bit of back-and-forth. He checked everything out and switched the gas supply back on and I’m pleased to report that nothing has exploded.

I went down to Brighton yesterday afternoon for a friend’s birthday celebration. Mooching around on the sea front and having a couple of beers was very enjoyable, as was the meal itself.

When I got back home there was a card waiting for me that said that there had been a possible gas leak and, because the gas people hadn’t been able to gain entry to the flat they’d switched the gas off. A quick phone call elicited a promise to visit today and sort it out, so here I sit, unable to have a bath (unless I fancy a cold one), waiting for an engineer. Lovely.

I’ve been getting a lot of spam with completely empty message bodies lately, which my spam filter wasn’t picking up on. Irritatingly, I found that I couldn’t get it to recognise messages with no content so I’ve set it up to reject emails that don’t contain any vowels, which seems to be working nicely.

On my way home this evening I was sitting in the queue at some traffic lights when another BMW motorcycle pulled up next to me. The rider and I got chatting, as you do, and found ourselves going in the same direction. Having established that we lived quite close to each other he asked me if I fancied a cuppa. Now I’m not one to turn down tea, so naturally I accepted and had a very nice time as a result. We’ve agreed to meet up sometime soon for a ride out or a beer or two. I’m looking forward to it.

As I left the flat this morning I found a card from the postman saying they’d tried to deliver a parcel. They clearly hadn’t tried very hard, by ringing the doorbell for example. I’d been sitting around drinking my tea so I’d definitely have heard if they’d bothered.

There was a serious party in the street where I live last night. I have no idea what they were celebrating but it was very jolly indeed, with people everywhere and kids running about and having a great time. A bit unusual for a Monday night but nice.

Over the weekend I tried a very pleasant summer ale from Greene King called Ale Fresco. It’s light and has a very pleasant citrus flavour. Recommended.

I’ve just read Yes Man by Danny Wallace and I have to say I loved it. Essentially, due to a conversation with a stranger on a bus who told him he should ‘say yes more’, he decided not just to say it more but to say it to everything. As a result, he won ?25,000 and lost it again, got a new job, went to Barcelona and had all manner of adventures.

The lesson the book teaches is clear. Saying yes indiscriminately can get you into a lot of trouble but being open to new things and saying yes more often can lead to all manner of good things happening to you. I’ve made up my mind that I’m going to try to be a bit more positive and say yes. Not to everything, but to more things.

Is there any pleasure finer than loading your entire music collection into your player of choice (amaroK for me) and setting it to play tracks at random? At times the machine seems almost psychic, selecting music that matches my mood almost exactly, and I love it when I rediscover music that I’d all but forgotten about. You can never, ever have too much music, you know.

Fun and games this morning on the way to work. The driver of the car in front of me tried to jump a red light, realised he wasn’t going to make it (all the traffic going through the junction across him was clearly a dead give-away) and reversed straight into my bike. I couldn’t go anywhere because there was traffic right behind me. Fortunately he was moving slowly enough not to do any damage but he then sat there, keeping the clutch just biting so he was moving his car backwards and forwards and bumping into me. Naturally, I reacted in the correct manner, giving him the finger and screaming abuse at him. I’m sure that’s what the Highway Code tells you to do…