Diary of an up and coming sociopath

I’ve been home and back now. Obviously, I didn’t stay long, but it’s the payment that counts. On Monday, Nikki and I went into Oxford to buy mum’s birthday stuff and to see if Nikki could return the No Doubt best of which she had realised a few hours too late, was not actually any good. No luck though. Even the shops don’t want it back. Shortly after 1pm, I embarked on the journey home.

The heat was becoming pretty bad, by this point. I had the fans going and that seemed to be keeping things cool enough as long as the car was moving. The M40, however, conspired against me. The first slow down came when there was a huge crash on the other side of the road. As far as I could see, an articulated lorry had veered into the central barrier and several cars had crashed into it. There was a huge dent, but the barrier wasn’t broken at all. This is the second time I’ve seen a lorry smash into those barriers without breaking one, so I feel pretty safe in the knowledge that they’re doing their job. The obvious inclination to rubberneck slowed traffic down a bit, but it was nothing compared to the jam that hit me on the other side of Banbury. I spent a good 20 minutes trundling along at an average speed of about 3mph while emergency vehicles scorched down the hard shoulder. As I approached the scene, it became obvious that a tyre had burst on some guy’s mini-lorry, because it was lying on its side across two lanes, facing the wrong direction. The driver seemed unhurt but obviously, two lanes were closed off and people were driving past the scene really slowly to get a good view.

After that, it was plain sailing to Stratford. I parked right right near to the centre, which is always a bonus, and when I stepped out onto the pavement, I became aware that some ephemeral speaker was playing “greensleeves.” Somehow, whenever I remember being in Stratford over the summer, it always seems to have greensleeves playing in the background. I didn’t hang around for too long after I’d picked up my comics because I was sick of driving and just wanted to get home. I managed it, had dinner, and then went to Josh’s for a couple of hours to take from him the blank DVDs, which he had mistakenly purchased, at reduced cost.

But then, no-one really cares about that, I’m sure. What I’m certain people really clamour for is stuff about the gamestesting I did today. Well, it was FCars again. I think I’ve done more FCars than anything else, now. I’m pretty certain it’s at least equal with Golf. Again, much to no-one’s surprise, I’m utterly shit at the game. I can beat it hands down in “easy” mode but I’m completely screwed once we get to medium. Generally, the way I play the game tends to be: Accelerate until corner, overshoot corner, hit wall, slide around on grass trying to correct orientation, rejoin track in last place. FCars was submitted but came back with a list of bugs that have generally been fixed, and that’s what I was checking today. I’ve mentioned before how Sony’s criteria are awful, and as if to really make things funny, today it turned out that two different revision of the PS2 hardware were acting entirely differently to each other, and the test station. I don’t envy the people responsible for fixing that.

At lunchtime, I had an agenda. Pixies album, or Spaced DVD. The Spaced DVD turned out to be more expensive than I though, so I decided against that, but when I got to the Pixies section I saw they had Trompe le Monde for £5, AND the B-Sides album for £5. This being Fopp, it’s about as cheap as it’ll ever get, so I bought both. I was earning, after all. As I left Aqua, I spoke to Diane and it seems I’ll be doing some Tennis testing at some point in the next few weeks. So that’ll pay for yet more DVDs.

Or, possibly, physiotherapy, since I seem to have destroyed a muscle in my arm. I woke up with a slight twinge in it the other day, and it was about as bad this morning, but throughout a day of hanging on to joypads with my arms outstretched, the pain has increased and it is, occasionally, slightly short of agonising. If it continues, I may have to break form and go see a professional about it, though I’m assuming that as with all my ailments it’ll just go away after some sleep. I could take a leaf out of Rachel’s book and place a sock over the top and kind of mention it casually next time I’m near a doctor or something. I don’t expect it’ll get to that to be honest. Actually, I’m going apply some curative sleep now. Then lectures. Great.