The Joy of Power Tools

"Press the trigger switch, and your circular saw will start"
User Manual

'Well,' says Dave, thoughtfully chewing his lip, 'if you're going to be cutting up roofing timber all day, then I'd go for the Bosch, but if you're just going to use it once or twice a year to cut up bits of pine, then you might as well go for the PB1200CS.'

He eyes me, waiting for me to admit that I wouldn't be cutting up acres of timber daily with my circular saw. What he is, in fact, saying is 'Are you sure you need a circular saw at all?'

It's a good question, and quite frankly, no, I don't. I'm building a spice rack from soft pine for the kitchen, not renovating a 17th century farmhouse.

But I've always wanted a circular saw, and this was my big excuse. Even the wife seemed keen, mistakenly believing that a circular saw was essential to the act of building a spice rack (even though just a few weeks before I built a seven foot bookshelf with a hand saw).

Back in HomeBase I stare at Dave's bloody and bandaged thumb. I wonder if he sustained the injury at work, or at home trying out a discounted circular saw.

'Well,' I say, 'I won't exactly be using it every day, so I suppose I'll take the PB1200CS.'

The name alone, full of letters and numbers, is exciting.

'But is it any good?' Asks the wife.

Dave sucks air in between his teeth. 'Well, it's a new line, you see, so we only know if they're good if they get returned.'

'And have many been returned?' She asks.

'No, and we've had them for eight months, so I reckon they're okay.' He tells us.

Good enough for me. But before we leave, we pick up a Bosch PEX220A 'Random Orbit Sander', reduced by £60 or something so outrageous that it would have been lunacy not to buy it. Oh, and a workbench. I blamed my dodgy angles on the bookshelf on the fact that I was sawing on two rickety old chairs.

Ker-ching! £60 please. Not bad for a hoard of powerful and dangerous machinery.

I've never used a circular saw before, though I've used an angle grinder, and I figure that the operation will be similar. It's big, and heavy. It feels marvellously macho and ready to cause grievous injury at the slightest mistake, so, unlike me, I read the manual before plugging it in and merrily chopping off any fingers.

It's full of useful advice:

- Do not force the tool.

- Look after the tool.

- Protect the cable.

- Maintain with care.

Makes it sound like a pet. The bit of advice that caught my eye though was:

- Do not use tool when tired.

Ah. So I decide to start sawing on Sunday instead - the traditional day for making outrageous amounts of DIY noise.

So I read the rest of the manual. It's full of new words and I go to bed with riving knives, mitre cutting locks, tct blades and parallel fences churning round my mind.

The joy of power tools must be hard to understand, if you're not excited by them. Buying one is like Christmas day, using it makes your day vibrant and real. Sound sad, but it's true. When you can't hear and your arms throb into the evening, you know you've had a worthwhile afternoon.

Anyway, it is fun, and it is clever, let's just leave it at that.

I convert the spare room into a workshop - tarp, dust sheets, move the extra bedding and towels to another room (you know how picky wives can be), and set up the bench, which occupies a mildly frustrating half hour (self assembly, some blisters required).

Luckily though I now own a 'pistol driver' (a purchase made for the shelves a few weeks ago), which is just bloody marvellous.

It's a 'Pro4.8V' and I recommend everyone to go out an buy one now. Not only does it look like a gun, so you can do cowboy / gangster mime with it, it also pushes screws into things with a satisfying noise.

So, bench is up and a long plank of pine is secured in it, with a line drawn down the middle. The PB1200CS circular saw doesn't come with a laser sight (like the more expensive Black and Decker model), so I'm going to be doing it by eye.

Christ, the saw is heavy. I plug it in and gingerly press the trigger.

'Gggggggggggggggggggrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrryyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyaaaaaaaaaaawwwwww!' It screams.

It's deafeningly loud and I'm grinning as I plough forward across the plank. Masses of sawdust and wood-chips fly across the room. I supress 'woo-hoos' though.

Half way across I'm stuck. My bits of wood used to clamp the plank in place are catching on the base plate. There's a burning smell now. Ah, probably not good that, I think.

My solution is to angle the saw slightly to get around the obstacle, and plough onwards. I notice a slight wobble, gouge, and burn in the area that I just passed...

Stop again, another obstacle. More burning smells. Cursing I work my way backwards along the whole plank to get the saw out of the end, and then take my finger off the trigger, before realising that I could have just lifted it out of the wood instead. Doh.

As the saw slowly dies, with a high screaming noise, I realise that I can't hear much any more. There was part of the manual that recommended ear protectors, but I figured they were just for the all-day-sawing-roofing-timber types. Apparantly not.

Well, I've started, I reason, so turn the bench around and go for it from the other end. All goes well and my plank is now divided in two. It's a bit black and wobbly in places, but it's actually quite a nice cut. I measure the two and they're improbably accurate too.

The rest of the spice rack went without a hitch apart from a sketchy moment when I managed to assemble some of the shelves in such a way that they couldn't be removed from the workbench by mortal means. Some smart unscrewing was done whilst hoping that the wife didn't come in and see...

And, lo, and behold, the finished product:

(picture later)
As you can plainly see, something not possible without a circular saw.

Descent of Man

Alone for the week, the wife in Canada, I do the first thing I can think of and find myself in the lounge drinking Stella Artois, naked, playing video games. Well, I am only human.

I enjoy this greatly.

Without the structure that a couple-life imposes upon you, my routine quickly reverts to bachelordom, illustrated well by a breakfast made from left over curry, chips, rice, chilli and egg, mashed up, fried and eaten with Brown Sauce (fairly stodgy and not to be repeated incidentally).

I spend the morning in Stereo, Games, computer shops and Matalan (which is a shop ever full of men without their girlfriends), take a pint and then head home for an oven-baked meal washed down with cans of lager whilst playing Playstation games.

Bored of my day now, I embark on a pub crawl (after a few glasses of wine and watching Dr Who).

On the street I find I'm already quite tipsy after all the lager and wine. My stomach grumbles portentously, offended by the new diet it has been given.

My pub-crawl plan is to drink in pubs that I've never been in before, and where I can get a seat. It is Saturday night, so this means that I end of walking a while before I find one, which sobers me up slightly.

First stop: The Prince of Wales, an unassuming, tiny pub. I order a pint of tasty Spitfire and sit alone, staring out of the window at girls dressed in mini-skirts and cleavage, laughing and staggering about in large groups.

Depression falls over me and I sit in quiet desperation, mulling over the nature of mankind, the ills of society, my own failings in life, the peeling paintwork of the skirting boards, the cobweb on the lamp.

Then a jolly red-faced man asks me for a light, which I supply, and he thanks me heartily and give me a big cheeky grin before returning to his table. I watch them for a while, he sits with two girls, both chubby and extremely happy. They talk about crap in an unintelligent manner, and laugh like hell. They seem very content.

All at once my spirits lift and I unaccountably decide that the world is, in fact, good.

My god, I think, the world is actually more good than bad! This seems like a revelation in a way that only drunks experience. (In fact, when I get home that night I make a point of writing it on the front page of Ralpharama - it is still there.)

As I look around I see furious life, laughing faces, emotional scenes, the vigour of it all fills me up and makes me gulp down my pint in happiness.

(I just re-read Candide, which I blame for all this up-and-down nonsense)

Feeling better I walk on to the next pub. I move through the throngs of summer-clad idiots with a grin on my face. They accept me as one of their own and smile and shout as I walk by.

I walk down streets, alleys, roads and lanes until I come across a pub I never before saw.

It seems to be full of terribly camp people, all mincing around and listening to the Eurovision Song Contest on the radio. Terry Wogan at full volume in a pub is somewhat unexpected.

I order a generic bitter and retire to a distant stool to scribble more thoughts of mankind in my black book in a doctor-like scrawl. As I write, and sip, I look around at the pictures of old film stars and Queen (not [i]the[/i] Queen mind). It's very quiet for a Saturday night.

I drink up and am heading out of the door when a strange urge pulls me to the bar and I find myself ordering another beer, and sitting on a stool there..

Czech singers yodel enthusiastically as I drink another pissy pint of Youngs bitter.

The barman does his best to cheer me up by flirting with me and rubbing my hand, but it can't be helped - I'm sliding back into a down.

'What the hell am I doing alone in this crap pub at 10pm on a Saturday?' I ask myself, and have no answers. I go to the bathroom and upon my return there's a man reading a soft-core gay porn mag at the bar. I feel sad and leave.

The pub? I asked before I left - The Aquarium.

I walk the streets, and actually enter, walk through, and leave a couple of pubs, which are both heaving with people in the later stages of drunkenness, which repels me now, as I myself stagger homewards.

I have a last pint in the Eddy, where I watch a barmaid do magic tricks for intoxicated young men. I have to seriously bite my tongue to stop myself becoming involved. I feel uncomfortable in the pub, though it's nice enough. I just want to get home I suppose.

The next morning I'm surprised to find the toasted sandwich maker all greasy (and thankfully turned off). Yet more evidence of my descent of man. The wife returns on Sunday, hopefully I won't be too ape-like by then.

Alone for the week

Alone for the week, the wife in Canada, I do the first thing I can think of and find myself in the lounge drinking Stella Artois, naked, playing video games. Well, I am only human.

I enjoy this greatly.

Without the structure that a couple-life imposes upon you, my routine quickly reverts to bachelordom, illustrated well by a breakfast made from left over curry, chips, rice, chilli and egg, mashed up, fried and eaten with Brown Sauce (fairly stodgy and not to be repeated incidentally).

I spend the morning in Stereo, Games, computer shops and Matalan (which is a shop ever full of men without their girlfriends), take a pint and then head home for an oven-baked meal washed down with cans of lager whilst playing Playstation games.

Bored of my day now, I embark on a pub crawl (after a few glasses of wine and watching Dr Who).

+++

On the street I find I'm already quite tipsy after all the lager and wine. My stomach grumbles portentously, offended by the new diet it has been given.

My pub-crawl plan is to drink in pubs that I've never been in before, and where I can get a seat. It is Saturday night, so this means that I end of walking a while before I find one, which sobers me up slightly.

First stop: The Prince of Wales, an unassuming, tiny pub. I order a pint of tasty Spitfire and sit alone, staring out of the window at girls dressed in mini-skirts and cleavage, laughing and staggering about in large groups.

Depression falls over me and I sit in quiet desperation, mulling over the nature of mankind, the ills of society, my own failings in life, the peeling paintwork of the skirting boards, the cobweb on the lamp.

Then a jolly red-faced man asks me for a light, which I supply, and he thanks me heartily and give me a big cheeky grin before returning to his table. I watch them for a while, he sits with two girls, both chubby and extremely happy. They talk about crap in an unintelligent manner, and laugh like hell. They seem very content.

All at once my spirits lift and I unaccountably decide that the world is, in fact, good.

My god, I think, the world is actually more good than bad! This seems like a revelation in a way that only drunks experience. (In fact, when I get home that night I make a point of writing it on the front page of Ralpharama - it is still there.)

As I look around I see furious life, laughing faces, emotional scenes, the vigour of it all fills me up and makes me gulp down my pint in happiness.

([i]I just re-read Candide, which I blame for all this up-and-down nonsense[/i])

Feeling better I walk on the next pub. I move through the throngs of summer-clad idiots with a grin on my face. They accept me as one of their own and smile and shout as I walk by.

I walk down streets, alleys, roads and lanes until I come across a pub I never before saw.

It seems to be full of terribly camp people, all mincing around and listening to the Eurovision Song Contest on the radio. Terry Wogan at full volume in a pub is somewhat unexpected.

I order a generic bitter and retire to a distant stool to scribble more thoughts of mankind in my black book in a doctor-like scrawl. As I write, and sip, I look around at the pictures of old film stars and Queen (not [i]the[/i] Queen mind). It's very quiet for a Saturday night.

I drink up and am heading out of the door when a strange urge pulls me to the bar and I find myself ordering another beer, and sitting on a stool there..

Czech singers yodel enthusiastically as I drink another pissy pint of Youngs bitter.

The barman does his best to cheer me up by flirting with me and rubbing my hand, but it can't be helped - I'm sliding back into a down.

'What the hell am I doing alone in this crap pub at 10pm on a Saturday?' I ask myself, and have no answers. I go to the bathroom and upon my return there's a man reading a soft-core gay porn mag at the bar. I feel sad and leave.

The pub? I asked before I left - The Aquarium.

I walk the streets, and actually enter, walk through, and leave a couple of pubs, which are both heaving with people in the later stages of drunkenness, which repels me now, as I myself stagger homewards.

I have a last pint in the Eddy, where I watch a barmaid do magic tricks for intoxicated young men. I have to seriously bite my tongue to stop myself becoming involved. I feel uncomfortable in the pub, though it's nice enough. I just want to get home I suppose.

+++

The next morning I'm surprised to find the toasted sandwich maker all greasy (and thankfully turned off). Yet more evidence of my descent of man. The wife returns on Sunday, hopefully I won't be too ape-like by then.

IKEA delivery

IKEA delivery: Any time between 8 and 8, we're told. But, they add, we'll call and give you half an hour notice.

Pub then?

No, the wife has other ideas - let's move the lounge around, clean up, and hoover under every crevice in the flat. Then, after that, we'll go shopping. Hmm? Sound good?

So, I dream of the pub and angrily sort through sheets of paper and move boxes about with some violence. Still, they call at 10:30am, so I'm not put out for too long.

So, given the nature of the world, and how unreliable it is, I start to make a chilli for supper, slowly, and they arrive at 1pm and park outside the flat in a never-seen-before space which appeared as-if-by-magic as they rolled down the street.

It's a big truck.

I point out the luck of the space to the jovial Scot driver.

He frowns, 'But if you didn'ae have the space, we'd have not have delivered yer sofa.' (I'm bad with accents).

This gem of information wasn't imparted to us at the time of purchase. Lucky, really.

We take up (nobly) the shelves and poles and screws and things, and leave them the sofa. I run down the stairs and catch them coming in the doors, which I hold open and then buzz around them unhelpfully as they push and pull the damn creamy thing up the four flights of stairs.

I'm glad I'm not doing it, I ponder, as I hang around behind them on the stairs.

'Well, it's nae small,' says the Scot as he heaves it into the lounge. He had an idea that the top floor would be a kind of single-room bubble.

We thank the movers for a good job, and (to ensure a day of sorrow) head for Argos to inflict the 'Flat-Pack-Walk' upon ourselves.

Let me explain.

We buy an 'entertainment unit', which is much less fun that it sounds. It turns out that it's actually a lot of shoddy wooden planks and some screws in a large, heavy box. It's designed for you to put your TV and video, DVD etc on. So they say.

We haul the item out of the shop and head up the road. Ah, it seems easy at first, but then the shoulders start to hurt, followed by the hands, back, arms, legs, elbows, neck, and ankles. You start to break out in beads of sweat and puff and pant, swear and stagger like a drunk.

'Just to the next lamp-post, eh?' You grunt, and totter towards it.

With the box on the floor you then stand around, flexing hands and looking nonchalant as passerbys eye you suspiciously. Blood slowly throbs into hands and arms.

Then it's another session to the post box, then the street corner, then the shop, then the next post box, the doorstep, each floor in turn, until finally, after half an hour of sweaty nightmare, the flat-pack-walk ends and you can start to enjoy the real fun of assembling the bloody thing.

The Argos design invokes in me furious swearing and blisters. This is, admittedly, partially the fault of the 1-pound-for-five screwdriver set that I bought in poundstretcher, but, also, the consequence of thinking it wise to design one leaflet without words than can be (supposedly) read by the entire world, independent of language.

Bollocks, I say.

The Entertainment Unit is a seriously bad design which simply involves powering lots of long screws into wooden planks without any nice starter holes. In the end I have to wear a glove as my blisters start to bleed.

Two hours. Two bloody hours it took. Two hours of pain, misery, red-faced-ness, cursing, and Stella Artois.

'I've finished with screwing for a year!' Shouts the wife (one her more memorable utterances), as she nurses her blisters.

A string of disappointments

A string of disappointments plunge me into a low mood: BT bill for £87 for just six weeks (don't know why yet); a stereo we found after the street market doesn't work any longer (after one hour of good performance) and we went out to buy speakers for it too; the Brighton and Hove beer festival finished yesterday, and not today as I thought, so I missed it.

So I lay on the floor and worried about money, and how we'll live next month for a while, then played playstation followed by three pints in the Cricketers reading the Sunday Times.

Relaxing.

Tzar Bar

Plastic glasses start my spider-sense tingling, so I look around suspiciously as I sip my pint of Kronenbourg at the back bar of the Tzar Bar. The wife has moved on to Rum and Coke after the last pint took a long time to go down. Price, £5.60.

It's busy already and we're incredibly lucky to grab a seat near the front bar with a view of the dancefloor, table, and everything. We settle back and watch the young and the beautiful enter.

We take another pint.

'Dark rum?' The barmaid asks.

'Um, okay.' I say.

'That's £6.20.' She smiles sweetly.

I figure that dark rum is more expensive than what we had the first time (I wasn't asked).

Back at the table a crazy-eyed, multi-tattooed man comes over to our table and does a rap in my face. I don't remember the whole thing, but it went along the lines of,

'Fat women, thin women, blonde women, tall women, short women, brown women and white, I want to f4ck them all.'

This rap was positively shouted into my face as the man made all the correct rap-esque gestures. It is difficult to know what to do, exactly, when someone raps in your, in a pub, face out of the blue.

He finishes and I say, 'Great rap man.'

He looks at me suspiciously, 'Really?'

'Yeah, really good.'

He turns to his friends and tells them, excitedly, 'He thinks my rap is really good, he told me, eh, eh?'

I gesture yes and his friends nod indulgently. I bang fists with the rapper as he mutters, 'I used to be a rapper you know.'

'No,' I say, holding his eye, 'you still are a rapper... You still are.'

He brightens up and wanders off.

Third pint.

'Dark rum?' The barmaid asks.

'Um, no, white.' The wife says.

'That'll be £6.90 please.'

I go and find the manager, who listens to my rum-price story and asks me pertinent questions about white vs dark rum, barstaff and times, then punches up the drink on nearby till. He frowns, looks at me, and gives me two pounds.

'Thanks,' I say, staring at the coins.

'I know what's it's like,' he tells me, patting me on the back.

I don't know what he's talking about. Perhaps he thinks I'm really poor. He's right of course, but that wasn't the point.

Back at the seat the wife goes to the bathroom and a young, tough-looking guy wanders over to me.

'You, out of that seat, now.' He says.

'Sorry?' I say.

'You, out of that seat, now.' He says.

I stare at him for a moment and say, simply, 'No.'

He stares back.

'[mumble] ... from the Manor?'

'What?' I say. What is he talking about?

'Are you from the Manor?'

I think about this, and say, finally, 'I have no idea where the Manor is, so, no, probably not.'

He frowns. 'No, no, the Manor, you know, it means like this area - are you from around here?'

'Oh, I say,' feeling like a loser, 'ah, yes, I live just up the road.'

'Oh.' He says, shakes hands with me, then leaves.

The wife returns and it's time for pint four.

'Dark rum?' The barmaid asks.

'The cheapest, please.' I say.

'That'll be six pounds please...'

Before we leave a man that looks like Rocky out of the Rocky Horror Picture Show movie appears. He is sporting meal wrist bands like you would expect gladiators to wear. He fiddles with them self-consciously. Maybe he just bought them.

'You should go to the gym,' my wife tells me as she stares at his huge biceps.

'Hmm.' I mumble.

On the way home I get progressively drunker until I can hardly stand by the time we get to our street. This is confusing, like I'd been slipped a mickey in the bar. By the time we get upstairs I've blacked out and remember nothing until the next morning.

Odd.

Violence on the Bus

The bus to work from the station is normally quite a sedate experience. We trundle through suburban sprawl, see the odd patch of woodland, a few tower-blocks, some shops. People get on and off, the windows are steamed up so you wipe a small hole and peer through it. It normally rains.

There are a lot of rowdy school kids that get on the bus en route, and if you catch the right bus then you'll be crammed in with them. You can listen to the latest gossip about that cow Sheila and catch up on tinny, bass-free r & b and rap tracks that leak from iPods and cheap MP3 players. The boys look moody, and remain silent, usually with hoods pulled right up, hiding their faces.

Today there's a small scuffle at the front of the bus. This is normal - often some kid will be feigning amazement that his bus pass is mysteriously out of date. And then outraged that he has to pay.

'I've only got a fiver.' [surly youth]

'That's okay, I've got lots of change.' [smiling driver]

Surly youth slams five pounds down on counter and looks like he's being robbed as he rolls his eyes.

But today the drama is more dramatic. There's a lot of movement, and from the back we see a ball of fight appear and then make its way through the bus. There's one white kid flailing around and three black kids kicking him and punching him in the head. One of the attackers grasps two posts with his hands and proceeds to kick violently with both feet.

This goes on for some time. One man next to me starts to shout things like,

'Leave it!' and 'Get off the bus!' But it has no effect.

No one offers to help.

Occasionally snowballs fly in through the open door to hit the victim's head, perhaps thrown by a slightly less aggressive member of the attackers. This seems poignant at the time.

Eventually it all stops and the three punchers go upstairs whilst the bleeding recipient looks a bit haggard and sorry for himself, but just takes a seat and says nothing.

I imagine that the bus driver will call the police, but no, the doors close and we carry on as usual. I peer out of the window and feel unbearably sad.

Cheese and Onion man

On the train I have my eyes closed. A state close to sleep, but not quite. I hear the noises of the train and am conscious of not having enough knee room. I would like to sleep, but find the worry of sleeping past my stop always prevents me. I have woken up in railway sidings before - an odd experience as you have to wait, alone, for the train to sneak back into the station before you can disembark. The train is cold, silent, dark, spooky even.

So, in near-sleep I hear the doors open and a terrible smell enters. Jesus, I think to myself, what a terrible smell. The smell gets stronger and I calculate that the person responsible for the smell is getting closer. Closer. Closer. Closer, and, yes, it sits down next to me.

I pull a long face, keeping my eyes closed, designed to make my nostrils into vertical slits, but it doesn't work and the smell is relentless in its assault.

I try and place the odour. The best I can come up with is bad teeth, cheese and onion, and farts.

How can this man not know that he smells this bad? Does he not have eyes to see the reaction that must come over people as he talks to them? Does he think everyone reacts that way to everybody else? Does he not observe?

I'm always disturbed by people's lack of observation. How oblivious to the world many of us seem. Perhaps I'm too conscious - I'm forever moving out of people's way, stopping making irritating noises, holding open doors, catching bags knocked off tables, ducking under street gossipers' wildly used hands, and so forth. So, to not be able to notice the fact that you stink, to me, is, frankly, a poor show.

I wake myself up and read my book, perhaps visual sensory input will help distract from the olfactory? The first line I read is a man saying the words, 'Ah, perfidious Albion'.

Perfidious is a word that likely to get you into fights in certain pubs in the country. What the hell does it mean anyway? I know it means nasty, somehow, but the exact definition escapes me, I promise to myself to look it up later (disloyal, deceitful, base, low...)

Thinking of rough pubs brings to mind a pub in Carlisle I was once passing through on some long forgotten journey: I was in the bathroom of the pub, washing my hands (some of us do), when a terrier-looking, thin psychopath walked in and stared at me in the mirror. My heart skipped a few times, not for joy, and I ignored him.

He is eyeing up my jewellery it seems, as he turns to me and says,

'Put this in for us.'

And hands me a gold earring hoop with a Christian cross dangling from it.

I stare at him and he turns his head to one side and sticks an ear in my direction. It has a silver stud in the lobe.

Now, intimacy in the bathroom may be something that women are comfortable with, but your average man doesn't generally do anything more personal than stand next to other men with his penis in his hand. Hmm, well, I suppose that does seem quite intimate.

Anyway, with my shaking hands, and eyeing the prison-esque neck tattoos, I manage to pry out the stud. My fingers are waxy. I resist the urge to sniff them.

The hoop is hard to get in and I twist his ear quite hard, reddening it severely. He doesn't seem to notice.

Finally it's in and I tell him.

He merely nods and walks out of the bathroom...

All this thoughtfulness has allowed me ten minutes respite from stink-man, but I'm brought back to reality by another smell. Ah, oh my god it's beautiful. It's the smell of heaven after an eternity in the dunghills if hell.

The stink-man has opened an orange and the smell has flooded the whole train cabin. I sniff it in, greedily.

It doesn't last though, and a few minutes later I'm back in farty cheese and onion land.

Commuters

The train is like a hospital ward. There are the sick, the coughing, sniffing, sneezing, sleeping masses. Whistles, snores, grunts, belches and farts punctuate the rumble of the train. If you are lucky enough to sit next to a toilet you get the odd authentic bed-pan smell. Then there are those that are like the visitors, sitting next to the sickly - those that read, talk, play with their phones, laptops, look out of the window in a bored fashion, or generally entertain themselves. They have the air of peole who would rather be somewhere else, but stoically are resigned to their fates.

At East Croydon station the cummuters queue for the doors, on both sides. The inner commuters vacate their seats a good few minutes before the train pulls up, and wait, staring out of the door windows. As they slow to a stop, their eyes meet the outer commuters. Time slows down considerably as the train finally slows to a complete stop and we all wait for the open door button to illuminate. These commuters are seasoned, none of them jab at the button angrily before it lights up - they know it is fruitless.

The doors slide open and its all the outer commuters can do to sto pthemselves rugby pushing their way stright on. It is the hardest tast to stand and wait patiently as the inner commuters exit onto the platform through the single width gap left for them. Even before we're all off the outer commuters are pushing their way on, racing for that precious window seat.

This train is't very busy and that's all the race is for - a window seat, as everyone gets some kind of seat in the end. These commuters don't even play the sitting in the aisle seat game - they just go straight for the window in a way that you wish people on buses would do.

Back on the platform I'm walking up one of the many long ramps that lead up to the station exit. It's quite sedate going up the ramp - the people allplod along, heads down, some smoking cigarettes that were list just seconds after exiting the train. I walk faster and try to overtake the mass, but this is risky as overweight, late commuters are appearing at the top of the ramp and thundering down them to try and catch the train with the closing doors, gaining momentum as they do so, reaching speeds they could never reach on the flat. And completely unable to stop if an obstacle, such as myself, gets in their way. It is safer to simply to duck back into the saftey of the sedate uphill-walking crowd and watch them thunder past, red faced and panting as their train doors close and whistles are blown.

New Year's Eve 2004

It took an entire day of watching TV and sipping water, along with a Vegetable Thali from the local Indian, to recover from New Year's Eve. The Flight of the Phoenix also helped somewhat.

The evening didn't start off too promisingly - we had no calls from anyone, and so assumed that we'd be spending it alone. We went to Tescos at about 5pm and bought what we could from shelves that had been cleared by panic shoppers.

12 Cans of Kronenbourg
1 Bottle white wine
1 Bottle Champagne
Nuts
Crisps
Humous
Olives
Coca-cola

Also in the house was a half bottle of whisky, given by my auntie as a thoughtful gift. I eyed this bottle early on in the evening, hopeing that it wouldn't be necessary to crack it open.

Caro cooked and I started my fist can at 6pm or so, sipping slowly. Then the phone calls began, and within half an hour there was a plan to have a party nearby. Oz and X were on their way over. Much eating, runing around and two more cans of lager were consumed before we left.

The party was small, but it was what we all wanted. We chatted, drank, pulled party poppers and ate a lot of food. We tuned into Radio 2 for the chimes of Big Ben, but they messed it all up superbly by seemingly miss a chime, confusing us all, and then finishing before all 12 were heard. This resulted in some mild confusion and delayed kissing and champagne popping.

Ah, then the levitation. I don't know how we got onto the subject, but we were talking about David Blaine and I mentioned that I know how he did his levitation.

'Go on then.' Said Mr Beer.

I tried to explain that it took months of practise in front of a mirror, that the slightest miscalculation and the illusion was ruined.

'Go on then.' They said.

By now a crowd was around me, waiting for the miracle. Me and my big mouth, I thought. I was starting to get cold sweats.

'Ralph is going to Levitate!' I heard the rumour pass around.

I gave up. Slightly drunk, I agreed.

'But not here, no space,' I tried.

'Outside!' Went up the shout.

So, then, tne minutes later, a crowd of people watched me in the car park wobble slightly, go onto tiptoes and then return to the ground.

There was a, um, stunned silence.

'Is that it?'

Ah, but how we laughed.

Then, a couple of hours later, I had a phone call from G, who had put his girlfriend to bed and was intent on crossing London to see us. Dissuation didn't work, so I gathered by remaining beers (breaking the party code that you leave behind what you don't consume) and went home to wait for him there. You see, the party was breaking up by 3 anwyay.

G arrived and seemed to have problems following my directions. Either he was drunk, or I was. I wasn't sure which it was. I went to meet him at the station, the long walk doing a lot to clear my head.

Finally, back at the flat we drank beers and smoked cigarettes, the first ones lit up in the flat since our arrival.

It was all going so well, until Charlie put in a appearance and convinced us to go out and look for a party, at perhaps 5am.

Luckily, downstairs' party had finished some time ago, and the windows were black. However, the rastafarians a couple of doors down had lights on. We wandered over and knocked.

A surprised and wary looking man opened the door.

'Hi,' I blurted out, 'we live a couple of doors down. I know S. We wondered if you were having a party. Look, we brought whisky!'

He invited us in. He was alone, all his friends having left some time ago. We (I) rambled on extensively as we drank the whisky and coke with him. I alked a great deal of questons about rastafrainism and looked a pictures of haili selassi on the wall. The guy took this all rather well and witha great deal of forbearance before we left at something like 7am.

To this day, I still don't know how he took our visit. I must admit to feeling a little horror when recounting it to myself.

Ah, but the best is to come. I was lacking out now due to the whisky, and so couldn't find my house.

Ring ring! Ring ring!

'Wife?'

'Yes?'

'Could you come downstairs and let me in please?'

'It's 7am. Don't you have your key?'

'Please, it's very, very important that you come down and let me in.'

Sigh. 'Okay.' Stamp, stamp, stamp.