doing everything and nothing

well, i would like to introduce you all to my very first unemployed blog post...

for just over a week now i have probably been the most active bum on the planet, refusing to let losing my job bring me down too much, so instead i have been trying to fill my usual work hours with as much as possible

this means that i have more time to make sure that the house is always tidy, i have finished checking and editing my NaNoWriMo novel, i've finished reviving and painting the cabinet that i found flytipped and shall now use in my geek room, i've reorganised messy drawers, i've gone out for long-ass bike rides, heck, i've done bloody loads of stuff, including getting my CV up to date and starting applying for new jobs

all in an attempt to not feel mopey and useless and bored, in fact, i'm quite enjoying all this extra time to do things that matter more to me, the only problem is that paying bills and a mortgage are also pretty high up on my list of priorities, but my time as a house-husband is in fact rather liberating, now if only it would stop raining long enough for me to get out and do some gardening!

despite this extra time, there are a handful of things that i haven't spent enough time on yet.

the first is blogging (hey, i've been busy with other stuff!)

the second is my music (hey, i've been busy with other stuff!) but as i was telling my brother the other day, music is a hard beast to tame, a couple of hours sat infront of a machine with the intentions of producing a groundbreaking piece of music will more likely result in being sat infront of a machine for two hours and still not be much further than when you loaded it up, indeed today i have tried to complete the final track of a Giles Babel EP and found myself going almost nowhere with it, and when you are trying to get the most out of every hour it is hard to accept that time can just slip away alongside any further achievement... but i'm sticking with it, don't you worry, maybe i'll have another crack at it after i've put the dishes away...

and the third...  i've done nothing at all to draw your attentions to the t-shirts that accompany my currently worked on EP, four tracks are complete, four t-shirts are complete, and yet, as of typing, i've only loaded one t-shirt up and have not even mentioned it anywhere at all...

in my defence, i had a lot going on. and in my defence, i've still got a lot going on. but getting the Giles Babel collection up to date needs to be another task that i sit myself down to complete


so before i waffle on too much i think i may leave it at that, you've had a little update, and i shall now think about making myself some lunch, putting away the dishes, hoovering the front room, maybe doing a bit of polishing, uploading the next three t-shirts in the collection, tackling that fifth and final track again and then perhaps i shall see you on the other side to discuss the t-shirt in the next couple of days perhaps...

so why don't i leave you with the first track, Poptarts and Battleships, from "programmed to prevent war" and a little subtle link to follow if you'd like to view the tee right now, and i'll be back with more info soooooon

a crimeless victim

people may talk about victimless crime, but right now i feel just the opposite, as if i am a crimeless victim

last week i had my bike stolen, within minutes of locking it up outside B&Q and picking up what i needed, i returned to find that my bike was no longer where i left it, in fact there was no sign of it at all



a couple of kids that were near the entrance of B&Q confirmed it for me (as if it could have been anything else), that someone had quite casually come along, cut through my lock as if it was butter and then hopped on my bike and rode off

further fuel to the fire, if someone was gonna make off with my bike i do wish that they'd have had to work a bit harder for it

thankfully it was directly underneath a security camera so there should at least be a decent image of the culprit.... but of course, that camera was not recording

yes, this was the kind of day i was having...


i knew anything that follows would be rather pointless, only if i'd had my bike microchipped and satelite traced would i have a hope in hell of it turning up again

as a kid we'd had mine and my brothers bikes stolen from our garden, they'd been security marked by the police at an open day at our primary school and we took along a couple of holiday photos of us with the bikes to the police station so they would know what they were looking for, and the uber-honest cop took the details, and then crushingly informed us that they probably would never turn up again, and if they did they'd most likely resemble scrap metal

not in the best of moods, i filled in the online crime report form (as it seemed an easier option than wasting my breathe) giving as much detail as i could, including the direction i was told that the culprit had headed off in, the names of the major retailers that faced the carpark he would have gone across that i presume would have their own cctv, and a ten minute time slot that it had all happened in, there you go police, that's most of the hard work done for you.... now, if you could just think about checking the cctv in the area...


what i do get is a phone call 2 days later asking me if the bike was locked when i left it (thank you for reading my report!!), informing me of my crime reference number

and this week i get a letter to let me know that 'the crime has been assessed to see what opportunities exist for further investigation' in order to identify the person responsible for the crime, whether cctv evidence could be recovered was given as one example...

oh, they have concluded that further significant evidence would not be readily available

i'd at least like to think that the police had tried, but considering that the times it could have happened between were minimal and precisely reported and that my bike was stolen from a busy retail park, surrounded by a number of other businesses, i am certain that there would be cctv footage, considering that reports say Britons are captured on cctv 300 times a day, i find it hard to believe that someone upping and leaving with a stolen bike is completely and utterly untraceable

i was already resigned to the fact that it was all for nothing, yet the fact that the 'one size fits all' letter i recieved shows no real attempt to act upon the information i have given to them only seems to smack of the fact that the police could really not be bothered to take the time it would have taken to just check....

it makes me feel that maybe crime is a viable way to make ends meet, with no fear of recrimination, with no real consequences, whoever got away with it has a brand new bike

while i have not a lot more to show for it other than a crime number, an empty space in my shed and increased journey times




for a little more information on the crime of stolen bikes, i'd suggest giving this a read

collision course

hello, and welcome back to Hunchbakk - music and musings, the music blog, with me, your very much alive host, Hunchbakk.

which is more than can be said for my poor bicycle, which ended up underneath a car this morning

thankfully all is well, other than the bike, and the situation seems to have been resolved without too much issue

it has left me a little bit shaken by the whole thing and scenarios have played through my mind, thinking that if i hadn't pulled my bike up as far forward as i did when i stopped, it could have been my legs that ended up under the car instead of my bike, and that i was lucky that the turning i was waiting at was out of the normal traffic lanes and when i ended up sprawled out on the tarmac, that i was out of harms way from any other cars that were making their way through morning traffic

after a minor bout of swearing and anger i picked myself and my mangled bike up and resumed my normal good nature, settled things ammicably and was able to laugh about it within minutes (although this may have been how the shock makes me react)

i exchanged details, got a lift to where i was going and an offer to have my dear departed bike replaced

and athough i'm a little shook up by the incident and i'm aching slightly, it seems either apt, or possibly ironic that i haven't been able to get this song out of my head all day....

Mark Ronson and The Business Intl - The Bike Song (featuring Kyle Falconer and Spank Rock) stream only


i had actually seen Mark Ronson performing this song at the Rockcorps gig held at the Royal Albert Hall last week, with The View's Kyle Falconer and Mos Def joining him onstage, which was a great gig and good fun, and i will be knocking out an article for the paper as soon as i find the time to commit to it, so keep your eyes peeled for that one.

and i promise to bring you some downloadable music sometime soon, but this just seemed fitting, so if you're feeling it then go cop that ish!~

a destructive force

be  fearful of anything left too long in my presence

it is likely to break

computer hard drives must shudder in their shells when i walk in a room, shitting giga-bricks cos of my reputation

my current computer situation is that the microphone input won't work and hasn't for a long while, the CD tray has given up opening, the mouse isn't actually sure whether it is connected or not most of the time, i-tunes will only open half of the times i want it to and web pages seem to need constant stopping and refreshing in order to try and get anywhere.

despite this i will keep trying to be as equally creative as i am destructive by experimenting and producing music on my weary machine

other computers that i have regular contact with seem to suffer fits and spasms and memory loss

only one CD tray on my 3CD changer stereo actually works, and sometimes even that is close to death and needs a good smack to get it sorted again

the radio in the bathroom tends to leave semi-regular gaps of silence during FM transmissions

a long suffering video player flickered its last a handfull of months ago, before this it had been prone to turning most films into black and white movies at any given moment


and yesterday, my bicycle that i rely on to get from A to B was struck down with a gash in the back tyre, so that it was pissing the magical self-healing green gunk from the inner tube as the wheel spun round and round and was soon flat, leaving me with a walk of shame
i am currently trying to attract punctuality, wealth and a moderately priced house to myself through positive thinking, but i can't help but think that things will continue to go wrong and that i will have to keep struggling through no matter how many times i focus my mind on computers that actually do what you want them to and 3 bedroom houses with a south facing gardens.

this isn't a declaration of negativity, this is an acceptance that things won't be hunky dory all of the bloody time - the world just isn't like that