Adventures in Stereo or, there's this rattle, but you can only hear it at 180 m.p.h.

I just bought a Manfred Mann album because about 80% of the songs on it are classics of the 60's which I used to listen to on an ancient Decca record player. I don't have the records or the player any more, so I thought I'd grab this CD before the supermarket have another of their famous stock-control-problems (where all the popular stuff doesn't get reorderd, yet the vile inventory is replenished with alarming regularity) and it disappears for ever.

The odd thing about it is that, in the true style of late 60's recordings, most of the stereo images have the vocalist panned hard over to the right, and the entire rest of the band panned hard over to the left.

The net effect, driving home, is that the band appear to be playing somewhere near the battery in the engine compartment, while the vocalist himself is located in the nearside wheel-well.

Highly strange.

Standards? No thanks! or, take a ticket!

I'm trying to book some holiday. The plan - such as it is - is to fly to the UK, obtain a vehicle from a hire company, and proceed to make my way about the countryside visiting friends and just generally not doing much of anything for a couple of weeks.

I called Hertz up to check my German driver's license would be valid. I considered this a formality as it's one of the new photocard European licenses, which replace the A0-size fold-out paper ones. The license is supposedly valid in every EU country.

Hertz told me that although it was valid to drive on, they wouldn't accept it for hiring a car since it was in German. Even though the UK has had photocard licenses for quite a while now (apparently they still aren't valid without their paper cousin anyway, good old Islanders) and all the fields are the same, in the same locations and with the same restrictions. I explained this to Hertz but they weren't having any of it. I asked the agent what I needed to do, and was told to obtain an International Driver's License.

So this morning I trogged down to the Driver's License Office at the borough council offices at the ungodly hour of 8am (this being a German office they actually open at 7am and close at 3pm with a two-hour break for lunch). The place was almost completely empty. I made the dire mistake of approaching one of the eleven counters without taking a ticket! A mistake I shall not make again. The women all glared at me with a well-practiced stare clearly designed to convey, with as little effort as possible, that I was a lower form of life than the amoeba and should just jolly well get myself back to the entrance and take a ticket from the machine and wait my turn!. I wonder, under what circumstances one would be permitted to approach without obtaining a ticket?

"Excuse me, could you tell me where the toilet is?"
"Take a ticket."

"I just need to get form D-1459 revision A (blue copy)..."
"Take a ticket."
"Look, I can see a stack of them on your desk, if I could just reach over the counter and--"
"Take a ticket!"

"Are you aware that an out-of-control juggernaut is at this very moment crashing through the shrubbery and will in a few short seconds reduce your precious counter to beige rubble and you to a pulpy mess?"
"Take a ticket."

I took a ticket.

I sat down on a hard orange molded plastic chair.

The women stared at me.

Time passed in silence.

The women examined their nails and brushed imaginary specks of dust off their counters.

A tumbleweed blew through the empty office. In the distance, a lonely church bell rang out once into the pre-dawn.

At last, through some concensus derived between them without speaking, they decided I had waited long enough, and the lady at counter eleven reached under her desk and pushed a hidden button. An electronic buzzer sounded and my number flipped over (in the style of Groundhog Day) on the board.

At this point I'd like to say the woman was officious and bureaucratic but unfortunately that would be something of a lie. I did have to pay 16 Euro into a machine that looked like one of those machines you get in car-parks to pay for your stay; (the 16 Euro is to pay for wear and tear on the orange plastic chairs), but other than that I was dealt with quickly and courteously - a fact which did gratify me but which doesn't make good essay material. So lets imagine that I battled heroically for hours against a bureaucratic system designed to sap the very life-force from my body, and put out of our minds nice Mrs Moeller who issued the license without any fuss.

I'm going to try it on with Hertz, because I believe a European license is a European license. But I'll have my international license in my back pocket. Just in case.

Edit: This post no longer applies to me as I've not been a bachelor since September 2005 :-) The wonderful Becky keeps me sane, laughs at my awful jokes and is the most loving, supportive partner I could have imagined. So enjoy the post but remember I'm now on the other side of it. -J



Supermarket Laws or, how to remain calm whilst buying frozen lasagne

Henceforth, it shall be an offence to shop as a couple. Billing and cooing will from now on no longer be tollerated. Kissing over the fresh vegetables, cuddling in the dairy products and any sort of affection at all in the frozen section are verboten.

In fact, I'll go one further and say that couples are banned from the frozen section completely.

For that is the realm of the bachelor.

The penalty for offences of this nature is the maximum permissable under the law: the offenders shall clean my kitchen.

You have been warned.