Sweet Dreams My LAX

Embarrassment abounds at VeryVeryBored.Com Towers and comes in the surprising form of pint-sized pop-star, Rachel Stevens. The former S-Club Seven singer, bizarrely oft voted in as the sexiest woman in the world by the demented readers of FHM and Loaded magazines, has been hammering on my head for the last two weeks with her debut solo song. It has become the chanson de jour for jaded pop music stations around the UK and has an annoying hook that one cannot help but mumble along to, occasionally bursting to a Monserrat Caballe-esque aria. Let me make it clear at this stage that I do not like this song and have, in fact, lamented to a disinterested Mrs VeryVeryBored that the production on the record is truly dreadful. I have contended that it sounds like the producer had found that, after a heavy night out on the tiles with 'bad boys of pop' Busted and The So Solid Crew, he only had five minutes to get the DAT on the back of a bike to record company , "Now That's What We Call Shyte International". It is a poorly executed mess, and a bad idea in the first place.

Source of my humiliation is that fact that I have believed for the last 2 weeks that the song is meant to be a two fingered salute to Los Angeles International Airport, apparently entitled, "Sweet Dreams My LAX". It seemed to make sense, I think that S-Club Seven had a TV programme made by the BBC (there's one for Gerald Kaufman) that was based in Los Angeles, and whenever I saw them on saturday morning telly they always looked knackered and cheesed off with the long commute. It makes even more sense because the airport at Los Angeles, as we all know, is called LAX for short and is also a hole. I've only been there once and it is not an experience that I wish to repeat. Delays meant my 1 hour transfer had become an onerous 5 hour stop-over and I was not allowed to remain air-side for this period of time. I therefore had to clear customs and sit in the shabby terminal building that is LAX. In fact, as I remember, pan-handling by hobos was so rife that there were no seats, but I might have made that up because I had found the whole LAX experience so utterly depressing.

Worst were the over officious customs officials who are no advert for American hospitality. They appear to have usurped the British for an overbearing sense of international superiority, and this is before George W Bush used 11/9/01 as an excuse for giving the American people carte blanche for slagging off anyone who isn't from Texas. I had arrived, as one does on long-haul flights, feeling utterly knackered and was in no mood for dealing with the whole process of arriving in a country. I had some Fijian kava in my bag in the misguided belief that I could recreate at tribal ceremony in my front room, and was aware of the restrictions on agricultural produce being brought into the country. It was also a brown powder and I could do without the wrong assumptions being made by the cheesburger munching officials that I was confronted with. I politely explained the situation and Monkey 001 stared at me, clearly trying to decipher what I had said. He then thew his hands up and said, "Can't you read the sign bud? Declare contraband goods at checkout" (or something like that). I explained that it was only kava root so that I did not need to declare it, though I was happy to do so if neccessary. Monkey 001 grabs his radio, "Psssht, blah-blah-blah" and Monkey 002 and 003 appear behind me and advise "go the checkout bud". I then had all my worldly posessions gleefully turfed out onto a table by Monkey 004, who also sniffed the kava (I was a bit annoyed that they did not stick their stubby finger in and give it a taste). They determined that I was not a US backed terrorist and/or drugs trafficker and then disappeared for their fifth lunch-break of the day, telling me that I needed to re-pack and move on my way.

It's not quite a 'Marigold up the bum' story, but enough to give me a deep seated suspicion of Yanks ever since. I am sure that the customs officials and Dubya are not entirely representative of the whole nation but there we go. LA continues to be at the centre of this particular axis of evil, so it came as no surprise to me that Rachel Stevens should want to parade around semi-naked in a video, where she has, incidentally, foolishly employed a load of very fit models, singing about how much she hates Los Angeles Airport. I was somewhat chaste therefore when, whilst winding VeryVeryBored Jnr to the sound of Steven's new song on a music TV channel, I saw a caption appear on screen declaring the title to be "Sweet Dreams my LA Ex". Maybe Stevens really does have a deep seated hatred of LAX but feels it wise to disguise it under the pseudonym of an American ex-boyfriend for fear of being Dixy Chicked. It does not however make me feel inclined to sing along the song with such venom anymore and I think it highly likely that the song will now just be turned off whenever it appears on the radio, just as it should have been in the first place.

Just a few things that I need to get off my chest today, none of which are particularly related to one another:

Mobile phone users, particuarly those who are passing their number in writing: Very long telephone numbers are not easy to read and therefore a convention has been adopted whereby the STD code is seperated from the main number. In some cases, what we call in the trade, the AFN, is also seperated. Thus a London telephone number, by convention, would be written thus: 020 7334 1066. I propose that mobile users who feel as though are exempt from this valued tradition, and opt to write their number as 07822920449, should be birched. It is a telephone number after all, not a barcode.

Exact Change Only Please is not a welcome indicator on the office vending machine, particularly when one works on a business park in the middle of the Hampshire wilderness. Manufacturers of this equipment really need to familarise themselves with just how hungry people can get when their brain is under-utilised. Personally I could eat an eight course meal by about 1030 most mornings so, given the option, I would much rather over-pay by 10 pence in order that I might acquire a 40 pence packet of crisps, rather than have my 50 pence piece rejected. The situation could turn quite serious by 1100 if the maintenance contractor has not remedied the issue, and it is only a matter of time beforeI end up taking a fire-axe to the machine so that I can get to it's tantalising wares.

Virgin Radio: please note the following important remarks concerning popular music. 'The Dandy Warhols' - Bohemian Like You was quirky when released, then overplayed c/o Vodafone, and is now the stalest song in the world. You should no longer be playing this song during Breakfast and Drive, your two most important programmes of the day. If you must playlist this record, please do so after 20:00, when your medium-wave frequency becomes all but useless. Similarly, though 'The Red Hot Chilli Peppers' have produced some reasonable music in their time, there is no need to play all of their back catalogue in a 6 hour endless loop interspersed only by Bohemian Like You and Get Off. Finally, Daryl Denham: please be advised that re-recording popular classics with 'hilarious' alternative lyrics ceased being funny shortly after Weird Al Yankovic recorded Eat It to the tune of Michael Jackson's Beat It

Thanks for your attention.

If You Have Found A Blue Ticket, You Could Have Won £1,000,000 CASH!

For a couple of weeks now I have had something of a cloud hanging over me. Following the incident which involved my donating a total of four hours of my life to a company called "Mosaic", purveyors of miracle exterior wall coating "Tex-Cote", I have been exercising a zero-tolerance policy towards door-to-door salesmen and panhandlers. It is a policy which tends to reduce the number of times the door-bell is rung by desperados offering useless products, or the 'phone being rung by companies who have got their hands on the fabled "Suckers List". In short, more time to myself, less time nodding sagely and pretending to listen to sales patter.

One can get too comfortable with this situation, however, and about two weeks ago I took a call from a company telling me that I had won a holiday and all I had to do was phone up and book it. "This sounds like an offer that is too good to be true?" said I, with heavy irony. "I know Mr VeryVeryBored, but I can assure you that this is a genuine prize with a choice of foreign destinations". I am smirking now and, as call-centre operatives across the UK and India know, a smile really carries over on the phone, "I suppose that now that I've got a newborn son this fantastic hoilday for two, benevolently given away by your company out of the kindness of your hearts, is no longer going to be an option for us?". An assured response came back, "On the contrary Mr VeryVeryBored, we will welcome children up to the age of two, all you need to do is book. Can I give you the number of the booking office?". Now this chap sounded as honest and reliable as someone from around the South London area can sound, perhaps I ought to find out more? Hmmm, maybe not, Mrs VeryVeryBored is sat with me and I seem to be enjoying playing the gentleman on the end of the phone like a fiddle in front of my audience. Confidently I respond, "I am probably the greatest mug in the world", maximum irony engaged, "but I think that it is fair to say that we do not need to have a holiday of a lifetime this year - I've got a shower curtain to put up instead". Slightly surprised intonation from my unsolicited caller now, "Okay sir, thank you for your time today".

And there ended the call. "Who was that?" said Mrs VeryVeryBored. "Just someone offering us a free holiday of a life-time with no strings attached - I told them that I was not interested. "Er, oh", half amused, half bemused. Silence then for a while with the pair of us clearly wondering if I have just cut my nose to spite my face.

This sense of loss has continued on my part for a couple of weeks. I am 80 percent sure that the free holiday for two (plus child) would probably end up costing £5000 each, with maybe VeryVeryBored Junior having to chip in a couple of grand extra. But what of the other 20 percent? Maybe, just maybe, this was a genuine offer? I might have had to to go to a tedious two hour seminar where I would get the opportunity to ask deliberately non-sensical questions in a bid to get sent out of the room and put on report, but that would be a price worth paying if I had spent thirteen and a half days supping cocktails by a sun-drenched pool? Alas I will never know and the whole episode will probably stay with me to the grave - "Here lies Mr VeryVeryBored. He did not like free holidays, what a knobber".

With this in mind therefore, I read the envelope that came through my door yesterday with some interest. It was one of those colour mail-shots that offer the world so long as you phone a premium rate number, the tariff for which is hidden somewhere in the fourteen page terms and conditions appendix which has been written entirely in six point font.

"IN JULY 2003 SOMEONE FOUND AND ENVELOPE VERY SIMILAR TO THIS ONE AND THREW IT AWAY. INSIDE THAT ENVELOPE WAS A LITTLE BLUE TICKET WORTH ONE MILLION POUNDS CASH". [their bizarre emphasis]. As one might expect, it went on to implore the recipient to not make the same mistake.

I was so excited when I opened the envelope that I had to be seated. You can only guess at my levels of ecstasy when a blue ticket tumbled out of the envelope informing me that I had definitely won one of of the following:

£1,000,000 cash
£50,000 cash
Mazda RX83 or £20,000 cash alternative
£5,000 cash,
Holiday in Italy,
£200 cash

Naturally, there is an 090... number attached to the competition tariffed at £1.50 per minute, but there is also a "play by post" option which they appear to offer with intense reluctance. I have read and re-read the instructions and I would be surprised if an entire board of legal experts could find a get out clause for the company, "Creative Services", running the competition. In fact, I use the term "competition", this is actually a give-away.

Now, fear not, I am fully expecting to find out that I have won "a holiday in Italy" and that it is in a hostel for the homeless, so long as I can pay for my flight out to Turin, but I feel a responsibility to conduct a consumer affairs experiment here on VeryVeryBored.Com. The closing date for entries is 12 noon on 31st January '04 and I will be sure to keep you updated on progress. I should imagine that the first bulletin will be to advise you that my postman is refusing to deliver anything to my house anymore on account of the sheer volume of junk mail that he has now forced to carry.

Here's to the new millionaire lifestyle - just 4 months and 4 days to go!


UPDATE: "All holidays include flights, transfers and accomodation. No obligation to purchase extras".

The March of Progress

For more than 100 years the alleyway at the rear of VVB Towers has been used to service the back-to-back Victorian terraces that make up the street. It is a simple yet effective way of dealing with waste - the shiny stuff comes in via the front door, the rubbish leaves by the rear, something of a metaphor for the human body, if you will.

Now, the emminent councillors at Eastbourne Borough Council have decided that the service alleyway should cease to hold its long held function. Like most of the town (if popular belief is to be endorsed, which it shouldn't), the waste alley is to be retired and put out to pasture. No longer will it be home to dustmen as they go about their noisy and messy toil, manhandling rubbish sacks in such a manner as to cause eighty percent of the contents to spill out into the gutter. No more nipping out in one's underpants, under cover of the midnight darkness, upon realising that the dustmen will be wreaking their special brand of havoc the following day, refusing to take anything that looks like it might fall slightly outside their remit for fear that it might be industrial waste from Sizewell B. No, dear reader, the service channel has fallen to the cruel hand of progress.

EBC, in their collective wisdom, have determined that the residents of this thriving yet genteel seaside town need better value for money from their refuse service. Naturally, using pure unadulterated Reaganomics, the best way to acheive this laudable aim is to contract out refuse collections to the private company that managed to get itself sacked by the neighbouring City of Brighton for alleged incompetence.

EBC's tenacious negotiation team have managed to agree with SITA that all residents, regardless of whether they live in a house built in 1903 or 2003 must present their rubbish to the refuse engineers at the front of the house. Small beer one might think, particularly if one lives in a 4 bedroom detatched house with an alleyway that leads to down the side of the house to a purpose built refuse area at the rear. Not so ideal if you are a terrace dweller who is either (a) lazy, (b) a pensioner (and there are still some of those), (c) pregnant (and there is a surprising amount of that), (d) disabled, or (e) someone who is intent on re-enacting the way the street was in Victorian days, albeit minus the squalor and the need to cover table legs with stout hessian. All these groups will have band together to wheel their bin from the back garden, through the gate at the back, along the long back-alley, up a road that they do not live on, all the way up the street that they do reside on, drag the bin up a step or two, and present it to SITA at the front of the house. There are also going to be problems for the forgetful amongst us as there will clearly be legal ramifications for those who are trying to undertake these activities at the midnight hour, dressed the in aforementioned underpants.

Naturally, the Reaganomics bit of this all means that the cost of collecting rubbish has reduced significantly. This is not, unfortunately represented in the council tax bill which has increased by 23.6% with the improvements to the refuse collection service often cited as a reason this hike though, in fairness, probably only by pensioners / lazy people / the disabled / pregnant ladies / Victoriana enthusiasts etc in angry letters to the Eastbourne Herald.

If I did not fall into the 'lazy' category then I would probably launch a campaign to "save the tradesmen's entrance". Luckily, the inevitable misunderstandings need not now occur.

This complaint has been brought to you in association with a baby suffering from a verbose bout of overnight colic.The net result has been this post and a 5 week old child finally sleeping safely, though unusually, in his changing area. His exhausted father fell asleep on the floor "for a couple of minutes until he wakes up", and both father and baby finally rose some four hours later, with VVB Junior looking considerably more comfortable and amused by the whole situation.

Public Service Annoucement

I am both worried and overjoyed by my uncharacteristic obsession with reality tv show / talent contest Fame Academy. The concept is pretty simple: get several averagely talented youngsters into a large country house and give them all intensive voice coaching. Give them an inflated sense of their own self-importance by sending them out to music industry events, get each of them to prove their worth by performing a tired 'classic' track on live TV, and monitor their every movement with a rather tedious live-stream of CCTV footage. Finally, package the thing together and put the show out on a Saturday in direct competition with the woefully inferior Pop Idol, just to annoy Gerald Kaufman. One contestent is expelled by plebiscite each week, and the winner is given a record contract so that they can enjoy 3 months of relative fame. Save for an appearance three years hence in a Channel 5 pop-documentary called "What Ever Happened To?", that brief spell in the limelight will conclude their career in the music industry.

The problem is that the programme is so very addictive. Both Mrs VeryVeryBored and I have become familiar with the foibles of the remaining contestents. There is "stare earnestly at the camera and sing sickly songs" Alistair, "prance about like a goon" Peter, "I look like I have stepped out of the 1980s" Carolyn, and "distinctive voice, spikey hair" Alex. VVB Towers is blessed with satellite television and so we are able to enjoy not just the weekly round-up, but the nightly updates from Claudia Winkleman, which I particularly enjoy. Interactive TV takes the experience onto a higher level - if VVB Junior happens to be on a night-time screaming mission, we can now view the live-stream and shout "you are all asleep, you lucky bastards" at the telly.

The show has strong educational value. With a new arrival in the house I am now able to sing-on-demand without feeling like a demented lunatic. It is something that I have not been able to do since I was a teenager locked away in my room. Oh the memories of the second most embarrassing thing that people can walk in on when you are going through those difficult years. VVB Junior is, for some reason, particularly fond of songs with left leaning lyrics: Tracy Chapman's "Talkin' About a Revolution", a song about American black power, and the obscure "Castaculan" from Aussie pop-poseurs 'Frente' ("I love my country but it wears a uniform, and speaks with foreign guns...") seem to be keen favourites. Our little socialist revolutionary is going to rue the day that his mother overruled me when I proposed giving him the middle name Aneurin, after the welfare state pioneer Bevan.

What luck then that this change in my life should coincide with the second series of Fame Academy. I have practically got voice coaches living in the house and I am taking their advice on board. Alistair and I learnt the other day, for example, that it is not good enough to just sing the song, you have to feel it too. The emotional rollercoaster of the Coldplay album certainly takes it out of you, but Archie seems to be pleased with the results.

One thing that I would like to recommend, however, is particularly aimed at users of the A27 road between Brighton and Lancing. When journeying along the stretch just prior to the Southwick Road Tunnel, avoid singing full pelt along with "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" by the Darkness, especially if you are overtaking an unwieldy heavy goods vehicle which is prone to side-winds. David and Carrie, both tutors at the academy, advise their students that each song should 'cost' the singer something. I do not, however, think that they would consider any "Darkness" song worthy of costing your life.

Sir Nigel Dempster Set To Retire From Daily Mail

Terrible news is received today from Britain's most reviled newspaper, The Daily Mail. Diary columnist and convicted drink driver, Nigel Dempster, 61, is to leave the title after three decades of writing his entirely pointless column.

British housewives will no longer be able to keep up to date with the comings and goings at Hermione Farquarson-Hamilton-De Zouch's house, or how young surplus royals are performing at their fee-paying school of choice. I was brought up on the Daily Mail, thanks to my Dad's dubious politics, and I have always been at a loss to explain why this page ever existed. Many would have thought that Associated "Family Values" Newspapers would have dropped their society diary autor when he dinged his car against a lamp-post whilst leathered. However, as successive stories about speed cameras show, the Mail chooses not to apply the same standards of judicial probity to anyone caught breaking the law whilst at the wheel. I should imagine edtor, Paul Dacre, probably poured him a celebratory whisky and immediately commissioned a piece on how the police should spend more time protecting country houses rather than arresting drink drivers.

It certainly is the end of an era at the Mail. There are thought to be more changes ahead with Dacre ordering swingeing cuts in the number of scaremongering psuedo-health stories. Cuts are thought to be aimed at reducing overheads at the 300 strong anti-MMR vaccine desk, almost single handedly responsible for rocketing levels of measles amongst young children. The 150 staff employed to mis-read and sex-up articles on breast cancer are also thought to be at risk.

Dacre, meanwhile, was recently heard belting out a rendition of The Red Flag, and has been seen dining with trades union firebrand Rodney Bickerstaff.

Wading Through A Sea of Sh!t

Here's a worry.

The rise in the popularity of "disposable" nappies in the western world has caused something of a problem in terms of where they go once the dustbinmen have removed them from your premises, hopefully not scratching the bonnet of your car with the dustbin in the process.

It takes some brands of disposable 500 years to decompose. Unless you are lucky enough to have an industrial incincerator next door, there is a strong chance that your "disposable" nappies will sit in a field for half a millennium, gradually being broken down by earth's organisms and bacteria. To put this into perspective, if your child had soiled himself at the very thought of the marriage of James IV and Margaret Tudor then there is a very real chance of one lucky archaeologist stumbling across the remains today.

The problem is bad enough when you look at a country like the UK where there are more than 600,000 new babies born each year from a population of 60 million. Let us say that those children are in nappies for 3 years each, and they require changing an average of 5 times a day. That's nine million nappies per year for burial. I can only imagine how tedious Time Team will be in the year 2503 with desperate looking archaeologists fishing out nappy after nappy and a distant relative of Tony Robinson patiently explaining that people around the turn of the millennium spent their lives wading through a sea of faeces because they (with the exception of the now legendary VeryVeryBored.Com Corporation) could not be bothered to wash and dry reusable nappies.

A worrying sign then that the Chinese have now discovered that, along with high tar cigarettes and fatty burgers, disposable nappies are so de rigeur. The mind boggles at the numbers here and I fear that my calculator does not have enough digits on it to complete the mathematics. 1.26 billion people are going to generate an awful lot disposables. At least it will give them something to do with all of that land, I suppose, and also gives Ananova the rare opportunity to write the headline "Chinese Babies Moving Away From Open-Crotch Pants". Bravo!

More Conservative By The Day...

Attention British Transport Police. Contrary to your current radio advertisement, people who use their mobile phone when they come out of a tube station are not "asking for [their] mobile to be nicked", they are probably asking for a taxi, asking where their friends are, or asking whether they need to get any food on their way home. It seems a bit defeatist to say that the exterior to all tube stations is a no-go zone for mobile telephony and probably demonstrates that British Transport Police and the Metropolitan Police have got far too many policemen sat behind desks filling in government statistical analysis sheets.

Alas readers, crime is also present in Eastbourne, the south coasts's most genteel resort. Friends of the VeryVeryBored.Com collective were recently broken in to whilst they slept upstairs. Apparently, according to the police, it was probably perpetrated by "the drug dealers who live on Latimer Road". This is an important piece of clarification - you note that this is the drug dealers on Latimer Road, not the dentist, or the doctor, or the office workers. One might have thought that it should be more like "the drug dealers in Pentonville", rather than "...in Latimer Road". Further details from the police response, given just after they had taken finger prints, a full week after the burglary, reveal why we have known criminals in our midst. On the day of the break in, there were 5 policemen and women covering the town of Eastbourne. That is about one per twenty thousand people. Perhaps I should make Dr Rock's day and write an angry and pointless letter to the Herald?

Further observations from a first-time father

On average, things take 20 minutes to complete: cook a quick meal - 20 minutes, do the washing up - 20 minutes, walk down the shops for a paper - 20 minutes, have a bath - 20 minutes, catch a tube-train to where you want to go - 20 minutes*, drive into town and park up - 20 minutes, do the shopping - 2 x 20 minutes.

Well, that is how things used to be. Along with 2130 being way past bedtime, things now take, on average, 60 minutes. This is largely due to nappy changing, talking in silly accents (with apologies to our friends in the North / West / France / Italy), bouncing up and down, pacing around the house with windy newborn slung over the shoulder etc etc.

Also, confirmation last weekend that export lager, particularly Stella "Wifebeater" Artois, and small children do not mix. VeryVeryBored.Com Towers played host to 3 friends (all with comedy relative names - Uncle Buck, Aunt Sally and Uncle Tom) and a suitable amount of the beverage was taken on. Mr VeryVeryBored, given his weekend overnights 'on-shift' status lamented this imbibing over several extended "crying for no particular reason" episodes on Saturday night / Sunday morning. Needless to say, the remains of the Stella have now been regretfully stowed under the stairs, set to mature for at least 4 months.

* in theory

The highs and lows of entertaining door-to-door salespeople

Many years ago, during a very brief spell of unemployment, a time where I truly realised just how low my boredom threshold is, I decided to have a quick chat with some members of the Mormon Church who were attempting a doorstep conversion. I had nothing to lose and I thought that the whole exercise would be intrinsically amusing. I invited them in, granting them 20 minutes or so to explain why I should abandon a perfectly logical agnostic position and join, not only a church, but a wacky Yankee one at that. We consumed our tea and biscuits and I nodded sagely, explaining that I thought that I was a good person by my standards and did not see why I needed to nail my colours to a theological post to prove it. They were, alas, not entirely satisfied with my response and booked me in for a higher level conversion. I had bored of the conversation by that stage and probably said something like 'yeah whatever' and expected to never see them again. This was not that case, and the Mormons began stalking me to a point where I had to leave instructions with whoever answered the door or the phone to advise that I had left the country permanently. It was an experience that taught me to embed a set of lies in my head - "we already have double glazing and some of the windows are triple glazed", "my father is a minister in the Anglican church", "I do not speak English", "sorry mate, no change just cards", "I am running late for a blood transfusion", "do you like cheese?", "you are compromising our operation, please move along", "I am the son of God and I ascend tomorrow so I do not think that I will be able to benefit from your raffle". Doorsteppers and panhandlers were despatched with ease and telephone canvassers rarely got past the line "We're not trying to sell you anything...".

From there I moved to London where this kind of attitude is the norm. Take for example a piece on London's XFM yesterday morning where presenter Richard Bacon was practically punched in the face when he tried to engage a passer-by in his outside broadcast. It is that kind of place - miserable. I rejoiced in the idea that I lived in a first floor flat and could ignore the doorbell because it was unheard of for friends to pop-round in an unsolicited fashion. Halloween was a particular favourite - there was no chance of the door-phone being employed, save for yet more lies, " I cannot get to the door because I am trapped under a wardrobe." etc.

The move out of London has, however, started to weaken me. For a start, I think that there are more door-to-door salespeople in the sticks because there is slightly less chance of them being dragged into the house, chopped up, and served to waiting house guests as rabbit stew. The road that I live in is incredibly friendly and in the space of 3 months I have engaged in conversations with about 50 percent of the street. People talk to each other over the garden wall and it is a bit like being in the 1950s, only without the urge to cover everything in either Brylcreme or linoleum. There is a great sense of community spirit.

Therefore, when a lottery seller from Eastbourne Borough Football Club distracted from a conversation that I was having with the builder next door, I was more than happy to support the local club with a pound a week which could translate into cash prizes. It was unlikely to happen to me, but I felt that it was my citizen's duty to help out. I signed up, handed over a fiver and awaited not only my fortune, but also a bronze statue of me to be erected at the gates of Priory Lane. It was only 3 weeks later, after I had not actually received my lottery numbers that another agent, replete with ID badge, knocked on my door. He advised that I had been duped by a fraudster. Well, fraudster is probably a bit strong, I think he was a bit hatstand actually. Anyway, we resolved the matter and I was given some official numbers. Furthermore, after I enquired as to whether the club was out of pocket as a result of this individual's activities, I figured the bronze was still secured. I even took Archie down to the club, albeit by accident, to show him the hallowed turf.

This appears to have been the tip of the iceberg. I've had a few weeks of playing dodge with a bloke from the local wildlife society - a worthy cause, but I have just not had time to go through their literature and he keeps on phoning when we are in the middle of dinner/changing/doing something more interesting than talking to door-to-door salespeople. By far the most annoying caller has been a company called Mosaic, who claim to the the UK's sole distribtor for an exterior wall-coating product called Tex-Cote.

The story begins with a student calling around, trying to earn some cash over the summer by arranging 'no-obligation house surveys', during which a representative of Mosaic / Tex-Cote will inspect your exterior walls and advise whether your house is likely to fall down by Tuesday week. I thought that it would be a reasonably useful exercise given that we have just bought the house and I keep on looking pensively at a series of cracks that exist in the outer rendering to the property. At least this way I could get a biased view of the cause and engage the builder next door to complete whatever work was neccessary at half the price.

Our intrepid salesperson arrived on time and proceeded to take me through the ins and outs of the product and the company. There was a very old video featuring Chris Serle, who used to appear in the consumer affairs programme 'That's Life'. The inspection basically consists of the salesperson tapping the walls with a large screw-driver bit. If it goes 'ding' then you are in the clear, if it goes 'thud' then your house is falling down. Predictably, our house got a mixed response. I was pleased to see that the salesperson's face did not drain of blood at any point and figured that we were pretty much in the clear. Thus, when the quote for eleven and a half thousand pounds was produced, with an option for reducing that figure by 3 thousand if we put an advertising board up, I decided that we could probably manage without it. Questionnaires were filled in and, with smirk and look of disbelief on face, I showed our man to the door.

That was the last that we expected to see of Mr Mosaic / Tex-Cote, but it seems that we might just be able to serendipitously benefit from a problem that they were having. Mrs VeryVeryBored received a phone call from the "managing director of the commercial arm of the company". He was in a fix - they were completing some work on two tower blocks and the people who were meant to be fitting the windows are running months behind schedule. Defying all sane practices, the company employs people full time to complete this kind of work, rather than buying in the services of contractors. He claimed "my guys are sitting around doing nothing and I want to get them working". He was prepared to do an "unbelievable deal" with us just so that he could shift his guys and the Tex-Cote coatings that had been bought in for the job. Mrs VeryVeryBored had a screaming baby in her arms and a ringing doorbell at the time so she employed the Mormons mistake ("yeah, whatever") but with a caveat that he could have no more than the promised "five minutes" of our time.

Mr Mosaic / Tex-Cote rolled up an hour early the following day, and proceded to re-explain his predicament. Despite being a consummate salesperson he advised that he was "not used to being in people's homes doing this kind of thing" as he was usually out on site with his boys and/or the client. Our 11,000 pound figure suddenly headed south (although on reflection I think he ended up only quoting for half the job) and we were advised that, slitting his own throat of course, he could do the job for 3,500. This was, naturally, on the condition that his men could begin work immediately. Archie was in his element. He was suffering from trapped wind that night and, I am pleased to say, screamed the house down. Mr Mosaic / Tex-Cote looked uncomfortable and left after about 40 minutes. I rather got the feeling that he had presented the final price about 5 hours before he really wanted to, just so that he could leave.

There is a two-part epilogue to these door to door exercises. Mr Eastbourne Borough Football Club knocked on my door last night and presented me with a prize-money cheque. Granted, it was only for a fiver but it was certainly received more gratefully than a punch in the face. Secondly, I was speaking earlier with a colleague in the south-coast office who has also had dealings with Mosaic / Tex-Cote. She was also quoted some years ago and, surprise surprise, their commercial division was experiencing the very same problems and had been able to quote her an unrepeatable price. She also showed them the door and completed the work herself, albeit minus the miracle Tex-Cote coating, for 500 pounds.

With the new addition to the family it has been suggested that I ought to register www.veryverytired.com, but I am considering going one step further with www.absolutelyfuckingknackered.com.

The balance of things has changed at VeryVeryBored.Com Towers: 2130 is now classed as "oooh, its a bit late" and 0630 as a welcome and somewhat unexpected lie-in. The most that the ante-natal classes made of this scene of devastation was a glancing reference to the fact that new parents should remind themselves that they are likely to feel a bit tired in the first few weeks. We should perhaps avoid sitting for a diploma in brain surgery before the child is 3 months old, and should hold off from splitting any atoms in the kitchen until maybe his 4th birthday. There is no reference made, alas, to European legislation allowing new parents to inform their employer that acute fatigue dictates that they will not be in the office for at least the next five years. Principle symptoms include irritability, a persistant worry that one is going to fall asleep at the wheel, listlessness, and a decision made to decamp under the duvet until your son's savings bonds have matured.

The problem is compounded by a wounding epiphany whereby I have once again determined that my mental health depends upon my ability to find alternative employment. I have only been back for 2 days and, along with being preoccupied with the genuine joy of being a father and encumbent narcolepsy, there are constant reminders that what I do is largely pointless, highly forgettable, mind-crushingly tedious and the inspiration for a website where the author constantly whinges on about how he needs to do something else with his professional life. Recruitment liars of England's south coast, brace yourselves!