» Meeting people from the internet

A happy ending
In January 1998 I was a final year student at Cardiff University. One Sunday evening I was with a friend in a computer room, listening to the charts on Radio 1, when Catatonia's Mulder & Scully was announced as the number three record.

With not much else to do (work wasn't an option) I logged on to the NME chat room, which was abuzz with people discussing how an second division indie band from Wales managed to stage a chart coup. One of the other chat room users mentioned that she was also at Cardiff Uni, and we discovered that we lived in the same street.

This was way before the dawn of online dating, you understand, and it was more of a chat about music than anything flirtatious. At the end of the evening I gave her my email address but thought little more of it.

The next day there was a message from her in my inbox. We exchanged emails for a few days, established a mutual love for the same bands, and eventually decided to meet for a drink at the student bar.

We got on, really well, so arranged to meet again. Within a couple of weeks we were a couple, fell in love and spent much of the next year inseparable. It was intense and passionate and unlike anything I'd experienced before.

We split up later that year after I graduated - it was the wrong time in life for us to be settling down. She broke my heart but I never forgot her. Every subsequent relationship was OK, but secretly I was comparing it to the girl from 1998. It felt like unfinished business, and I never knew whether it was a whirlwind romance or something that was cut off before its time.

In 2004, six years after we first met, I finally gave in and re-established contact. We went for a drink, found that same intangible chemistry that had been lying dormant all those years, and you can guess the rest. We married in 2006 and our little boy was born in May this year. I honestly couldn't be happier.

Looking back, it could all have been so different: if we hadn't been on the same website in that particular hour (I'd never used the chatroom before or since, and it's long gone now); if we hadn't lived near to one another; if she hadn't emailed; if we hadn't liked each other IRL; if I hadn't reestablished contact years later; and if we'd gone in hugely different directions in the intervening years.

Yay for meeting random people on the internet!

I can't stand Catatonia, mind.
(Fri 21st Oct 2011, 17:01, More)

» Ignorance

Homage to catatonia
In my office last month. Person A walks up to Person B. Apropos of apparently nothing, the following exchange occurs:

Person A: "Have you read George Orwell's... 1912? The one about the pigs? What's it called?"
Person B: "Big Brother?"

I was slack jawed in disbelief. I should add that these are 40-something university-educated workers at a major media company.

Which reminds me, we recently had three flatscreen TVs put up on the walls of our office and I made a joke about how Big Brother would be watching us. Person B replied: "Yes, and the eye logo would look really good too!" Some people need to read more books and watch less TV.
(Fri 31st Aug 2012, 16:35, More)

» Weird Traditions

I work on a BBC website in Wales.
This week someone from Texas wrote in, asking: "My grandpa had a tradition I wanted to know if it is Welsh? He used to blacken our faces and place us under the bed on our birthdays." We've no idea if it stopped there or if grandpa is now in the slammer - as my mate pointed out, it sounds more "illegal in most countries" than "Welsh"...
(Fri 29th Jul 2005, 17:40, More)

» Claims to Fame

I once made a jpeg of Debbie McGee being fucked by an alsatian.
It was in response to the Louis Theroux programme with her and Paul Daniels, in which the annoying bald illusionist responded to the persistent rumours about her, saying he'd love to see such a picture it actually existed. So, to make him happy, I found a picture (can't remember where, filth fans) of a woman being rogered by a canine - doggy style, naturally - and Photoshopped Debbie's head onto it in a deliberately amateurish way. It got into the Popbitch newsletter - and my boss and my mother both mentioned that they'd seen it on my site. Oh dear.

As a footnote, there was a reference to an image of a woman being fucked by a dog in the first episode of Nathan Barley. I did wonder about that.
(Mon 28th Feb 2005, 12:52, More)

» How I Skive Off Work

I work for Microsoft
My line manager is only in the office a couple of days a week. The various other execs (we're hugely overstaffed at management level) seem to be in endless meetings pretending to negotiate to avoid our redundancies (though we know they only care about themselves and their mates), so no-one's ever around.

All the people in my immediate vicinity are likely to be on Bill Gates's redundancy list, so we don't really do much work at all, just sit around blogging, downloading music or emailing friends. The senior people know the lack of productivity is due to the demoralised workforce. This will remain the case until June, when we finally get our cards, and from then we'll have another six months or so to work out our notice. Bolox to it all.
(Thu 28th Apr 2005, 13:52, More)