I went swimming at an unearthly hour this morning with Wayne. There were 3 partitioned areas, one for the slow, one for the less slow and one for serious swimmers. Unfortunately I am above less slow in less speed and nothing like a serious swimmer. I kept running into the person in front while being lapped by people who actually wear swimming caps. I now ache in places I didn’t even know had musculature.

Last night I went through a lot or Jim Lee art and was inspired to draw. Which I have done, and it looks nothing like Jim Lee. It’s hard lined and has no feathering or hatching, at all.

Apparently you can now catch death from sausages. And Mexicans. Especially from Mexicans wielding sausages.

Easter came obscenely early this year. Apparently it wont happen again in my lifetime. It being as early. Not it being Easter.

To the surprise of absolutely no-one Heathrow’s terminal 5 is a mess. I read that the luggage handling system took 13 years to design and implement. This does not mean that it was thorough and every contingency prepared for, it just means it is at least 13 years out of date. It uses arrays of lasers to read barcodes on luggage when it screams out for RFID chips. They’d be more accurate and reliable and probably even cheaper in the long run.

I have worked out a slogan for politicians standing against the incumbent government: They don’t have policies, they react. They don’t have vision, they avoid oversight. You’re welcome.

Here’s how busy I have been with work: I only just discovered there is a new series of South Park started in America. I do aim to correct this shortcoming though.

We’ve had a rework of airconditioners to do at work. It wore me out completely the first day but I now feel fantastic for it. I recommend it as a workout to everyone.

I am in the process of moving to Spain. This is to expand out business and hopefully make a lot of money. I need to do the following:

- Pack everything either to go into storage or to be sent across.
- Sort out a Spanish bank account as, despite what we were informed by our business bank manager in England (a man who makes more mistakes than right decisions and I am fast losing all faith in), we need one.
- Sort out a landline telephone and attendant internet (I am planning to go with Tele2, anyone got any thoughts?)
- Sort out a mobile telephone with cheap calls and a Symbian or Windows Mobile handset so as to run Skype on it (I have no idea what company and think this will take the bulk of my research time).
- Get printing and incidental associated things sorted out (stickers, loan agreements, flyers, card transaction system, update webpage).
- Buy a new computer motherboard, CPU, thermal grease, DVI cable and large scale back up device. I am also considering a 32″ television and a Nintendo Wii.
- Cancel my gym memebership and severely change my phone contract, if not cancel it.

Spain is very hot, the people work hard and at a fair pace but they do take a break for several hours in the early afternoon. Internet cafes seem relatively cheap and plentiful, food and most basic items are cheap but cotton clothing and electronics are relatively expensive. My new gym is about 30 Euros a month, which is a big saving on my old one.

I need to work out how to adjust my diet and make sure I get enough fluids. Hopefully I will get opportunity to work on something that I have been having slosh about in my head for a bit. I wont be getting the same constant comics fix that I have been used to.

Gordon Brown will bring in strict new security laws. Gordon Brown believes in attacking the low paid. Gordon Brown is apparently going to keep us in Iraq. Gordon Brown, simply put, is the worst excuse for a Tory Prime Minister in my lifetime. All the down sides with no commitment to social reform or small government.

Wolverhampton Subway is no longer staffed wholly by utter idiots. They reserve that for the till operator. I think this is a side effect of them sacking off the male staff and replacing them with women who actually remember the order placed with them and don’t ask you to repeat it till you are hoarse and your tongue bleeds from exertion.

Apparently 100,000 women took part in the run for life today. I would cry sexual discrimination apart from the fact I don’t fancy running 3 miles in beating hot sun.

Armand Van Helden has a new album out. It sounds like a lots of eighties dance with no drops. No glitches, no dirty beats. At first it was a shock, and an unwelcome one. But it is a grower. Some of the songs I now love. However, I do prefer his glitchier, dirtier and more droptastic songs. Which the BBC apparently wants to deny exist, failing to mention albums from his discography as mood suits them.

I have discovered Yazoo Yogo Summer Berry drink. It tastes like my mother’s raspberry cheesecake. This is a very good thing. I had to track it down in its natural habitat and snare it in a huge net, but the effort has been worth it.

As I walk to (and occasionally from) the gym I pass a basketball court and football pitch. On the scrub land between them and the pavement grows two different kinds of poppies. This being on the edge of All Saints I am unsure if it is being used to cultivate heroin crops or they have declared an armistice I am unaware of.

Luther Arkwright is a very dense comic which contrives to have the end of royal dynasties and governance across Europe happen at once for some reason which wholly escapes me. In places it is beautifully drawn, and the sheer literacy of it is to be lauded. But it is bloody hard going and I am left with an overall lack of care for the characters (although rounded and developed) and plot (although detailed and meticulous) such as I have no desire to ever read it again. Or suggest to anyone else that they should.

Pirates 3 on Thursday. It shall, of course, be one of the best two sequels this summer. The other will be Ocean’s 13. Spider-Man is for emos and Shrek 3 is for people who get off on intellectual slumming.

Yesterday I went to watch horse racing. Adrian called me, early in the morning, and asked if I wanted to go to the races. Of course, me being stupid, I took him to mean the dog track (which I knew we had locally) rather than the horses (which I had no idea existed). I went to the gym and spent time learning how to pick winning and losing dogs. Which was, of course, a colossal waste of time.

In the first race I backed a horse to go each way. For a good two thirds of the race it was leading and my heart was in my mouth. Then it faded spectacularly to not place in the top four. After that I kind of lost all interest, picking horses who didn’t manage to do what I thought they would. We left early and decided not to go back.

Earlier I went to the gym again, then into the city centre shopping. I had the experience of going into Tesco and being able to time and observe the activity on the self service till. People waiting to be served by a cashier got through faster, just because the general populace doesn’t seem to understand barcodes or be aware of their location on products. Of course, the self service time was massively (some would say exponentially, and why not?) increased by the presence of an obviously middle class woman and her idiot son who must have been at the till unsuccessfully dealing with their not huge shop for at least 10 minutes. I wasn’t even queueing near them and still had the desire to kill them both.

Luton lost to Leeds, Bradford City lost and Chelsea conspired to fight back to draw against Spurs. And Middlesbrough forced Manchester United into a replay. Not the best weekend for me, sports wise.

Adrian will never let me live it down. We’d been to the gym and were in Wolverhampton city centre. There were enough police riot vans going round to make me wonder if there had been a military coup and I suggested we get a late breakfast in a new place that did pancakes and waffles. To day the service was bad was an understatement. They had no idea what food they had, what extras they had, where it was located or how to serve it. After waiting entirely too long Adrian was presented with a bowl of hearty soup and some nice granary bread. I got two rubber coasters covered in cheap chocolate spread and the world’s most bendy fork. I’d say I am never eating there again, but that would imply I gained any nourishment to being with. We came out, went to a street vendor and bought 4 chicken samosas.

I have made the gym nearly every day this week. I missed Wednesday for the most slim of reasons (I was unable to move having unloaded and then unloaded a wagon the night before) and am actually making progress much quicker than I should. Perhaps I am just delusional, but I feel motivated. I am enjoying going and feeling accomplished again. And now I am managing to drag Adrian along with me too.

Liverpool conspired to lose in the FA cup and the Carling cup to Arsenal in the same week. At first it was just funny, but it soon got to be hilarious. It culminated in the losing 6-2 to a bunch of kids and looking like they were ripe for the plucking. The first loss won me nigh on 15 quid, the second I didn’t have the nerve to bet on. Then, today, they beat Chelsea. This either means Chelsea are in real trouble (a strong possibility) or Liverpool no longer care about cup competition.

I actually voted on a Big Brother eviction for the first time in my life yesterday. Not that I have watched a minute of it in some years (not since nearly burning my flat down one drunken night), but I deeply wanted Jade to lose and be publicly stoned. Unfortunately, I will have to settle for her “career” being in ruins.

Some things, viewed through wiser and older eyes, are crap. Some things aren’t.