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Yet another messy night at Glamorgan although this time it wasn’t the alcohol to blame! To see the photos from the night, click here.

Will it be a case of third time unlucky for me tonight?  Once again I am off to Glamorgan without a place to stay for the night - Or rather I have a place to stay, but it’s on the platform at the train station wrapped up against wind and water.

I’ve been lucky so far as despite my boss not being able to put me up due to moving house a couple of lovely students have stepped up to the plate to help me out and offered me places to stay (if not necessarily to sleep and not in that way!*) 

Still if all else fails last week there should be some games on stage tonight and ”Who Wants To Take The Photographer Home?” should be a fun game to play. The rules are simple, people tell me what they are offering me to entice me back to their place and I decide who wins - although I have to admit that any offer that beats sleeping in an open air train station is a definite contender.

*Unfortunately, you filthy minded people!

It’s the dogs again although this time it’s a father and daughter duo and as I haven’t used a black and white photo for a while where it is in black and white rather than colour.

This will be the last dog on these pages for a few days at least as tomorrow’s photos should come from the Gunge Party at Glamorgan SU - although I suppose I will probably wind up taking photos of some dogs there.

Whilst the crime’s themselves are not on the same scale as in America; where people have tried attempting to joyride a tank* the yoof of Britain is certainly ‘catching up’ with the intellectual prowess displayed such criminals.

So what was the crime of the yoofs…?

Well I think the title of the video that they put up on YouTube says it best, “Wild Specs Robbery”, with the subtitle “Pissed up bald lad steals randomers specs in street! Absolutely WILD!!!”

That said it sounds like it was a good quality video up on YouTube from the wannabe filmakers as the film managed to capture clear images of the offenders face and aid police in tracking down the offender, whom the police politely described by saying, “He isn’t the brightest lad.” and whom the YouTube audience describe variously as, “cretins”, “chavs”, “scum” and “retarded”.

I read this article in the Times and I can’t help but chuckle at the way they describe YouTube’s popularity to their readers:

Set up 20 months ago, YouTube, was initially intended to be for sharing videos online with friends. It has made rich men of its creators, Chad Hurley, 29, and Steve Chen, 27, who sold it to Google for £883 million.

…

So popular has it become that politicians have started to use it to try to spread their campaign messages — or to attack their rivals. This month two Labour MPs were forced to apologise for making a controversial spoof video of David Cameron, the Tory leader, in which voters were invited to sleep with his wife.

I laugh as I am sure that a video I saw of a cat flushing a toilet probably got more views than that video** 

*Although I did go to school with someone who once tried to go for a joyride in a JCB and his getaway was about as effective and even he admitted afterwards that, “It was not one of his brightest ideas.”

**I’ll see if I can verify that at some point.

Freddy and Muppet are brother and sister to each other and like any siblings when one gets attention, the other wants it as well and so shortly after I took the photo yesterday of Freddy on his own Muppet decided that she wanted her chance in front of the camera.

This was going to be about nice things… 

I am aware I moan a lot about my job and the idiots I have to deal with as a result of it (and not just the ones that phone up), but today I was planning to write about a few of the things that I appreciate about the fact although my commute effectively wastes four hours a day, it does give me a lot of time to listen to music and read.

I honestly was planning to say some nice things, but then I started working and the morons phoning in soon brought my down from the happy place that listening to Belinda Carlisle’s greatest hits had sent me to.

Now when taking someone’s address the first thing that we do is ask for a postcode and this seems to be a daunting task for some people, after all you only live at the address and recieve pieces of mail with it on every day and probably had to use it when arranging bills, bank accounts, etc…

Now assume that the person knows their postcode (and most people do - today has just been worse than normal) I now have to repeat it back phonetically to confirm it and this is where problems really begin to occur…

They of course will tell me I have repeated it correctly and so I go to search for an address only for the computer to tell me that the postcode doesn’t exist or it’s the postcode for the wrong address - this shouldn’t happen after all I have to listen to the idiots, so they could at least listen to me - I am trying to help them after all.*

Then I will ask for them to reconfirm it saying “so that’s ‘B’ for bravo” and they will invariably reply with, “No it’s b, b, B!” - Which is of course really helpful.

Of course I am aware of how certain sounds sound similar over the phone such as ‘ess’ and ‘eff’ or ‘bee’ and ‘pee’ and I will then ask, “Is that B for bravo or P for papa?”  The most common answer to this question (unsurprisingly given the intelligence of callers) is of course, “Yes!”

Finally you get them to tell you which it was and it’s on to the rest of the call which you know is going to be as much fun (and about as painful) as dragging your testicles across a mile of barbed wire as you try and find out why they are actually calling.

*Even if the help I suspect some of them need is far beyond the scope of my job.