Paul Annett

One thing I neglected to mention earlier was that whilst I was in London, my fiancé Relly was back in Brighton being bored.

As she tends to do, she browses eBay to upset herself about all the pretty things we can’t afford because we’re busy saving for the wedding in July. So there she was, sitting on the sofa and using the iBook to check out the prices of an iPod to match.

You’d expect that pressing ‘buy it now’ would then take you to a page which says “you are about to buy an iPod for X amount of money plus X for shipping” - but apparently not if you’re already logged in. What she hadn’t realised was that I hadn’t logged out of eBay last time I used it, so now I’m the proud owner of a new 40GB iPod (yet to be delivered).

Fortunately this doesn’t bother me too much as we want to cut down on our massive CD collection so that we can move to a smaller flat soon, but since we don’t want to lose any of the music an iPod is essential. And rather than spending £400 in a high street store I’m much happier to get a new (sealed) one from eBay for £330.

She was very nice to me last night…

Although I no longer live in London I still have some web design business to do there from time to time, and when I do I try to arrange several meetings on the same day. So it was that Friday started in Dean Street with a meeting about a ’sales department’ for Nice Design. This is most welcome, as although I prefer designing sites for local businesses in Brighton, London still seems to be where the higher budget jobs originate.

After this meeting I made my way swiftly to a lunch appointment in Greek Street’s Nando’s to discuss music websites, file sharing, and CD sales with an important ‘playa’ from a major record label. I can say no more, other than that sometimes I do feel a pang of hypocrisy when on one hand I occasionally use Kazaa to get hold of a track I can’t otherwise find, yet I then talk to record industry peoples about digital rights management and the proliferation of their artists’ work in the illegally pirated markets. I is secretly a spy, and will self destruct in five seconds.

My afternoon consisted of a fleeting meeting with a web agency followed by a long overdo catch-up with Calum and Tariq, two friends I left behind with I moved from London to Brighton. It was especially important for me to see Calum again, as we haven’t seen each other since June and he’s due to be an usher at my wedding in July!

It was lovely to see them over a few drinks, and to my surprise they both (at my recommendation) bought both CD1 and CD2 of Easyworld’s new single ‘Til the Day, which is doing really well in this week’s midweek charts and has had loads of publicity on TV and radio, which is great. So fingers crossed for them!

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for more than three pints as I had to rush back to Brighton on the train to drink some coke with a cigarette butt in it (see yesterday’s blog entry), but we did have time to discuss magic (obviously), why reflected images in a mirror appear reversed left-to-right, but not top-to-bottom, and how on Earth do they make Maltesers seamless. Something that needs some research, I think.

Today I committed one of the most vile examples of public behaviour. I spat on the pavement. Of course I wouldn’t have done so had I not just drunk from my Coke can, which contained a cigarette butt the townie lads in my carriage slipped in there whilst I slept on the train. So I had an excuse.

The more immediate thing which I noticed was that they also appear to have stolen my glasses. This is not too much of a problem because I can see fine without them unless I’m reading or at the cinema. It’s just a shame that, having not been to the cinema in a few months, this weekend was the weekend I chose to revisit our local and watch a film or two. That and they’ll cost money to replace, of course. Bugger.