Did I get my bag back?

Last night at around half past eleven I got a call from the Chandos. The man on the phone told me that he had found my bag!! In order to confirm that it was mine HE started listing the contents to ME. It reminded me of Frank Oz at the start of the Blues Brothers - "One propylactic ... soiled". He had clearly had a good rummage - "Yeah - and there's ... some sort of script here..." *rustle rustle*

The script is for a show at The Old Red Lion. I have no idea when the show is, but once I work it out I'll post it here in some sort of attractive advert format. It's written by this very sweet parochial middle class woman in her sixties, who turns into a slavering demented psycopath the moment she puts pen to paper. She wouldn't say boo to a goose and keeps on trying to buy me sandwiches in real life, and then has me running around behaving like a retard and swearing more than Tarantino when he burns himself on the oven. Bless her.

But yes - the bag is returned. I would give you a photo but I don't have a camera. So that's a pretty useless sentiment.

Why is the time on this stupid site set to PST? There must be a way I can make it GMT so I don't have to change it everytime I post.

Social experiment

I have lost my bag. Quite literally it contains a torn magazine and a chocolate bar. I left it in The Chandos pub in St. Martin's Lane - upstairs. Nice pub. Good leather sofas and odd beers and soft drinks that you can't normally get. I have just phoned them. It has been an hour since I left it there and what I'm wondering is - has someone nicked it? This sorry saggy bag with an ancient white chocolate and berry bar that I bought reduced in a motorway caff before christmas and never quite had the guts to put in my mouth. And a torn PC magazine from about three months ago.

I brought it out in order to put my wallet and phone into it in order not to stretch the pockets on my jeans - a new concern and one that is more my girlfriends than my own. My wallet and my mobile phone are safely in my pocket. Bad habits are really useful sometimes. Who cares about stretching my pockets - at least I haven't lost my wallet and my phone.

Incidentally the staff at the Chandos are superb. The barman was this big Aussie guy who seemed a bit of a brute but the guy I just spoke to on the phone was really helpful and he took my mobile number and is going to call me back if he rescues my bag. If not I don't relish telling my Harriet how I lost it. Ah well.

I was meeting up with a chap called Geoff tonight - I don't know him terribly well but he is joint best man with me at my mate Dan's wedding. Organising parties - all very serious.

Oh god and I discovered today that one of my ex girlfriends got married. Not only that but she only went and bloody married the guy I used to live next door to at school. Lovely guy - tall and blond and polite and all the things I'm not. Dammit. I didn't introduce them though - they met at scottish dancing. She kept on trying to get me to come with her and I really didn't fancy it. Ah well, That's life. Dammit.

Ad sales suck

I've never even seen one of these things before but as far as I know I'm expected to put down all the things that are going on in my head. I also understand that blogs are always deeply political which I'm sure is nonsense but that's the flavour they've been given. Partly to do with the fact that the only blogger I've ever heard of is Salaam Pax or so I think his name was - the Baghdad Blogger. I did a play with this crazy greek / not really greek at all director called Tassos Stevens which involved Salaam Pax mixed with oscar acceptance speeches and journalists writing from warzones all thrown together under the title After The Last Days of Mankind. It's a homage to a play that was created by throwing together transcripts taken from WWII from both sides detailing human responses to tragedies and war in general. The original play lasted three days. Our one thankfully came in at considerably less - more like half an hour. Anyhow, ad sales suck. This is what I have come to tell you all about. I'm selling advertising space in a men's lifestyle magazine. I'm not even being paid for it - I'm doing it as it helps me to develop a thicker skin so I can put up with more rejections from shite commercials that I don't really want to do anyhow. I get commission on any sales I make, but what i have discovered is that the Media Buyers in this country are all endemic racists. Drum is a superb publication with a hell of a lot of promise, but nobody is prepared to trust it - I come across an endless instinctive lack of trust. People expecting to be conned. I am told that there was a previous mag called untold that took the money for six months worth of ads and then did a runner. But as far as I can tell these people are just not willing to give money to a black mens lifestyle mag and not one of them can come up with an adequate reason why not. "This sort of publication is not really in our brief" they tell me and they are putting ads in Arena and GQ. Sod them all. I feel a little better exposing them all for the nasty smug bastards that they are. I'm sure something will turn around soon. But in the meantime Media Buyers are all swine. So now I'm going to click a button and see what happens with this rant. And I'll come back and throw more crap at the walls if it doesn't just delete it and send me to whitescreen hell.