How to set up a Treo 600 on o2 Pay As You Go...

Go to Home > Prefs > Network

Make Service: O2 Mobile Web GPRS Copy
Make Connection GPRS
Make Password: password
Make APN address: payandgo.o2.co.uk

Click [Details]

Make Fallback: None

Click [Advanced...]

Make IP address: Automatic
Uncheck Query DNS [_]
Make Primary DNS: 193.113.200.200
Make Primary DNS: 193.113.200.201

[OK] [OK]

Click the Home Button

Go to Web then select Options

Make Home Page: http://payandgo.o2.co.uk

Click [Advanced] Click [Set Proxy] Check Use Proxy[_]

Make Proxy Server: 193.113.200.195

Make Port: 8080

[OK] [OK] [OK]

Make sure you write this all down and keep it somewhere safe - like on your Blog.

Switch off the expensive Christmas present - then switch it back on. Hurray!!!!!!!! The web in my pocket - or at least a cut down streamlined version of it...

Guess what I have just spent the best part of 2 days doing... A lot of head banging frustration and phone calls to nice chaps in India and poking and prying on the web and I finally got it sorted.

Oh, final thing. Remember to have more than 60p in credit on the phone... That last bit took me about 3 hours to work out. It's been a long day.

Merry Christmas

Just taking a moments break from the Christmassy doings to wish the world a Merry Christmas!

We a currently trimming the artificial Christmas tree Merriol bought the other day - apparently my 2 foot tall brown artificial Christmas tree is just “horrible” and was once likened to a collection of badly wired together used toilet brushes - so after 9 years living with it Merriol has finally put her foot down and bought a new one. The new one is six foot, cerise and the gayest damn thing you ever saw. It was instantly christened Pricilla Queen of the Forest.

Merry Christmas, World.

One of the unconcidered joys of having Holly at two nursery schools is that we get to go to two Christmas concerts.

On Tuesday we got to see our little darling singing in Gaelic and today she was the "Fairy" Gabriel in the nativity play. She made a good Fairy Gabriel. Needs a few lessons in stage craft - I mean facing the audience at some point would have been a good idea - but she was right in onto the stage, on cue (with a helpful shove from one of the teachers), and said her lines good and loud. I sttod there the whole time feeling dead proud and videoed the whole thing. I love being a dad.

Rotted what's left of my brain last night by watching a TERRIBLE 1951 movie called Unknown World. And I still can't work out why I do this. Why do I watch this drek?

Answers on a postcard please. I really would like to know.

OK... Nearly Resumed

I didn't get the job. It was a fun day though; I don't suppose all professional auditions are like that, but it was a good intro. Basicaly we played some games, did some improv, did a bit of singing... (now I wonder WHY I didn't get the job...?) and they were good enough to tell us on the spot who got it. I could see why they chose the people they did, the three who were chosen (there were 8 of us at the audition) worked well together - and they could all sing.

It would have been nice to have got the job but at least I won't be running around the country when Phoebe and Tyler are over in the spring.

The last few days have been trying to beat the mess moster that is our house into submission and doing Christmas shopping. The highlight of which happened yesterday in Oban. We were in Ottakar's bookshop when Holly spotted a book about the Nativity. She is playing "The Fairy Gabriel" in her nursery nativity play this week so all we have heard for the past week or two is "Baby Jesus this and Baby Jesus that...". So she sat down with this book and became engrossed in the pictures then suddenly she started singing Away in a Manger. When she finished a couple of people applauded! It was a... I don't know quite how to put it.. it was one of those moments that if I had seen it in a movie I would have reached for the sick bag, but because it was real and because it was my child it made me so proud.

I'm so glad I have kids.

Other stuff:

I'm thinking of becoming a school govenor. The Primary school here has an elected board of Parent Govenors - exept it doesn't because no one stood to be elected this year. So they've had to call another election and I 've stuck my head up and said that if no one else wants to do it then I will. I'm not sure what I'm letting myself in for, but if someone else stands then I will run away and let them do it.

I hate joining things.

Recent dialogue between Holly and me:

Me:
(pointing at the tabletop next to her computer)
Holly, where's the credit card that was there?

Holly:
I haven't seen it ...

(pause)

... it's in there.

And this is how I discovered that credit cards are just under 3.5 inches long. Just wide enough to fit sideways into the floppy drive of a PC ...

---

I have an audition tomorrow.

I have to have an audition piece.

I have just picked it up and am starting to learn it ...

I am an idiot.

Do sexually frustrated Flower Fairies get the bluebells?

This "joke" will not be appearing in next year's panto

Normal Service is Resumed

Normal service is resumed. Thank you for your patience.

The Panto went well despite all the forgivings and qualms. All four shows were well attended. The biggest disappointment for me was that Holly burst into tears as soon as I came on stage and was inconsolable. She insisted on going home and missed all of it. Next time we do one (in two years), I guess she might be old enough to join in the fun. I hope so.

The other highlight of the week for me was realising one night, just before I went on as King Rat for the first time, that half my costume was in the wings over on the other side of the stage where I had left it the night before.

Stupid! Stupid! Stupid!

Ballachulish village hall was not really built as a theatre. It is more of a Badminton court with this square hole in the wall at one end. There is no way to get from one side of the stage to the other as in a real theatre unless you build a set you can crawl behind. If you exit stage left, you have to stay there, lurking in the tiny wings, in the cramped space between scenery stored over that side and the other three actors who walked off with you, until the end of the scene. We did not have a set I could crawl behind. I did not have a costume. I did have about 45 seconds to improvise something from whatever was lying around in the dressing rooms.

I improvised. Wrapped a chunk of material round my neck and went on. No one noticed. Apart from Kath who was in the dressing room as I burst in shouting “OmiFuck! Mycostumeisontheothersideofthe fuckingstagewhatamignnado????”

Oh yeah, there was also that moment when I had just struggled into the Fat Elvis suit for the start of act 2 when Bill came into the dressing room and said:

”You’re on!”

I looked at him. I looked at the stage monitor (a baby alarm gaffer-taped to the wall) I looked at him again.

“On?” I said.

He looked at me. We both looked at the baby alarm (why we looked at something that was only relaying sound I have no idea but we did).

“Yes,” he said, “at the end of this song.”

“Oh FUCK!!!!”

You have never seen anyone change from a Fat Elvis costume into a Rat King costume in as short a time as I did it. (Actually, you’ve never seen anyone change from a Fat Elvis costume into a Rat King costume at all, have you?) I got into the wings just as they were delivering the 2 lines of dialogue that follow the song:

“Oh Dick”
“Oh Rose”
Enter King Rat

I never want to be that close again.

Spent Sunday tidying the place up and hoovering the 15 pounds of glitter Merriol scattered around the place and then my body said:

“MY turn now, remember that cold you have deliberately not being having for the past 2 weeks? Well guess what... ?” at which point something turned a tap on inside my sinuses and something else whacked me one in all the major joints of my body with a baseball bat.

OW!

Ok, Ok, maybe I was a wee bitty hasty with the billboard sized ARGH! yesterday.

We had another rehearsal tonight and worked on Act 2. It's coming together. We did a run from start to finish with only the occasional break for techie stuff and it ran well. I think the thing is actually going to work. Towards the end of the evening I was beginning to enjoy myself and starting to have fun, trying to do some acting as opposed to merely doing 'Remembering Of Words' which is what I was desperately failing to do yesterday. I wish we had a few more days. But we don't; tomorrow is it.

There is an old theatrical tradition I just made up that says that the greatness of a first night is in direct inverse proprtion to the crapness of a dress rehearsal. If this holds true then judging by this evening's dress rehearsal we are going to be up for Tonies, Baftas, Oliviers, Ralphs, Freds and induction into the Panto Hall of Fame...

There is only one word in English that can sum up this evening. It's 34 letters long and consists of the letters A R G and H in variable quantities. (Though to get the true flavour of the evening reading it in 12 foot high lettering would just about do it.)

I blanked on stage not once - but twice! Total and utter 'what the fuck do I say now?' blank. I know the lines. They are in my head. I wrote the damn things! It's just that we have had so little real rehearsal time on this show spread over such a long time that, yes I know my lines when I'm sitting down or lying in bed, but stand me up and have people standing around me in places different to where I imagined them standing and I'm utterly lost. We have all day tomorrow to bash this thing into my head- and a great deal of Thursday.

And now the last few paragraphs rewritten for the ticket buying population of Lochaber and any potential employers who may be reading:

The Rehearsal went swimmingly. Everyone was on top form. There were a couple of easily solved technical glitches but we ad-libbed out of them brilliantly. We had a few post rehearsal drinkipos in the Eau De Nile Room (I think 'The Green Room' sounds so common, don't you?) and I said to Sir Ralph. "Jolly little number isn't it?" Unfortunatly he thought I was talking about Pinky Warburton who was had just passed the door. As Sir Ralph and he had had a bit of a spat the day before Sir Ralph though I was making a 'certain kind of remark' and dashed his Pimms into my face before bursting into tears. We laughed about it afterwards but I could tell he was upset.

Oh God where is this going? No idea. Bed sounds like an idea. I usually find that's a good place to go when I start typing rubbish.

'Night.

There is something fundamentaly weird with my life at the moment - or even fundaweirdly mental.

I spent most of this evening glueing the words to Donald Where's your Troosers onto the back of a roll of wallpaper. (It's a Panto thing.)

Not a long entry tonight. I'm just switching off the pooter and going to bed having set the mouse traps for the night. It's freezing here and that always heralds a sudden influx of the little buggers. Merriol and Sue bought some (useless) 'humane' traps while I was away - and didn't catch a sodding thing.

Now I'm back the real traps have come out. The ones that kill the little shits, then post their heads back to their grieving relatives with a stiff note.

Grrrr! I get all Rambo and macho when it comes to rodents in my house. I'm normaly a pretty placid and gentle soul but rodents chewing my wiring and pooing on my worksurfaces? Out comes the Bambi hunter in me. Current bait is slices of Twix Bars, it comes highly recomended as a bait by a fellow mousehunter. I will let you know how it works... that reminds me, I need to file down the trigger mechanism on the number 2 trap it's just not sensative enough...

6 hour rehearsal / costume fittings / photo shoot for local newspapers and radio etc. today. Not total chaos but edging on it from time to time. We have 3 days to get this thing together. I feel like Mickey Rooney putting on a show in the barn - Oh Christ no! Not Mickey Rooney! If I have to feel like someone putting on a show in a hurry, let it be James Cagney as Chester Kent in Footlight Parade!

Charlie Bowers:
Is there, is there anything I can do?

Chester Kent:
Yeah. See that window over there?

Charlie Bowers:
Yeah.

Chester Kent:
Take a running jump and I think you can make it.

Footlight Parade is, in my humble opinion, one of the best movies of the 20th century. The final reels are just pure cinema. 3 enormously lavish Busby Berkeley numbers bang bang bang one after the other. It's just the best musical ever. Stop reading this and go watch it. It conveys the sort of desperate panic I'm feeling about all of this a lot better than I can. (Great editing too)

How did I get onto this?

I dunno. I'm tired. 3 days to go and we have only just started on the scenery...

After the rehearsal I asked Ilona (director/producer/half of comedy double-act and remover of most of the obvious knob jokes from the script) how she thought it was going.

"On a scale from 'O mi god' to 'We are so utterly screwed'", I said "Where exactly are we?"
"We're fine." She said,"It's always like this; don't you remember the last time?"

No I don't. I don't remember it being this close to the wire at all.

And I do want whatever medication she is on because it is obviously working...

How Are We Going To Stop Daddy Singing?

I have an audition for the TIE job in March.

I have to sing.

I forgot to put a stamp on the application letter.

I am not going to get the job.



.

Dikke Whittingtone, A Historical Overview.

(An extract from a conversation on the South Bank Show between Hieronymus Fartwrangler, Emeritus Professor of Medeaval Post-modernist Irony at the University of the Highlands in Onich, and Melvyn Bragg )

Prof. Fartwrangler:

"Class is part of the rubicon of reality," says Lyotard Cameron suggesting, without any meaning, that the works of Baldwin, Pitt et al are postmodern. It could be said therefore that if dialectic precapitalist theory holds, we have to choose between Lyotardist narrative and constructive capitalism which states, like Satre:"Consciousness is fundamentally a legal fiction," However, according to Prinn, it is not so much consciousness that is fundamentally a legal fiction, but rather the defining characteristic, and some would say the futility, of consciousness. The example of Batailleist `powerful communication' depicted in Ballachulish's Dick Whittington is also evident in the act of tying one's own shoe laces in a public place, although in a more mytho-poetical sense. And, in a sense, It leads to the implication that we have to choose between cultural capitalism and precapitalist desituationism."

Melvyn Bragg:
Oh No it isn't!



Prof. Fartwrangler:
Oh yes it is!


Melvyn Bragg:
Oh No it isn't!


Prof. Fartwrangler:
Oh yes it is! And Neo-cartusian pre-raphelistism says I'm right!


Melvyn Bragg:
Well, we don't believe you, do we boys and girls?


Germain Greer, Mark Lawson, and Brian Sewell:
No! Booo! I don't like him, he's nasty! etc.


Melvyn Bragg:
Thank you Professor Fartwrangler - it's nice to see
our ALL our tax money isn't being wasted... Goodnight.

---

That's it! I'm off to bed; my brain just can't cope with any more of this ...

Prof. Fartwrangler gratefully acknowledges the help of Elswhere.org's Postmodernist Generator in formulating some of his theories.

I sang.

Today I called round to Paul's and recorded the songs for the Panto. I had tried to convince the powers that be (Ilona) to let me mime the things as I am such a shite singer. We agreed on this compromise: I can sing along with my pre-recorded self.

This evening was spent trying to get everyone's surnames correct on the programme before I mail it off to Debs who has (foolish woman) agreed to do all the layout and typography and that.

Done that.

Bugger.

I'm running out of displacement activities.

If I don't find any more very soon I'm going to have to learn my lines.

Only a week to go!

It's Hard To Belly Dance On One Leg

This time in two weeks time the Panto will be over and done with. This is a scary thought as we have no scenery, only a few finished costumes, and hardly anyone knows all their lines yet. Even worse - I now have to sing...

How does this happen?

Every year I say:

"I'm not singing. I refuse to sing. There is no way on God's green earth are you going to get me to sing..."

Every time I end up singing.

This time I get to murder four Elvis songs in cold blood in front of witnesses. Sorry Elvis.

---

This morning I took a long look at the arse end of a Renault Megane regarded by most people as the ugliest arse end of a car of this, or any other century. The megane is almost passable from the front but walk round the back of it and looks like someone did origami with the original drawings before they went into production. It's awful. Ugly Ugly Ugly.

As I was looking at this thing (the one I was looking at had a strange angular two-tone paint job which made it look even more awful than the one in this picture) it occurred to me that the recent riots and unrest in Paris were nothing to do with social deprevation. What was the major target for the rioters? Cars, that's what. They firebombed every vehicle they could find - and if they were all Meganes I don't blame them.

"To 'ell wiz ze social deprevation it eez ze ugly ferking cars we canno stand no more! A bas les voitures de merde Francais*!"

• Current Listening to Random Breakbeat streaming from here

*Berlingos not included.

I'm home! I'm home! I'm home!

At long last the tour is finished and I can get on with something aproaching real life. If dressing up as a Giant Rat and Fat Elvis counts as real life - but more of that later.

The last few days of the tour was a bit of a bore. The whole thing was a week too long and ended up with me mooching around Inverness, kicking my heels, trying not to spend money. The last show was in Grantown on Spey. Nice little town about an hour and a half from here.

It took me 5 hours to get back home.

First we had to take the hire car back to Inverness (which was, naturaly enough, in the other direction) then I had a long wait for my bus in Inverness, a long trip down the Great Glen, then another long wait for the next bus - which was late etc etc. All of this on the coldest night of the year so far. I was not a happy bunny when I got home.

A very cold, not very happy bunny.

I got to the panto rehearsal about 2 hours after everyone else and didn't get to do a lot but I did try on the Fat Elvis costume Ilona bought for the act 2 opening. It's a cheap, thin nylon, white jump suit with bits of gold trim and a rubber forehead/wig thing. It doesn't look like a lot for what we paid for it. There aren't any mirrors in the hall so I didn't get to see the full effect but, judging from everyone's reaction when I walked into the room, the suit may just turn out to have been worth the money.

I have never had people laughing so hard they are literaly rolling around on the floor just by walking into a room before.

(Actually, now I come to think of it, I haven't really had people rolling around on the floor for real by doing anything before. Not really rolling around on the floor, not lying on the floor in uncontrolable, tears and snot everywhere, laugh till it hurts type rolling around on the floor I mean. People happily text and type LOL and ROTF* when they mean they found something slightly amusing so it was a bit alarming to see people ROTFing in the flesh. I just hope I never see anyone "piss themselves laughing".)

It is now gone 2am and I am going to phone Pheobe and wish her a Happy Birthday and go to bed.

Most of this evening having been spent trying to find the piece of paper I last saw two weeks ago, over there somewhere ------> It's got all the details of who has done what and when and whyfor the Panto. I need it for the program. When I wasn't digging through huge heaps of bills and things that need urgent attention 3 weeks ago I was fixing Firefox after I broke it by crashing the pooter immediatly after telling it it wasn't Firefox at all but that it was Internet Explorer 6 (I forget why). After that it didn't launch at all. A lot of twatting about later it came down to editing one line in a .js file in a folder I'd never seen before. (Doesn't it always?)

• Currently Listening to: Random CD purchaces from the last 2 weeks of mooching around charity shops with nothing to do. Including 1940s Texas Swing music, Japanese drumming and various Q magazine coverdiscs
  

• Currently Reading: The Blind Assasin by Margaret Atwood

* Laughing Out Loud and Rolling On The Floor (as if I really needed to explain...)

Argh! That Tree is Looking at Me!

Too pooped to Blog.

Up till late last night at Nicky and Phil’s wedding dance in the Fort, a long rehearsal for the Panto this afternoon / evening followed by another attempt to apply for another job…

Off on the last leg of the tour tomorrow, so more next week.

• Currently Listening to: Non-Stop Streaming Techno Trance Tosh from Epitonic.com

• Currently Reading: Some Collection of Ancient Awful SF (the name of which escapes me for the moment). “Eat Ray! You Beatelgusian pond slime!” snarled square jawed Dirk, his nostril quivering with righteous anger, as he blasted the hideous slug-thing to atoms. ‘

Just a couple of photos of Bonfire Night:

One-woman, ground-based, aeronautical display team Morag Calder does impressive fly-by with smoke

Me whacking the base of a 12 year out of date, 15,000 candlepower signal flare just to see what happened. (What happened was Merriol took this picture with a flash the exact moment the hammer hit and scared the crap out of me.)

Unboringness

Back in the bosom (and other bits) of my family at last. I am getting so bored with sitting in bus stations, and on buses and in bus stations again…

It is late I’m tired, so not a huge long entry. Highlights of the week included arriving in Gairloch. A town a long way from anywhere (apart from a few other, equally remote-from-anywherelse, villages).

It’s a long way to Gairloch from wherever the hell we were were during the day. (My short-term memory is shot to hell; I have no idea where I was yesterday, let alone the day before that. It has all become one great long blur, get up, do the show, drive to another school, do the show, drive to another town, find the B&B, get some sleep, get up, do the show…etc.) So, after a long night time drive along windy single-track roads that meandered all over the place through a landscape houching with suicidal deer just waiting to wander across the road as we hurtled towards them. We finally arrived at the Highland Lodge (or whatever it was called) only to find the place was shut. A couple of lights on a couple of cars outside but everything was locked and bolted. We pounded we hollered we walked round and found other doors and pounded and hollered at them. Nothing. Before long someone mentioned The Shining and that was it. We were off. We got back in the car and drove towards the only lights we could see. Suddenly the whole episode started looking more and more like the opening sequence of every other cheap bad Horror film you have ever seen. We eventually found our way after a few false turns and backing down dark tree lined dirt tracks to find an inn. As we drew up our headlights picked out a shape, a tall blurry outline off in the near distance. A motionless figure beneath a tree.
“Is that a person?” someone asked.
“Yes.”
“No, it’s dummy!”
“No, it’s a real person!”
“Look!”

The figure moved.

All four of us screamed like 12-year-old girls.

The hotel chef flicked his cigarette end into the dark and went back into the inn.

---

This afternoon, being Friday, things got extremely stupid.

There is a part of the workshop in which Emma plays a girl who has “Unrealistic” ambitions to be a vet. I play her Dad. Then, in a sort of bastardised forum theatre, the kids make suggestions as to how she should change her behaviour and attitude so her plans become more “realistic”. This afternoon the kids were full of TFIF and Chris ended up sadistically lumbering Emma with “Becoming a Jedi Knight” as a possible way to becoming a vet.
She entered going doing light sabre noises, and I came in on my knees doing the worst Yoda Impression the world has ever seen. For the next few minutes, Emma and I tried not to fall into giggling heaps but, as usual, I lost.

I am just so crap at Improv. I laugh at my own jokes and just lose the plot.

• Currently listening to: http://www.epitonic.com/files/reg/songs/mp3/386DX-Anarchy_In_The_UK.mp3 and other weird and groovy stuff at epitomic.com


• Currently Reading: Nothing. I finally finished Kinflicks and liberated it in a B&B in Grantown-on-Spey. Enjoy!

Yet again I am sitting in Inverness Library trying to resist the temptation to smash the keyboard into a million pieces. I mean what is the f*cking point of having a public access internet system that doesn't allow you to access even your own email without putting up pissy little "forbidden" pages all over the place. Surely there should be some way of having an "I am an adult I promise not to be offended by words like bugger and bollocks let me in you bunch of censoring c*nts!"

The asterixes are there because it won't even allow you to send naughty words. Jesus! Grow up people!

OK Rant over.

Another week of fun and games over, and another 2 hour wait in Inverness before the bus. The wind is howling around scarily. There are things banging and crashing about on the library roof. Doesn't sound very safe. The ride over is going to be wild.

More when I get home, whenever that will be cos it looks like I’ll have to sit around in Ft William for an hour waiting for the next bus.

Oh an actor's life for me...