Hi again. Next week we're moving to Worthing and I'm dreading all that lifting and packing. You'd think as a DJ I'd take it all in my stride wouldn't you? But as this will be about the 55th move since I left the home of my Transient military family, I know exactly how much of a sweaty, groany, tiresome business it is. On the upside I'm looking forward to living in a flat where you can walk straight out of the kitchen and into the back yard where there will be a table chairs and parasol waiting for us to sit down and have breakfast, dinner or barbacue etc. Also having a living room with a fireplace (just for the look only) and parking space for the vehicles at Cloud And Sun Towers that doesn't come with overhanging trees and accompanying perpetual bird shit and tree debris to wash off. Yes the car and van will actually stay shiny! You should see them now after a storm has hit. They look like I've just driven them through a commercial compost heap. I spend my life wondering whether one day a very over grown tree will introduce itself into our bedroom one windy night, but all that's over now. I love trees by the way, but not the fast growing kind on a bit of no-mans-land. They've even blocked out terrestrial TV since I moved here. At 60' high they show no signs of either slowing down or meeting a tree surgeon any time soon.

I had a cancellation last Saturday night. The bride and groom split up six months earlier and the "groom no more" who's job it was to tell me, didn't bother. Never mind. Becky and I decided to make the most of my complete weekend off as it's such a rarity. We ended up going out for lunch and then dinner. A bit decadent I know, but as I've mentioned on facebook, not enough it seems. On the way to Chichester for dinner I got pulled over by the long arm of the law and fined for not wearing a seat belt. By Christ that was an expensive day. I know we're all supposed to wear them but as an ex truck driver I still have to remember every time I get in to do so. (there aren't any seatbelts in lorries or haven't been until recently.) None of this made the young motorbike plod any more sympathetic. The sprogs are always the most keen to dish out paperwork. Give it a few more years and he'll try and avoid it wherever possible. This is beside the point I'm trying to make though. I've been a professional driver for around 25 years now.Yes I'm still doing it in the week. I drive special needs folk to and from a day centre when I'm not deejaying.  I've had prangs and clips and even two head on crashes before now and not once have I needed a seat belt. I'm not saying we should stop wearing them, I'm just saying that how is it just to punish someone for not ensuring that they might avoid accidently killing themselves? I don't get it. Surely if I want to kill myself I am free to do so? And how is not wearing a seatbelt going to kill someone else? When you've crashed, you've...well, crashed. You might be dead, but it doesn't kill the other guy or the passengers does it? Which brings me to the other official obsession. "speed kills". No it doesn't! If speed killed, then we wouldn't have any racing drivers left would we? You want to know what really kills? It's nothing to do with seatbelts or speed. It's ta ta ta ta ta ta taaah..... Inabilty or inattention. If you're a boy racer and you can't take that corner at the right speed, that's inabilty mate. Don't try to run before you can walk. And while you're at it, drive your own car and stop nicking ours. If you're on anti deppressants or alchohol or spliff, or you've just had a falling out with a friend or relative, or you're just plain knackered. That's inattention. Oh and before you mention other road users and the stupid things they might do.. If you have your attention on the job, you can compensate with defensive driving can't you?

We live in such a punitive society don't we? Nobody except the wonderful emergency services (the irony) are acknowledged for their hard won skills and experience. What's that saying? If you've done something for five years you're an expert. If you've done it for ten years you're a doctor. If you've done it for twenty years, you're a professor. As I said before. I've been professional for 25 years. Surely my opinion counts for something? I reckon they should leave us alone and if they insist on pulling us over, I have ears and a brain. I don't need a whopping £60 bill to remind me to obey (or else) the arbitrary law of the realm in future outings. Oh by the way, I talked about some of my point with the young whipper-snapper who pulled me over. One of the things he said was that "on the down side, I've known people die in their cars when the car caught fire and they couldn't remove their seatbelt in time."  Discuss.

Have a great weekend and remember to belt up or you might be sending that painful envelope off to Edward Street in Brighton. Think on...

Hi all. Just a quick one today. We're moving to Worthing in September as Becky needs to be closer to Brighton and I don't ever want to live in Brighton again as it's...well read my earlier blogs.

Anyway, I acted all efficiently and tried to get everything cancelled for our moving date: landline, water, council tax etc. Well the council tax cocked up and sent us another bill of roughly the same amount and of the same duration. The water people (we have two here) were great and answered the phone straight away. BT (broadband) want to charge me £70 for the router they replaced becuse the other one was pants and kept failing. Can I send it back? "oh no sir you've soiled it now, we can't take it back". You think that's bad? You ain't heard nothin' yet! Talk Talk are all bloody Talk Talk and no intelligence. They only cut off my land line a month early yesterday and when I discovered this and eventually got through their awful phone menu sytem to one of their droids I also found out that they'd already given my number back to BT and if I wanted to be re-connected I'd have to have another number and wait up to two weeks for an engineeer to come round and do it and incur a £69.00 fee. Try to remember here that I'm running a business and I can't do without internet for two friggin' weeks ignoring the fact that they've just thrown away my business number as well, ie: it's THEIR fault not mine.. After about 2 and a half hours (at 0870 prices!) of getting passed around the system, getting put back to the menu system and getting cut off all by people who had such a strong Punjabi or South African accent that I could bearly understand them, I finally got transfered to the retensions unit,(very clear sounding native Southern England voice), got the fee waived and they said they could put me up the queue for re-conection. I've just got a text this morning saying that and engineer has is coming round on the 23th August (today is 13th - Friday 13th!) and I'm going to tell them to poke it up their corperate arses. I've also just got a survey through the email (as I'm now on 3 mobile internet) and I'll make sure they get the full picture....In a word...I'm dumb struck at their complete lack of compassion and inability to take responsibilty for their own mistake. It's like no one there seems to think they are part of a group that they're supposed to care about the image or performance of. They are in short I think, a group of temporary migraterary working robots who are only thinking of how they can improve the dreadful salary that they doubtless earn from the evidence put before me.

The moral of this story is: if you're moving, don't do anything until you're safely ensconced within your new pad. And then LET THEM CHASE YOU! They can't do anything to you anymore. You can even cut off their precious direct debit if they get too testy and ask them to send you a clear bill and then if you need to, you can contest it. If they ask you why you left it intil last minute, link them to this blog and all will be clear to the stupid dumb asses!

Have a great weekend. Happy birtday to Katy last night, hello to Wendy (tonight) and Phil and Leslie (tomorrow night)

Ta ta!

Mike

PS there's no need for a comedy link today. You've had enough in the above haven't you?

Hi all again. Not a bad summer is it? Not too hot. No rain to speak of.. and one of my broken bass bins (now repaired) comes back tomorrow by courier hopefully.That's such a weight off, as I've got some biggies coming up and I need the extra oomph!

I'm doing lots of gigs right now of either weddings or foreign students. I've had to resort to taking in paper and pen, as the other week a Russian 13 year old asked me for "leeki par-nmm" Eh? 5 times he tried to get the message accross and you've got to remember that I'm standing in a loud environment at the best of times, so it's a delicate balancing act trying to hear them without getting your ear drum shattered from the requestee shouting in it. Turned out it was "Linkin' Park - Numb". What do you mean you've never heard of it? Oh you're a radio 2 listener are you? Well confession time...I do Chris moyles in the morning (only in the biblical sense) and Number 2 there after as it's more random and just brilliant for picking up back catalogue tunes. Refreshingly, You never quite know what you're going to hear. How many stations can you say that about? Not many commercial ones that's for shure.- ooops, that's "shure" the microphone company. I thought that was wrong.

That reminds me. I must get the arial replaced on our old but gorgeous VW golf. I love her to bit's. She drives like a dream (1.8 CL) but only picks up BBC radio Sussex on the inherited stereo (won't play cd's either) unit. Now there's a radio station! Every tune a thousand years old guaranteed! I'm going out of my mind. We've got an ipod, but with all the DJ business I can never get round to putting any more then the 300 odd songs on it already. Ipod owners will know that this is an obsticle that must be confronted in order not to get bored with your all time favourite songs and literally lose the will to live any more. For without those to fall back on; what is the point of it all?

Have a great weekend and think of me working my nuts off!

Enjoy now some classic Benny:here