I'm back

How long for I simply don't know. I've finally got ahead of myself and have a spare 5 minutes to type some old nonsense up here. Moving turned out to be far more hassle than I anticipated. So trying to do that and do some work took up a lot of time.

Everything's now sorted (car insurance, breakdown cover, gas, electricity, water, congestion charge, parking permit, council tax, HMRC, banks, building socities, British Telecom, occupants of interplanatery craft, have all been informed of my new address and they have all taken advantage of this knowledge by setting up direct debits to take money from me. Every one of the above pieces of life admin required more the a simple phone call or letter. It required assembling proof of address, proof of identity, copy of gas bill, DNA sample, bone marrow sample etc etc. And each phone call was a "Press 1 if you want to speak to someone about such and such, Press 2 if you want to talk to someone about so and so." And no matter what time you called you were always held in a queue. And a lot of them were in India, which no matter what people say, isn't as easy as talking to someone who has English as their first language and because for some unkown reason my flat number doesn't appear on online registration forms and because of moving flat, living in Amsterdam followed by Shanghai I didn't have ready access to my documents, I was driven to the edge of despair. Here for example is how I spent and hour and a half NOT getting car insurance.

1. Go onto GoCompare website to get quotes


2. Get marvellous quote knocking £80 off of last year’s quote.

3. Want to check my no claims and whether my points are still on my licence.

4. Search for paper licence, can’t find it.

5. Call insurers and ask for those details. They are about to tell me when I get a call from Shanghai, which I have to take.

6. Shanghai rings off as soon as I answer it.

7. Call insurers back . Nice lady helps me and gives me my info.

8. Go to GoCompare to buy my insurance.

9. Can’t remember my security password for my creditcard.

10. Instead of just letting me change the password like it normally does, it freezes my card.

11. Call Egg. Unfreeze my card.

12. Go to GoCompare to buy my insurance.

13. My address does not appear on the drop down menu because it does not exist.

14. Computer won’t allow me to change my address.

15. Call GoCompare. Get man in India who says I should go to the edit screen and change it there.

16. Go back to GoCompare. Find edit screen. It still won’t let me change it.

17. In the meantime my quote has gone UP £25 quid!

18. Call GoCompare. Talk to lady in India whose computer has broken  and who suggests I call back in half an hour.

Start crying.



Here's me poking my head out of the window of my new flat.

The reason it looks like it's falling down on the right hand side is that  it is.





Just made on offer on a flat.

If that gets accepted I'm moving in and I'll be able to post some more regular crappy posts instead of hardly any crappy posts. These will take the form of hilarious observations of Britain and my fellow Britons' behaviour. Oh yes. We're just as daft/irritating/bastardy/cretinous/occasionallly lovely, as everyone else on this lonely world, spinning endlessly through the vast cold, empty reaches of space to no avail whatsoever.

I'm back in Blighty

Yes back home now and I've got to spend my time sorting my life out. I had to leave for Amsterdam in such a hurry back in November, that I couldn't organise all my life admin and it's all unravelled while I've been away. It doesn't help that I can't remember any of my passwords or PINs either. And I have to find a place to live. 47 is no age to be living with my mother. Anyway things might go a bit quiet while I sort it all out.
Laters duder (as the young people say - the twats).

Crikey

This was outside the restaurant we went to for our leaving dinner. Not sure I'll be partaking in their signature dish.

And so we say farewell.

Yes, my one reader, I'm coming home. After three months in the Paris of the East, it's time for Andy B to go home again to the land of pubs, warm, flat beer and quite a lot of bastards (in my worldwide travels I've noticed that they're everywhere).
But hold fast (I'm Edwardian) I still have four days left. Four days to say goodbye to all the friend I've made over here (the barman at The Kangaroo). Ha ha ha ha ha. Only joking. There's lots of nice people at work and I'm hoping to bid them all fond farewell in time honoured fashion. Yes, a traditional Chinese tea drinking ceremony in the Yuyuan Gardens followed by floating traditional Cherry Blossom  Xiangyuas (a sort of small boat) onto the Huangpu to symbolise moving on and then we all sing a traditional Chinese Song of the Double Happiness Return.
Actually sod that. I'm off to the Kangaroo to drink traditional beer, play traditional pool and start to believe that , over the time it's taken to drink three pints, I have somehow become charming, hilariously funny and Brad Pitt. Then polish the whole splendid evening off by traditionally getting run down by a 9ft pile of carboard on a tricycle. With a man somewhere in it.
It literally does not get better than that.
Fact.

Me wistfully contemplating the busy metropolis that is is Shanghai, whilst simultaneously balancing one end of the Lupu bridge atop my big fat head.

.

The Great Shanghai Boat Race

I was taking a stroll down by the Huangpu River last weekend and accidentally found the Shanghai equivalent of the Croisette in Cannes. It's an 8.5km stretch of uninterrupted riverside walk that, unlike the Croisette, is refreshingly empty of French people. Indeed at one end of it, it was empty of people entirely save for one handsome chap revelling in the rare solitude. Yes. Me.
Shanghai is notable for many things (The Helicopter Blow Job for one) but emptiness is not one of them. There's not a square inch of the city that doesn't contain someone else or isn't being swept, or spat on, having a fish descaled on or driven over with a tricycle.So you can imagine my surprise when I found this oasis of calm.
So I walked along for about half of it and was lucky enough to witness the annual Shanghai Shitty Boat Race. This race is open to every salty seadog, pirate and jolly jack tar with a shitty old tub in Shanghai to hurtle downriver to the sea. Here's some pictures of this year's race.

The Peleton

This was first, second and third until....

....the one in the middle started taking on a lot of water, flooded her bilges, swamped her gunwhales and sunk. These are her final moments.

Winner of the crappiest boat competition.HMS Xziazhouchanglelu.  Which is Mandarin for HMS Lotus Blossom Flower.

I'm getting there.

Been a bit busy at work. Here's a nice picture while we all wait for me to get my arse into goddam gear. It's me but I accidentally cut my head off (self portrait). But somehow, I think, it still works. Might be a bit better for not having the old Brittain conk taking up half the frame.
Your thoughts?