I cannot handle money

Having been out and about doing something socialable every evening this week (highly unusual for me, which is why I failed to budget for it), I woke up this morning with only £24 in my bank account which must last me untill I get 'paid'* (hopefully Tuesday of next week).

Regardless of the perilous state of my finances, today I have already wasted money in the following ways:

• Purchasing the Weekend Guardian (I could have read it for free on the internet or in the public library but I needed the free wonders of the world stickers to complete my wallchart)
• Purchased the Big Issue (there's never anything to read inside it but I made the mistake of maintaining eyecontact with the vendor a little too long, so she assumed I wanted to buy it, and I hate letting people down if I can help it)
• Purchased felefal from the extortianatelly priced veggie cafe in the Old Town (I could have made some myself but last night was a big work gathering and I felt I needed to restore my body salt balances urgently)
  

I hate the way that the consumer society makes fools of people like me that I spend money on stuff I don't need without even realising it. Maybe I should just stay inside for the duration.

* by this I mean 'receive the next grant installment from the research council' but everyone else refers to it as 'being paid' so whatever

Update: further unnecessary spending -

• a half of coca-cola (necessary 'entry fee' to watch the second half of the England match in a sky sports bar full of scottish people cheering on their team in blue - Israel, who also played very poorly). This was a listless experience, and easily the biggest waste of money of the day.
  

Open 5 race report

Mountain 5 Open5 Series - Sutton Bank (somewhere in Yorkshire), 11th March 2007

Finishing position: 21st of 53 (male solo category)
Finishing-position-if-everything-had-gone-to-plan: ooh, I'd say about 9th

Things that went right:

• My bike didn't fall to bits half way round. Given the condition of my bike, that is worth celebrating in itself!
• It was a nice bright, dry day, hence at no point did my brake pads become clogged up with mud and dirt (as is the norm)
• My route choice was relatively sensible. Lots of high scoring check points dotted together deftly avoiding all the densely packed contour lines on the map.
• Looking at the route analysis site, several of the other competitors seemed to head straight up the densely packed contour lines and so lost a lot of points in penalties, to my benefit.
• I decided to bike first. Frankly this was so that I wouldn't lose all my points in penalties if the bike did fall to bits (which, as ever, I was half expecting). However an advantage of this approach was my transition consisted of dumping my bike and beginning my run. No time wasted re-adjusting the brake pads (for the 14th time...), tucking into a three course picnic lunch (as others do) or similar annoying distractions.
• I suffered from a bad cold earlier in the week, and so was probably snoring in the local YHA. This would have ensured that several of the other competitors would not have had a restful night
  

Things that didn't go right:

• Typically, I left my fancy technical £65 running shoes at work. These are the same fancy technical running shoes that I have previously abandoned on a bus to Leith (but were recovered thanks to Lothian buses). I had to run in my 'dossing around the house' £19.99 trainers instead. I blame this for my slow running speed.
  
• The forest trails on the map were a very poor match for the forest trails in reality. Either that or I was just plain lost. Looking at the route analysis I lost about 40 minutes or so on the leading competitors whilst biking around the forest trails section of the course trying to find the checkpoints there. I could have made good use of those 40 minutes in the running section collecting the extra 50 points that had originally been on my route - then I would have been 9th!
• Looking at the most successful route decisions - my running route could have been more creative. In particular, the guy who came first was clearly 'thinking outside the box' by spurning the circular run that most of us chose.

Interesting landmarks:

• do not walk on the Kilburn White Horse
• dramatic sutton bank cliff - possibly the location for an ancient hill fort
• the B6270 , winding its way gradually cross country along the path of the river Swale. Sheep and rabbits from the surrounding hilly countryside carelessly amble across the road although the abundant roadkill corpses indicate that this carefree trust in the motorist is misplaced. My quote: 'Maybe this is like the road to hell... or Yorkshire". No really, it's a very picturesque road, and my anti-yorkshire prejudice is bred purely from a mixture of automatic suspicion and ignorance.
  

Generally I was fairly happy about how it went, although if I was actually organised enough to train for these events now and again I might be up there with the, like, real contenders in the top ten. But I'm lazy... still maybe for the Keswick event in May I will make a special effort.

Democracy in action

Fantastic! It looks like communicating with your MP is effective after all - serves me right for being cynical.

At the start of the year I decided to open up the channels of democracy and get in touch with my MP more often, starting with a letter on the upcoming Trident vote. Several weeks later I was becoming slightly miffed that he had not replied to my letter. I even contemplated the possibility that he had just thrown my missive in the bin. But it turns out that my sceptism was entirely misplaced since yesterday he resigned from the Government over the issue. Thanks, Nigel!