Mr Omneo Blogs…

Funny how it goes, for the past week or so I’ve been keen to blog but I just haven’t had time.  Very often it’s the other way about, lots of time no real idea what to say.  One of the reasons I’ve not had time this past week is also one of the reasons I often have too much time it’s a horrible, nasty three letter word T. A. X. somehow if I spell it out in capital letters my brain won’t register it’s meaning and send me scurrying to the corner of the room.

Like a lot of people here in the UK, I was in last minute panic mode because I had decided to leave doing my tax return until the last 10 days before the deadline for submission.  My brain knows that it would be so simple to just do all the paperwork at the end of each month so that submitting my return will be a breeze but does it listen to itself? Of course not!  So I had a marathon session with a years worth of receipts and bank statements and finally crunched the numbers, filed it on-line and bit the bullet and paid the tax man what I owed…ouch!  Anyway, I’ve decided I’m not going through all that again so it’s definitely going to be month by month from now on, I only have a few months left before it’s technically time to do it all again! Read the rest of this entry »

Networking. A word that depending on which hat I’m wearing can elicit small murmurs of geeky joy or loud groans of unmitigated pain.

The geeky joy comes when networking is used to describe setting up computers on a network.  I probably like it so much because it’s pretty logical, it either works or it doesn’t and if it doesn’t the trouble shooting process of elimination, whilst sometimes long and protracted, usually always results in the desired outcome.  With this sort of networking I have a tanker ship worth of patience that a Somalian pirate probably dreams of hijacking. Read the rest of this entry »

So, blink and you might have missed the end of 2009 and the start of 2010. As we get older I wonder if anyone is still out there planning the party of a life time. It’s easy enough for me to look back on my twenties with a hint of rose tinted spectacles. The partying to excess that ritually has to happen to mark the year end is/was a rite of passage. If you weren’t partying your life away you were a dullard and I partied my life away until a few years ago when I suddenly wondered what it was I was partying for, I’m still trying to figure it out which is probably why I had a very quiet new year.

2009 was the year I decided to go without alcohol. At the stroke of midnight I poured myself a glass of wine, I sat and ate a midnight meal of Sauerbraten and sipped my wine, I finished my glass and poured myself another but within 15 minutes I had a thumping headache…ouch! A Ramon Allones Spanish edition sort of eased the dull thud I had hammering at my temples but not quite. I watched UP and retired to bed… good grief it was only 1.30am… Mr Omneo is growing old…ish…sorta…kinda.

Christmas was quiet, as is always the case.  I was fortunate enough to get a great Gail Brodholt print from William & Cleeve.  Whilst not depicting the right period, it captures my old workplace from 1991 when I was Head Usher at Paul Raymond’s Revue Bar in London’s Soho district.  I used to look out from the window of the bridge that covered the alleyway.  It was quite possibly one of my strangest jobs.  I was employed to watch women strip 6 nights a week, 2 shows a night.  Some might say a dream job, the reality is it was rather boring.  Sure the first day or two was exciting enough but then the sadness crept in.  After a few months it was even sadder when I realised there were people who were regulars, not least a math teacher from Liverpool who saved up and came down every 3 months to watch both shows on a Friday and Saturday night.  I also encountered my old Physics teacher from Glasgow one night, the poor soul, he spent most of the show staring at his feet when he recognised me.

Ahh the stories I could tell from my days at the Revue Bar; I get a little sad when I walk around Soho now and see how…tame… it has become, I wasn’t lucky enough to work in Soho during the truly wild times but even the early 90′s were far more exciting than 2009.  Wonder what 2010 will bring us?

Now that we’re into 2010 there is no time to wonder what the new year will bring, the new year is now, time we all got busy don’t you think?