Ex-Captain's Log

In which The Author's new project starts to bear fruit

A couple of weeks ago I told you about my new research project, which can basically be summed up as No More Mr Nice Guy. Well, last week I published a summary of my first week's findings on Facebook:

• Told a fat chav using his mobile phone at the cashpoint to either piss or get off the pot.


• Told another chav to get out of the fucking doorway in Cash Solutions.


• Left an extremely rude message on the phone of the guy who couldn't be arsed to ring me back yesterday.


• Walked out of at least three pubs because the barbint was more interested in what was happening in Pokemon Land than in selling beer to customers.


• Told one of the Debating Society to belt up because he was in a public library, not a pub.

I had thirty-nine 'likes' within a couple of hours – which is on a par with my friends' reaction when I signed up with Gollancz back last year. I think I must have struck a chord with a lot of people.

I'm pleased to say that Week Two has been equally productive. I didn't do karaoke last night (again). I walked into the Lighthouse at 6.30 p.m. and the jukebox was already turned up to 11. I had a quick pint, gave up trying to chat to Philvis, and made my excuses shortly before 7.30. I headed to the Glosters, where a gang of my friends were sitting at the bar. I needed to go online, so I connected to the Cloud and posted this very angry status:

I'd like to thank everyone who took the time to look at everything I put together online for the Cynon Valley Quiz League last week. It's just a fucking shame that the prime mover behind the whole reboot couldn't be fucked to pick up the phone and arrange a time to meet me and sign everything off. I'll be deleting every sign of it at 1237 tomorrow, which is exactly one week since I asked him to spare half an hour from his packed schedule of daytime TV and pints with pub bores. Liz B., please don't waste any of your time on the logo, because it won't be fucking appreciated by the person concerned. Good luck to anyone putting a team together, but if the organiser can't commit to half an hour to tidy things up, I certainly won't be committing myself to every Sunday night for six months or so.

The aforementioned Liz B. is a very talented artist and illustrator whom I've known since her student days. I asked her last week if she'd be interested in making a logo for the CVQL which we could use on social media and in our documentation. Fortunately for us both, she had a bit of a backlog, and she was planning to make a start on it this weekend.

I was true to my word – even if I was a little late on cyberparade this lunchtime – and I've now deleted the Facebook page, Twitter feed, Gmail address and Wordpress site. I've also trashed the contents of a folder where I'd stored everything I'd drafted in the hope of getting it finalised this week. Since that hasn't happened, I really can't be bothered to piss about chasing people. Don't go looking online for the CVQL, because in a couple of weeks – the 'cooling-off' period, so to speak – it'll be as though it never existed in the first place.

And it ain't gonna stop there.

At the last Plaid Cymru branch meeting, Item 5 on the agenda was 'Social Media'. As usual, Brian's eyes glazed over as soon as Cerith, Danny A. and I started talking about our Magical skills. I asked the remaining members of the committee, and the people who have already decided to stand in the 2017 local authority elections, to send me photos and potted biographies which I could publish on the website.

Bear in mind that I'm not a Welsh speaker, so I have to get my old pal Gwyn M. to translate everything before it can go live on the other half of the website. That all takes time. The sooner I get this information, the sooner I can use it.

The last meeting was on 6 September. It's now 16 September, and silence has well and truly fallen. I'm not going to chase people for this stuff. Instead, I'm going to rock up at the next meeting with a sheet of A3 paper bearing a couple of photos, a few columns of text, and a shitload of blank space, and present it to the members.

I'll apologise to Brian in advance and say, 'Thanks for your contributions, everyone.'

Then I'm going to go for a pint in another bar just up the street, and they can ring me up if they've got anything to say to me.

I'm really getting too old for this shit now. It's not as though I'm kicking my heels all day. I've got a lot of things on, between proofreading, the Colstars, music events, and organising another trip to London. I'm also having to set aside a big chunk of my time for fuck all financial reward and precious little gratitude.

If I haven't got something from the Plaid gang before the next meeting, their cyber presence could well go the same way as the CVQL's. It takes quite a long time to set these things up, and (as I discovered this lunchtime) it'll take me less than five minutes to eradicate the lot.

During my last visit to the surgery, my GP tipped me off about a Stress Management course which started in Aberdare last week.

I told him, 'I don't need stress management. I need a semi-automatic and a shitload of ammo.'

I don't know if he thought I was joking. At this point in time, I'm not entirely sure myself …