BRAINS!!!

[bellinghman]

I think I'm turning into a zombie this afternoon. My brain is totally shutting down, and I think I need a fresh infusion of nice steaming brains before anyone's going to get any more work from me.

In other news, we finally went into Cambridge to see PotC III last night. This (the experience, not the film) was not as usually fun as normal for two reasons. Firstly, while in the restaurant half an hour beforehand, the fire alarm went off, and the entire block, including the cinema, was evacuated. We were finally allowed back in some 40 minutes later, at which point, we had barely time to pay up before hitting the auditorium.

Secondly, shuffling zombie hordes of Marillion fans had just left a gig at the Junction when the film finished. Since it was (a) a sell-out gig, and (b) Marillion fans have a fairly high car ownership rate, this meant a frightening queue for the pay machines in the car park, and then a 15 minute queue just to get out of it. As the tickets had been paid at the machines some time beforehand, they were re-expiring before the cars reached the barriers ...

Comments

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

I've always wondered how long you have after paying before The Machines decide you're trying to pull a fasty.

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I don't know. In this particular case, we were at the 4:50 mark when we paid, and at the 5:05 mark when we got out, so if there was code saying "paid 5 hours, or for 10 minutes from payment time, whichever is the later", we were screwed anyway.

There was an attendant on duty, furgling the barriers, and we assume he was running around releasing people. But we hate that car-park anyway - it's difficult to get lined up on either the entry or exit machines, and the ramps are so tight that you frequently see people reversing to get a better line.

[oldbloke.livejournal.com]

One of the Uni car parks has incredibly narrow bays. 50% of the cars that use it have dints from other cars' doors.
We recently used a car park in Barcelona that had a pretty tight exit, not helped by being in an unfamiliar car of course.
My boss's boss has a Porsche, and has to take the ramps in the car park here _very_ carefully to avoid grounding.
There was a brilliant bit on Top Gear once where they had loads of trub getting a supercar out of a car park in, IIRC, Paris.
[That's enough car parks. Ed.]

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

The bays in the Clifton Way car-park aren't that bad - tthey do have a decent width. It's the ramps - they seem barely wider than the bays.

Back when I still had the Audi A4, that would ground quite easily. The Broadway Centre carpark in Ealing had a spot that I always had to be careful with. Mind you, our driveway was also a problem for it - if I had any passengers, I'd have to tell them to get out before I reversed in.

This was also the car that, on circumscribing the Ring of Kerry, I had to get used to being overtaken by white vans, since I daredn't go above 45, the road was so bouncy. Happily, the new MG-ZT has normal ground clearance, and has yet to ground anywhere. Why the Audi had lowered suspension, when it was a surplus work vehicle, goodness knows.

[silly-swordsman.livejournal.com]

shuffling zombie hordes of Marillion fans had just left a gig at the Junction when the film finished. Since it was (a) a sell-out gig, and (b) Marillion fans have a fairly high car ownership rate

I missed that they were playing, or I might have been briefly tempted to go. Except that I lost all interest in them after listeing to the first Fish-less album.

I think that (b) is a rather polite way of saying "Marillion fans are now all grown ups who are happy to go to concerts to relive their memories of youth, but not to the extent of walking from the station or taking a bike like they would have done when they were young."

Although there seems to have been quite a revival of old 80's metal bands lately, so perhaps Marillion sort of got caught up in the slipstream?

[bellinghman.livejournal.com]

I've not heard the post-Fish stuff. I have one album of theirs (whichever has Incommunicado and Uzis on a Street Corner on) in the car stereo, which tends to get skipped due to the incredibly self-indulgent repetition of anything Fish thinks particularly deep. Or (as bellinghwoman says) particularly difficult to sing. Such as the word Incommunicado.

With 40-50 albums in the car auto-changer, it's frequently weeks before it comes up, but it's time I re-ripped the CDs.

We did get sort-of tempted, but (as I said) it was already sold out, so we carried on hanging around outside waiting for the cinema to reopen.