There are probably better ways to spend 3 decades. Then again, I'm sure there are much worse.

So I was out this evening and me and one of my house-mates ended up watching a film at a friend's house. All is well, but then we get home and find the front of our house in a terrible mess.

We live in a terraced house with a small front garden to our house which we use only to keep a rubbish bin and recycling stuff. Bristol city council being what it is, we get a garbage pickup once every 2 weeks, which just isn't a sustainable regularity for a house of 6. Thus we often have to leave rubbish bags next to our big black bin™. One of these bags was now in the middle of the pavement with its contents strewn everywhere.

My first reaction was that it was probably a fox, a cat or a squirrel on steroids (it would have taken quite some force to move the bag as far as it had gone). But then we saw something that convinced me that if this was the work of an animal, it would have been a particularly well connected animal. For next to our remaining bin bags was a mobile phone.

I was willing to entertain the possibility of it being a large coincidence, but for the fact that to drop the phone, the person would have had to have been in the middle of our garden, literally right outside our door.

The phone was off, but we tried to turn it on and managed to get it working just long enough to ascertain that it didn't belong to anyone we knew (from the address book). Then another house-mate came back and it emerged that he had a similar phone and that his charger would probably work on it. It was set to charge and has been left like that. We got the joy of 3am garden cleaning, and we decided to leave the matter for the night.

The dilemma here is that the person who has subsequently lost their phone (on what would appear to be a drunken night out) is also the same person who trashed our yard. Obviously there is a desire for vengeance, which might be unfair. The question is...what would you do?

(In an unrelated matter, does anyone know whether or not Dentworth is still among us? Trying to look at her stuff gives the this person has cancelled page, but I can still see her display picture and hometown on annotations, which isn't true of the other account deletions that I've seen)

Seriously. I was wandering round an employment fair yesterday, when suddenly one of my bags felt heavier. I assumed I had imagined it and carried on. When I checked later, there was a small pile of miniature chocolate bars at the bottom. It really made my day. A very nice surprise and an untraceable random act of kindness.

It made me want to post some kind of halfbakery superhero 'anti-thief' idea. Except that
a) It clearly already exists, and
b) The anti-thief would likely eventually be confused with a regular thief and arrested/beaten up.

Just thought I'd share that with you all. As you were.

It was early on Saturday evening. I was in Bridgend and had to get to Cardiff to get to a Razorlight concert (about a 20/25 minute train ride, in theory). There were 3 trains leaving' at 5:55, 6 and 6:26. I was supposed to be meeting some friends there just before 7 so the first 2 were the much simpler options. I was reading these times on their internet site and happened to glance down at the clock. 5:51 it said. So I pretty much flat out sprinted the whole way there (although, to be honest, that's usually my only way of catching a train, I have no idea how long it takes to get to the station at a normal pace). I got there as the clock hit 5:58, I could literally see the 5:55 train pulling away from the station, I took a look at the schedule and it read:

18:00 - Cardiff Central - Expected 18:23

Bollocks! I was going to be pushing it to be there on time. So I sat. And I waited. And I glanced at the clock. And it read:

18:00 - Cardiff Central - Expected 18:31

Double bollocks! At least I could take the 6:26 train to save a few minutes now. But predictably, 5 minutes later:

18:26 - Cardiff Central - Expected 18:34.

Without bringing up the profuse amount of swearing, I eventually got on a train at half past 6. By this point I was more than a little irked with the train service. So I resolved to myself that unless prompted, I wouldn't mention to the conductor that I hadn't bought a ticket (my local train station has crappy hours for buying tickets and you're generally expected to buy them on the train). So with my new resolve to show my civil disobedience by depriving the train service of £4.50, I continued on my way.

As it turns out, I didn't have a choice in the matter, the conductor never came into the main carriages, so I didn't even get the opportunity to buy a ticket. Regardless I left the station with a slight smirk on my face at how I'd (admittedly involuntarily) showed the Man who was boss (in retrospect this was probably my big mistake).

Somehow or other, I was able to make it close to on time (Due, at least in part to a silly looking sprint around Cardiff). Razorlight were pretty good to watch. I had a great time and returned to the train station only to run into a large, hulking, security guard shaped obstacle.

"What platform for the train back to Bridgend" says I expectantly.
"Not a train, is a bus" comes the reply. Bad news. It was 11 o'clock on a Saturday night and being both tired and sweaty, 20 minutes on a relatively spacious train seemed considerably preferable to 35 minutes on a cold, cramped bus. But it seemed bearable.
"Do you have a ticket?" he adds unexpectedly.
"Why?" I hesitantly reply.
"Because the buses are already busy and I've been to told not to let anyone through who doesn't have one"
"Can't ...people just buy one now?"
"Nope"
Now this just seemed fundamentally ridiculous. I couldn't get home because I didn't have a ticket that I hadn't had any opportunity to buy.
"So do you have a ticket then?"
"Umm....yes"
He didn't seem too convinced. He looked about to ask me to show him my non-existent ticket when another public transport aficionado who appeared to be in my situation began to protest. While the security guard was distracted, I slipped past with a group of other people.

The bus driver was nowhere in sight so I just hopped on. Thankfully there were plenty of spaces (I'd have felt a wee bit guilty if someone had lost out because of me). As the bus pulled away I realised that I still hadn't had to buy a ticket, and my smirk returned. (You'd think I'd have learned from the last time)

Then the drunken singalong started.

I've been working in a restaurant now for the past few months. For the most part, it's pretty rubbish. Hours are long and anti-social, pay is minimal, and worse, I have to deal with people (children included) occasionally. The people there make up for it quite a lot, but I'm still going to be glad to be leaving at the end of the week. But my shift on Monday was more than enough to at least make me reluctant to be leaving.

For some reason, there was an inordinate number of people there for birthdays. One table had brought in a big wonderful looking chocolate cake. No more than 15 minutes later, three quarters of it was brought back into the kitchen untouched. The family didn't even want to take it with them. Naturally, the kitchen staff weren't going to complain. It turns out that there are few things nicer than having a big cake to take little bits out of as you work.

Then, as the last few customers are leaving and everything is being shut down, it transpired that there is close to an entire boxful of chicken just waiting to be eaten that would have to be wasted if nobody would eat it. Chicken is what our restaurant is best known for so nobody was going to pass up that opportunity either.

So now, I'm quite full but a little bit thirsty. After I finish, I go to join everyone else in the bar area where I'm told that on certain Mondays the bar staff go do 'line cleaning' in the evenings. What this means, I'm not sure of. The effect on me was that there was an awful lot of beer that the bar was giving away to staff members for free. Believe it or not, I didn't complain.

Oh and when I stumbled home much later, I found a pizza that I had forgotten about, bringing the number of unexpected foodstuffs/drink of the day to 4. Not that I could count to 4 by that point, but it's nice to reflect upon.

What this has taught me:
-Western society wastes way too much
-Crappy jobs can sometimes have very good perks
-Finding something you'd forgotten about is a great feeling. Works best with money but to a lesser extent with food too.
-Some days will just be lucky. Don't question it. Just accept it.

It may seem pretty stupid but the sheer run of good fortune of the day probably makes this one of my best days in recent memory. Anyone else have any good luck or decent times lately?