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In a display of what is probably one of the geekiest things I’ve done to date, I took a day off work yesterday to get hold of GTA IV and play it non-stop from when I got in until such time as I had to go to sleep.

My verdict so far is that it’s an absolutely amazing game. It’s easy to get used to and very intuitive - similar enough to the old GTA games to still be a classic, and yet includes so many new features that you wonder how on earth you’ll ever manage to explore all of them. The list of “achievements” that you can get on the Xbox is absolutely mammoth, and I’m not far enough through the game yet to even understand how to get some of them.

A few of my favourite things about GTA IV:

• You can now get taxis to wherever you like on the map, if you don’t want to drive. This is fantastic for the times when you die after starting a mission and don’t want to have to drive there again.
• The handling of the cars is much more realistic. The Xbox version uses the analog triggers for acceleration and braking, as most Xbox driving games do, and although it takes a bit of getting used to, it’s far more fun when you learn to drive properly. Any rear-wheel drive car will fishtail its way down the road forever if you don’t release the accelerator, and you actually have to brake properly for corners now. I’ve no doubt that some people will say this is a bad move, but I think it’s a step in the right direction.
• There is a much improved social aspect to the game. After you do business with people, you can go out drinking with them, play darts or pool, go bowling, to a cabaret or to the strip club… there are a load of mini-attractions which make the game more detailed and fun.
• In relation to the previous comment, you actually get drunk if you drink. In one instance, my cousin invited me out drinking so I went with him, and we got riotously pissed. I opened the front door of the bar to leave, and fell down the stairs, injuring myself. I managed to lurch my way out onto the road where I’d parked my car and tried to drive us both home (despite my cousin’s warnings that I was too far gone), and it proved to be a bit of a mistake. Not only could I not keep the car going where I wanted to, a police car saw me drive off and chased me down for drink driving. Elements of a game like that make me smile, as they show fantastic attention to detail.
• If you do the social things with people, they will like you more. Getting certain people to like you more will unlock “special abilities” they have, which will help your progress through the game. The fact that it’s totally voluntary is great, as it means that you choose your own path through the game.
• In a similar way, you also get to make decisions which will affect your storyline. So far it’s just been me choosing whether people live or die, but it’s great to have the freedom of choice. There was also an instance where I had to choose which of two people I wished to kill to progress with the game.
• The developers have removed some of the less fun elements from previous games - for example, in GTA: San Andreas you could make yourself fat if you ate too much, and if you didn’t eat enough you would lose weight and eventually starve, losing health. Although this was a novel idea, it just turned out to be a total pain in the end, as you’d be on your way to kill someone, miles from anywhere, and suddenly the game would tell you that you were starving and in danger of death. Very helpful… not. It also appears that things such as “driving skill” have been removed, and are now down to the player rather than an imaginary scale.

I could go on about all the things I love about this game, but I think the only thing I can say that does it justice is that you really must try it. If you liked the previous GTA games you will absolutely love GTA IV, and even if you weren’t a fan, it might be worth trying to get back into this one. I’ve always usually found GTA “clunky” on consoles and therefore played on PCs - using analog sticks is not as easy as a good old keyboard and mouse combo - but I’ve actually started to get used to playing GTA on the Xbox, and I can see that console controllers offer some benefits.

I can’t wait to get home again tonight and play it :)

During my time at University in Liverpool, I didn’t witness much violence at all. Despite the bad reports that you sometimes hear about big cities, Liverpool was never that bad a place to go out. Of course there were incidents, but they were usually minor, and I never experienced any such trouble myself. This may be because I tend to keep myself to myself, but I never felt uncomfortable or unsafe when I was out in the town.

There is a big club called “Nation” in Wolstenholme Square. It’s most well-known as being the home of “Cream”, Liverpool’s famous nightclub which closed several years ago. There are still other events going on there, and during my three years I went to a few drum & bass nights there. They were always good fun, everyone got on (mostly because they were all on ecstasy and too busy gurning and hugging each other to do anything else). There used to be an event every Wednesday called “Medication”, which offered cheap entry for students, loud house music and many single people for the night. I went quite a few times - it wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I like a night out as much as anyone else.

One particuar time, my housemate Paul’s younger brother came over to visit from Ireland. Paul, wanting to show him a good night out, got us all to go to Medication for the evening. We had a good evening, but on leaving at 2am (closing time), Paul got into an argument with the bouncers. He tried to go out of the door holding a bottle of WKD in each hand, and the bouncers (rightfully) stopped him, saying he couldn’t do so. The corridors for leaving were very narrow, and Paul asked if he could step outside quickly to finish his bottles and clear the corridor. The bouncers were indignant that he couldn’t, and Paul downed the remains of one bottle and then proceeded to argue with the bouncers. They forced his bottle off him and pushed him out of the door, where he proceeded to noisily remonstrate with them about the injustice of them taking a drink off him that he had paid for. He asked several times to see the manager, only to be met with apathy and silence.

I’ll admit it now, he was being a bit of a tool. I understood where he was coming from, but the bouncers were only doing their job and making sure that he didn’t go and smash the bottle over someone’s head. Obviously it seems like a good idea to argue when you’re drunk, however.

The bouncers grabbed Paul and dragged him to the other side of a set of security railings, which are put there to keep the crowds back from the exits. There were lots of people around as it was kicking out time, and the scuffle didn’t go unnoticed. An official-looking woman who seemed to be the manager had appeared at the exit, and Paul promptly escaped the bouncers’ grasp and went up to question her on why he couldn’t finish his bottle. He’d barely got two words out before two bouncers grabbed him again, forced him back to the other side of the security railing… and then began to throw punches at him. The crowds backed off and there was a lot of comotion - girls screaming “get off him!” and many people just watching and wondering what on earth Paul had done to deserve this.

He went down to the floor almost instantly, as the bouncers were big and he didn’t really stand a chance. His brother saw this and ran over quickly, punching one bouncer and throwing him backwards, but he took a surprise punch from the other bouncer and hit the floor himself, at which point yet another bouncer ran in, and they both started kicking what I can only describe as seven shades of shit out of them both. I like to think that I’m able to look after myself, and I won’t deny that I was very tempted to jump in to try and help Paul out, but upon seeing the kicking they were receiving, I really wasn’t about to throw myself into it when I wasn’t part of what was going on in the first place.

This all happened very quickly, and was probably over in ten seconds or so. Before this happened though, one of the bouncers grabbed Paul’s bottle, and broke it over his brother’s head. I’d seen enough by this point and I think the crowd had too - the jeers and shouting had become absolutely deafening, and the bouncers backed off and went back to the door of the club, taking a lot of verbal abuse from the irate crowd. Paul and his brother managed to pick themselves up and were in a bad way. Paul’s teeth were wonky, his nose was bleeding and his face was red from the kicks he’d taken - his brother was bleeding profusely from the side of his head where the bottle had struck and he too was nursing a lot of bruises. There was a police van just round the corner and we told them about everything - a few policemen got out and started the questioning the bouncers and the crowd, and the driver gave us all a lift to the hospital.

I don’t think anything ever came of this in a legal sense, but it was an eye-opener for me. I’d never seen violence that bad in real life before, and again I was quite shocked by it all. One thing I will note is that when the fight originally started, one of the bouncers shouted “watch for the camera” as they ran over to Paul - it’s quite clear that the bouncers watched exactly where they started the trouble because they knew they could be caught on CCTV if they did it in certain areas. It’s the age-old “give them a kicking down a back alley” style.

Needless to say, I think that the bouncers in both these stories are pathetic, spineless police force rejects who have a god complex and a serious problem when it comes to abuse of pseudo-authority. I won’t say that Paul wasn’t inviting them to start something with him, but the use of a bottle is never, ever necessary.

During the summer before starting university, my friends and I were looking for some excitement. We’d all been 18 (and hence old enough to drink) for quite a while, and going out in the same old places had become rather boring - particularly when you consider that we’d actually been doing it illegally since we were 16 anyway.

For some reason, we decided to go out in Hertford, which is the county town of Hertfordshire (duh) and about a 20-minute train journey from Hitchin station. We arrived there one evening (it may have been a Friday night, I can’t remember) and set about having a few drinks - the town was quite busy and we had a good time, ending up in “Zero’s” bar at about 11pm. The place was closing shortly and we were told that we could go downstairs to their club (”Sub Zero’s”) if we paid, as it was open later. We went down, and continued the evening. The place was a bit of a dive, but the music was playing and it wasn’t too bad. Matt and Craig (my male company for the evening) were talking about Matt’s girlfriend, Jo (who was also there) in a friendly manner and there was some goading and larking about on their part as they discussed all this.

As a part of all this, Craig got Matt in a friendly headlock and ruffled his hair. At this point, everything went a bit crazy. Three bouncers rushed over to split them up, then forced each of their arms up their backs and frog-marched them to the exit. I rushed after them, realising what had happened, and tried to explain to the bouncers that they’d made a mistake. Craig and Matt were also doing the same at this point, but of course nobody was listening. They got to the top of the stairs and were escorted to the front entrance and pushed out. Craig turned round and raised his hands, saying “whoa, whoa, you’ve got it all wrong mate”… at which point the bouncer punched him in the face. He didn’t just do it once either, he gave him three or four hard punches - made Craig’s nose bleed but didn’t manage to knock him down. I watched the whole thing happen in astonishment, and when we were standing out on the street afterwards, Matt was full of righteous indignation and called the police.

We went to court on two separate occasions for that incident, but in the end the judge didn’t convict him due to lack of evidence on the CPS’ part. The CCTV footage from outside the club was never obtained because it conveniently went “missing” (funny that) and there just wasn’t enough other evidence to find the bastard guilty. He was suspended from work for six months or so while the court proceedings were going through, and I hope with every fibre of my being that he sat at home and worried about going to jail for a long time. I’m not sure if he still works there, mainly because we’ve never been back.

It’s blog o’clock.

After having made myself ache by playing with my powerball so much, I decided to learn to start it by hand (as this is apparently what the pros do). It was quite easy once I worked out how, with the help of an excellent YouTube video. Don’t mind the dude’s cheesy voiceover, just watch exactly how he holds it and what he does and copy it. You’ll get there soon enough.

Unfortunately, I bottled out of deleting my Myspace account last week. I never use the thing to edit or do anything with my profile, but I’ve realised that I’m far too nosy to get rid of one of the only methods I have of looking at photos of old friends. I am sorry to have to admit this, but it seems that Myspace has beaten me. Perhaps in the future I will be able to break the hold it has over me!

I have been working at home a lot more recently, I have to say that it’s absolutely awesome. I also got a substantial pay rise from my boss, which I was very pleased about. To celebrate, I bought myself a nice shiny new 22″ monitor to put on my desk at home, so I now have an awesome dual desktop setup going on. I also paid substantially less than the price Amazon are currently quoting - something more in the region of £150, which was very, very reasonable. The monitor itself is fantastic - picture quality is superb (particularly in World of Warcraft, which is absolutely stunning at 1680×1050), it looks brilliant on the desk and it makes doing all my work a whole lot more pleasurable.

I transferred my level 61 alliance rogue over to Kloopy’s server recently, after he got back into playing WoW regularly. I’m just about to ding level 65, and it’s all going very well so far. I’m using Jame’s Alliance Levelling Guide, which has got mixed reviews from people in the past, but I have to say that I find it very easy to follow, and I’ve managed to get four whole levels in not a great deal of time. I’ve not played an Alliance character in ages but it’s all slowly coming back to me. Playing on a PvE server is also very different to the PvP servers I’m used to, and I find being able to level without the threat of being ganked to be a dream come true.

I also ordered myself an 8-bit tie the other day. They look great - see for yourself! (Kloopy and I realised afterwards that we probably should have taken the photo while not staring directly at the sun, however)

The panto has been and gone, and you can see me hoofing about a bit here if you have me added on Facebook and have the “Video” application. I’m the guy who comes on stage after the dog and then dances at the very left-hand side of the video. If you don’t have me added on Facebook, search for “Gus Luxton” in the London network. My picture is of me posing in a mirror in a stripey shirt and pinstripe trousers.

My birthday (last Wednesday, December 12th) was brilliant - many thanks to anyone who sent me birthday wishes by any medium at all! Being 23 is a little scary though. I logged into last.fm a couple of days ago to look at my recommendations and it came up “Male, 23, Hertfordshire” at the side… I actually had to do a double take as I realised that I was old.

I am seriously looking forward to Christmas and having some time off work. I enjoy my job and it’s been very rewarding of late, but I am shattered and just need a week or so off to actually draw breath and get back to feeling human again.

Sorry for the short sentences and the formal style - I’ve just updated Livejournal for the first time in about two months with an absolutely massive post, and I don’t have much wordiness left in me.

It’s the Secret Santa at work tomorrow, and I have to say that some of the people upstairs are absolutely ruining it. They watch the present box like hawks, and as soon as anyone brings a present up, they’ll run over and check who it’s for so that they can make a note of who bought what for who, and hold them accountable at a later date. For those who aren’t familiar with the concept of Secret Santa, it’s where you put everyone in an office/club/group’s name in a hat and randomly draw one each, so you get someone to buy a Christmas present for. There’s a budget of £5 in our office, and the (unofficial) idea is usually to get embarassing or amusing gifts. The main point of the whole thing is that you don’t tell anyone else who you have, though - that’s why it’s a “secret” Santa and you can get away with buying some very amusing things indeed. I am currently devising a scheme where I will be able to get my gift into the present box without them noticing.

I met up with Xsara this evening for the first time in a while. She’s doing alright and looking well. I thought she’d disappeared off the face of the earth but no, I was wrong. It’s a good job I didn’t eBay the DVDs she left at my house like I was planning to…

This weekend has been very relaxing - I am sitting at my desk at work at the moment, and despite being very hungry and wanting the bacon man to show up and provide me with a sandwich and a bottle of Coke, I feel rather good. Considering I only got five hours’ sleep last night, that isn’t too bad. I just need to make sure that I kill myself off at the gym after work and then go to bed at about midnight tonight, otherwise I’ll be a total zombie tomorrow morning.

I find that usually, the weekends where you don’t do a lot are the most relaxing of all. A few weeks ago, my best mate moved out of the flat he was sharing with his girlfriend, after some relationship trouble. It’s a long story, and everything between them is fine again now (they’ve been together nearly five years, it would have been a major thing to lose) but the side effect is that we no longer have anywhere to go to chill out, drink and play games of a Friday or Saturday night. This is a shame on some levels because I really quite liked his flat, and it was great to have somewhere we could stay up late and make a bit of noise, then crash out at 4am and sleep until halfway through the next day. It’s also quite a good thing, because it means that my weekends have become a lot more about sleep and sitting around in my boxers and a dressing gown. This is a geeky comment but it’s certainly one I believe in!

Rehearsals for the pantomime are well underway, and after rehearsal on Thursday night, I went into town to meet Matt, Craig, Larman and Jo for a drink. After one pint, it became another, and soon enough I was being badgered into leaving my car in town and going to the Ivory for a load more drinks with them. I hadn’t planned on it, but the best evenings out I’ve had (both at home and university) have been spontaneous ones, and this didn’t disappoint. The only bad part was going to bed at 3am, and then having to get up at 7:45 on Friday morning for Matt to give me a lift to town to collect my car.

Having said that my weekend was relaxing, I did actually go to work on Saturday night. It’s a longish story, but I recently went to watch some kickboxing at the Stevenage leisure centre, which is attached to the Gordon Craig theatre. My old school friend Dave is a full-time deputy chief technician at the theatre and organises lightning, sound and stage management for all the productions they put on - he happened to be doing the lightning and sound for the kickboxing, and when I saw him we both had a chat about things as we hadn’t seen each other in a while.

He mentioned that they had vacancies for casual work - basically doing similar things to him but on a part-time basis - a bit of lighting and sound, rigging lights, follow spotting and the like, and said that there was a job for me if I was interested. I’ve always loved that side of theatre, and despite having got back onto the stage recently, part of me has always preferred being one of the unsung heroes behind the scenes who actually make everything work together. After thinking about it momentarily, I accepted his offer and agreed to get in contact to sort it out.

Saturday night was my first shift, doing what’s known as the “get-out” for Tap Dogs, a loud, high-energy show featuring six tap-dancing Australians, which had been running for the whole of the previous week. The get-out is basically disassembling the entire set, lighting and sound rigs and packing the whole lot back up into a lorry to send it to its next venue. The set is constructed primarily of box-section steel and, as such, is rather heavy. The majority of the sections involved six-man lifts to actually get it to move - to say it was hard work is a bit of an understatement! It was good fun though, and although I didn’t get home until 3am, I earnt a lot of money for it :-)

It is Friday, and I am bored at work. I have spent a large proportion of today on the excellent Facebook (that site truly is a procrastinator’s nightmare) and I am looking forward to going home.

This week has been absolutely exhausting to say the least. I was in a meeting room at hotel in Stevenage for the first three days of it, doing massively long days to try and get a project finished in time for Thursday. We were ready on time in the end, but circumstances changed and so the launch date has now been moved forward to a few weeks from now. I can’t say I’m not delighted about it - it’s given us more time to thoroughly test things so that we can actually release a top-notch product. This week has totally taken it out of me though, and I am seriously looking forward to crawling into bed and sleeping for about twelve hours this evening. There will be some beer being drunk in town first though, as that is definitely called for.

The show (Daisy Pulls It Off) went fantastically well in the end. We had big audiences every night and were sold out Friday and Saturday night, which was excellent. It’s much easier to perform when there’s a big audience and they keep the atmosphere and the laughs going - comedy is quite hard to pull off (excuse the name based pun) when people don’t find it funny. It was brilliant fun though and I was totally demoralised when it was over. I thought I’d escaped the post-show malaise as I was fine on Saturday night, but I think that was because I was at the after-show party and was drinking quite a bit of alcohol. It all hit me when I had to disassemble the set on Sunday morning with a bit of a hangover.

Not to worry though - rehearsals for the Christmas pantomime have now started. I’m playing Jack (one half of the famous “Jack and Jill”) and it’s looking to be quite a laugh so far, although far more energetic than what I’ve been used to! We had our first attempt at doing the dancing that goes along with the first song last night… not only was it absolutely knackering, it was damn hard as well. I’m totally out of practice! I’m looking forward to it, though.

I think I may have to be purchasing Halo 3 - having done some 3-player online on release day, I think it’s definitely going to be added to the games list. Awesome stuff!

(I’ve been meaning to make this post for a while, and just never got around to finishing it)

Recently, I attended a driver improvement course in Hatfield. The reason for this was that I had a car accident back at the end of last December where I hit a car from behind on an icy morning after being distracted by a group of cars making illegal U-turns in the middle of a busy single carriageway.

As you might be able to tell, I have an attitude of severe cynicism towards the whole thing. It was apparently no accident that I hit this car, it was a “collision” - there is no such thing as an accident any more, according to the police, because there is always blame involved. It is fairly safe to say that I do not like the police, and especially not their attitude to this whole affair.

Anyway, about a month after the accident, when I had my new car, the police wrote to me to say that they were contemplating taking further action as a result of the accident. This pissed me off - they had already charged me £105 for the “privilege” of having my car towed when it didn’t need to be, and now the bastards were actually giving consideration to taking legal action against me for a simple accident that happened on an icy morning - no thought given to the mitigating circumstances I detailed in my statement or anything.

I forgot about the letter until a few weeks afterwards when I received a letter saying that they were “offering me a driver improvement course as an alternative to prosecution”. Essentially, they were saying “pay for a £160 course or we might take you to court - what you gonna do?”

At first, I thought the whole thing was a big con. I was tempted just not to pay and basically say “bring it on - what sort of case have you got against me?”. As time wore on though, I ended up with a whole load of reasons to actually pay the money and go on the course. If they did take me to court and I lost, I’d not only be saddled with far more than £160 in expenses, but I might also end up with 6 points on my licence. That really isn’t good news at 22.

After much deliberating, I decided to pay the money and go on the course. I deliberately left arranging it and paying for it right until the last minute, because I wanted time to save up the money, and I paid by cheque just to give me the maximum possible interest I could get on the money before handing it over.

The course lasted one and a half days - a Friday, and a Saturday morning. This wasn’t too bad considering that I only live 15-20 minutes drive from the place it was held (a hotel in Hatfield) and I actually found the whole course to be quite interesting. There were some humourous parts to keep you interested in what they were saying, but there was a lot of real content as well that was good to learn, and did change your overall attitude to accidents and driving. I’d been very cynical before I went, and I left with a changed mentality towards the whole situation.

The best part of the course was actually going out on the road with a Gold-standard advanced driver. He knew exactly what he was doing on the road and really made an effort to point out things that I did wrong. He said my driving was very good on the whole and only picked out that I got too close to people in traffic - “tyres on tarmac” was the key point to bear in mind. Obviously, you drive a bit differently when it’s a strange car (this was a diesel, and I don’t have much experience driving them) and when you’re almost being examined but I was fairly relaxed, and the instructor (Roy) was a top bloke who had a great sense of humour and a brilliant method of teaching.

Overall, I think the course was worth my time and the money. It certainly beats getting prosecuted, and I think it’s taught me some things which I will bear in mind in the future. I’m thinking about doing advanced driver training now, but I’m not sure whether I really want someone being that critical about my driving or not!

This is quite a long story, but I’m in the mood for exercising my writing fingers.

My best friend Matt lives in Baldock, which is a small town about 6 miles away from Hitchin, where I live. He moved into a one-bedroom flat at the end of last year with his long-term girlfriend Jo. Parking is fairly tight in Baldock as it’s a fairly old town which has had to expand to cope with the amount of cars there are on modern roads, and as such it is quite difficult to find a space, much less one where you can leave your car for an extended period of time. For this reason, the landlord of the flats Matt lives employs a private wheel clamping company, who come and check the car park every so often for cars without passes and clamp them as a deterrent.

About two months ago, I went to visit Matt on a Saturday to drop some games off to him and have a quick chat. I parked my car in the loading bay outside the front door, and went into his flat to speak to him. When I came back out twenty minutes later, there was a big yellow clamp on the driver’s side front wheel of my car. It’s worth pointing out that this was March, and when he moved in last November, the landlord who owns the flats was “between clamping companies”, which meant that parking in the area went unchecked, and therefore to see a clamper actually around was something of a shock. I looked at the clamp in astonishment, and then walked past my car and out into the courtyard. I saw an unfamiliar-looking old white van, and a guy in tracksuit bottoms lying on the floor next to a Mazda MX-5, applying another clamp.

Me: “Hey, mate - why have you clamped my car?”
Him: “You don’t have a pass, mate”
Me: “I don’t need one - I was in the loading bay. I’ve only been here 20 minutes”
Him: “Well I’ve been here 10, and you were there when I came”
Me: “…so that would imply that I have actually been here more than 10 minutes then, possibly the 20 minutes I just said I had, then?”
Him: “Errrrrrr”

Suffice it to say, he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.

Me: “So are you going to unclamp my car then?”
Him: “I can’t do that.”
Me: “Why not?”
Him: “I don’t have the key.”
Me: “Right. So how do people get unclamped, then?”
Him: “They pay the release fee. £105.75″

I laughed at him, and walked off. After a quick conversation with Matt, we decided that the best thing to do would be to ring the landlord, who had obviously not notified the clamping company that loading bays were present in the car park - they just assumed all spaces were the same, and “no pass equals clamp”. The landlord wasn’t answering the phone however, so I called the 0845 number on the large sticker that had been clumsily stuck on my car window. A guy who was quite clearly on his mobile phone answered, and even after I explained the situation, he informed me that the only way to get released was to pay the release fee, and then appeal against it if I thought that it was unjust. I laughed at him as well, and hung up the phone.

About an hour passed, and the clamper showed back up in his van. I grabbed the notice board from the foyer of the flats, which contains a parking plan and clearly marks the loading bays, and took it out to show him.

Me: *patronising tone* “Would you agree that this is a plan of this car park?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Would you agree that that blob there *points at paper* is clearly that building there *points at Matt’s block*?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Would you agree that this bay here, marked “LB” is the bay where my car, that silver Seat Ibiza with the clamp on, is parked?”
Him: “Yes, I would.”
Me: “OK. Would you agree that, according to the legend on this parking plan, LB means ‘loading bay’?”
Him: “Yes.”
Me: “Right. So would you agree that my car is actually parked in a loading bay and not a regular parking space, and you have clamped it wrongly?”
Him: “Yes, I would.”
Me: “Would you care to explain why you won’t remove it then?”
Him: “Oh, I don’t have the authority to do that.”

This was unbelievable. Here I was, showing him concrete evidence that I was in the right and he was in the wrong, and yet he still wouldn’t take the clamp off. I explained that we’d tried to call the landlord but he wasn’t answering the phone, and his response was basically that I’d have to pay the £105 release fee if I wanted my car back.

At about 4pm (my car was originally clamped at around 12:30pm) I needed to go home to do things, and so I called the company and grumpily asked them to send round the guy who takes payment. Imagine my [sarcasm]total surprise[/sarcasm] when the same guy who clamped my car in the first place showed back up in his van. He produced a chip and PIN machine and took payment from me, gave me a receipt and a complaint form, and then pulled a set of keys out of his pocket and unlocked the clamp. When I saw him pull out the keys, I laughed, and watched like a hawk while he removed the clamp to make sure he didn’t scuff my alloys.

That was pretty bad luck on my part, and I was rather annoyed at the situation. The story doesn’t stop there, though.

The landlord called Matt back on Monday. He said that he was sorry but he finished at 1 on Saturdays, and therefore he’d returned his call as soon as he got back to work. Matt explained the whole story to him, and said that as a resident, he was very displeased with the way the clampers went about their business. The landlord promised he would speak to the clampers and look into it. A couple of weeks later, he called Matt back to say that I was due a refund, and that I should speak to the clampers to sort it out. I called the company and they said that they’d agreed to pay half the money, while the landlord paid the other half. I said I didn’t care who paid provided I got every penny of my money back, because I shouldn’t have been charged it in the first place. I gave them my name and address and they said they’d send out a cheque once the director who signs the cheques got back from holiday.

I’ll cut the story down here because it’s getting a bit boring, but I called the clamping company nine times before I eventually got the cheque out of them. Every time I was told “oh it’s in the post”, “it’s been sent to you”, “oh for fuck’s sake it must have been lost in the post, I’ll get another one out to you”, “my director’s still on holiday”, “my director’s not been in yet” etc etc. Considering the usual attitude I have to being fed a load of bullshit, I was very restrained and only lost my temper with the guy on the other end of the phone once. The rest of the time I just made sure I was a persistent thorn in their side who wouldn’t go away.

Every time I called, I got the same guy, and he told me the same lies. The last time I called, I got someone different, who was apparently one of the directors, and the guy who signs the cheques. He told me that the cheque had been signed and “sent out to you yesterday”, and when I said that I didn’t believe him because I’d been told that before, he said that he’d signed the cheque personally and it had been sent, and there was nothing more to it. At that point, the guy I usually spoke to walked back into the office, and I heard the director say “I’ve got Mr. Luxton on the phone about his refund”. The usual guy replied “Oh yeah, that cheque you signed is on my desk”. At this point, I erupted into laughter at the fact that they had been so obviously caught out lying to me. In the end, they didn’t post the cheque at all - I suggested that if they had a guy going out to Matt’s area that day then they should drop it in his letterbox for me, and conveniently enough they had. Matt rang me that evening (last Friday, in fact) to confirm that there was a cheque payable to me sitting in his mailbox, for £105.75. Hallelujah.

I have written this post because I am simply overjoyed that they have finally paid me. I am still waiting for the cheque to clear, but I have cleared the majority of the hurdles. I can’t be the only one who thinks that it is total and utter bollocks that I’ve had to wait this long for a refund on money I should never have had to pay in the first place. They have claimed interest on my money for nearly two months as a result of this, and while that probably isn’t a massive amount of money, it’s the principle.

The name of the original clamper was Matthew Betts. The guy I spoke to in the office on all these occasions was called Danny. The company are called SIA Security Services, they are based in Bedford, and they are a complete and utter bunch of fucking wankers - you can quote me on that. It’s not libel because it’s true. I never want to see or hear from them again. Ever.