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It is the LG DR175. £79.99.

However, I had to sit on a bus for an hour and a half on the way there, and an hour and a half on the way back, and I even had to pay £4.40 for the privilege. The bus was far from direct! It went via Westgate-on-Sea, Margate and Broadstairs before even considering going to Westwood Cross. Public transport in Kent is not yet worthy of the 21st century.

Thankfully, thanks to the miracle of modern technology (i.e. the iPod), I was able to catch up on two episodes of the fantastic and hilarious National Theatre of Brent‘s latest masterpiece, The Arts And How They Was Done, on the way.

Not any more, at least. I’m not the sort of person who goes down the High Street and just buys something. I have to look EVERYWHERE to find the best possible price. I have to scour the Internet for HOURS. Then, and only then, will I buy something from an actual shop, but only if it’s cheaper or if they will match the cheaper price (which most shops will. MOST shops.).

I have just spent 3 weeks trying to find a paperback book for the best possible price. I eventually bought it at full price (£7) yesterday, having not found it in any of the discount bookshops. The book is Join Me by Danny Wallace, and I have bought it because I have recently enjoyed reading his “other” book, Yes Man, and I know that Join Me will be good.

The 3 weeks that I spent finding the damn book have not been enjoyable: they have been 3 weeks of utter torment, in which my mind has wrestled with itself over whether or not to just buy the damn book and stop being such a tight bastard.

Now I am in the middle of another purchasing battle (fought only by myself), this time over something far more expensive: a DVD recorder.

I saw this thing a few weeks ago in Comet in Canterbury, and decided against buying it because it costs so much (£79.99). Yesterday Chelle  and I decided to stop messing about and just buy it. Of course, I knew that, given the time that had passed since I last saw it in Comet, it would no longer be there, especially as this was the best price I had seen it for anywhere, including the Internet. This is a rare occurrence for a shop, it seems.

Anyway, today, I got up and went out to Comet to buy it. They didn’t have it! An assistant told me it had been discontinued but there were 4 left in Margate, and looking at the screen I could tell there were a few more in various other Comets (3 in Maidstone, and a couple in Halley’s as well).

“Sod that!”, I thought, ”I’m not going to Margate just to buy this thing, especially when I know they’ve got them for £100 in Curry’s in town, and I KNOW that they will match the price for me!”.

I went to Curry’s, in the rain. Sure enough, they had a few of these DVD recorders left. I asked the assistant, who said that they’d be able to match the price as long as it was the normal price (which it is!), and proceeded to try and fail to use Google to search for Comet in Margate. The assistant (whose gender I shall not reveal) also had trouble spelling “comet”, for the love of God. It’s no surprise, then, that they concluded that the Comet call centre to whom they had got through could not find the DVD recorder on their database, and therefore they couldn’t match the price.

Maybe if they’d got through to Margate in the first place, which I’m SURE it is possible to do, they’d have been able to match the price. They even said that it wasn’t on Comet’s website. Well, no shit! It’s not on Comet’s website, and nor is half the stuff they sell because their website is SHIT,  and in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s not on your sodding website either! So what difference does that make?!

I’m not one to put £20 worth of gullibility into the trouser pocket of a major electronics retailer, so I walked out of the shop, seething.

Tomorrow I will go and spend my £79.99 in a shop where they are decent enough not to ask for an additional £20 for the same product. My latest long-term struggle with the retailers will be over.

And the DVD recorder will be mine.

There is no prize money at this quiz, the organisers having long since abandoned it in favour of a charitable donation out of the pub’s own takings during the night (this being, of course, the most profitable night of the week at The Moon). You may regard this as a bad move, as there’s no point in attending a quiz if you can’t win anything; on the contrary, I am of the opinion that the lack of prize money encourages a much more light-hearted attitude within teams and allows everyone to enjoy themselves much more.

Once your team arrives at the pub, they will be shown to their table (which would have been booked during the previous week because the quiz is so popular, and rightfully so!).

There are nine rounds: eight rounds of ten questions each, split into two halves of 4 rounds, and a picture round (of ten pictures) to ponder during the interval. This gives a maximum of ninety points, brought up to 100 by the joker round.

The rounds are all named semi-cryptically, and teams are able to view the list of rounds at their table, choose which round to play their joker on, and decide on their team name before the quiz.

Before the quiz itself begins, teams give in their joker round choice to the quiz master, who then reads off the roll-call of team names (which are, of course, often topical and often hilarious).

Since the quiz is weekly, the rounds are varied and are different every week, with the exception of the first round (current affairs) and the final round (general knowledge).

Questions are asked clearly over the pub’s PA system, twice so that everyone gets to hear them properly, and are answered on the answer sheets (one sheet per round, all given out in one go at the beginning of the quiz). At the end of each round, the quiz master tours the pub to ask each team if they would like any questions repeated.

Teams then swap answer sheets to be marked, with half-points given for half-correct answers, and double points given for the team’s Joker round. Fear not, though, of draconian or inept marking, as all the answer sheets are then collected to be checked by the quiz master’s assistant during the next round. That being said, there’s no prize money anyway, and it’s all for charity, so everyone has lots of fun finding out if their answers were right.

In the middle of the pub there is a screen on which a computerised scoreboard grid is projected, with team names down the side and round numbers along the top. Teams can then check their results on the scoreboard and see how well they are (not) doing. The scorer rearranges the list of teams on the scoreboard after each round’s scores have been submitted, to show a true leader board. Teams who have not played their joker yet are highlighted.

After four rounds, the picture round is given out and the break begins. The picture round is not just “famous faces” every week! Sometimes it’s a set of close-ups of objects and sometimes the pictures are of landmarks or places. There are a variety of topics that can be covered by the picture round. Teams have enough time during the break to buy a round of drinks and contemplate the whole of the picture round. Finally, before the start of the second half, the quiz master gives a rundown of the scoreboard for those who cannot see it.

The picture round is gathered in after the final set of rounds and is added to the scoreboard, whereupon the quiz master gives a final rundown of the scores and announces the winner. Everybody goes home happy, having enjoyed themselves very much at the finest pub quiz in England.

So, I can almost hear you ask, where is The Moon Under Water? Well, as you may already have guessed, it does not exist except in my fevered imagination. I have yet to experience this utopian quiz.

The one at the Dolphin in Canterbury comes close, though …

It means “nothing will spread onto the root vegetables”.

“Easy!”, you cry. No! Not for me. I need bootcut jeans, preferably dark, of 30″ waist and long (32-33″) leg.

32 is just too large a waist for me, and 30 too short a leg.

The alternative, which is what I am sometimes forced to do, is to buy the 32 waist “Long” leg and wear a belt, but the jeans just don’t look as good! They look ill-fitting in the upper region, where I like my jeans to be fairly snugly fitting, in order that my bottom doesn’t look swamped by them, and they then don’t make me look short.

The reason that I need bootcut ones is that with normal fit jeans, trainers look really stupid.

Another problem is that, in a few shops, the jeans have a hipster-style waist!! I’m not the sort of fellow who has his boxers sticking out above his jeans (or, at least, not obviously!), and I also find this style quite uncomfortable to wear! For the love of God, the hipster style is designed to hang nicely from the shapely hips of women, not the straight-sided male physique! It almost doesn’t work, save for the presence of the arse, which just about holds it up.

Fashion just DOESN’T GET IT, does it?

Why can I find hundreds of pairs of dark bootcuts, but none of them fit?!

Is the problem that most men are tall and skinny, and buy all the 30L jeans
before I have a chance to?
Or do jeans manufacturers overestimate the largeness of the members of the young-adult market that they are supposed to cater for?

Back me up. What’s YOUR jeans size?

I have not joined the Amish!

No! This year, I have gone to Canterbury this year, where I am enjoying a rather less metropolitan existence.
However, I am forced to listen to the godawful Invicta FM during the day sometimes, which is so bad because there are a number of songs in their “today’s BEST mix!” (a lie) that are played at least three times in five hours. These songs are:
The Feeling - Never Be Lonely
(I don’t know who it is) - Trouble In America (if that’s what it’s called)
… and a whole host of other rubbish and/or annoying songs! Bloody hell! Trading Standards should be on their case: this is NOT today’s BEST mix or whatever they dare call it. What nonsense!

In other news, I am playing the splendid Morrowind (because my computer is not powerful enough for Oblivion!). It is the most absorbing experience evar.

And finally, DO NOT sign up to Tiscali’s broadband service. They managed to delay  my connection for about six weeks, only getting their rses in gear once I’d written a two-page letter of complaint.

That is all!