Travel bungs up the sinuses

I (Stephen) have a cold. It’s not the flu – it’s a just a cold. And when I say it’s just a cold, that is not to belittle my condition in any way. It’s not pleasant, but it’s not the flu since if it was the flu I wouldn’t be writing this as I wouldn’t be out of bed. It’s a cold and I will fight for the right to be able to moan about colds because I will not exaggerate my condition by pretend it’s the flu. It’s not the flu, it’s just a cold.

Stephen P.I.

At work on Thursday my (cold-ridden, sniffy) mind wandered and I remembered a guy called Richard with whom I’d worked in Sainsbury’s. I worked there, mainly in the fruit and veg section, at weekends when I was in the sixth form and in some of the summers when I was at uni. I’d not seen Richard for eight or nine years and wondered what he was up to. I typed his name into Google to see if he has what nerds would call a “web presence”. I wouldn’t call it that, obviously – I said nerds, remember?

I found a few references to someone of that name having written some film reviews for magazines and some reference books on films. This was a stroke of luck, as I figured if anyone I knew would do such a thing it would be him. I looked him up on Friends Reunited (should have done that first really) and found that he was indeed a writer. His listing mentioned that he was off to Oz, though this was from over a year ago.

So I went back to Google and searched for his name along with “Australia”. It came up with his contact details at the Oz edition of Empire film magazine where he is now a writer. He's right here in Sydney! I read this magazine every month in the UK so I was very impressed. I called him at his office and checked if it was him. It was. He remembered me and he came along to the weekly trivia quiz at our local last night. What a small world! If it hadn’t been for me and my private eye/stalker ways I wouldn’t have got in touch with him.

To top off the coincidences, this morning I saw this article on Yahoo news about people stalking people and tracking down long-lost friends on Google.

Pop quiz, hotshot!

So Richard joined Anne and me for our third pub quiz. We’d come first each of the two weeks we’d been and each time had won $40 of bottle-shop vouchers. Given that we’d only won by a narrow margin each time, it wasn’t a foregone conclusion.

This time we had a secret weapon. The Richard I knew from Sainsbury’s had an encyclopaedic knowledge of, among other things, films and sport. The latter was particularly important, since Anne and (especially) I fall down on sports questions. Things hadn’t changed and he helped us to our third victory.

Embarrassingly we won by a clear 12 points, thanks mostly to our new team member. The other regulars there must hate us. As it was we got talking to them afterwards and (I hope) they don’t hate us. They seem like nice people and it’s good to have a regular Thursday night fixture. These wins will make our inevitable first loss all the more painful though.