Matt Charlton

On the way to Nandos tonight I heard the news on the radio that a few of the MJ concert tickets had been postponed and that emails had been sent out informing customers as such.  I hadn’t received an email but Jamie has – that’s not great, especially when you look at the information given here:

Rescheduling Information

Due to the sheer magnitude of the “This Is It” concerts at the O2 Arena promoters and producers AEG Live and Kenny Ortega, Michael’s directorial partner and creative collaborator have elected to move back a few of the opening shows in order to meet the challenges presented by such a massive and technically complex show.
Organisers are determined that all Michael’s legions of fans attending the opening nights get the same quality of staging and level of entertainment. Only the four shows listed here are affected:

·     8th July will take place on 13th July 2009
·     10th July will be moved to 1st March 2010
·     12th July will be moved to 3rd March 2010
·     14th July will be moved to 6th March 2010

“Kenny and Michael are, at the same time, both creative pioneers and perfectionists. This show has grown in size and scope, thereby, necessitating more lead time for manufacture of the set, programming the content for the massive video elements, and, most importantly, more time for full production and dress rehearsals in the world’s busiest arena, the O2. As much as we agonized over this change in the original schedule, we are sure the fans will understand when they experience the level of entertainment Michael Jackson intends to deliver while also ensuring the safety of the musicians, cast and crew and the crisp execution of the production. It is AEG Live’s sincere hope that those lucky enough to have purchased tickets will have enough time to change their personal schedules and travel plans if they are coming from outside of London. We do not want anyone to miss this once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

Frequently Asked Questions

Q:  Can I have a refund or exchange my tickets?
A:  Yes, anybody who cannot make the rescheduled dates for any reason will get a full refund of the ticket and booking fee. Customers who booked with Ticketmaster will be contacted directly and offered an exchange to the new shows or a refund

Q:  I will attend the new rescheduled event date. Is my seat location still valid?
A:  You will have the same seat originally purchased.

Q:  How can I speak to someone at Ticketmaster regarding my order?
A:  Please call Ticketmaster’s Customer Support Team on 0844 277 9982. The lines are open Monday to Friday from 9.00am to 8.00pm and Saturday and Sunday from 10.00am to 4.00pm. International Customers please call +44 (0)161 385 2111.

Q:  My event date is affected. Will my ticket have the newly rescheduled date on it?
A:  Fans that are able to attend the rescheduled dates will be issued tickets with the new date printed on it.

Q:  Can tickets be sent to a different address?
A:  Unfortunately, for security reasons Ticketmaster will only dispatch tickets to the billing address of the card used to pay for the tickets. This procedure is in place as credit/debit card fraud is on the increase with telephone and internet bookings and is there to protect the card holder. All policies relating to the collection of tickets is agreed between Ticketmaster and the venue/promoter to reduce incidence of credit/debit card fraud.

Q:  How can I check the confirmation of my Ticketmaster booking?
A: You can check the details of your booking by:
1.     Viewing “My Account” on line* at Ticketmaster
2.     By calling the Ticketmaster 24hr order confirmation telephone line on 0870 242 4442
(*Please note this facility is only available for online bookings).
You will need your booking reference number or the credit card number used at the time of purchase.

Q: Can I go to any of the other dates earlier than March 2010?

A: At this time all dates are sold out other than for a few remaining Hospitality packages.

Q: Why has the first night been rescheduled 5 days later and we have to wait until March 2010?

A: This is due to technical reasons and to ensure that all fans get to experience the same level of quality and entertainment.

Q: Will any other shows be affected?
A: We are confident that these will be the only changes to the shows.

Q:  My travel plans have been disrupted. Will I be compensated for loss transportation bookings and hotel?
A: Unfortunately Ticketmaster is not responsible for accommodation and transportation reimbursement.

Q:  When will I receive my tickets?
A:  Tickets may not be dispatched until closer to the event. Ticketmaster aims to dispatch tickets as soon as possible. We are not able to be specific with exact dates of dispatch. Please allow as much time as possible for your tickets to arrive.
If your tickets have not arrived five days before the show or, if you are travelling, five days before you leave, please contact Ticketmaster directly using the “Ask a Question” facility at Ticketmaster. Please include your reference number and the name and postcode the booking is under. Ticketmaster only posts tickets to the billing address of a credit card. If the address in your booking does not correspond to that held by your credit card company, we may cancel your tickets.

Michael, who is directly involved with all aspects of the styling/choreography/band selection and rehearsals, is working around the clock to ensure this is the show to end all shows!
Kenny Ortega, Michael’s directorial partner and creative collaborator said, “After directing the Dangerous and HIStory tours, I know what the fans expect and myself and the team want to deliver a flawless production. We apologise to all disappointed Michael Jackson fans and remain extremely dedicated and focused on creating an exceptional live music experience.”

FULL LIST OF DATES:
·     13TH JULY 2009*
·     16TH JULY 2009
·     18TH JULY 2009
·     22ND JULY 2009
·     24TH JULY 2009
·     26TH JULY 2009
·     28TH JULY 2009
·     30TH JULY 2009
·     1ST AUGUST 2009
·     3RD AUGUST 2009
·     10TH AUGUST 2009
·     12TH AUGUST 2009
·     17TH AUGUST 2009
·     19TH AUGUST 2009
·     24TH AUGUST 2009
·     26TH AUGUST 2009
·     28TH AUGUST 2009
·     30TH AUGUST 2009
·     1ST SEPTEMBER 2009
·     3RD SEPTEMBER 2009
·     6TH SEPTEMBER 2009
·     8TH SEPTEMBER 2009
·     10TH SEPTEMBER 2009
·     21ST SEPTEMBER 2009
·     23RD SEPTEMBER 2009
·     27TH SEPTEMBER 2009
·     29TH SEPTEMBER 2009
·     7TH JANUARY 2010
·     9TH JANUARY 2010
·     12TH JANUARY 2010
·     14TH JANUARY 2010
·     16TH JANUARY 2010
·     18TH JANUARY 2010
·     23RD JANUARY 2010
·     25TH JANUARY 2010
·     27TH JANUARY 2010
·     29TH JANUARY 2010
·     1ST FEBRUARY 2010
·     3RD FEBRUARY 2010
·     8TH FEBRUARY 2010
·     10TH FEBRUARY 2010
·     12TH FEBRUARY 2010
·     16TH FEBRUARY 2010
·     18TH FEBRUARY 2010
·     20TH FEBRUARY 2010
·     22ND FEBRUARY 2010
·     24TH FEBRUARY 2010
·     1ST MARCH 2010*
·     3RD MARCH 2010*
·     6TH MARCH 2010*

Look at the dates – the first one has been rescheduled for 5 days later, which isn’t a big deal, the other dates (including the one that Jamie has booked) has been put back to March next year.  That’s crazy!

The bit that gets me is the travel arrangements/hotel booking situation.  Jamie is lucky, he was going to drive down anyway – people will have booked train tickets and hotel rooms.  Train tickets that aren’t refundable (the advance ones generally aren’t).  I didn’t book any train tickets when they were released because they were too expensive.  I do have the hotel booked, but this is booked on a credit card and should anything happen I *think* that I’m covered for a refund (the hotel booking is changeable/cancellable anyway).  I know that situations such as this one are unavoidable, but when you take into account the location of the concerts combined with people booking hotels as soon as they managed to get their hands on the concert tickets themselves it’s going to cause a lot of problems.

I know that you can either have a refund or an exchange on the tickets, but still – that doesn’t help the people with booked hotels/trains.

It’ll be interesting to see how this affects the ticket touts on ebay, selling tickets to people in the USA and things – serves you right you greedy bastards :p

What a turbulent couple of days we’ve had in the world of gaming.  Firstly, yesterday the news broke that Sony had bought the rights to the upcoming Ghostbusters game from Atari and would be making it a PS3 exclusive.  The news later cleared this up and we found out it’s acually a timed exclusive – the 360 version along with the wii verion will be hitting towards the end of the year.  This only affects gamers in the EU.  Sony – you’re shit.

If you think that Ghostbusters as a game is going to shift PS3 consoles – think again – the console just doesn’t have it.  I’ve owned mine for nearly 2 years now, it still takes 2nd place against my 360 and is used mainly as a blu ray player cum (thanks for the heads up Gareth) karaoke machine with Singstar.  If there’s a multi platform game I’ll buy it on the 360 every time.  Yes you have to pay Microsoft for Xbox live membership, but it bloody well shows in difference in service levels and download speeds.  All the timed exclusive is going to do is piss me off.  I’ll still be buying Ghostbusters on the 360, I’ll just wait until it gets released.  It’ll be a nice Christmas present.  If you’re lucky I might use my free lovefilm trial to rent your poxy exclusive. I’ll still buy the film when it comes out on blu ray but the game I’m waiting for the 360 version.

On the plus side, this makes me think that the game will be something special – we’ll have to see won’t we.

The other big news in gaming is that 3D realms has closed it’s doors.  Duke Nukem For(n)ever doesn’t look like it’ll ever see the light of day.  Citing a lack of funds causing the shutdown confuses me somewhat – they’ve just had a massive hit on the XBLA with Duke Nukem 3D – they must have made a packet with that.  I guess 12 years developing a game that’ll never come out really does affect your company in a negative way.  Oh well.  I guess it’s not the end of the world.

I had a day off work today and rather than waste it we decided to spend another day out and about.  This time we didn’t get to visit Bridlington and have Fish and Chips whilst watching the seagulls on the harbour, we didn’t get to have a sit out in the sunshine in Sue’s mum and dad’s back garden in York.  We went sofa shopping.

I bet at this point you’re thinking – he’s writing about going and buying a sofa? I’m outta here! See you later, hope you come back soon

For those of you that are still reading, hi.

When we moved into the house the people here before us had left the sofa and chair that they’d had – they were terrible, very hard and no cushioning.  Trouble was, we couldn’t afford to replace them.  After suffering for a couple of years we eventually went out to DFS and bought some new sofas – they had to be 2 seaters and no wider than about 210cm so that one could go into the bay window.

The ones we bought looked good enough but after a few months turned out they were shite.  The frame of the thing isn’t solid, its almost like the sides are made out of cardboard.  The cushions are made out of hollow fibre and are pretty much flat as a pancake now (even with a fair bit of pillow battering every few days).  So we decided that we would ditch the 2 seaters, buy a 3 seater and see how we got on.

We ventured out to Birstall, the plan was to visit Harveys, DFS, SCS, and maybe some of the other random furniture places they have out there.

We started off with Harveys, since they’re having an extra 20% off their sale prices which finished at 8pm tonight (always does, doesn’t it).  We had a nice look around found a sofa that we wanted, got the tape measure out to measure the width of the sofa and a salesman wandered over.  He told us we didn’t need to do that – everything they have in has these little cards that have the measurements for each one so you don’t need to measure them yourself.  Very handy.  He said every sofa/chair set should have one – if they didn’t to let him know.  And off he trotted.  Very pleasant and very good – just what we wanted.  Left us to look around and try out sofas in peace and didn’t intrude unless we wanted him to.

He clocked my Universal Studios t-shirt and started chatting to us about Florida – really nice chap and we felt that although the underlying chattyness all boiled down to a potential sale, he was a friendly enough bloke.

There were two sofas we quite liked in Harveys along with a nice (if not expensive) coffee table that had drawers and cupboards.

The one that we really liked consisted of this three seater:

This Chair:

And this was the coffee table:

We wandered off to SCS to have a look around there.  Straight away we were jumped on by a sales person who followed us around for a bit and was blathering on about one sofa, another sofa, lah de dah.  I wasn’t really listening.   I was too busy trying to find a sofa that we  a) liked the look of b) was comfy.

Some of the ones that looked quite nice as soon as you sat down you knew they just weren’t the right ones.  They’d look nice and firm and supportive, you’d sit down and it’d be like sitting on a foam sofabed from the 1980s.  Naff.

There wasn’t much in SCS so we tried the other stores, every single one of them the sales people were hanging around by the doors, waiting for people to come in, as soon as they did they were on you, some of them even going as far as following you upstairs once they’d told you that the fabric stuff was upstairs and followed you around.  Wasn’t very pleasant.

None of the sofas anywhere else really appealed – they just didn’t seem to come up to the same standard as we’d found in these two at Harveys.  So we grabbed a coffee from Costa and wandered back over to the other complex where Harveys was.

Found the sales guy and talked numbers.  The figures he’d given us were a little out – turns out the insurance for accidental spills and things he’d not priced up quite right and it was £90 more than the initial quote.  He agreed to meet us halfway and knocked £45 off which I thought was fair enough.  Mistakes happen.

The sofa and chair are both electric recliners.  Wasn’t that much more than the manual recliners and it gives you a little more control over the recline and also doesn’t mean that you’re kicking the thing away when you want to stand up and put it away.

We talked about it for a bit, decided to go with 2 years interest free credit rather than 3 years to get it paid off asap and signed up.  I got him to throw in a Coronation Street Salt n Pepper set (should retail at £20 – wtf?!).

So delivery for the coffee table should be within 8 weeks, the delivery for the sofa and chair within 11.  I got home and did what I should never have done – searched the net for Harveys Review.

Loads of people complaining about poor customer service, delayed delivery times and damaged/wrong items arriving.  Sue’s mum and dad ordered their suite from Harveys and as far as I know didn’t have any problems.  I know that for every one complaint you have maybe 100 happy customers.

I’m not so much bothered about delays – yeah I’d love the furniture as soon as possible, we’ve only paid out £200 deposit and that was on a credit card.  The rest is financed over 2 years at 0%.  The first payment for that doesn’t go out until theres a signed delivery note from us.  As far as I’m concerned, that won’t happen until we’re happy.  I’m not anticipating any problems but sort of wish I  hadn’t googled.  Stupid brain.

So – hard sales drives don’t work.  That’s why I prefer shopping online wherever possible.  I can get on with what I want to do and read reviews/find the cheapest price.  It doesn’t really work with Sofas though, you have to go and try them out in person.

Whilst I was out I nipped into Comet to see what they had in the way of laptop bags and things – I’m looking for a new satchel/messenger bag/man bag.  They had this nice belkin one but it was £40.  Quick price check on amazon showed it was £22.

Ordered it whilst I was sat testing out the new sofa.  We must have spent over an hour sat on it – wanted to make sure we got it right.

Once we were done, we went to Nandos.  They’ve opened one up in the Showcase Cinema car park – it was absolutely delightful.  Nice and open and airy – they had all the external patio doors open and it was lovely and spacious.  Food was really nice too.  We had a bottle of Nandos Sun dried tomato medium marinade.  I’ve poured it into a bowl, thrown some chicken in and its sat in the fridge marinating until tea time tomorrow.  I can’t wait.

It’s been nearly two weeks since my last (normal) blog post.  That’s rather scary, especially when it’s something I’d taken to doing quite regulary.

I’ve spent the last week being rather poorly.  What I thought initially was a cold turned out to be something slightly worse – even worse than Man Flu.  I think it might have possibly been REAL flu!  How about that. 

Along with the usual runny nose and cotton wool head, there were shivers, then hot spells complete with sweats (yum), major headaches, fever (haven’t had one of those for a while, muscle aches, a feeling of completely knackeredness which led to sleep, more sleep and rest.  I tried to go back to work on Friday because I felt slightly better, didn’t even last 2 hours before I’d sent myself home on the bus, I couldn’t concentrate and I couldn’t think straight, I couldn’t even hear. 

My inner ears were still up in Queensbury and I was down in Halifax, it was like wandering around with earmuffs on – everything was muffled and led to me feeling even worse.  This seemed to sort itself out when I was on the bus back up home which was good. 

Saturday morning I felt slightly better – my nose had stopped running, I felt completely out of it for most of the day though and had some interesting headaches later on, it took paracetamol, codeiene and later Ibuprofen to shift it completely. 

This morning I felt great, this afternoon even more so.  I’m confident that I’ll be back at work in the morning all shiny and happy.  The only downside to this is that I’ve inevitably passed it on to Sue who is now suffering.  Now it’s not like her to complain if she gets a cold, she just gets on with it (I’m a man so when I get a cold, it’s like a life threatening illness), with it knocking her for six I know it wasn’t just a regular cold which makes me feel slightly better about having to take time off work sick.  I hate having to do that, I feel like I’m letting people down – at the same time I don’t want to do anything that might slow down my recovery/affect me more in the long term. 

It’s one of those great conundrums isn’t it – stay at home, get better, people at work are undermanned but manage or go in, spread your illness to your workmates (cheers Carl ) help out but not be working at anywhere near full productivity.  I’m still not sure which is the best route to take – I know that everyone deals with illness in a slightly different way and it affects us in different ways too.  I’m not one for taking sick days with just a runny nose but if it’s affecting my concentration and ability to do my job I have to make a decision. 

I don’t really have anything else to write about at the moment, that’s pretty much been my week since last Tuesday when I started with it, Monday night I could feel it starting in my throat.  Haven’t touched the Playstation 3, Xbox or that white thing (I think it’s called a Wii) under the TV for what seems like ages.  I might fire up the 360 later and have a go on Halo Wars seeing as Lovefilm have sent it out. 

I also need to find Top Gun on Blu Ray (my brother lent me it a few weeks ago and I seem to have misplaced it).  Really want to watch it and I know he’s going to want it back sooner or later

/Keanu Reeves

I couldn’t work out where I was going to post this – it sorta kriss-crosses both of my blogs.  It concerns my thoughts and feelings but is deeply linked to and concerns my weight loss.  It might as well go here on the main blog. 

If you’ve been keeping up you’ll know that up until last week I’d been doing very well and had lost 1st 8lb.  Over the course of the last week I stopped counting points, didn’t by any stretch of the imagination “go crazy” – I just ate and didn’t bother so much about any of it.  I didn’t binge, I didn’t gouge on crisps and sweets.  I did have some pic ‘n’ mix (which was nice) but it was in a cup rather than a huge bag.  I think I maybe had just one bag of crisps over the week too. 

Anyway, I jumped on the scales yesterday and I’d put 6lb on. 

With me being at Centerparcs Mon-Fri, and doing lots of cycling and walking around and swimming I thought that whatever I ate would simply be offset by the exercise, I’d maybe put 1-2lb on over the course of the week but would probably lose some weight.  After all – I’ve had a 1-3lb loss every week since I started right?

How very naive of me. 

When I saw the gain it blew me away.

I spent the entire day feeling numb, out of it, down in the dumps – it was one of the worst feelings ever.  I didn’t feel like it was me in my body, I felt like an empty shell. 

I felt as though I probably wouldn’t be able to stop counting WW points ever again if this is what happens when I lapse for just a week.  If I sit back and think about it – it’s not so much the gain that’s upset me, it’s me thinking I was going to lose weight when I ended up putting weight on. 

Also partly to blame was one of those weight machines/body fat analysers at Centerparcs – I got on it on Wednesday night and again on Thursday night.  I looked at my weight, ignored the first number and just saw 11lb.  I was wearing heavy clothes and my trainers, I thought “that’s pretty good going – only 2lb heavier than I was last week and I’m fully clothed – I’ve lost weight”. 

I look at the tickets now that I’ve gotten home and I can see that the actual weight it told me I was was 22st 11lb.  That’s 16 pounds (1st 2lb) heavier than last weigh in.  A couple of my friends also tried the scales and weren’t happy with the results, I reckon the machine is a little out of whack – I certainly didn’t lose 10 pounds in two days.   

I started to come around towards the end of the day and of course everything feels better after a good night’s sleep.  Woke up this morning feeling fine, I’ve got something special on my mind……… hang on a minute, no that’s Herman’s Hermits.

Anyway, I feel much better today and back on track.  I feel focussed and happy at where I am.  Well – I’ve accepted where I am, and where I’ve still got to go. 

I’m grateful for all the messages of support I’ve received over the last 24 hours and the bits and pieces of advice – it’s all helped immensely.  Thank you very much.