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Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I Yam What I YamWell it's taken me more than a week, but I've finally solved the "incredibly difficult puzzle" set by the organisers of the Brighton Hip-Hop Festival. It turns out that 'Dire Rank' was an anagram of...

RareKind

I was so close with Kind Rear. I solved it using a combination of lateral thinking, ingenuity, and sheer blind luck, when I happened to walk past a picture of Popeye playing poker (it's a common sight in Brighton) and noticed the word tattooed on his arm. RareKind, it turns out, is a gallery in Trafalgar Street dedicated to "the urban art scene", and specialising in graffiti and hip hop art. Which explains why I've never heard of it.

Anyhoo, yesterday's excitement involved taking the small bundle of fluff I call Chloe to the vet to demand some more tablets for her hideous bowel condition. There's not actually anything seriously wrong with her, but the vet does like to give her a stroke every six months so that he can charge me £23 for doing absolutely nothing. It's an arrangement I don't seem to get any say in.

From there I headed into town to get some more visitors' parking permits, in the misguided belief that people might actually come and visit me one day. I chose to drive, a decision I regretted when I discovered that the multi-storey car park next to the council parking office now charges 80p for 15 minutes. Which is £3.20 an hour. That's more than some people earn. Well, it's more than I earn. It's no wonder everyone parks on the double yellow lines outside the office when they go in to complain about their parking tickets.

Anyhoo, I stood in line for two minutes behind a man who was complaining that he'd moved here two months ago, was told he'd have to wait two months for a parking permit, and was now wondering why he hadn't received one. He was naturally delighted when the woman told him that due to a computer problem he'd have to wait another three months.

Fortunately the man who dealt with me was far more helpful. He informed me that since I last ordered some permits, the computer has accidentally wiped everyone off the database, they have no record of me, and I'll have to fill in the forms all over again. Computers, eh. They're the future.

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