>>>>>Killing Time<<<<<

The red telephone bill had arrived and I thought I better pay it pronto. What better way, I thought, than using the telecom company's 24-hour, 7-day-a-week payment hotline? I phoned it but it just rang and rang. I phoned it again, and it just rang and rang. I tried one last time. That's right, you guessed it. So I called another number on the back of the bill and spoke to a nice lady called Pam, or perhaps it was Pat, who sorts out direct debit queries. "I'm sorry," she said, "I only sort out direct debit queries. We're having a problem with the payment line at the moment." "I know," I huffed, "That's what I was calling you for. It's a bit rich, isn't it, that a telecom company is having trouble with its telephone lines?" "The problem," responded Pam/Pat, "is one of demand. We have a lot of people calling us." A strange explanation. I find it hard to believe that so many people want to pay their bills that the phone lines go down. I forsook all that fancy technology and walked to the bank and paid the bill over the counter instead, and was tended to by the usual miserable girl with big bushy eyebrows.

I was listening to Elton John's totally trousers Billy Elliot travesty Electricity - not by choice, I hasten to add - at the weekend and, somewhere near the end, he started harping on about electricity being free. Reg just doesn't live in the real world, does he? I've had the stuff from npower, Yorkshire Electricity, British Gas and Southern Electric and have always found it to be incredibly expensive. Maybe that fire that burns deep inside is gas powered? I think that Mr Dwight might be getting the word elecricity mixed up with an erection. You decide...

I can't really explain it.
I haven't got the words.
It's a feeling that you can't control.
I suppose its like forgetting, loosing who you are.
And at the same time something makes you whole.
Its like that theres a music playing in your ear.
And im listening, and im listening and then I dissapear.
And then I feel a change*.
Like a fire deep inside.
Something bursting me wide open.
Impossible to hide.
And suddenly im flying.
Flying like a bird.
Like Electricity.
Electrcity.
Sparks inside of me.
And i'm free, im free.

*Note that he "feel(s) a change". I take that to mean that he's on a coin meter.

Apologies for the copyright infringement (that's not actually part of the lyrics, which were probably written by Bernie Taupin not Elton, more an apology for the copyright infringement).