The lightning revealed the outline of the brick terrace house in Swindon's Old Town. There, perched on the side of a hill, a terrible scientific experiment was about to take place. In the beige dungeons of of the house, beneath the slanting archways, Doktor Kaldrailstein made the last few adjustments to his work. Soon he would pull the industrial strength lever that allowed the electricity to flow, and breathe life into his creation. The terrible hybrid creature, made from the parts of deceased
Hunger knows no bounds. With the cash I had left I couldn't resist steak & cheese burrito on my way home. Yes, I know, my finances are now forever ruined, but the delights of takeaway food were too much to ignore. So I ordered my early evening meal and waited for the chap behind the counter to stop mashing the ingredients.
To my left the approach of a pair of lads was becoming obvious. Sometimes you just know a stranger is about to accost you, and the burlier of the two ambled slowly tow
Another day, another supermarket checkout queue. My local vendor has just had a refit, and in the name of progress has installed a number of those hateful automatic tills, so the shop can save money on staff wages. Strange thing is though they've had to keep people on the payroll to show us ordinary members of the public how these machines work.
Every time I go there now a smiling happy shop assistant asks me if I want to try their gleaming new robots. I'm afraid to say their smile doesn't
Every week I attend a work club. You remember the film Full Monty? yep, that's us, a disparate group of individuals all sat for an afternoon plugging away despondently at our job search and ready for any high jinks to pass the time of day.
The chap who runs the club has obviously gotten bored of the shy silence that normally pervades our sessions. No-one seems keen to talk to each other, although last week we had a competition to find the stupidest vacancies online. I managed to find a chin
Money is the issue these days. Certainly for me, because I don't have any, but also for other people. It looks like a record number of mortgage repossessions this year. If that wasn't bad enough, fines for transgressing the law are rising steadily. Up to
I've just watched an advert on tv. Its sponsored by the government, and tells us that if we don't act now our world will become hotter with dire results to our comfortable lives. It ends with a a view of the world wrapped in a red hot atmosphere. Thats a chilling message isn't it? It is of course designed to frighten us out of our complacency. It is, without doubt, propaganda.
Our government is socialist and whilst it has politicans in the public eye who proclaim their wish to further the pr
She couldn't wait. With a mischievious smirk my mother asked if I'd heard about the latest government initiative for the unemployed. I hadn't, as it happened, but I understand that long term claimants are now going to be required to work four weeks on placement to qualify for benefits.
Actually I'm not that bothered. I did thirteen weeks of that earlier this year, so it's just more of the same to me. The point though in this case is that my mother couldn't wait to push a pin into my little b
You have to wonder at the motives of North Korea. They push their atomic program in directions that raise suspicions of the outside world, fire missiles into the pacific and call it a satellite launch, and now throw away the truce agreed with South Korea after their own cold war that lasted since the 50's.
How do you deal with a country that has this mindset? They seem so wrapped up in their own propaganda. Then again, I think the North Korean leadership found out that staying in power durin
Another glorious morning. On my way to the Job Centre I stopped in the park for twenty minutes, watching the various waterfowl doing fowl things on the lake. The black headed geese stayed by the shore, pecking each other for something to do before the breadcrumb crowd arrive. Pidgeons in all shades of grey didn't wait, flapping around and searching the pavement, mystified as to why breadcrumbs hadn't magically appeared. There were no swans today. Those graceful birds are a common sight here usua
Today I thought I'd stop by the park and spend a few moments enjoying the quiet of a monday morning before having to get on with the real one. As mondays go, this does actually appear to be none too busy. The hill was devoid of cars completely, so either everyones on holiday this week, or the signs displaying the number of parking spaces are working.
As it happens, a flock of seabirds have dropped in to enjoy the lake as well. Now they ain't quiet. Frenetic activity everywhere, a constant ch
The task for the day was to head out to the edge of my known universe, or more specifically, Blunsdon. That's four and a half miles away. Even though the start of the one day course in 'How To Use The Internet For Jobsearching' was not all that early, getting there required an early start.
I don't mind as such. If you need to get out of bed at some ungodly hour, that's what you do, and whether the need to get up or the uncomfortable cold temperatures were the cause, I was wide awake long be
I notice the control unit for Evil Robot was missing from the customer services desk at the museum. Well, although I've got better things to do than remove his restraining bolt, if he fires up I've got no way to bring him under control. Luckily this was the quiet shift so the risk to the general public was minimal. Personally I was more in danger of dropping dead from boredom.
We had a visit from none other than DW, our intrepid online journalist. It's always good to hear from him because y
The spirit of Christmas is not yet dead. I see that pensioners and beggars in Milan will get free hand-outs of caviar. Is it just me, or are the Italians doing better than Britain?
Calendar of the Week
Christmas is nearly upon us. The traditional season of thirty year old hit singles and toy adverts on tv. The same old festive movies are hitting our screens again. Well... now that I'm offically famous, I've decided to join the gravy train and announce the first official Caldrail merchandisi
One of my daily rituals is to open my mail box and browse the contents the postman deposited there this morning. Sometimes there's nothing new there of course, I'm not that popular. With all my job searching I get a lot of letters from employers, typically telling me the shortlist is complete and I'm not on it. So be it. With every bundle of interesting, useful, or expecnsive communications from the outside world comes junk mail. Offers of products and services are largely wasted on me I have to
They're back. Having reconnoitered the library the other day, an even greater horde of little barbarians have stormed the premises in a quest to occupy their equally little minds with positive activity. The teachers hiss and hush to no avail as they spot something that interests them and erupt into frantic efforts to point at something first.
"I'm only good at the world stuff." Said one child as a statement of his intellectual achievement. Well good for you son. They walked past me on the wa
In my childhood there was an annual pilgrimage to Northumbria, where one side of my family originates from. Inevitably that meant a visit to Cullercotes and Whitley Bay. Any excuse to get down to the seaside. it's a very british obsession.
One year we stumbled across a puppet show performed in the traditional fashion by a couple of guys in a claustrophic box stood on the sand. Funny thing was, I found myself wrapped up in the antics of the puppet characters. He's behind you! Why doesn't he l
Rumours of tax rises are doing the rounds. Just what we needed. Now that food has become more expensive, petrol more expensive than ever, and energy prices attempting to land on the moon.
When Tony Blair got Labour into power with white grins and visions and promises of turning over a new leaf, what did we get? A Labour Party with a sneakier gameplan. Instead of taxing people in their wage packets, lets spread the taxes into new territory like pensions, insurance, and travel. When we complai
My computer is not well. He's in a coma. No matter what I do, he refuses to boot up. So today I could no more than take him to hospital. There, the repair technicians are drinking endless cups of coffee trying to figure out what is wrong.
A quick visit to the hospital before it closed for business today wasn't encouraging. They wouldn't let me see him, and the receptionist told me that the computer has not yet regained conciousness. He's getting a bit old now I suppose, and deep down you kn
Is it just me, or is there a change in the way our conflict in Afghanistan is being reported? The sad loss of eight soldiers in one day is something very revealing about modern warfare and our perception of combat. On the one hand, there are persistent calls for our troops to receive the equipment they so badly need. On the other, politicians are bemused and tell us this equipment is there. Further, an army spokesman said very clearly to a suspicious reporter that the army had the equipment they
The notice said "Closing Down Sale! Everything Must Go!".
That's a familiar sight these days. There's plenty of commercial properties with shutters down, boarded up, and windows whitewashed. Most of the time a shop closure doesn't matter to me because I'd so rarely need its services.This time it's the shop where I get my hiking gear. Now it's personal.
A part of me thinks the shop has only itself to blame. The goods are not exactly cheap and that's at sale prices. I suspect that's partly
I woke to the alarm clock this morning as I suspected I might. That's the price you pay for staying up late. I now have half an hour to get dressed and down to the job centre to sign on. Inertia is a terrible obstacle first thing, amplified by the frigid temperatures that only a siberian would scoff at. No, it's no good, I have to get out of bed.
Having fallen listlessly sideways onto the carpet, I was suddenly aware that I was risking hypothermia unless I moved. Move I did. In fact, I was
The plumbers turned up at the door last night. "We need to check for a leak in your bathroom." One boldly announced, "'Cos we cut a hole in the downstairs ceiling and the waters coming from upstairs."
I had visions of a domestic disaster looming as these people disassembled my home in the hunt for a few drops of water. Two of them bounded upstairs and proceeding to dismantle the bathroom as expected. One brought his young duaghter along. Thankfully she was well behaved and was more concerned
In case anyone doesn't know, Archie is dead and Stacey did it. I imagine by this time the whole world has heard about that. Another thing everyone has probably already heard is that I don't like soap operas. That surreal glitziness of working class Coronation Street, that farcical drama and tragedy of rural life in Yorkshire, that irredeemably dystopic world of Albert Square. Those claustrophobic virtual worlds might be wonderful to some people, but seriously, I really don't care what happens. W
Way back in the days before musicians were obselete and I was optimistically expecting to be a famous rock drummer any minute later, I must have played hundreds and hundreds of gigs back-to-back all over England. Funny thing though is only once do I remember being offered drugs.
In that particular case I was guarding the mixing desk before a gig at the infamous London Road Hall in Bath, a fetid amber-shaded place whose clientelle seemed to compose mostly of rival drug dealers and their wooll
For some strange reason I seem to have been co-opted as the local guide. Some guy stops me in the high street and asks where the supermarket is, even though his friend already knows and can't get a word in edgeways. Another chap wants to know where a certain solicitors office is. A lady stops me in the street and I confirm she isn't lost. I'm thinking of selling guided tours of Swindon. Or perhaps there's an opportunity to make a living exploiting the rich variety of wildlife and colourful grafi
