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
Libraries are places that require a quiet atmosphere. Its very easy to be distracted and since the whole point of a library is to provide educational material, with too many distractions its difficult to educate yourself.
The day-care centre facilities are a case in point. Young children like to run about, throw tantrums, and generally cry for attention, not to mention inspire adults to hold impromptu singing lessons. I spent one hour on the library computer with somebodies child threatening
Last night I watched a program by a tv & film actor who plays hard-man roles and wanted to know the truth about the kind of men he portrays.
The gentleman he interviewed in that episode, now a reformed character, once 'taxed' drug dealers with intimidation and violence. The program was intended to shock law abiding people about the reality of the dangerous men we so rarely encounter. The strange thing is that I wasn't shocked at all. Even when the character showed the passionate depth of
Todays the day. My first job interview in months. The alarm clock was set, something I've not had to bother with since last year, and to be honest, given the humidity during the night it wasn't required anyway.
It takes me a leisurely forty five minutes to stroll down the leisure centre. The weather is cloudy but that humidity is still there. Lord knows what it would have been like had the sun come out. There are indications of storm clouds sweeping across the West Country this morning. Apar
The weekend is here and the rain has gone away. It's official. The weatherman ruefully told us to look forward to a good one and he was was correct. He so loves those amber triangles on the screen with "Weather Warning" emblazoned upon it. I think it really makes his day.
The Hybrid Is Here
Quite a few years ago, on another site, the discussion on the forums got around to the merits of the hybrid car and its ecological impact. At the time, I was wholly dismissive. This was of course the era
Hilary Clinton has made a fashionably late visit to our shores and naturally the press conference followed. It's becoming a bit of a soap opera. Is it just me, or are political speeches becoming a bit commonplace? To some extent that's partly because of modern media coverage. With so many channels and air-time to fill, it seems politicians are rising to the challenge of opportunity. I guess that's politics. If you want to get ahead in that business you need people to hear you.
The subject m
The lesson of todays sermon is never to to take anything for granted. My worry is that this will sound more like an exercise in paranoia. Nonetheless, the events have occured, and behind it all lurks a reason. Let me explain.
I make no secret of my predeliction for using computers. They're versatile tools and sources of entertainment. But as with all complex machines, sometimes they go wrong. The ebb and flow of my computers reliability has inspired various posts on this blog already. At lea
We've had some snow, a few dustings, and if I were honest, nothing like the problem it's been for some parts of Britain. Apart from that section of pavement beside the College Car Park. Sheltered by the shadow of the abandoned building, it never thaws out in sunshine, and thus alwys freezes into a thirty yard skating alley.
Woah... That was close... Walk slowly...
You'd think by now someone would have noticed. Okay, it isn't some Dickensian vista of snowdrifts between tudor shops, but
Such is the good weather we're getting this weekend that Yahoo is making a news item of it. That said, I look out of the window this morning and the sky is a plain white sheet of cloud. Perhaps Yahoo need to be a bit quicker off the mark with their journalism?
Grand National
We have a horse race in Britain called the Grand National. It's something of a national event these days. It was televised yesterday and some outsider won it, leaving bookies with huge losses. One complained that they'd
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
For years Swindon has been a byword for Victorian pidgeon nests. Our 19th Century legacy has survived in all sorts of quiet corners around the town. For the most part, these brick edifices were as rundown and abandoned as their inhabitants. Yet as shabby as it was, it leant a certain character to the place. In recent years, I've wandered around the town taking photographs. The interesting patina of urban decay is simply wonderfully photogenic. The industrial archaeology alone is worth two gigaby
Today I thought I'd upload a few pics taken from my back window. Vistas of weather and early evening sunshine. I like them.
I've Been Fired!
My job searching course has now changed. Instead of two sessions a week of two hours each, I now have to wade through a single four hour marathon of trawling through endless internet job sites looking for jobs within reach. Given the average attention span of a human being past his teenage years is a maximum of twenty minutes, I think you can understan
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
A few years ago, a guy at work told me what the Polish were like to live with. He resided in a rented room, in a property shared with a number of Polish people. He told me of the attitude they were prone to, and the shenanigans they adopted if they didn't get their own way.
For my part, I took it with a pinch of salt. Perhaps my colleague was unlucky and his co-habitees were not the most genial sort of people to begin with. I didn't assume he was right about the behaviour of a nation.
No
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
Okay. I admit it. It's raining. Having moaned about our weathermen predicting wet and windy days for weeks, it finally happened this morning. That said, it isn't the downpour we'd been promised (Don't you just know I'm going to regret writing that?). You could call it a damp squib.
Rumbles In The Night
I was kept marginally awake last night by the rumble of a large diesel engine somewhere in the vicinity of my home. That means either of two things. Firstly it might be that white lorry that
Perhaps the shock of cold mornings has worn off now, or perhaps the day is genuinely milder, but today is bright, sunny, and bearably chilly. On my way the Job Centre to deliver my daily excuses I stopped in the park, watching the gathered waterfowl swim back and forth vainly waiting for a passer-by to stop and throw breadcrumbs. What? On a cold day like this?
I have to admit I remain bemused about how these birds don't freeze. After all, they live outdoors and swim in cold water. I suppose
One of the great bugbears of life is getting old. When you're young, you tend to sneer and roll your eyes, for the experience of age is something beyond you. Well, my hair began to go grey when I was a teenager so that never really made any impact on me. It all seemed normal and part of everyday life. I never got self-concious about it at all, even after enduring endless jibes about hair colour products for men.
It seems however that I've recently attracted an unfortunate medical condition I
I am by nature a creature that likes his food, and feeling a little peckish, I ventured into my diminutive pantry to determine what wonderful and exotic ingredients I had lurking in there. Ooh heck, this looks a bit sparse.... Uhhh... Any pot noodles left? Nope. Looks like another trip to the supermarket is in order.
The weather of course was damp and miserable. There was a time when we used to get scorching summers, but now the green brigade have banned noxious gases and nearly everything t
What? Sunshine? Surely not? There was I expecting another grey dull and bitterly cold day when out pops a clear blue sky. That said, the pavement is dangerously slipery in places where the sun doesn't melt the frost, but so far I haven't bowed to the inevitable and made an undignified close inspection of the paving slabs.
Suprisingly, given the clear skies, it wasn't as cold today either. I hardly needed gloves. Now if only I can manage to stay on my feet...
This'll Warm You Up
Although
Only when you get up close to a Great Dane do you realise just how big those dogs are. There were two being coaxed along the alleyway across the yard last night. The pair of them just about filled the pathway. Nice horses, I quipped as I strolled past. At least these two dog owners won't get attacked by urban foxes.
The curious thing though is that the owners expected me to be scared stiff of them. Why? Both dogs were behaving themselves. After all, there was an occaision when I decided to p
How do I describe today? Believe it or not, I'm finding that difficult. Okay, it's Friday, so thank God for that (or not, depending on religious beliefs or recent events in your life), but that doesn't do justice to the sort of wishy-washy lazy don't know what I want to be kind of day.
I mean, it's cloudy, right? Soft focus grey blankets of cloud obscure the sky, but it isn't raining, and far from it, because I see the sun shining. How is that possible? How is this Friday able to destroy my
As Tuesdays go, this was not a good one.
Let's see... What happened today?
Erm... Not much...
Oh hang on - I did burst into song first thing this morning!
My Italian Tenor Moment
Just one more carton
Give it to me
Fantastic fashions
From Italy
I want - to look my best
So give me that carton
And bu-u-u-u-rn the rest
Proof of God
Yes - in the desolate wastes of the stockroom, isolated from human contact and with nothing but navel gazing to keep us from devolving into fis
Some ago a religious leader decided that nations should submit to the authority of his faith. National leaders who opposed his initiatives were blacklisted, denied their spiritual welfare. The common people were enticed to believe without question what their priests were telling them. It all happened nine hundred years ago and resulted in the first crusades.
Sometimes I watch Russia Today on television. Not because of any communist sympathy, but simply because you get a different viewpoint t
Everything seemed a bit grey this morning. Our first foggy morning in ages. Now that I've signed on at the dole office and wanderd up to the library to see to my jobsearching, the sun has broken out again. Maybe that's not quite world breaking news. Can I do better?
Institute Is Falling Down
Our beloved Mechanics Institute, a sort of all-purpose community centre built by the Great Western Railway in 1854, is in danger of collapse. The cellars are flooded. The roof is on the point of caving
