No, don't worry, I haven't discovered Jesus just in time for Christmas, and quite honestly, spending christmas day in a stable full of smelly farm animals with a screaming baby doesn't sound like heaven to me. No, I have a different nightmare....
Heavy snow has hit Britain again and the usual wintery chaos has begun. Homes without electricity, roads slippery, the whole country grinding to a halt. Except Swindon, which once again is blissfully free of the stuff. That means cars can travel fre
I woke this morning to that dull white glow through the curtains. I knew that meant snow. Well it was no suprise - the warnings had been made regularly on tv for the last couple of days. What felt strange though was the curious lack of rumble. There was no background noise of passing cars, nor was the house shaking as lorries rumbled past.
Walking down to the library, Swindon is deathly quiet. There's hardly any tire tracks in the snow, which is merely a surface covering, albeit a very slipp
After my daily stint at the library it was time to pop down to the supermarket for a few items to keep my stomach from rumbling. The street was busy as usual - Ooh look, there's that woman sat at the cafe opposite, staring at me again. Either she's an investigator for the Department of Work and Pensions (Ridiculous but these fantasies make my day so interesting) or she's stalking me (I'm going to find boiled bunnies in my flat before long - I just know it). It might just be I got up this morning
Picture the world in prehistory. No television, computer games, or cars. In between hunting wild beasts I guess they had a lot time on their hands. So bored was one ancestor of humanity that he discovered rubbing wooden sticks together made things catch fire.. Can you imagine how excited he was to discover that?
Later, when voluminous wigs were fashionable, Newton discovered that sitting under apple trees was not only painful, but seriously enlightening. Sometime later, Einstein discovered t
Over the years I've met people on internet forums. We all say that. The truth is we haven't met them at all. They're just little icons and text messages from people far far away. How well can you know someone on a website? That's difficult to say. If there's one thing the internet allows, and indeed one of it's greatest dangers, is the anonymity of it. You can invent a persona and people do exactly that.
Time and again I hear stories of 'women' being unmasked as male teenagers (Good grief,
One of the changes in lifestyle enforced by the lack of motor transport has been my shopping habits. Rather than load up a car boot with my weekly needs I must now carry stuff home manually, so I shop lightly and more often. I pop in for odds and ends almost every day now. yesterday it was to restock my supply of soft drinks, which I can obtain at a bargain price, plus the advantage of getting an arms, shoulder, and legs work out as I climb the hill laden with plastic bottles filled with liquifi
What a lovely morning! The sun is shining, the drunks are sleeping it off in police cells, and the library has resumed a quiet mood as we all sit down and log on to pursue our various browsing needs. Logging on first thing in the morning isn't a hassle any more either. AM has vanished... what? Has he actually gone South Africa? Or has he succumbed to old age?... I actually miss his verbal presence even if he was a complete scoundrel.
Not like yesterday of course. IHaving left some time unuse
Yo ho ho mee hearties, 'tis blowing a gale and the seas be rough. This be weather to sort out the landlubbers from old sea dogs. Haven't seen a good squall like this since last year. Batten down the hatches boys and break out the rum. Ye'll be needin' it fer the journey 'ome... Ha ha harrr.
They promised foul weather this morning and delivered on it. It is horrendous out there. For old sea dogs and parrots only. Wooden legs available while stocks last.
From the Window
A few days ago I w
The plan was to head for the hills and spend the day wearing myself out on the ridges of the Marlborough Downs. On the way I took it into my head to investigate a corner of the local countryside I'd never strayed into before. The grass was incredibly thick. The blades were almost six feet long, though not standing upright, growing sideways in thick layers of the stuff. I've never seen anything like that in England before.
After ten minutes of wading through that lot, I was knackered. It was
A lovely sunny morning. It really is. Mind you, despite the sunshine, when I left the house earlier today it was very chilly, clouds of breath marking my progress, and if it hadn't been for my steady pace, I would have felt the cold very quickly.
Today was upposed to be the day I started my forklifting course. Some people people might not appreciate how momentous this opportunity is. I sepent nearly two decades in warehousing and no-one would train me on forklifts. That's what you get for dr
I woke bleary eyed after the Star Trek marathon on television this weekend. No, before you ask, I didn't have anything better to do. I've been pretty critical of the films by and large, so you have to wonder why I bothered. Put simply, there were one or two I've never seen and it's been a while since I saw the others.
The major thing that struck me was the obvious. The early films try to create a sense of magic which just doesn't work. It's as if just having the old team from USS Enterprise
As shocking as it is, it seems that piracy is becoming more commonplace again. Never mind the brazen Somali's and their multi-million dollar ransom demands, now we have ships boarded in the English Channel, one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world and right on our own doorstep.
Noticeably during the Cold War piracy wasn't an issue, what with naval vessels everywhere and so forth. The reduction of military ships since has made itself felt, and pirates now believe they are safe to conduc
I happened to spot a book at my local library today, memoirs of a man named Alfred Williams, who was born in 1877 and spent twenty years in the Great Western Railways workshops in Swindon. It seems that he was a man who enjoyed the Great Outdoors more than the hellish graft of his daily grind (literally). In his own words...
One has to die before his mates in the shed would think there is anything the matter with him. Then, in nine cases out of ten - especially if he happens to be one of the
What a difference a layer of cloud makes in the first embers of daylight! Unlike Wednesday morning, today it was dark again when I made my way to work. It was bound to be one of those days. My boss made her usual cheerful appearance and said "I've got a little job for you."
Little jobs? Now that they've discovered stock they didn't know they had, they're dropping prices on almost everything and my boss informed me that my job was to write the new price on every tag. That meant checking throu
Has the mystery of the lowered level of water at Queens Park been solved? I notice workmen are repairing the pavement edge that used to meet the water. To be honest, it did need working on, having collapsed in places, but I found it interesting to notice signs of a previous brick lined edge the current pavement was built on top of.
That would mean the lake is usually higher than it was when the lake was first created. Not world shaking shaking news, but hey, do you really want another descr
With my long suffering PC now deceased, I find myself with a lot of time and no means to occupy it. Socialising? Not any more, my bank account is in danger of floating away, if anyone still remembers me that is. Music? Well why not. I now have some time to get a little much needed guitar practice.
As it turns out, I've had a chance to play a somewhat expensive guitar, one of those 'Explorer' style instruments (if that means anything to you) that is twenty five years old. I've heard it said w
Roughly every two or three days we get warnings on television about heavy snow. The familiar amber triangle displayed on our screens is getting a little boring, especially when nothing happens. Take today for instance. Despite "The end is nigh" every half hour on the news channel, I've witnessed nothing but fair weather. Lovely day out there. Birds are singing, children are playing, the boss is smiling, and I didn't have to wait for a library computer. What could be better? Apart from millions i
For some reason I woke very early this morning. I mean, it was still dark outside, so this must have been about five o'clock or something daft. Even dafter was the impulse to get out out of bed, pack the pack, and head the heck out toward the hills. So naturally I obeyed this impulse because my intellect hadn't woken up yet.
You see this time of year is a bit awkward. Sure, it's very chilly in the first light of dawn, but any exercise in warm clothing produces nothing but sweat. In cold cond
What you're looking at it something of a survivor of the Great Computer Crash of 2009. Okay, I like trains. Even Top Gear presenters play with trains. What well balanced male of the species doesn't? Football fans I imagine, but then they get so wrapped up in their tiny little worlds too, don't they? But I digress. Pahusett Valley is one of my virtual routes I put together on a comouter. Certainly it lacks the tactile sensations and satisfaction of creating a model with your bare hands, but then
When I was a very young child, I saw that old comedy film where two steam engines collide head on. Without special effects, film makers in the twenties had no choice but to either show a lot of steam or do it for real, and that once, they did. I don't remember, but apparently I burst into tears. I suspect Hollywood wanted a different reaction but then again we british have always had a love affair with the steam locomotive. The news of a collison between trains in India doesn't reduce me to tear
These days my flying is limited to to the computer. But I still dream, and I hope you enjoy my artwork based on screenshots of my particular hobby.
Exuberance
I was sat at a computer the other day, browsing flight simulator forums and enjoying some banter about the Second World War, when I heard the light aeroplane flying around outside. That isn't unusual over Swindon. For some reason the town is on a north-south route for private flyers much to the chagrin of the controllers at Lyneham Ai
We were all stunned this morning to discover KS had not turned up for work. Absence is a dangerous thing on a government sponsored placement. You could end up losing your benefits entitlement (or even your freedom, as one young lady was found guilty of submitting the bus expenses three times over and now faces a criminal prosecution).
We were all discussing our missing friend. Has he been killed on a runaway bus, has his girlfriend locked him up as a sex slave, or perhaps more likely, had he
Given my opinions about Gordon Brown, the news of his intention to step down really ought to have inspired a sense of shock. For some reason it didn't. He's not the most popular leader we've ever had. He got the job because Tony Blair gave it to him, not because he was voted in by the public. there is therefore a sense of justice that he's decided to resign following the very narrow defeat of his party in the general election. That's politics unfortunately. Like many other walks of life, such as
There's been yet another warning about contracting cancer in your lifetime. The list of various causes is growing steadily. If you smoke, sunbathe, drink beer, eat cheese, processed ham, open a fridge, or expose yourself to plastic bags you stand a risk of suffering from this malady. Personally, I think you stand a greater risk of this great disease if you see a doctor.
One chap I used to know from work made a very simple choice. He wasn't interested in the various treatments available for c
Every so often I get asked which team I support. The question of course always applies to football, or more specifically, soccer, but the questioner assumes you already know that and that you follow the results with an encyclopedic knowledge of every individual involved in the game. I have to say that sport as a whole fails to move me. Fine if you're actually playing it, when it becomes a contest between teams or individuals concerned, but to cheer from the sidelines always seems a bit like porn
