It's a properly celtic morning today. Cold, certainly, that sort of insidious damp chill you can never feel warm in whatever you do. I look out the window at the pale blue sky, static undulations of blue-grey alto-cumulus tinged with gold, and that grey claggy horizon with a distant mountain range of cumulus far off in the west.
It's also a very quiet day. Sundays are sometimes like that, and with these dull grey mornings you usually get a very subdued response from people. One old chap said
Last night I saw the glare of a waning moon coming through the back window. A bright moon is always an invite to stare into the night sky but to be honest I was disappointed. Although the sky was clear, the moon wasn't really penetrating the darkness and it still felt like nighttime. You may well say it was bound to be, but a couple of nights before the moon had been nearly full, lighting the streets, yards, and alleys at the back of my home like a pale version of the sun, light grey clouds drif
Today it was back at the work experience program, my very own infant school for out of work adults. It's an interesting experience because with each week the boredom level is clevery designed to increase to mind numbing tedium, so that the workplace actually becomes interesting. We all sat around playing Scrabble. No, really, we did, until the well-meaning advisor brought along a dictionary and proclaimed half our words out of bounds. Young T immediately upset the game board to show her displeas
I have changed my mind. Such a decisive moment in my life is somewhat rare these days, but hey, there you go. The subject of this mighty mental re-evaluation is of course Star Trek. I've always dismissed Voyager as a bit wishy-washy, but after all this time and endless repeats of all the series, I'm starting to think Captain Janeway's politically correct attempt to reach home is the one that's maturing the best.
The old Star Trek, the original, with all those iconic characters is of course p
Today was a little dull at work. It always is when you know the weather outside is bright and sunny (mostly because the managers are away enjoying it thus they're not directing your efforts). So I spent much of the day restacking piles of cardboard boxes. Another thrilling day in my life.
However, I noticed some of the odd architectural features of the stockroom. The long dark alcove behind the air conditioning ducts. The empty room beside the fire escape that the stairs don't quite reach. I
The gas bill arrived this morning. For the first time since I moved in nearly eight years ago, I've made a loss on that particular service. Worse still, the supply company have automatically doubled my payments. I can't afford to pay that much. My benefits don't cover domestic bills. It seems a bit odd in a way but all I get is Jobseekers Allowance plus Housing Benefit, and I have to pay for everything out of those two sources, which has never left me with a huge profit but now energy prices are
This is the view from a factory chimney, looking toward the town of Somato nestling in the valley below. It all happened here.
I was back at HQ when the radio message came in. A recon patrol had ventured out as far as Somato, and stumbled on an enemy stronghold. Coming under fire their squad leader had been killed. They were pinned down on that wooded hill, just to the left of the town, and needed help. I was available so I gathered a few troops, an available truck, and headed out across th
Autumn is making itself felt. Steady streams of yellow and brown leaves are wafting along in the breeze, and it's been threatening to rain all day. You can feel a sort of heavy dampness, an occaisional raindrop, and the trees obey the stimulus in time-honoured fashion.
As autumns go, this one is proving to be a bit more colourful that ususal. Don't know why, maybe it's all that fresh CO2 we humans have been making that has invigorated the trees with autumnal splendour?
Drive a car today.
I used to see urban foxes from my back window on a regular basis. More often than that, I would hear their yelps and screeches in the dead of night. It's been a while since that noise has pierced the stillness of Old Town's quiet hour. Had pest controllers reduced their numbers? It seemed as if the only interruption to my slumber was going to be inept car thieves from now on.
Last night a vivid sunset appeared through my back window. I went off to get the camera, opened the window, and took
Everyones worrying about money at the moment. I can't say I've any sympathy for those ministers of Parliament required to pay back allowance claims considered dubious - they've been on a gravy train for decades. It so happens the cash shortage might well impact on me. Not because my benefits are under threat, but because job opportunities aren't going to be so readily available in the future. Typical of this situation is the farce over a few stones.
Years ago there was a church just across t
What a day! Glorious blue skies and sunshine. I'm in a good mood, the young lady leaning out of her upstairs window smoking wasn't in the mood to criticise me when I walkd past, the ginger cat rubbing against the brick wall didn't run away, and this has to have been the quietest saturday night for a long time.
Apart from the usual renditions of the 'F' word up until three o'clock, but hey, kids like to play don't they? All those tiny little dramas were played out on the street again last nig
The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, public debt should be reduced, the arrogance of officialdom should be tempered and controlled and the assistance to foreign lands should be curtailed lest Rome become bankrupt. People should learn to work, instead of living on public assistance.
Cicero (55BC)
(Courtesy of Councillor David Glaholm)
Councillor Glaholm makes the point in the Swindon Advertiser that nothing changes. He's right of course, but then why would he not
The pen is mightier than the sword. On the face of it, that's a silly thing to say. More than once I sat through a school assembly in bored silence while the headmaster gave yet another rendition of that parable. Even as a child I knew swords were painful. Pens? They just make a mess in your pocket and give the teachers an excuse to mark you down. Perhaps that's one reason why I used to pull the wool over my teachers eyes at every excuse. I once drew a diagram of the Mexican deployment at the Ba
My first clue to the importance of the day was spotting the library security guard. He's a portly chap, walking with a pronounced sway, sort of like an oversized chimp. He was carrying a bunch of flowers. Never in my life have I seen him look so incongruous. I couldn't help asking him if this was part of his usual duties. He chuckled, but I think what he really wanted to do was punch my lights out.
Later I went to the library for my daily dose of internet goodness. What is going on? The inte
Human endeavour is a curious thing. A lot of what we do is little more than instinct. Watch any wildlife program and you see exactly the same behaviour patterns that human beings have always displayed. It's just that we like to kid ourselves that we're somehow superior when in private we like being as animal as possible... What? The same goes for war. It's just an extension of one herd against another in competition for something. Most animal species have learned to ritualise such behaviour to m
My second battle has been fought. I went to the bank to have my title changed and curiously enough, the somewhat bored bank clerk merely sighed, dismissed my certificates and patents with "Yeah I've seen it" and promptly did the necessary changes on the screen. That was painless, though he wasn't any more impressed than anyone else. Guess he sees it all the time...
Now it didn't go all my own way. There's a load of notices and pamphlets at our local council that tell us they're keen on publi
Sunday morning... Time once again to step over the casualties of last nights binges and make my way to where I sit now, typing out this blog entry. What struck me was how quiet everything was. A solitary electric tool echoed in the back streets on the west side of Swindon hill, whining away with it's owners delirious need to reduce his untidy house to matchwood. Oh sure the church bells were trying to keep christians occupied on their day off but for some odd reason it didn't seem as intrusive a
As if invasions of jellyfish weren't enough. Last night I caught a program on television where some ex-special forces guy zips into chainmail to film vicious gangs of humboldt squid.
Apparently these horrible little monsters are spreading like wildfire because they can. We haven't helped of course. I mean, we're always to blame, aren't we? Apparently our fishing habits have caught all the predators that eat squid, so now the little horrors don't have any competitors.
They are actually re
Buckingham Palace isn't happy. The climate is changing. And Prince Charles is dumbfounded by sceptics of Global Warming.
Look Your Highness, it really is very simple. There are a lot of people claiming CO2 is destroying the planet. It isn't. The CO2 cycle is almost as old as the planet itself, and for most of Earths history, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere was way above what we have today by orders of magnitude. CO2 has been rising again for millions of years, long before we invented dark
What a gloriously sunny day! Now that I spend four days a week locked inside 'The Bin' as the shop staff call it, sunlight is a rare commodity for me. What do you do on sunny days? I've forgotten. Well let's find out...
Sunbathing
I must admit, stripping off in these temperatures isn't a comfortable prospect. Despite the warm sun it's absolutely freezing out there. I remember when I was 14 years old I went on a skiing trip with the school to Austria. On the day we turned up there were young
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
There's a chap who works on the shop floor who sometimes comes up to grab stock from us. The sort of guy who's completely grey. He just doesn't intrude on the senses at all, In fact, I wouldn't mention him at all if it wasn't for his party trick of exhaling smoke. No, seriously he does, without a cigarette, dark grey smoke billowing out of his lungs. It looks utterly bizarre. KS spotted it today and we had a banter about this strange phenomenon.
Not only do we have a ghost on the premises, b
Half past eight? The interview slot was a bit suspicious but that's the time printed on the notification. As it turned out that's the new opening hours of the Job Centre. A few waifs and strays like me silently congregated in the small plaza outside in varrious states of dishevellment. Personally I just couldn't be bothered to dress tidily at this hour of the day and for my part turned up looking like a vietnam POW. The security guard opened the doors and we all sauntered in.
Android Lady a
All I did was go for a walk. In the two or three hours it took me to wander around the Mouldon Hill area, I very nearly achieved a dose of sunburn. My reflection in the mirror is an almost embarrassing shade of red. I'm actually glad todays weather is grey and slightly damp. It's spitting with rain right now. What a difference a day makes.
On the way there I followed the railway path. As a child I used to walk along the tracks. Back then the line was no longer used for regular services and
Sometimes I wonder if falling over is a communicable disease. A former boss, DS, has long demonstrated a complete inability to stay on her feet, drunk or sobre. It seems I'm starting to show signs of the same affliction.
My task for the day was simple. I have one of those desktop lamps that doesn't have a bulb to fit it. So I set off with the aim to find a suitable light bulb with which to illuminate the darkened recesses of my hovel. Unfortunately the lamp happens to be one of those old Woo
