Not a nice day. Maybe it isn't raining quite to the extent certain parts of Australia have suffered recently but the wind is blustery and the air damp with rainness. No, not a nice day. As if that suprises me. For a start this is Britain, and we are known internationally for our trademarked lousy climate. On the other hand, it's also a time of astronomical significance and therefore the skies are cloudy so we cannot observe the celestial wonders above.
BBC have even started Stargazing Live i
Britain was never intended to be this warm. Could someone do something about that please? Or does that mean I have to pay more tax?
My Big Mistake Of The Week
I made a huge mistake. I admit it. Sometimes it happens. There it was on the television schedules - Doctor Who Live.
pardon? My curisosity was aroused. I don't paricularly care for the childish and hyped up modern Doctor Who (it's just Harry Potter with a sonic screwdriver instead of a wand, a tardis rather than a Nimbus 2000) and
I woke this morning from my slumber as the rat made a loud plop exitting the house via the toilet. Not that I'd gotten much sleep - my computer has once again succumbed to the vagaries of electricity and fizzled out. There I was, working away, when the monitor went blankl and I could hear raw current arcing somewhere. With such a strong smell of burning I even had an electrician out in the middle of the night to check I wasn't going to burn the house down. Sadly it appears the rate escaped elect
There's an election in the wind. My first clue was that piece of card posted through the dor telling me I can vote. The second clue was a couple of coaches parked near the library with signs telling me that our local minister of parliament was in town talking to citizens, promising them the Earth, and asking for their vote to make it possible. Makes a change from the Jesus brigade I suppose, even if the preaching isn't much different.
I don't know about you, but I find the Promised Land is s
You can't have a museum without exhibits. Every so often we find new ones. Or should that be old ones? Anyway, our boss came across some stuff being thrown away at Portsmouth and couldn't resist an ancient computer. You should see it. Straight out of a 70's Doctor Who episode.
It turns out our new exhibit is a bog standard Bloodhound missile control box, or in civilian guise, a nuclear reactor control box. I'm not joking. Some power stations are still using these things to this day. Our boss
Today I'm at the local library.. So who's in this morning?
Ahh.. As usual Mr AM makes his unhurried entry. He's an elderly New Zealander, over here to find his family, and after seven years they're still not answering his emails. Always first through the door, always slowing everybody else down with his two walking sticks, always bullying an unsuspecting interloper off his favourite PC, and always smiling at young Miss L (She's a pretty lass, desperately bored with library work). Give him a
Yesterday I made my way into town and to do so, I need to cross a busy road junction. There's a pedestrian crossing there so it isn't an onerous task.
I approach the traffic light and looking to my right (We brits very sensibly drive on the left) a car was slowing down to turn left into the College car park just before the crossing. The van behind had nowhere to go. So taking the opportunity I strode across the road, with the traffic lights changing from red to flashing amber (Thats 'You ca
David Cameron has said Britain needs to be more evangelical. No. It doesn't. Christianity is two thousand years out of date, causes nothing but misery, and is no better than it ever was at curing the worlds ills. No suprise then that our revered leader is patronising Britains official religion, which is getting a bit ridiculous given that even the Archbishop of Canterbury has admitted that Britain is no longer a Christian country.
This is course now that the Pope has made saints of two of hi
What's happened at the Job Centre? Usually I stride through the door and waft past the security guards holding up my identitu documents in that sort of "Get out of my way minion" sort of manner. Not any more. Now the guards stop me and ask where I'm going. What? Again?
Fine. Well, I'm walking over there toward the door the other side of the lift, into the hallway where I use the door on the right to enter the staiwell, where I climb the steps all the way to the second floor, where I turn rig
For the last week the weather has been glorious. All the hassles, disappointments, and frustrations of dealing with recruitment agents seem somehow pointless compared to getting out and enjoying the sunshine. Just the other weekend I took a walk along a cycle path in that strange unfinished part of Wichelstowe, roads and streets spread across empty farmland and the onset of green leaves. Not only was my journey shared by the usual crowd of cyclist, dog walkers, and chain gangs of rubbish collect
So far astronomers have found seven thousand asteroids orbiting close to Earth, of which nine hundred are at least one kilometre in diameter. That's like a mountain floating around up there at tens of thousands of miles an hour. Some of you are probably predicting this is going to be a paragraph or two about the frightening hazards whizzing silently over our heads. Correct. It is.
The worrying thing - and the television documentary deliberately portrayed it in a manner designed to raise hair
One of the enduring qualities of the ancient Roman Empire is an instinctive need by europeans to revive the idea of a continental empire. The European Union was supposed to be a collective of nation states although clearly there are politicians who saw it as a vehicle for imperial ambition. Others saw it as no more than a convenient gravy train. I suspect the same was true two thousand years ago.
Things aren't looking too good. Those nations scrounging from the pot have been told to pull the
The notable absence this week has been Small H. I asked UT about his whereabouts, and was told that he'd gone 'ferreting'. For those unacquainted with British wildlife, the ferret is a small furry predator that is tradiotnally used to warm the nether regions in winter. I suspect Small H has a more practical use for his pet. Oh, but I can't call him Small H anymore. Apparently he's from an important landed family, very big in ferreting circles, and from this point forward I shall call him Lord H.
Autumn is here all of a sudden. The weathergirl apologised last night and told us so. Very nice of her, but to be honest I was expecting it. The air is a little colder than a few weeks ago, the leaves a bit yellow, a and sure enough, its starting to get windy.
Not quite as windy as the hurricanes that hit Taiwan recently, nor those of any other areas such as southeast america, but I remember a time when we didn't get this high winds as a matter of course every year.
I suppose I could bla
Something's wrong. I know something is wrong. Part of me thinks this might be paranoia, yet I cannot escape the evidence of the light through the bedroom curtains. It looks distinctly un-sunny. Oh no!
My worst fears were confirmed as I glanced bleary eyed out the back window. A grey, overcast day, with a sombre mood. How strange! Normally it rains on a Bank Holiday Monday but all we got was blistering sunshine. What it must have been like trapped in a traffic jam with a family of bored kids
I saw a mention earlier that there's been a call to ban 'cartoon' villains.
Pardon? Which idiot thought that one up? No doubt they're concerned that our little offspring will be irrevocably harmed by exposure to images of bad guys and grow up as adult Dick Dastardly's.
Children are not blank slates. However primitive and limited their experience of the world might be, they are born with a character of their own. Nature does this as a survival strategy. By including a diverse set of prim
Cold, wet, miserable. That's pretty much how Swindon is right now, and that's probably not far different from how the rest of the country feels, give or take a flood here and there. Even my local Subway aren't smiling when I arrive to spend a few more hard earned dole payments on something to eat. Hey - It's not my fault this that or the other is on special offer this week.
All is not lost however. The old Thompson Insurance place on the High Street - It's been empty for years - is being ref
Sunday morning and the rain has eased. Some might claim that was proof God exists, but I know different, because he wouldn't have foisted BFL upon the world. There she was in the library foyer, sat waiting to find her next victim. She smiled to herself as I scowled.
Luckily Mr R opopped in. He's a regular at the library too, a cheerful chatty sort of guy who seems to spend all day there playing 'fruit machine' programs. Before he gets there though, he too runs the gauntlet of BFL.
Too l
It's the bad old days all over again. Back when I was a youngster the world was biting its nails as Russia and America stared nose to nose with a nuclear arsenal to smack each other with the moment one or the other said something about their mother. Back then it was common practice for the Russians to send reconnaisance aircraft into our airspce here in Britain to see if we were still paying attention, which of course we did, sending jets to intercept the intruders and wave them off while they g
Another little gripe about libraries... Well, I seem to spend a lot of time in them these days. Sometimes I stroll across town to the local library at a sports centre. Today, as I log on, its become an impromptu day care centre. There's a whole tribe of infants all sat around singing nursery ryhmnes. Maybe its my age, but I feel an urge to morph into AM, and shout "WILL YOU LOT SHUT UP! I'm trying to type my emails."
Oh no, not another nursery rhymne. Twinkle twinkle little star... Now they'
The Old College site still looms large in our local concerns. Even now, they're still trucking huge lumps of hillside away to some infill site somewhere. The sandy soil has now gone so they're digging up dark grey clay, thick lumpy soil that forms steep sided piles. The rain hasn't helped of course. looking down onto the site it got quite messy down there for a while - they've had to lay down a level of rubble to make the surface usable.
The other day I was passing the site with my shopping,
By some fluke of economy I was left with ten pounds the other night. A crumpled tenner in my hand is a gateway to pleasure on a scale unimaginable to ordinary dole seekers like me. So immediately I rushed out into the street with a maniacal grin on my face, braving evening traffic and revellers in a mad dash for the kebab shop across the road.
I made it! Safe and sound on the other side of the road, I entered the bright interior of turkish takeaway cuisine. I think I had some vague intentio
Just now I saw a headline that a drag queen has been sentenced for sending a hoax bomb threat to a warehouse I used to work at. Quite right, but it did amuse me. Some years back the warehouse manager, DG, left her briefcase in the foyer and as an unattended suspicious package, the premises were evacuated and the army bomb disposal called in.
Well, she eventually got the boot. She also presided over another large operation that went bust later. I knew I was right about her. Am I allowed to be
The last week has been a miserable procession of rainy days. Not those romantic downpours so beloved of Tina Turner, its those claggy dull grey squalls that we British like to call weather. But now I think about it, what happened to August? We hardly had any sunshine at all, and the indian summer we sometimes get in September looks like being a washout.
Its hardly Global Warming is it? But then it occurs to me that since we get most of our weather second-hand from America, and that they get
The news is full of our local elections. It seems the media has smelled blood, and have joyfully reported the embarrasement of our prime minister. The headlines are coming thick and fast as Labour returns its worst result for forty years. Gordon Brown of course says his party needs to listen and then they can move forward. Listen by all means GB, but people are starting to vote with their... erm... vote.
In Zimbabwe Mugabe has lost the vote, but not the war. After twenty eight years in power
