If I'm not mistaken, the weather is turning seasonal and things generally get a bit chilly. Yep, the trees are turning brown, and that's not because they've spotted the tree surgeons butchering the local vegetation on the annual crusade to defoliate Swindon. I was amused the other week when I encountered a couple of guys sweeping leaves out of the main corridor of the College. How very autumnal. Unfortunately, there's little for me to be amused about now and yes, things are definitely getting ch
I knew it was going to happen. My neighbour, Punch, is nothing if not predictable. On the Sunday I had left the house for an early morning hike to take advantage of the glorious good weather. With squeaky floorboards and no sound insulation between our properties, it's impossible to be silent, though in fairness I have no intention of making an unnecessary racket. I am after all required by the letting contract not to do things that upset the neighbours.
But my early morning departure was im
Yesterday morning the weather was overcast, another typical dull British day and disappointing after the spell of spring sunshine we've been enjoying. By lunchtime the sun had burned off the cloud and it was a gloriously warm day. So much so I decided to go for a stroll, and headed north to Seven Fields.
Thats an area of farmland surrounded by housing developments and designated public space, although its still used as hay meadows amongst the wooded hillsides. There's an unspoiled quality to
Those sweaty summer nights are with us again. I blame America - we always get our weather secondhand from them. Hiowever I can't blame them for the behaviour of the locals. As soon as the warmth kicks in they start behaving like they're on a mediterranean holiday, shouting, throwing, or generally hitting each other. You might not be suprised to hear that happened last night. Again.
Clearly the way to improve social behaviour is not by fines or visits to a magistrates court, but banning summe
Warning! Heavy metal music is bad for you!
I've heard this all before. I can't remember how many times I've been warned about volume. There was a time when.. (Warning - Imminent Reminiscence).... I was at a practice in a garage rock band when a council official turned up to measure the sound after complaints about us. He asked us to play (that was our first gig man!) and with alarm told us we were too loud. A bit predictable, but then he said our volime was the same as Concorde taking o
As I write this I'm watching the Glastonbury Festival on the box. Its amazing that a cow shed in a muddy field can be such an important event. Its been a long long time since I hit the stage at such an event - I certainly never got to play Glastonbury itself - but I remember one of our gigs on the bill of a folk festival in the west country. The stage was a lorry flatbed. No expense spared obviously.
It was a cold and dark november evening when we went on. You could almost see the frost for
The temperature has dropped alarmingly. It's actually cold getting out of bed, if that wasn't difficult enough on a Saturday morning. I glance out the window and see nothing but dreary english fog.
It turns out to be so cold even the internet is frozen. I've been searching all morning for a place to log on, with internet cafe staff frantically trying to stop their customers wandering away. I think thee's a telephone company employee who's going to need stress counselling.
Then again, th
Another one of those articles on how to be successful at dating the opposite sex has appeared on the boards. It makes interesting reading but clearly anyone following the advice is going to struggle. Let me explain...
A connection
A man can tick all the boxes in the world, but in so many cases if the woman feels no chemistry, it
The run of good weather seems to have come to an end. I know this because it's raining outside, and that's always a reliable clue. The almost complete car park of the Old Cllege site is awash with puddles and dampened blokes in high vis gear, who never seem to be doing anything when you look at them. Funny thing is, walk away for a few minutes and the site gets an mysterious upgrade when you're loking the other way as if by magic.
Sex Godesses Of Atlantis
Don't worry, this is merely a ploy
"I'm cold" mentioned a young lady to her friends outside the library this morning. She's right. It is. That usually happens around the start of December so quite why she's dressed in the bare minimum of clothing I don't know. Dogs don't have this problem because they come with fur coats attached. I spotted a little keeshond puppy last night and couldn't resist the temptation to approach the owner and find some excuse to pet the little bundle of furry fun. We used to have a keeshond many years ag
Earlier this morning I opened my emails. As usual there was the usual collection of unsolicited and unwanted stuff from people I've never heard of and probably don't exist.
Salvador Hale - Male Enhancement
Hampus Showers - Arissa says I feel tight in her now
Shan Spivey - Enter her with your throbbing manhood
Grant Saunders - She loved my large manhood
Abhijit Lukic - Non stop bedroom action
And so on. Those were the polite titles too. Who sends all this rubbish? Does anyone seriousl
The weather has taken a turn for the worse and its temporarily goodbye to long hot spring days. Yep. British weather has reasserted itself and its raining. Just in time for the traditional downpour on a Bank Holiday Weekend.
Dream of the Week
Nearly decided that getting a job was the front runner for that prize, but no, it was last nights dream about tornado's. Don't remember the details, but someone pointed out the window and there they were, four or five funnels under a thick black cloud,
A somewhat battered and bruised Robinson Caldrail crawls slowly up the beach of Washout Island, surrounded by the detritus that shipwrecks usually leave riding the surf. Alone and castaway, this is not the first time I've been marooned on this particular island. Right now I'm too devastated by what happened at the height of the storm. Captain AD, determined to brave the foul weather aboard his unseaworthy vessel, ordered me thrown over the side to stay afloat. I wasn't suprised. I'd considered a
We return once again to the issue of the Old College site. It's.. Erm... Still there. Only the other day I saw a youngle couple taking photographs of the rather shabby edifice blocking the afternoon sun at the bottom of the hill. Or rather he was, she was patiently waiting for him to do something interesting.
This morning I received another newsletter from our ever enthusiastic labour party. All the political parties put these comunity newsletters through our postboxes in the optimistic hope
Switch on the television today and chances are a car advert will appear. Not sure why they're so frequent all of a sudden but it might have something to do with the daft names they give cars these days. Go? Ka? Cee'd? What's all that about? Now I see one for the Vauxhall Adam. What next? The Nissan Nigel? Toyota Terence? The Ford Fred? God forbid someone should build a car called Eve. That will bring new meaning to a warning sign for "road humps".
I can't help thinking that the use of 'fun'
Way back when I was working in warehousing I often used to see people spending time in the toilets, usually sat in their cubicles smoking or reading newspapers behind closed doors, at least when they weren't pulling the toilet apart with their bare hands for something to do. It's something of a british tradition and one I used to sneer at.
Problem is, things are a little chilly in England right now. We've had sub-zero temperatures for a week now and last night it tried to snow. Some people m
How things are changing outside my window. For some time now the Old College site has been no more than a mountainous lanscape of crushed college, but now that work is ubnder way to develop the site (at last), the hillside is being cut into and levelled. It's extraordinary how much gravel and dirt has been removed. Even more extraordinary are the metal bolsters that are used to shore up the alleyway at the back of the site. They must be something like fifty feet in length or more and each is bei
Deep in the rainforests of Darkest Wiltshire, the natives are restless. The Independent Peanut Republic of Rushey Platt has decided to go public, to reveal its ancient mysteries to the world. I suppose that means we have to accept tourists too but you can't have everything.
So what is the Republic of Rushey Platt? Well, when I was unemployed I decided it might be a cool idea to declare my idependence from the UK government. That way I could ask for Foreign Aid and get paid millions of pounds
Must be a rainy day. The library is half empty. Oh well, at least the early morning rush for a computer isn't the usual death before dishonour charge up the stairs. I see a certain youngster has been released from prison (he was jailed for drug dealing) and even he isn't bounding up the stairs the way he normally would.
Actually most of the familiar characters are somewhere else. The guy who likes to threaten me every time a I say anything, the woman who thinks the library is her personal se
On my way to the sports center I passed a billboard announcing the latest headline from our local rag - Man Accused of Pointing Gun At Policeman. Well I can understand his frustration, but its more evidence of the steady creep of gun culture here in Britain.
Following the Dunblane Massacre, the government effectively banned the private ownership of guns, aside from shotguns but you still need to justify that ownership to the authorities. The sort of massacres we see played out in America are
Iraq has been returned to sanity. Libya has been returned to sanity. Egypt, Tunisia, and Yemen are undergoing counselling. Afghanistan was always a pretty insane place to begin with and so far has proven difficult to pacify. Now President Assad of Syria has spotted the trend and warns the west that intervention will cause an earthquake that will burn the whole region.
Now apart from his complete ignorance of geology, this does sound like the usual arabic vitriol. "Rivers of blood" is another
The bells... The bells... Ten o'clock and all is well. I know the time because the bells are tolling. You see, the library is built as an annexe to the old town hall, now used as a dance studio, and the clock tower is clearly audible. With victorian engineering to rely on, how could I possibly be unsure of the time? There was a time of course when the Great Western Works sounded that old steam horn at regular intervals. It was to mark the start and ends of shifts in our local dark satanic mill o
The good news for all you people out there earning a living is that finally you're getting your own way. I'm shortly to be placed on a 'More Intensive Regime' concerning my endless quest for gainful employment. Basically that means I have to turn up every day at the Job Centre and explain why I'm not out there looking for work, which of course I would be if I wasn't too busy explaining my presence to my claims advisor.
The thing is, I'm also supposed to be attending a Support Centre every da
Its the turn of the french to hold the presidency of the EU right now. What are they suggesting? They want each member state to stump up 10,000 men, plus tanks, planes, and ships, for a european defence force. This is interesting because a european defence force was part of the Treaty of Lisbon, which the french people didn't want, nor did the dutch, and neither - somewhat more pointedly - did the irish. But it seems we're going to get a Treaty of Lisbon even if we didn't want one at all - Which
Times may be a'changin', but Swindon carries on going its own way. Or is it? Just recently I notied our local HMV store has re-opened after falling victim to the terrible economic Black Death that stalked the towns and cities of England not so long ago. Not only that, but just the other afternoon I spotted the first white metal frames at the Old College site. As if I could miss them. They tower above the surroundings and make the assurances of the developers that the buildings wouldn't be any hi
