Time to get on with my search for gainful employment. I think I'll phone Jobseekers Direct - its a happy friendly service to help idiots like me get a job by finding vacancies on their extensive database. After the usual identity checks the woman asked me what areas of employment I was interested in.
Warehouse, distribution, logisitics.
"We've got one vacancy for a warehouse supervisor.."
North Swindon? Yes I've applied for that.
"Well thats all we've got. Have you done any stock
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
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
As I draw ever closer to the day when recording my new album becomes a necessity, so the desire to be ready for it drives me on. I learned to play guitar in my early twenties though I have to confess I was never particularly talented or technically proficient - just good enough to embarass specialist players at my level - especially since I was a drummer by trade. Mostly I just embarassed myself.
Nonetheless it's been twenty years since I played guitar anything like seriously, so in order to
Industrial accidents happen. There's no denying that. I know of a guy who drove his forklift off the bay because he hadn't noticed the lorry had gone. There was a forklifter at one place I used to work who regularly smashed holes in the breezeblock wall because he reversed out without looking. There was another who broke off the sprinkler head and flooded the warehouse with brown sludgy water.
There's a chap who works in our warehouse who thankfully doesn't work for us. He fell out of the ba
Our recent spell of sunny weather seems to be coming to an end. Showery old Swindon is a little damper today, here and there, usually when I step outside the house. I have to say that today has not been a special day in any sense whatsoever. For the pidgeons on the balcony outside the library, I guess it must seem a bit different. I've just watched two of them having sex in plain view from my vantage point at the computer.
The victorians used to believe that mankind was the crowning glory of
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
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
Swindon to Newcastle is about six hours by train. Time to settle into the seat, relax, let the train take the strain. I watched the towns and countryside roll by. It was all going too well. The stop at Sheffield Station was a long one. The minutes ticked by and there was no sign of movement. Platform staff who usually shepherded the trains away were curiously absent. Please don't tell me another strike is in progress... Then the tannoy bleeped into life to make a passenger announcement.
"If
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
We don't own the Shed we work in. No, we rent it, at a stupid price, from NF the site manager. NF wants us out of the Shed so he could squeeze us in with all our pallets in the Hangar, and rent the Shed to someone else at an even stupider price. Which sort of backfired a little because we're shortly to move down the road to rent warehouse space from a professional company at a stupider price still.
Now I turn up for work one morning. I have to walk through the Hangar to reach the yard, but f
As an unemployed person I have to say there are one or two disadvantages to being on the dole. One is that everyone else think you're a lazy good for nothing sponging off the state, the second is that your Claims Advisor thinks you're a lazy good for nothing sponging off the state.
She called my name out and as I stepped forward to her desk, she raised her eyebrows at my suntan. Fresh from my journey home from Newcastle a few hours earlier I looked like I'd spent the weekend on a tropical b
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
Yep, it snowed. I woke up to the sound of people falling over. A garage mechanic shovelling snow off the ramp to the yard made sure I got out of bed. I'm going outside. I may be gone some time.
What is going on? Swindon is alive with people. Cars crawling forward sensibly at a steady pace. People laughing, joking, gritting pavements. Youths dragging plastic sleds they got for Christmas four years ago and never thought they'd ever use. Help... Drowning in community spirit....
A ten y
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 warning had gone out last night that clear skies meant colder temperatures. No frost yet, but the drop was significant and it felt distinctly chilly as I strolled down the hill for my daily dose of thrills and spills at the library.
No, really, I had a ringside seat as the librarian ejected a bunch of youngsters from their chosen computers and told them to log on downstairs in the munchkin area. I tell you, it was a tense dramatic moment the likes of which we haven't seen since Maggie Th
Many years ago I went off one weekend to visit a kit car show. It meant a long journey there and back the same day but I was young, enthusiastic, and totally nuts about cars, or indeed most things that moved courtesy of an internal combustion engine.
Needless to say the main hall was packed full of all sorts of DIY cars. Fun cars, serious cars, wierd cars, and a few that turned out to be infamous money pits. I wandered among replicas of ferrari's and lamborghini's that seemed almost as expe
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
"There's going to be a hundred thousand new jobs in London to assist the Olympics" Said Mr G, our ever helpful and jovial assistant at the job club. I had to laugh. Unemployment down in London? Can you imagine how difficult it's going to be to claim benefits there this summer? You won't stand a chance.
Mr G found that equally amusing. I imagine though that the prospect of less unemployment in the capital, even temporarily, might well be another bone of contention in the Houses of Parliament.
I can't tell how how pleasant a day it is right now. Bright sunshine and a cool breeze. Even the mood is relaxed as I go about my business among the throngs of people feeling exactly the same way as I do. Okay, I avoided the marching band, but hey, each to their own.
The museum has been unusually busy too. Paying customers? Whatever next? Asking that question was my mistake. For those who've ever watched the comedy series My Name Is Earl, Karma is alive and well outside of California too.
"EEEEERGH!"
Believe me, at three in the morning, that high pitched screach is enough to scare the living daylights out of you. Yes, it's the urban foxes again, lurking in the darkness to hunt smaller nocturnal animals lurking in the darkness, or the bonus of edible rubbish we humans have discarded, or as I've come to believe, just to wander around and annoy people with high pitched screaching.
This time the fox was very close to the backs of the houses where I live. That's unusual. Norma
Looking out the window this morning I see a vista of clear blue sky. After yesterdays squalls and blustery winds it's a welcome change. Years ago, on a day like this, I would phone the flying club and ask if there was an available aeroplane. There is? Brilliant, I'll be there in an hour.
There wasn't much to it. I arrive, park up, and pop by the control tower to check for weather information. Oh yes. You never take british weather for granted. It's suprised me more than once. Also there was
Time to take Ol' Reliable down from his perch on the kitchen surface. As microwaves go it was a simple beast. Put your food in, select a cooking time... Three minutes?... Yes, let's try three minutes. If I see steam building up I know it's time to cut the power early. How simple is that? No complicated programming or indeed any intrinsic knowledge of cooking required. Just hot food, on demand.
There can be no sentimentality in the cutthroat competition of consumer electronics. Ol' Reliable h
Africa - Land of the future's gold
Land is for everybody young and old
The place that holds a single bright future
But what happens when the future turns to torture?
Ma' Africa
What went wrong with your brains?
You kill each other into strife and no human dignity
Africa - Lets stand together
And make Africa the Land of Hope
Ma' Africa From the album 1 Giant Leap (2001)
Africa is such a place of contrast. Great natural wealth and beauty, a place where children play joyfully in the
No-one could accuse me of not being prepared. With the risk of heavy showers predicted by our faithful prophets of the television weather report, I was not taking chances. Okay, I wasn't in hiking mode, dressed in outdoors survival gear, but in clothing I know from experience is able to cope quite well with the minor downpour or two. So military surplus it is then.
All day long I was going here and there, seeing to my daily business, and to my utter disgust the dark clouds came and went with
