Yesterday was not a high point in my life. My credit card was withdrawn. Such a simple little thing isn't it? Just a small rectangle of plastic that allows you spend some of other peoples money provided you pay it back. You might immediately assume that I got into debt by using one. Not so. They withdrew it because I don't use it enough. Profit and loss you see. Due to a technicality in financial assessment, I can't have a replacement card. The tragedy is that I'm now excluded from buying goods
Last night I watched a news report from Gaza, where masked Hamas paramilitaries are busy training and preparing for the end of the ceasefire there. The Hamas spokesman proudly informed the news team on camera that Israel "Will be suprised". You know, I can't help feeling they've let the cat out of the bag there... In any case, the US can now track their activities by satellite.
The US Space Agency is to launch an orbital machine that can map carbon dioxide around the world. I can just imagin
Last night I paused to look out into the yard behind my home as I often do before retiring to bed. This was in the early hours of the night and now that the strong winds across the country have subsided, there was that familiar spooky silence once again.
I did notice an odd halo effect from the moon as the light refracted through the thin clouds hanging limp in the sky. It would have enough to stop superstitious medieval peasants in their tracks and even the lack of hollering from nightclu
Times they have a-changed. The downturn in the economy has been evident for some time with many shop closures and to some extent that's become mundane, something you expect to see. As I passed the newspaper stand at the supermarket I caught a headline that attracted my interest. The shopping centre is in the hands of the receiver. Shocking. The report did say however that for now it's business as usual. That's the high street equivalent of UN intervention in a collapsing nation state (but let me
My last day at the Work Experience Centre! Free! Free at last! Free to experience sunlight, fresh air, and sensible intelligent people! But until that actually happens, I have to sit through the usual lecture and group activity. A part of me hopes my wierd brother will be waiting outside with his second hand ex-police car in a cool black suit and shades, mostly because of the fun adventures I
By chance I bumped into the boss of the museum in town and we had a chat. Normally he's buzzing around here and there sorting things out, so it was great to discover I've been working for a human being.
The conversation eventually got around to things christmas. I'm a spiritualist, he's an aetheist, and funnily enough neither of us has any problem with that, unlike the christian who works there. She goes into a strop every time Jesus isn't treated with absolute reverence by everyone.
Lo
Bank Holiday Weekends are a British institution that foreigners might find hard to understand. The name is misleading. All it amounts to is an extra day off work. However, like some kind of mass-lunacy, there's two pyschopathic obsessions that afflict the British at these times.
The first is a strange urge that overcomes the weak-willed who gather their unsuspecting families and drive off to a holiday destination. Most don't get there. Braving the rain that inevitably pours cold water on the
On another website I came across some collected video footage from the Korean War, mostly concerned with communist aviation. It was interesting to watch. I don't know a great deal about that conflict and this was the early days of the jet fighter, who were still fighting with WW2 tactics lacking sophisticated radar and 'beyond-visual-range' missiles.
Now what comes across is the speed involved, which really shoudln't suprise anyone, but when you consider that at this time the Sound Barrier r
Another day, another visit to the doctor. It was an early start on a damp and dismal day in rainy old Swindon, the traffic thrashing around in a sort of 'late for work' way. When the doctor called for me he asked "What can I do for you today?"
It was tempting to reply that I didn't know. Hey, I was asked to book this appointment. Come on Doctor, get your act together. Not that it would have made any difference. Apparently I'm going to be turned into a cyborg for 24 hours shortly. No, really
I've had a bit of an argument with someone. There's an american chappie on another website, who claims to be a pilot of fixed and rotary winged aeroplanes over fourteen years, who's said a few things that to me seemed casually ignorant. I do actually have some sympathy for Americans, I know they get a lot of stick, but then sometimes they really do ask for it and a few times in the past I've encountered their brash arrogance - or at least the behaviour we Brits see as such. I think sometimes the
There's a car advert thats been shown on tv for some time now and it still bugs me. A stylish young man in his dayglo green Mazda hatchback does handbrake turns around the studio with beautiful female dancers trying to stop him from drving away. It never did look right. Firstly, the hatchback is the same as the car his granny would drive. Without the body kit, spoilers, rubber-band tires, and a twelve pounder cannon sticking out under the back it just wasn't the sort of car he would be seen dead
Most of cooking is very quicky and easy. Fifteen minutes and I'm done. Sometimes though when I've got a spare bit of cash I like to prove Jamie Oliver knows absolutely nothing about cooking by reinventing the entire genre in the prvacy of my own home. So it was yesterday, when I happened upon some quality products at tjhe supermarket on sale at bargain prices.
I once remember reading a bit of wisdom that said "Love and cooking such be approached with complete abandon". I've always though spo
Back in 1908, Swindon was inundated with 15 inches of snow. Thats more then we got yesterday. The result of all those warnings of blizzards and sub-zero temperatures resulted in this picturesque scattering of snowflakes.
This does in happen Swindon - a couple of decades ago there was a country wide snowfall over Britain. Drifts six feet deep cut off entire communities and made travel all but impossible. In Swindon, not a single snowflake. I would love to know why Swindon so rarely gets
It's snowing!
Lots of snowing!
It's been snowing since midnight last night. This can't be happening, it isn't possible, Swindon doesn't get snow. Hang on a moment, I'll look out the window, just to make sure I'm not imagining it...
It's snowing! Everything is white. It's a complete snow fest in Swindon...
Somebody stop the snow!
Meanwhile, back at the world
Oh, lot's of things going on. Gordon Brown is facing a possible coup from his MP's, a flashy powerboat used by demonstr
With all this wintery chaos going on you people out there must be suffering terribly. I feel it is my duty, and honour, to bring a little amusement to your otherwise frozen lives. So without further ado, at great risk to life and limb, I bring you todays blog entry...
Todays Blog Entry
The snow was falling most of saturday afternoon. Not heavily, but persistent. Worse still it was wet snow, creating a slippery surface on top of asphalt or compacted snow from the previous night. As I looked
Nature is such a fascinating subject. You can't help but admire those colourful documentaries, even if they're carefully constructed and selective in what they show. It is supposed to be entertainment after all.
Still, the program about the South Pacific was of interst to me. It seems the 'Bird of paradise' has a habit of making a stage and attracting a mate by going into a song and dance routine. In effect, so do human beings. Birds have mating dances, we have nightclubs. In fact, the only
I see from the news that there's plans to create a new bank holiday. Another one? hey I don't mind at all, it's another day of work... Or it would be if I had a job. It does seem a bit strange though. For a government trying so hard to oil the wheels of transport policy, why do they want to clog up the motorways with parked cars again?
Is it merely another example of the Labour Party attempting to buy favour with a disillusioned public? Vote for us and have new holidays? Given that this gove
It happens today. it's inescapable. And it will cause suffering and hardship.
That's the message I've been seeing and hearing in our media. It's a womnder there's no-one wandering back and forth the local high street with a placard saying "The end is nigh". I am of course referring to the imminent assault upon british shores of another arctic blast.
It's now late morning and if I were honest, there's little sign of our impending doom. The sky is sombre with dark grey clouds under a ligh
As I woke this mornign it was obvious the weather wasn't all too pleasant out there. Another rainy day? This has to be Swindon. The other day I was strolling home along the canal path. The weather was damp rather than rainy, a typical grey day for this part of the world. This being winter, green was in short supply. Most vegetation has withered away leaving pale yellow weeds and brown woody bushes.
Allotment gardens, our modern re-invention of the medieval vegetable plot, look little better.
The sun was getting quite warm as I walked home yesterday afternoon. I wasn't in any particular hurry and made my way through Old Town. Yellow paintwork caught my attention. As an automatic reaction I glanced up like anyone else, and since bright paintwork is a rarity in the sombre decade we live in, it might not suprise you to learn the car was a Lamborghini Gallardo with its roof down.
The driver was looking straight at me behind his shades. Don't know why, he just was. Then of course he n
The recent sunny weather has been very tempting, but long hikes in the countryside during hot weather can be a trial of endurance over and above lasting the distance. It isn't just sunburn of course. The heat can wear you down to the point where you get into an unhealthy state - and that's just England, never mind the tropics. Not being as young as I once was makes a difference - it really does.
Anyhow, today was cloudy. The weather reports had suggested our run of sunny days was coming to a
Today I made another visit to my local surgery. All part of keeping the Grim Reaper at arms length. Nothing much to report, just a routine visit, and despite not feeling completely fit as a fiddle, I'm not suffering in any real sense.
By coincidence I spotted a news article teling us fifty-somethings how to stay in the front line against the Grim Reaper. Sort of like a survival manual for grey haired old codgers. Who knows? Maybe there's a few tips I could use?
Tip number one. Keep Chec
Now we know the security arrangements for the forthcoming 2012 London Olympics. The armed forces will keep the invasion of foreign athletes from conquering Britain. We certainly are going for gold.
Seriously though, 13,000 troops? Attack helicopters? Jet fighters on scramble alert? A battleship on the Thames? I'm struggling to get my head around this. I agree there's bound to be a risk of terrorists making some explosive statement of their anti-whatever views, but this stuff is protection
What can I say that adequately describes the events since my last entry? Let's see.... This is a tough one... Well, I got chatted up by a tall leggy blonde. No, really I did. She was standing outside a bakery tempting customers to consider her wares. Does this sound a tad obvious? Just another sales pitch in the great market place of life I guess. But we had a nice chat all the same.
Lovely Weather We've Been Having
What can anyone say about two months of sunshine and showers that resulted
Today has been my first day at the new warehouse. Poor old AD can't cope, there's no official office for us yet (Its a portacabin buried behind stock in another unit nearby) and he's got nowhere to plug in his fridge and microwave. Now there's a man with priorities. At the moment, our office is a pile of pallets shoved into one corner. Cool. Especially in winter...
And what a site! Its huge!! Enormous!!! They give you a map when you sign in at security and boy oh boy do you need it. Warehous
