Sooner or later they infiltrate your home. No matter how secure you believe your privacy to be, they find ways to intrude upon your premises. Even when you discover their presence, there's a good chance they will find a way to escape you, and worse still, no matter how hard you try to push them out, they will find a way back against all adversary.
Yes, the spider is at large in my home. I know he's up there, I've seen him, scurrying across the no-mans land of the carpet in a mad dash to find
There's a recent spanish film caled Pans Labyrinth. For those who haven't seen it, its about a young girl in spain in 1944, at the end of the civil war, struggling to cope with reality and immersing herself in fantasy. At the end of the film, its impossible to know whether she was deluded or really the princess in exile. Its a film that doesn't baulk at showing violence and human nastiness, and one with some haunting visuals. The quality of the film is excellent.
You know, I sometimes wonder
Once I've finished my chores for the day the world is my oyster. A small one if I'm honest, but that's the trouble with living on benefits. So with an afternoon to kill, what should I do? Something creative? Prose, artwork, or music? You have to be in that mood. Play computer games? I just don't feel the inclination. Yes, you guessed it, I decided to watch television. Why, I don't know, I just sort of felt that way.
Finally I settled on a channel called Quest. They occaisionally show some in
You know what? After being accused of leading a fantasy life, I have to speak out. Sorry, but it's real. I really am here. And just to prove how lame my life can be, I wish to describe the highlights of yesterday...
1 - A woman asks me for assistance. That was unexpected. The reason was of course Microsoft Excel, the cause of more lost hair and failed interviews than anything else known to mankind. Don't get me wrong, my excel skills are best described as 'Almost', yet I still know more abou
"I don't want her!" Insisted the young man to his paranoid girlfriend last night. To be honest, the sordid details of peoples love lives don't interest me overly. I'll leave that sort of thing to the people who watch soap operas. That said, it was impossible to ignore. He was a typical specimen of british youth. Thin, gangly, shaven haired, spitting out his words in a descending tone. She was was quieter, insecure, prodding him for a reaction and definitely achieving her objective. Had this conv
Another day, another jobsearch. My claims advisor doesn't like me doing anything other than seeking gainful employment and is trying to force me to waste more of my time looking for jobs I applied for last week, but you see, all work and no play makes Caldrail a dull applicant. So my claims adviosor can... well... off.
As I write this I'm entertained by the efforts of a young man to woo the pretty young blonde sat next to him. He started quite well - she liked the attention - but he hasn't g
Fame!
I'm gonna live forever
I'm gonna learn how to fly
Those of us scarred and traumatised by the 1980's will no doubt recognise lyrics from that song belonging to a television series which I'm pleased to say I managed to avoid entirely. But what is fame? A reputation? A state of being? A mysterious blessing from fate? Curiously enough, people generally either see it with some degree of religious awe or an excuse for utter contempt.
I made the mistake once of describing my
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
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
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
2014. At last. All those god awful christmas songs have been put back on the shelf for another eleven months and life returns to normal. Apart from floods in Britain and blizzards in the US, or the usual woes of war and famine elsewhere.
There's also been a distinct lack of a Rapture - that's when Jesus returns and magically transports his believers into paradise leaving behind their worldly goods, which lets face it, would be a charter for looters here in Blighty. You have to admire End Tim
In Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, Marvin the paranoid android moans and groans about intelligent doors, about how smug they are at completing their task of opening for their human masters. Well, he would groan even more at the doors to a local shopping mall. There's a three second delay between their sensors detecting your presence and deciding whether or not to allow you entry. Small boys pretending to be aeroplanes bounce off them in confusion. Adults trying to slip by get wha
A while ago I mentioned AM. he's that geriatric New Zealander who just won't keep quiet. Well, as a young man he was in the East African Rifles in Tanganyika - I assume he is actually telling the truth about that although it would suprise me if its all bluster, he does tend to.. - and regards himself as an expert on all things african.
This morning, as we waited for the library to open, he commented at length on his opnions of the regretable violence that has escalated in Kenya. His opnion w
There was a film on release some years ago called Ronin, a tale of skulduggery as mercenaries are hired to retrieve a package. In one memorable scene, Robert De Niro finally loses his patience with Sean Bean whose character had made a big deal of having been an SAS soldier. "What colour is the boat-house at Hereford?" He yells at him. Sean Bean becomes flustered and cannot answer, exposed as an imposter. De Niro later admits to a witness that he doesn't know anything about a 'boat-house at Heref
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
Occaisionally I get stray phone messages. I suppose we all do from tiime to time, and there was a time you always got double glazing companies trying to sell you more replacement windows.
Sometimes you get strange characters phoning for strange reasons. I remember one chap called me and I made the mistake of assuming it one of my mates (he used the same name). He then proceeded to ask where his hammer was. Hammer? What hammer? He then got irate because I'd 'lost' his hammer. Sorry mate, wro
Just one of those days I guess. All of a sudden everyone wants to talk to me, everything has to happen as soon as possible, and poor little me has to rush around like an overstressed gibbon trying to get through it all.
I have to point out of course that most of you do this all day every day. I don't. Being unemployed for a long time rather reduces your pace of life. For me popping down to the shops is an event. A phone call? For me? I didn't know this thing actually worked.
Anyway, I wa
That's it for this week as my college course closes because of half term. This is the first time in thrity years that I've been to College. I have to go back next week to finish off my course and again shortly after to finish it off even more.
What course am I studying? Well, it isn't Roman History. It isn't a degree in Dynamic Temporal Physics either., sadly, so I still can't argue with Professor Brian Cox without being put in my place. No, it's Employability Level One, so I'm finally being
The weather forecast had already warned us of storms crossing Britain late into the night. As luck would have it, I was on a late shift, and that meant walking home during the period when I was most likely to be drenched in minutes or used by nature to light the vicinity when hit by lightning. There was every risk of both, and to be honest, I’ve always had a policy of avoiding such weather conditions by the clever use of indoors. Not last night then.
One colleague at work told me that storm
In recent years Swindon has gotten into festivals. A couple of years ago we had a festival of Innovation, which I suspect was not entirely innovative, but since I never attended it I'll have to assume that Swindon was wowed by new and exciting stuff.
Last year we had the LEGO-fest. What? You missed it? Shame on you. The museum still has the Mario mosaic crafted lovingly in, yes, you guessed it, LEGO. Proof that Swindon is James May's natural enviroment.
Now looming on the horizon is the
Cars mean different things to different people. Many buy cars they can afford, others buy cars for covenience. Some buy big 4x4's to compensate for small body parts, some for status at the golf club, others buy sporty cars as automotive *iagr*. Now some cars are icons, others are good value, some are simply excruciating and an embarrasement to be seen in. Why would you pay thousands of pounds for somewhere to put a coffee cup?
The Vauxhall Vectra is right there at the pinnacle of naffness. T
"Hey mate!" Hissed a builder as I strolled by the old college car park that is now being fenced off in preparation for Demolition Day. "Can I borrow yer barbells?"
Pardon me? Either that young man has discovered that erecting the ramparts around the site is physicaslly demanding and urgently requires a body building regime, or I've just been propositioned by a gay builder. Walk on, Caldrail, walk on...
I mean, what on earth was that youngster thinking? Does he really believe I carry larg
A few nights ago I was walking home late at night along one of the main roads leading into the town centre. In the wee small hours you rarely see pedestrians, and the only movement is the odd hot hatch or police car. The amber street lights might be effective in lighting the dual carriageway but the grass verges are obscured in shadows and gloom. Okay, I do see urban foxes around there quite often, but on this night all was quiet. Hello, what's that in the grass? A plastic bag? The shredded rem
The lady on the supermarket till is an endangered species these days. They're all being replaced by robots. Well, until a bunch of guys with dark suits and sunglasses escort this particular lady to a large black vehicle waiting outside, I'll avail myself of the customer service.
"Are you going to Fairford?" She asked. I looked out the window, surveyed the grey clouds and damp ground, and said no, I wasn't. She meant of course the RIAT air display, our annual traffic jam north of Swindon. Fai
One of the features of the Wiltshire countryside is the crop circle. A pattern made in a field by flattening crops. Since their early days these patterns have gotten quite sophisticated and some are extraordinary to look at. For me it's a part of everyday life in the country. Every year there's a crop circle or two, so no big deal, though I doubt the farmer sees it that way.
Why do these circles appear? This morning I've picked up a book at the local library that discusses this very point. I
