One of the joys of opening my post box every morning is the flyers and handouts that fuill it. After all, most of the letters I get are no more than rejection letters from employers, so it gets a bit depressing reading them. Thanks for the application, you're not shortlisted, please don't feel upset or suicidal, and apply again whenever you like. I'm starting to think the post service is making bogus job adverts to keep their members in gainful employment.
The flyers are different. Some are
Picture the world in prehistory. No television, computer games, or cars. In between hunting wild beasts I guess they had a lot time on their hands. So bored was one ancestor of humanity that he discovered rubbing wooden sticks together made things catch fire.. Can you imagine how excited he was to discover that?
Later, when voluminous wigs were fashionable, Newton discovered that sitting under apple trees was not only painful, but seriously enlightening. Sometime later, Einstein discovered t
Right then. Time to to meet my contractual obligations and earn my benefit payments. So its off to the office and another session of the training programme. Seeing as I'm officially famous and a genuine unemployed person, I think today I really must make the effort and dress in typically grungie fashion. Cue Stayin' Alive by the Bee Gees and lots of silly dancing in front of mirrors.
Having dressed the part it's down the stairs and out into the big wide world. There's no stopping me today...
I was recently told i am one of the few male that actually enjoys watching chick flicks, now what does that say about me?
Chick flick (also "chick's flick") is slang for a film designed to appeal to a female target audience.... Although many types of films may be directed toward the female gender, "chick flick" is typically used only in reference to films that are heavy with emotion or contain themes that are relationship-based (though not necessarily romantic)...
...to put it even more
There was a time, before the BBC discovered computerised special effects, that we used to see those fifties 'B' movies. You know the ones? A terrible threat to mankind emerges from its hiding place and lays waste to the nearest big city before mankind finds a way to destroy it. Good wholesome family viewing. All these films followed a familiar pattern. Whether the threat came from space aliens, nuclear radiation, meteorites, or chemicals, it all started with an innocent small town slowly becomin
Last night I strolled up the hill to get a bag of chips. Yes, it's true, I did. Sometimes my spirit of adventure gets the better of me. Anyhow, this was during the twilight. On the horizon, the last angry embers were fading out. The sky was that deep blue you get shortly before dark. As I looked up, dark grey clouds were wafting silently past. I've always thought how strange it is that clouds move at dusk without any wind.
Even stranger is that spell the moon casts on you. There it is, a pal
What is art? that's a very philosophical question at first sight but a very important one if you intend earning your living from it. For most people, art is either pretty, pretty horrendous, or pretty well mystifying how someone got paid megabucks for a pile of oversized kiddies building blocks.
There have been some incredible attempts at labelling mundane objects as art. There was that display in the Tate Gallery of a cube of unmortared bricks that earned the creator two million pounds. Mos
In some ways I'm lucky. I'm just old enough to remember seeing steam locomotives working mainline services on British Rail. Steam engines have this animistic quality which endures despite the nerdy image of those who like them. As for me, I've always had a soft spot for this powerful works of art that belch smoke and hiss and chuff... Well, you know what I mean. The distant sounds of whistles still draw my attention. I remember this forgotten world. All those sounds behind rows of trees, the exq
826 Valencia is the name and address of a nonprofit writing workshop and tutoring center in San Francisco, United States, whose aim is to help students ages 8
Every year the English go one better than spending a weekend parked on a Bank Holiday motorway. They go on their summer hols. I always find it remarkable that the English generally regard the rest of the world as their playground.
The most popular playground for many years has been Spain. Now up until now I always thought this was because Spanish hotels were so unfinished that it didn't matter if drunken English tourists wrecked them. We English do like to remind other countries of our victo
I've noticed that people are very protective of their real identities around here. Very few use their real names or even post a photo of their real selves in their profile page. This is a virtual community so it's normal, I guess. But human curiosity is also natural so I imagine that after a while we all end up wondering what our virtual friends are really like in real life, what they look like and so on... Or is it just me??
I'm not revealing my true identity just yet but I thought I would
It's Bank Holiday Weekend in Britain again. Those of us not busy demolishing our properties with ideas for home improvement will be heading for the coast, a mass migration of people desperate for fun and sun away from their daily grind. The government have issued a warning to those intending to travel that they can expect long delays on trunk routes.
We know. Everyone knows the motorways get jammed up with cars every Bank Holiday Weekend. But then, since the government have made our lives du
...last night i had a really strange dream,we were hosting a conference for publisher and authors, but who knows maybe i just glimpsed into the future...
UNRV Anual Digital Classics Conference London
UNRV ADCC Agenda Overview
09:00am-9:15am Conference Welcome by Chris Heaton
09:15am-10:00am Opening Keynote by Elinor Hirschhorn (Executive Vice President, Chief Digital Officer Simon & Schuster) Classics in the Digital Age - Challenge and Opportunity
10:00am-11:15am Adria
For a few days now cheery weatherpersons have smiled and siad we're all going to get wet. Amber triangles are shown on the screen with Heavy Rain! in bold black lettering. Risk of local flooding. They might be right I suppose. It's just that so far we've only had one day of rain and that was drizzly. I must also confess, that as I write this, I can see the library window splattered with raindrops. I knew I should have brought my canoe with me.
The damp conditions now spreading across Swindon
Don't you love it when you hear a song that you love, and it happens to fit your life in some way or another?
I was driving to work this afternoon when that lovely Smiths song came on. The funny thing about the Smiths (and Morrissey) is that I never am totally sure what the title of the song is, but I always end up singing the damned thing. Very good songs, very catchy...and very silly.
"Panic on the streets of London
Panic on the streets of Birmingham
I wonder to myself
Could life
Some time ago on a job website I was asked if I wanted to take part in an online questionaire. The questions were fairly moronic but I hadn't anything better to do. One listed a load of organisations and asked me to describe them in three words. One was MI5, our home defence secret spy unit. I wrote 'Probably boring, but?'.I did kind of wonder if that answer was going to get me held in custody for three months under the Prevention Of Humour Act, but I never got an interview.
Yesterday was my
...and Tuesday, and Wednesday...well, you get the drift.
Yes, it's been about 3 weeks since I've had time to sit down here and update...actually, it's been almost 2 weeks since I've had time to log into the site. So, just to catch you up....
Honolulu was absolutely spectacular...but 4 1/2 days isn't nearly long enough. Love it, loved spending my time doing exactly what I wanted to do, nothing more and nothing less. Wish I could do this vacation thing more often.
Got back, and had
During my high octane, non-stop, action packed lifestyle as an unemployed job seeker, I occaisionally get a few moments to myself in which to relax. Yesterday was one of those, so in an uncharacteristic bout of feet-up laziness, I sat back and switched on the television. Hey, they've added some channels sonce I last watched telly. So I discovered this music channel showing all the hits from the eighties. Wow. This is so nostalgic. Phil Collins still had hair. Adam Ant still had warpaint on his f
There's a strange phenomenon that takes place when Swindon gets bad press. You suddenly find hordes of people who say "We like it."
Swindon has tried ceaselessly to reinvent itself ever since the railworks closed. Out with the old, in with the new, oops we made mistake, look at our brand new plan. In fairness, the pace of beautification is increasing. The victorian pidgeon nets are vanishing, plans to reintroduce the canals throughn the town center are in place, and architects impressions of
The Opening of the Library has become a daily ritual in my life now. It's almost assumed religious significance as I enter the Temple of Bookworms and quietly wait for the monks guarding the lower chamber to unlock the fold-away doors to the Inner Sanctum upstairs.
Not any more. yesterday the guard, whom I've not seen before, opened the coffee bar and told the faithful that they'll just have to walk around the staircase. What? Have we erred? Are we being punished for our sins?
Groan. Oh
It looks like Jacob Zuma will become the next South African president. Even though everybody knew he would win the elections, this still saddens me a little. I moved to South Africa with my family in 1992, just before the end of Apartheid. I was very fortunate to be there when the country experienced its first democratic elections in 1994, which culminated in Nelson Mandela being elected president. He was a brilliant speaker and a unifying force in a country that could very well have sunk in a b
Now that I've been unemployed for a year, I must face the Inquisition. It's a ritual designed to help me get back to work, though to be honest, it rarely makes any difference. They change a few conditions on my jobseekers contract and send me to a special unit where I can learn how to be a jobseeker again.
There were a few us waiting for interviews. A woman walked up and asked if we were in the right place. The guy opposite me looked puzzled. "In the right place..." He mumbled, staring empt
