caldrail

Understand where you're coming from. As for me, I'm jumping on the bandwagon. I'm writing a novel about Ug, the Neolithic detective, finding out who killed the Neanderthal next door with scientific logic and reasoning. I'll be rich beyond my dreams...

The opening of the library is my daily ritual these days. I come in and browse the selection of paperback novels. Ye gods there's some rubbish getting printed these days. A lot of it is genre based. Half a dozen tales about the Roman period are there, and the details on the back are sounding very similar... Johnius Smithio the detective... On the trail of the man who killed the other one... blah blah blah. I've heard all this before. Doesn't sound like a likely scenario anyway. Ooh look, a novel about Egypt. Johna Smithra the detective... On the trail of the man who killed the other one... blah blah blah. Sounds familiar. Didn't know the ancient egyptians had a police force... Lets see.. Whats this? A novel about mysterious goings in a modern greek monastery. John Smith the detective, on the trail of - Lets not bother eh? Or this one? A novel about mysterious parchments, mysterious hooded men, and a trail that leads to the legendary Sword of Excalibur... John Smith the detective.... On the trail of the man who.... Sigh. Is it just me or are novels getting just a bit less novel than I remember them? Keeness of the Week The security guard finally overcame his lethargy and opened the doors. The coffee bar downstairs was first to open. One young man rushed forwards. Wow. He must be thirsty. Then, before the guard pushes back the doors to the stairway, the young man reappears from the other side and bounds up the steps. Well done. You managed to get in around twenty three seconds sooner than the rest of us. Very impressed. Especially since the guard happened to open the door a minute early and you can't access the internet until nearly 09:31. I amble my way upstairs. Choose a PC, and log myself in. He rushes past behind me, keen to find a PC he can log onto....

No, thats a romantic vision created by authors dating back to the middle ages. Medieval writers loved romance, and did after all reinvent Arthur as chivalric king. In all these stroies the activities of the hero,which may have fallen short of truly christian behaviour, were given nobility of purpose if not status, and the legend that Robin Hood was the dispossessed Earl of Locksley is typical.

According to the news, there's a record number of people being given counselling to make them give up being gay and go straight. You know, I can't help feeling all this gay stuff is just ridiculous. To be fair, I don't know a lot about it (don't want to, it sounds a bit undesirable to my traditionalist view) but having been on the receiving end of ignorant opinion depicting me as one of their number, I do have some sympathy for those that choose that lifestyle. Thats the trick isn't it? It's a lifestyle choice. I see all this justification about chromosomes and such but such behaviour is a cultural choice. I was watching a program about Japanese Samurai warriors the other day. It turns out that they were advised to sleep with their swords, because wives could not be trusted. Further, they fostered close and sometimes oddly romantic relationships amongst each other, to compensate for their lack of warmth in female realtionships. They didn't see it a gay issue, it was simply what was acceptable and normal to them. I understand that most gays in the modern west are 'happily' married with kids, leaving their real proclivities to a seedy and risque secret life. Fact is, many of them go about their business right under the noses of their mates. There's a gay club at the bottom of the hill where I live, but you never see anyone coming in or out. When I used to work for one particular warehouse, I was labelled gay. Now an insult or two means nothing, but the lads decided that since I wouldn't 'admit it' (or accept their opinion was superior because they were higher in a pecking order more like) I got a whole load of grief for the better part of a decade. There really were some malicious characters in there. The funny thing was, one morning one of their mates whom they socialised with on a regular saturday night turned around and told them he was gay, moving out of his girlfriends house to live with his boyfriend, and thanks for all the pints. I wish I could have seen their faces. I suppose I could beat my chest like they do and boast in true celtic fashion about who I slept with, but then gentlemen don't tell. Truth be told, I'm just not interested in their pecking order. Just their girlfriends. Seven Year Itch of the Week Well it getting obvious isn't it? I'm at that delicate middle-aged point of desperately hanging on to whatever youth I have left. I also think employers are partly to blame. They seem so determined to turn me in to something else, to sweep away my happy individuality and replace it with banal conformity. No, I won't conform. My toilet seat is staying up.

What did those women look like? Well... like a bunch of women out jogging really. I suspect one or two of them enjoy their own reflection, but actually there wasn't one that caught my eye. Is that why she called me a nutter? Actually that doesn't bother me. The world needs nutters. How else could she possibly justify being superior if it wasn't for nutters like me? Silly woman ought to thank me. I've given her life meaning. I also think I've become a bit more aware of these snide opinions. There was a time I would have blasted past in a red sportscar and not even noticed her. But I daresay she would have said a few words about that too

As a small point of interest, the casual use of a descriptive word is typical. In real life, we do the same. It's just that when it comes to studying things we like to apply strict definitions and titles and fill forums arguing over it

Doesn't sound right to me, I can't imagine a centurion being lackadsaisical about whether pilum shafts aren't straight. Having said that, the ease of repair is a distinct possibility. A hard shaft might break off whereas a softer one bends. The former needs blacksmith time to replace, the latter a few seconds of cursing and fiddling.

Women are such fickle creatures. In Newcastle, the opinion of one young lady who passed me by was to say "Ooh not him, he's fat" Now that I'm officially fat, I can no longer attract women in Newcastle. Sigh. Scratch Northumberland off my list. Yesterday afternoon I took a stroll down that road where all the posh houses are, the one that leads to Coate Water. A group of ladies jogging in their lunchtime began discussing my finer points. as they approached in the opposite direction. That conversation didn't last long, and one lady with little restraint reckoned I was good all the way until my neck. I'm also a nutter apparently. Sorry, do I know you? Obviously now I'm officially ugly (and officially insane). Sigh. Scratch Swindon off my list too. Still, lets not be pessimistic. Since the two local opinions are almost diametrically opposed, I've calculated that the woman most likely to think I'm acceptably ordinary lives in Sheffield. Sorry Sheffield. You're officially fat, ugly, and not right in the head. Just one consolation - Swindon wants to be just like you. Trust me, it's well on the way. Weather Forecasts of the Week Weather reports are so amazing. In our modern high tech wolrld, we have satellites recording images of whats going on in the world's climate. Computers that distill that information and make scientific predictions about what weather to expect tomorrow. Not only that, we have weather forecasters that take those results, screw them up, throw them over their shoulders, and completely blow it on national tv. It happened this week. The weekend shift on the weather report predicted a dire Monday and Tuesday. Grim wet weather set to dampen British spirits. Oh? So far Monday and Tuesday turned out to be gloriously sunny. Not that warm perhaps, but thats down to the time of year (or perhaps the frosty young woman who thinks I'm ugly).

By sheer good fortune I saw this last night. I suspect the 'realistic Roman dinner' was nothing of the sort (no slaves, a single linear table with modern upright chairs, no additional entertainment - apart from the Marquis of Bath that is). I wish he served the the prototype of the ejaculating cake. That would have been fun, watching cake shrapnel take out the guests in one big explosion. He did cheat there didn't he? Don't see any mention of dry ice in Roman literature. What was interesting, and indeed the primary motive of Hestons attempt to recreate the dinner in the first place, was the aspect that food should not only be interesting and tasty, but an experience in itself. There he obviously succeeded. It struck me though that creating this meal wasn't exactly cheap, and as always, the indulgences of the wealthy minority of Rome get all the attention.

Nope. That kind of helps my argument doesn't it?

Yesterday was signing on day. My fortnightly ritual has now changed from late in the afternoon to first thing in the morning, except that no-one seems entirely sure when. I approached the reception and handed them my booklet. The young man glanced at it and very helpfully told me to go away and come back in half an hour. Then he noticed some other detail on the page and looked confused. "Wait here please." Wait? At a dole queue? Thats novel.... Initiative of the Week It seems our security concious land is about to train store managers in anti-terrorist techniques. Wow. I'd better be careful the next time I get shoddy service at the till. Sharp suited operators abseiling down ropes with submachine guns and wrestling me to the floor, yelling "Don't Move!". Come on mate, all I want is a plastic bag.

Headhunting was common to celtic tribes though I agree some tribes may have placed more importance on it. As regards cannabalism, a useful analogy comes fromNew Guinea. There, it was traditional to hunt and eat people from other tribes. But it was only eating the brain that gave you your enemies virtue. The cult of the severed head was pre-roman however, and I don't see any resurgence in that practice regardless of celtic legends recounting such activity.

Agreed. But I was considering that the pilum might travel further than the front rank of the enemy, or that in the dynamic conditions of a melee, enemies behind their front would have time to sort something out. The Pilum Muralis is known to exist from Caesars time, I understand there's archaeological evidence for it (From Weapons of the Romans, Michel Fuegere) The soft shank was designed as a more practical version of the two pin pilum, and we know the later pila heads were only hardened at the tip. After all, if you're going to go to the trouble of hardening steel for penertation it would be just as easy to harden the whole thing and create a rigid shank - we know they didn't do this. It was the fragility of the two pin plia that gave rise to the 'bendy' pilum. I think too much emphasis might be placed on this however. The whole point, as it were, was to deliver a spear into enemy lines before an attack. The bending bit was after impact. Yes. Like at Adrianople in ad378? The goths were of well armed with missiles anyway - they were known for it, but the Romans, compressed and disordered, had less chance of returned missiles than the fluid and mobile goths milling around outside them. Caesar, as I've mentioned before, complains of the gauls throwing his pila back at his troops. Fact is, you could do that whether the tip was bent or not. If you're a defending Roman, you still raise your shield against a thrown stick of that size or risk some bruising in the face. At any rate, it could ruin your whole day regardless.

I can't find the book I wanted to unfortunately - a hazard with libraries. However... With human societies (this is especially true of warrior cultures) there is a connection drawn between a spiritual quality and a specific part of the human body, such as the heart, or the brain. The flesh is mundane, usable only for sustenance if your society is so inclined. The bloody mass sacrifices of the amerindians focus on the heart. Japanese culture focuses on the abdomen as the center of the man, and the celts saw the head as the focus of a mans virtue. Not suprisingly then in celtic societies there was the cult of the severed head. The act of taking a head demonstrates your mastery over your enemy in a very final way, and to own a head was to own its former courage. A celt would boast that he had been offered a great sum to sell his heads but refused. The symbolism for the celts was very important. Their spiritual beliefs were based around this kind of thing and it survives in the earliest versions of the arthurian mythos, celtic tales passed down from before the Roman period. The cauldron is another important icon. I don't understand what the significance was exactly, but the cauldron was some sort of recepticle for spiritual power. Add to that the various properties associated with plants and animals, the 'fairy tale' menagerie of spirit creatures, and you get some idea of the richness of their beliefs. Now since people aren't always so immersed in religion as others, I've no doubt that some individuals paid lip service to these beliefs. The point was though that the severed head demonstrated your prowess in battle. You had cut the mans head from his shoulders and therefore the ownership of it gave you a very real measure of status. A currency of severed heads in other words.

It was my understanding that druids sacrificed criminals, but I'm prepared to put straight on that. The idea that druids ate flesh as a normal practice in order to gain their enemies strength runs counter to the accepted head hunting they used for that purpose. The possession of an enemies head was supposed to impart their manly qualities. There was also some symbolism fromskulls connected with it but off hand I don't remember the details. I'll do some digging on this - There's some literature to hand.

I've decided cars are female. They just are. most are frumps unfortunately. Some are reliable, others not. Some have interesting personalities, many simply don't talk to you or keep on nagging because you left the bootlid up. Then there's cars like Ferrari. Curvaceous redheads with tight leather, vivacious, demanding. You just know she's going to be trouble but you can't help yourself. I say this because going through some old papers I discovered my report from a racing school where I drove F355's at Thruxton circuit. Now that takes me back. It was the first time I'd driven a real Ferrari. I was expecting it to be a real beast, twice the power of anything I'd driven previously, and my brain was telling me to take care. You might not be suprised, but the tasty redhead won my heart in the first ten seconds. She beguiled me with all her italian charms. She was doing strange things to my anatomy, but luckily the lady owner who instructed us plebs in the driving of cars that cost more than my home had seen it all before. You see, german cars are a bit cold. Very good, but like female scientists with whips. "You vill take zat bend faster Caldrail *crack*". You come to a bend and you wonder 'Can I go round it a little quicker?'. To your delight, you can. Then the same thing happens again, up until the point you realise you really have exceeded what the laws of physics allow. Ooops... Close your eyes Caldrail... But Ferrari? She snorts in disdain at your sensible driving and starts stroking your ego. "Go on Caldrail-a, I want-a to see you drive-a!". The woman was insatiable. And I didn't mind in the slightest. As it turned out, she was a pussy cat. She handled almost the same as my long-serving Toyota MR2 (albeit considerably faster). There was that momentthe instructor told me to go for it, to drive a hot lap. I floored the accelerator and the car went light, lifting on its wheels and sudden;y this well mannered and sophisticated lady was lap dancing in front of me in a wild frenzy... *dribble* That was a fun day. Thing was though, I went back to work the following day and a workmate approached me. "So you need to take a day off to get a haircut do you?" He asked me with obvious contempt. "No." I answered, "I take a day off to go flying in the morning and drive Ferrari's on a race track in the afternoon". "Oh." He said, "Your day was better than mine." Yep. Conundrum of the Week Ferrari's are red, fast, powerful icons of motoring. Symbols of excess, tempting you to break speed limits, behave like arrogant playboys, and earn more money than you could possibly spend. Cars that evoke passion, cars that make you choose between them and your partner, cars that change you from ordinary caring sharing Joe Bloggs to greedy, demanding, sexually jaded Schumacher Junior. So why did the Pope bless Ferrari?

You have my sympathies. i suspect though, Mr Obama's expensive plans have more to do with actually doing something, rather than making expensive plans, paying for it, making a big noise about it, then forgetting it ever took place.

Yes this begs the question then ... How did the Roman army reuse bent pilae? I had always pictured the Roman Legionaries on fatigue duty heating and straightening their recovered weapons. It strikes me as a total waste if they couldn't. Of course might this mean that reused pilae were far more likely to bent then those that were fresh? The reason the Romans adopted the soft iron shank was that the earlier two-pin approach was fundamentally fragile. Any knock on the side and the wooden pin broke, making your pilum useless. The advantage of the soft iron version was that you could/i] bend it back in line, thus putting right any incidential damage and retaining the pilums utility. This did mean of course that craft enemy might realise he could bend it back and throw it at the Romans - Caesar complains of this sort of thing being done by the Gauls - but the idea persisted for centuries. As for being weakened, remember that the metal was only hardened at the tip. The shank was left as soft metal and didn't weaken that much, although it should be borne in mind it wasn't bent often in normal circumstances.

The problem is that Grodon Brown wanted to appear as a brilliant Chancellor. Every so often we saw a press release or some politican repeating that mantra. There was always enough money it seemed. If you looked closely, he was txing everything b the back door. Pensions were taxed for the first time for instance. Insurance and travel taxes increased. Fuel duty raised to 75% of the price at the pumps. You pay tax first then claim back whatever benefits your situation allow (if you know about that). The thing is, whilst appearing beneificent, he was running up huge expenses and borrowing money to pay it off. So inevitably he was keen to move to No10 as soon as possible and avoid the criticism that he wasn't as good a chancellor as he made out. A lot of people are fooled - on another website, I got called a tory spokesman for criticising GB. Yeah right. Labour came to power saying the old ways were over. They weren't the party of high taxation any more. Yet now we find our tax bill is the highest ever. Dangnabbit, Neph, you win again!

Yes, but politicians only race until they get there, then they stop and do nothing.

The government have required agencies to make a profit for some time now. Here's an example... When I qualified for my New Zealand PPL, they sent my license in the post within two days at no cost, aware that I was there on holiday and wanted to do some flying around their islands. Two years earlier, a UK PPL cost me more than two hundred pounds once I'd done all the requisite flying and exams, and I had to wait a couple of months for it to arrive. It seems the romanesque attitude of screwing the public for every penny has become well rooted in our society now, and we have the current government to thak for that.

And he still hasn't gotten rid of bendy buses.

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 it. None of these manicured parks with denuded foliage that Swindon is becoming fond of. It is however bordered by two of the three 'P's, the grotty undesirable bits of the town. Park is too far away, but Penhill to the north and Pinehurst to the south mean that urban squalor is staining the outskirts with it's detritus. I wandered along the path that follows the curve of the hill through the woods above Penhill. It resembled South Wales almost. Untended gardens filled with rubbish, shabby unloved houses with shabby unloved inhabitants. I reached the center of the wood where the large oak had been set fire to four years ago. They'd finally cut it down. Surrounding it was a rubbish dump spread through the undergrowth. Shabby unloved woodland. What can you do? Complaint of the Week A shabby and unloved youngster picked out his DVD from the selection at the library and put his coins into the machine for the ticket to allow him to take the item home for a week. He ambled toward the security guard with a look of bemused outrage on his face. "I put two pounds in." He said. The security guard stared back unconcerned. "The machine doesn't give change Sir." "Yeah but I put two pounds in." "Sir, the machine doesn't give change." "....I put two pounds in. I'm supposed to get fifty pencve change." "And I'm telling you, that machine doesn't give change." "But I put two pounds in. Where's my fifty pence?" "Library opens at half past nine. You can sort it out then." "I should have fifty pence." And so on, until a librarian had the misfortune of passing by.

I'm glad to see not everyone is taken in by his posturing.

I thought that was canon. I had no idea it was being debated.