caldrail

The frozen slush and hard packed snow has turned to an undulating sheet of ice outside my home. On a downhill pavement, it's fairly lethal. Looks like I'm going to have to break my back and shovel my way to the shops to prevent broken bones. What a choice. Choices of the Week Every year you see the same adverts. Lovable pets in help center cages looking mournful. The message is always "A pet is not just for Christmas" and I agree wholeheartedly. Not everyonme does it seems, and in the papers was a report of a puppy left in a sealed box by the roadside. The callousness of its last owners is obvious, but it also strikes me that a suprise gift of a pet is the daftest idea for pet you could possibly consider. It may be that someones dog has had puppies unintentionally and they're trying to rid themselves of the unwanted animals by handing them as gifts to friends and so forth, but you can't help wondering how thoughtless the gift was, never mind the death sentence meted out by the recipients. In this case the dog was rescued. There's no guarantee it will find responsible owners. As for the irresponsible ones, a part of me wants to seal them up in a container and let them freeze. The other part wants them named and shamed. then again, with all these pro-animal sentiments and responsible attitudes, why is there is no clear cut procedure for passing on unwanted animals? Because, much like human children born to unmarried teenagers, they simply get in the way and cost money.

We... slightly don't, no. Given England last had snow like this eighteen years ago, and that Swindon never got a snowflake even then, I doubt anyone thought of buying one. A shame, because the pavements outside my home are covered in packed ice since no-one shovelled the snow away, and its well slippery.

Actually, trolleys are well adapted to survive wintery conditions. They carry on hibernating in ditches and hedgerows without ill effect, ready to lay there basking in the sun when the weather improves.

Popularity. Although Tiberius was Augustus's successor he wasn't popular with the masses. Germanicus was, and whether you rate his ability as a general or not, he was without doubt more popular than Tiberius. Thst important. With popularity, you have more freedom of action, more support. To all intents and purposes Tiberius was looking over his shoulder at the peoples favourite war leader, a celebrity in Roman terms.

The misery goes on. In very un-swindon-like style, the snow started again last night and as I glance out the window of the library, it's just begun cascading down in thick torrents. Our local council now has only two days of grit reserves left to clear our roads and keep Swindon moving. I'm biting my nails. Weather Update of the Week Oh. Its just reverted to that thin sprinkle of fine drizzly snow. Panic over. Phew.

Good point. Increasingly, with cars becoming dull as ditchwater to drive, lots of gadjets and toys are migrating to the front dash for drivers to play with. I think the reason I haven't had any serious accidents (I made a couple of low speed bumps in my early days, one was someone elses fault) is that I don't play with the dashboard or even bother with the stereo. Always look out the window. I know it sounds daft, but, there's a sort of parallel with fighter pilots. Its the one you don't see who gets you. Actually, the dullness of modern cars is a mystery to me. Adverts constantly portray production vehicles as fun to drive, exciting, responsive, a pleasure to own etc... The ones I've driven handle like rice pudding and need a request signed in triplicate before they gather speed. Maybe I'm lucky. I'm old enough to remember when cars were real cars

Funny thing is, in bad weather like this the trollies vanish from sight.

Wow. Now there's a man who takes his Dungeon & Dragons seriously. I'll bet he gets tons of party invites....

Its funny you posted this Doc. A friend of mine drove in the states once and was thoroughly frightened. Not by gun totin' hoodlums or whatever, but just by people cruising at legal speeds and basically losing attention because of the boredom. I'm reminded of an american lady I came across once. She was from Idaho, or Iowa, or somewhere flat and empty. We got talking about driving and I asked how she found it driving on British roads. She gasped in typical rural drawl "You people are sooo-peerrrrr-men." and went on to describe how she drew up at a road junction and didn't dare move for cars whizzing all around her. In fact, the same phenomenon is starting to occur in Britain. Now that speed limits are rigidly enforced, people are becoming less attentive (one reason why the accident rate hasn't improved much since speed cameras came in). Whereas in the good old days you kept a good look out for your own survival, now you just sort of accept that everyone is doing the same speed and doing the same things. Before my car(s) were nobbled and I became a pedestrian, it was getting more and more hazardous on city dual carriageways (the ones limited to 40mph) because no-one bothered to look before they manoevered. Not really a change for the better.

Can't. All that snow from last night and early this morning has turned to slush. Boy oh boy is it going to be slippery overnight!

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 year old threw a snowball at his mum. He missed, but hey, it doesn't snow too often around here. "This is quite fun isn't it?" He observed. Yes, kid, it is when you're ten years old. For the rest of us, we have to avoid.. woah.... wooooooooaaaahhhhh! Splat. Oh no. I've fallen into someones footprint. Sheer walls of snow at least three inches deep. Aww man, how do I get out of this? At least I'm not injured. Can't phone Mountain Rescue, I left my mobile phone at home. Guess I'll just lie here, surviving on melted snow, until a walking shag pile carpet turns up with a barrel of rum under its chin to lick me to death... Return To Form Of The Week AM was sat at the PC 'doing his emails'. In the next cubicle, a young man was discussing something with his friend whilst he pointed at the screen. "Do you mind?" Demanded AM, "We're trying to concentrate. This is a library. Its a place for people to concentrate.". Wow. That shut him up. ? An hour later AM was struggling with his emails. "How do I save this?" He demanded, "I've only got thirty seconds left..." I waited with undisguised glee for him to fail to save it. He dragged a poor unsuspecting librarian to assist him. She shrugged, helpless to satisfy AM's need for instant assistance. His time ran out. "Oh ,look at that. That was a big story, and now I've lost it. Useless. I come here, I try to use my emails, and I can't save it. I should throw this computer through the window.." And so on, endlessly. He started lecturing his neighbouring PC users about how bad the computer system is. I was tempted to remind him that we needed to concentrate, but I was enjoying his performance too much.

Whether a general was 'good' often didn't matter. Roman society was always competitive and political intrigue was part of military life. From the Augustus onward, each legionary commander was chosen by the Emperor, he wasn't a career soldier. The Emperor chose 'safe' men. people he thought were reliable, and often they proved not to be. Therefore a popular general might not be such a good idea, nor one who who was immodest.

Last night I sat back to watch a little tv. In both senses. Outside I heard a revving car engine and tire squeals. Oh come on you idiot, surely you're not pratting around in this weather? Sheesh... Later I became aware of a persistent rumble. I get that from big diesel engines idling outside by the pedestrian crossing. Except this time it just went on and on. Its uncomfortable because the vibration carries through the house. Looking out the window I spotted why. The single decker bus outside had failed totally to negotiate the icy hill and was waiting for assistance to arrive. It was very slippery last night and although a little slushy this morning, I was a tad careful about walking down to the library! best news of all is that tomorrow the snow is back, slap bang over Swindon like a cryo-thermal nuclear blast. Can Swindon resist this onslaught of Winter? We shall see... Statistic of the Week One in five Brits stayed at home during the snowfall over the last few days. Like me. Only I've got a better excuse to stay off work for a day or two. Its called not having a job. I wonder if that statistic will be bigger if we get snowfall next year...

Oh we do get summers! maybe not tropical hot, but certainly sweltering for us Brits. Yes, our winters are more usually an extended Fall, and thats the country as a whole.

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 snow. Is it a hot place to be perhaps? Certainly not at the moment. It is genuinely cold. Britain gets laughed at for its absolute inability to cope with anything more than three snowflakes in one place. One snowfall and the entire country falls apart. Yes, we're dunces when it comes to winter. But then, since we so rarely get one, is it fair to blame us? Conversation of the Week On my way home from a hike in local countryside I happened upon a woman who was about to take a photograph of a tree bud. I stopped and said "I've taken some daft pictures in my time but that talkes the buscuit" She laughed and we got talking. A newbie to Swindon (You can tell, she likes it here), she has nontheless come to grief against the 'can't do' attitude of local garages. You have my sympathy. Apparently today she has to fix her camper-van, drive to work in Newbury, then attend a job interview in Portsmouth. With all the snow that fell over the last two days? You wait until you leave Swindon. Good luck.

I woke this morning to that dull white glow through the curtains. I knew that meant snow. Well it was no suprise - the warnings had been made regularly on tv for the last couple of days. What felt strange though was the curious lack of rumble. There was no background noise of passing cars, nor was the house shaking as lorries rumbled past. Walking down to the library, Swindon is deathly quiet. There's hardly any tire tracks in the snow, which is merely a surface covering, albeit a very slippery one. The college car park is virtually empty. The good news is that heavier snow is expected in the area by mid-day. Russia never invaded during the Cold War, but now they're here with Cold Air. There's a few of them in the library trying to log on like me. Sort of an advance guard. I'll bet they feel right at home. Warm Glow of the Week I notice that a steam locomotive has been cleared for service on British mainlines. Thats always an event - I know most people wouldn't admit it for fear of being labelled a trainspotter - but there's a mystique about these victorian engines that you just can't beat. This one is an A1 'Peppercorn' (I'll bet you just wanted to know that). Designed and built in 1948/49, the class was scrapped in the 60's as dieselisation made itself felt. But not this one. After raising three million pounds, a group of enthusiasts have built a brand new one which they've named Tornado. Extraordinary.

They were two different class of entities. The Romans did not have a national army. They wouldn't dare give that much military power to one man (other than the emperor himself) for fear of coup detat. Instead, they developed the idea of temporary warbands which Marius had made permanent in his reforms, and given a regimental air by Augustus in his, yet its still erronous to see the legions (or auxillary formations for that matter) as regiments in an army. They were independent units, mini-armies in their own right, so that an ambitious general had a limiting factor in loyal legions against him. Auxillaries are to all intents and purposes foreign mercenaries serving under the Roman system in return for citizenship after they complete their term. Second class soldiers in other words, although valuable ones. A third tier was the rare occurence of slave soldiers. Augustus for instance had made freedmen of slaves in order to recruit them as sioldiers. They were not allowed regular weapons and equipment, nor were they allowed to billet beside legionaries.

There's a very cold wind blowing through the trees of Rushey Platt. Cold air from Russia has blown in and already the weather reports are warning of severe conditions. The AA have advised motorists to take warm clothing with them as gale force winds and drifts of heavy snow are expected. The reverse is going on in Australia right now, where winds from the continents interior are blowing hot air over the coastal regions where everybody lives. There's going to be comment about Global Warming of course. People will say carbon dioxide is to blame and that cars must be banned to stop these freak weather conditions from happening. But then, I had to give up driving last yearand now the weather has gotten worse? Obviously the sports car is not the villain we think it is. We like the weather to be predictable, not this mobile disaster area sweeping across the land. It seems people are only happy when life is the same from day to day. They like the monotony, the familiarity of the same old pattern, the certainty of the same old things. Not me. I like some variation. So today... lets see... what can I do today?.... oh stuff it, I'm off down the library. The Tale of the Library Whistler Once upon a time, in a library far far away, there was a person who made just a little bit too much noise. The Wicked Witch of the Library turned him in into a newt, and all the public at the library remained silent and happy. All was quiet until yesterday, when a young man, rash and headstrong, decided he would whistle as he browsed the internet. The Wicked Witch had long since retired, so the young man thought himself safe. The security guards were roused from their slumber. They talked into their radios then shrugged. So eventually a policeman came and took the young man away. Times have certainly changed. I blame the wind. Luckily Mr Policeman stopped the young man before he broke his.

Its more to do with long term trends in Roman society. In the early days, Romans were very public spirited and keen to do their bit - it was seen as a mark of respect to have served, and some senators tore open their togas to reveal war wounds to give their arguments weight during debates. But this was an era of austerity. As the more comfortable life evolved along with the empire (and although not everyone was rich and comfortable, there was an easier life to be had from servicing the needs of the wealthy) people were less interested in military life, especially after the success of the conquest era and the lack of further glory. By the late empire, military service wa considered onerous, and press gangs were used to find recruits, and whilst the practice of cutting off your thumb to avoid military service had been present in Roman society for hundreds of years, it got so frequent in the late empire that one emperor ruled that two thumbless men were as good as one fully fit man.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_usurpers Plus a link to a list of them at the bottom.

Suetonius (Lives of the Caesars) mentions a few usurpers (however unlikely some of them were) Tacitus (Annals, Histories) discusses a legionary rebellion in Germania and also covers the events of AD69 - Year of Four Emperors Ammianus Marcellinus (Res Gestae discusses intrigue behind the events of the late empire Those are just the ones I can think of, I'm sure there are others. Cassius Dio probably has something to say but I'm not well acquainted with his work.

I got the good news last night. The International Monetary Fund have suggested that Britain might be in recession for as much as twenty years, struggling to pay off debts while the rest of the west recover nicely thank you. Twenty years? You mean I'm going to bleat on about the economy and my lack of good fortune for two more decades? Should I cancel the Ferrari then? Now That I Come To Think Of It Until a few years ago, life was simple. I had money in my pocket and a slightly fast car on the drive. Now I'm a pedestrian. My last boss wanted me to drive BMW's. I suspect that was part of the reason for getting laid off. My boss previous to that wanted me to drive Vauxhall Vectra's. I'm almost convinced that was one reason why they let me go. The Police aren't happy about my driving hot Eunos Cabriolets either, but they let me go. My mother wants me to drive a cheap, economical, safe Toyota Prius. Only she's not letting go. "We went to Evesham yesterday.. In the car..." She told me over the phone. Yeah, whatever. Can't think of any reason to go to Evesham, can't understand why I need to take several more hours to do the journey than I used to, and I certainly don't want to be seen driving in a Prius. "Did you apply for that job?... Do you need a car for that job?...". Ahh no thats ok. Good grief, she'll have me wearing womans clothes in public next. As a Genuine Retired Has-Been Wannabee Rock Star who used to strut in skin tight zebra-striped lycra's with hair down to my waist, I have my standards. The Prius ain't one of them. Now I imagine there's a few people out there shaking their heads saying it's only a matter of time. I have to, because my blog isn't a world best-seller. So if there's anyone still out there who's patient enough to put up with my tales of doom and gloom, rest assured I'm still buying the occaisonal car magazine. Now that I come to think of it, I buy the occaisional train magazine too. Hey, Rod Stewart has a model railway doesn't he? Thing is, at the shop where I buy them, the train magazines have migrated to the top shelf along with the porno monthlies. One copy of Steamy Nights, and... yes, I'll take a copy of Railroad Dreams... Oh, and the latest issue of Railroad Model Photographer... They're doing an article on chain coupling. Unmissable.

Looks like he's taken a few punches....

"Trust Sicknote to get in the way... Should have stayed in bed..." Muttered AM as he shuffled past on his crutches. Was that comment directed at me? AM doesn't like me very much. Back in the days when the library was at its temporary hut, he had his favourite PC and used to bully people off it when he came in. He tried that with me once... "Come on, Mate, didn't you see my name on the screen?" No, I didn't, because it wasn't there and I couldn't have logged on if it was. And then I had to repeat the argument when two well-intentioned librarians had been recruited by the man to kick me off. Now of course the library is busier, and he can't push people off PC's like he used to. But Sicknote? For those unacquainted with British Commonwealth culture, thats a nickname applied to those who avoid onerous duty (or any duty at all) by pretending ill health when they're clearly fighting fit. Is AM suggesting that as an unemployed person I'm also claiming extra benefits for ill-health when I don't deserve it? Thats what a lot of people on the dole do, but not me. I'm miffed. Especially since AM clearly used to be the sort of soldier who shirked duty in his youth and was mouthy enough to get away with it. That smirk you see on his face when he succeeds in pulling the wool over peoples eyes is a little obvious. They say old soldiers never die. They're not wrong. Don't You Just Love Wildlife? I went to bed late last night, and settled in for a good snooze. Almost immediately an urban fox somewhere out the back started yelping. It made aconsiderable racket and it simply wouldn't stop. Please Mr Landlord, can I buy an air rifle? That way I shut the thing up. And whilst I'm at it, maybe those late night drunks proclaiming football team affiliation and advertising their manliness. Perhaps not. I doubt the Police would let me out of doors again. Go on then Mr Fox, yelp away.... Don't care... zzzzzzz Drama of the Week Drama and excitement right under my own nose. A gas appliance being fitted to a property up the road caught fire. Fire engines rushed to put out the blaze, Police blocked off the road. And I was blissfully unaware as I whiled away the hours tapping on my PC keyboard at home. I need to get out more. Assuming the Police let me that is.

:D