caldrail

So it's true then? I really don't have one? Well would you believe it... Brains are extinct...

What is going on? Usually I get pretty well ignored by passing motorists, heckled by one or two, but today? All day long I've had people beeping their horns and giving me a cheery wave. Haven't a clue who they are. Haven't a clue why they're waving. Well if you want my autograph I'm not running after you.... Todays Country Hike Not too far, just down the track that runs round the south side of the local golf course. You never see anyone use it, but typically for Britain, it was a mass of wintery puddles and muddy ruts, that dark grey sludge you get from leaf mould. I think I spent as much time on todays hike walking sideways and slipping back as I did going forward. Just in time for.... Dog owner of the Week Goes to the woman I met on the Polo Ground, whose dogs seemed to derive great pleasure from charging at me. When I joked about their aggressive play she told me that dogs left to their own devices go wild in twelve hours. What? Who exactly is going to train these dogs to survive in the wild? All their life they've gotten sustenance from small metal tins pulled from a kitchen cupboard and even then they need a human being to open them. Ok, dogs are good scavengers (some even scavenge from the kitchen) but they can only susbsist that way when there's a surplus to be scavenging from, and nature being what it is the local wildlfie will soon cotton on that there's food lying around. Most emancipated canines would starve very quickly I think. But what do you expect from old wives?

Woolworths are closing. After nearly a century of trading on the High Street the grand old name is to vanish, unless someone pulls a rescue package together. London and Rochdale sites have already laid off staff, and it won't be long before the Swindon site does too. Somehow I doubt I'll get a job there anyway - I know of manager of old and she doesn't want me working there - but with hundreds of warehouse personnel on the market my job search isn't getting any easier. Weather Report Our first snow fall this year. It caught me by suprise, because whenever we get a decent layer of snow I always wake up to a sort of pink glow through the curtains. Not so this time, because the snow amounted to several snowflakes less. hey, its a start. Put Down of the Week Our revered Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, was lambasted in the House of Commons a day or two ago for telling politicians that he was 'saving the world'. Ho ho ho. Now his financial policies have been lambasted by the Germans who agree with me, that while everyone else is recovering from the recession Britain will be weighed down by debt. I've been saying that for years. Curriculum of the Week I do hear that the government is planning to change the school curriculum. History and geography are out, computers are in. Maybe it's just me, but isn't that because the teachers don't know anything about history or geography? What is the point of teaching kids to use computers? They're not actually going to learn anything, it's just a way of keeping their attention, which indicates yet another failure of modern teachers. In other words, we're about to create a generation of brainless mouse-clickers who don't know anything about their own country, don't know about anyone elses, and who think the internet is a reliable soure of information. It's a triumph of ignorance.

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Now that we've all written our reports, it's time to test you all on whether you've read it! So, here are some questions to test your knowledge of the UNRV 2008 UK Meet... 1 - What did Charles become after losing a game of 'Shut The Box' a - Bitter and twisted b - A newt, but he got better c - Hopelessly demoralised d - Didn't play anymore 2 - What did Caldrail say to the man at the door at Vindolanda? a - Get a move on mate... b - I want to go through that door. c - No thank you, I'm British. d - Do you take Visa? 3 - Who did we discover the medieval inhabitants of Newcastle to be? a - Chinese b - Seriously untidy c - Football supporters d - Two foot tall 4 - What interrupted Caldrails talk on Hadrians foreign policy repeatedly? a - His audience b - His brain c - The Denmark Ferry d - Museum officials in a desperate attempt to preserve history as we know it. 5 - Why did we start late on Sunday? a - So the Augusta could finish her coke bottle b - So Caldrail could visit the beach c - So Augustus Caesar could find something to show us d - So everyone could recover from Caldrail 6 - How many burgers did Caldrail eat without anyone knowing? a - His secret fetish was satisfied but once b - An all out attack upon burger bars across Newcastle c - His slaves returned from their forage with none d - He was on a diet. 7 - How many times did the Augusta fall asleep on the bus? a - Once b - Never c - We lost count d - Spent the whole weekend semi-comatosed 8 - How many taxi drivers were harmed in the making of this weekend? a - No recorded injuries or fatalities b - One went without breakfast c - Two collided after a woman attempted a moon in a burger bar d - Several suffered ribcage injuries after observing us wander starry-eyed through Newcastle 9 - Who had the most seashells of the weekend? a - Caligula b - The Roman Legion Re-enactment Society c - Neptune d - Caldrail 10 - Who was the Bestiarius who attempted to stop the cat from eating a mouse at Arbeia? a - Caldrail b - Augusta c - Charles d - Augustus Caesar Answers 1a, 2b, 3d, 4c, 5a, 6a, 7a, 8b, 9d, 10c. +1 point for every succesful attempt to gain Newcastle Metro tickets +1 point for believing Caldrail scored five in 'Shut The Box' +1 point for still being able to sit cross-legged like Charles +1 point for every breath you observed Augustus Caesar make during his after-dinner story -1 point for every correct answer to the Augusta's crossword puzzle -1 point for every mention of Caldrails obesity -1 for not making it up the south face of Mt Housesteads If your score was.... 10 or more Hercules himself could not achieve such scholarly distinction. You shal be feted, cheered, and quite probably stabbed in the back at some point. 7-9 Exceptional. A glittering senatorial career awaits you, but alas, the throne will be forever out of reach.. 4-6 An able score. Limp to the senate house and dribble quietly please. 1-3 Hmmm... Better stick to orgies I think. Quizzes are a bad career move for you. Zero or less Oh dear. Looks like the arena for you. I want a good clean fight, no cuts above the eyebrows, and don't come back to the changing rooms before you've expired in dramatic fashion. Oh hang on, the Augusta hasn't finished yet....

Hermaphrodite? Makes me wonder what 'going on a summer holiday' on a double decker bus to Greece was really about off-camera. No wonder they were all smiling. Well... fame is fleeting.... Now that my career as a celebrity is over, I can relax safe in the knowledge that Ant and Dec won't be asking me to do strange things in a jungle. I'm certainly not telling them I'm scared of Cliff Richard

The street where I live isn't quiet. It's a major route from Old Town on the hill to Swindon town centre. Consequently I hear cars going by. Ordinary cars, cars with loud exhausts, and occaisionally cars bumping into each other. Sometimes a heavy lorry thunders by and the house literally shakes. Motorbikes scream up the hill and make it sound like Silverstone on race day. At night it changes. Women scream up the hill and youths chant football songs. I have to be honest, I've kind of gotten used to this background noise. Occaisionally though, I hear something original, and that happened last night. "Your blog is rubbish!" Yelled some woman outside. Now that warmed the cockles of my heart. After all those years of gigging the length and breadth of England and pushing through glass ceilings in the workplace, I finally get recognition for blogging over a hot keyboard. It just goes to show you don't need Simon Cowell to become famous. Well, now I'm qualified to appear on game shows and supermarket opening ceremonies, hurry up with the offers, this is only going to last five minutes... Sex Secret of the Week Since I have a boring blog (100% result in a recent poll of one person), I think it needs a little more pace and controversy. So lets start with the most outrageous expose of all, that Cliff Richard has declared himself 'a sexual enigma'. Oh get real Cliff. Look the words up in a dictionary first.

Without a doubt there is something iconic about Hadrians Wall. The Romans have left us so many relics of their empire across Europe, Africa, and the Middle East, many in far better condition, yet if you ask the average person to name a roman ruin - its a fair bet Hadrians Wall will be on the list..I last visited Hadrians Wall when I was a small child. Those memories of windswept moorland and a mossy line of stones across the hills have faded somewhat. Back then I doubt I had any real understanding of the Wall, nor just how old it was. To me it was a curiosity, a pile of stones left behind, and.a place whose ghosts I couldn't hear. Now I'm somewhat older, hopefully wiser too, and the opportunity to revisit Hadrians Wall with my friends at UNRV was too good to resist. In all honesty I wasn't expecting a great deal, I simply assumed that I was better able to appreciate what the Wall was and what it meant for the legionaries who were taken from their homelands and sent to the very edge of a huge empire. There's no doubt in my mind the location of Hadrians Wall was chosen for practical reasons, given the escarpment that cuts across the north of England there, yet its also hard to accept that it wasn't an instinctive choice. The escarpment marks what is left of a collision in distant prehistory between the landmasses of what is now England and Scotland. It really is an ancient frontier indeed. Since then the lanscape has changed. The hills have been weathered down considerably, the forests that once covered them cleared away. Its that empty bleakness of the border that gives a false impression of loneliness to the modern eye. At Houseteads, the ruins of the fort there are perched on the ridge, overlooking open grassland, with little sign of human habitation beyond the needs of isolated sheep farmers. In roman times it would have been so different. That fort would have a been stout defensive retreat, a home to roman soldiers, and beside it the settlement of Vericovicium housed their civilian neighbours. As far as the eye could see an endless expanse of forest, punctuated by farms, and an aerial photograph of Housteads plainly shows the field boundaries in the valley below, the last remnant of a settlement now long gone. It wasn't just a ruin in the wilderness as it is today, it was a place where people lived and worked. The stonework however does not reveal those lives to you. It doesn't bring the Romans back to life. It merely marks their passing. To hear the ghosts of our forebears, you need something more. At Corbridge the first sight of excavated walls as I turned the corner left me astonished. Laid out before me was the roman town of Corielsopitum. I could see the walls of homes, shops, forums, temples, granaries. A small aqueduct leading to a roadside cistern. This was a cramped, busy place, travellers jostling with traders for space on the road, narrow alleyways and compact architecture, and I felt drawn to it. You could amost here the conversations, the carts, the arguments, all the noise of urban life. But there was still something missing, and that of course was the inhabitants themselves, the Romans and Britons who once lived there. We can never really bring them back to life but perhaps you can glimpse what their lives must have been like. For that, you need the personal touch. You need the ordinary objects and bric-a-brac they used or the evidence of their own words either in letters or commeroative works. At Vindolanda, it was all on display. Fragments of textiles demonstrated the subdued natural colours of their clothing, the elegant simplicity of their leather footwear, the variety of pottery they once handled on a daily basis. Even the rubbish they threw away left us a message about their day to day business. The museum had built dioramas suggesting the rural coarseness of their lives together with the tools they earned their living with. Almost uniquely there are the recovered letters the romans had written to each other,the records of daily administration, little voices trapped on slivers of wood. It was all becoming clear in my mind. I could see the Romano-British way of life. It lacked the comfort we associate with wealthy romans, but then isn't that decadent image a little misleading? Even with the privations of frontier life it was possible to sense a spirit of community, both in the towns and the barracks. I think it was fitting that we visited the reconstructed barracks at South Shields last of all. Here the weathered foundations were made solid, made real, and at last I could hear the ghosts. We wandered into the dining hall and saw the limits of the opulence the frontier was capable of. We stopped at the spartan quarters of the commanders wife, and marvelled at her patience. We saw the communal bunks of the soldiers and felt the weary irritation of being forced to sleep four or eight to a bed. The smokey atmosphere, the gloomy interiors, the pungent smells, even the sight of a modern cat trying to catch a mouse between the buildings lent a reality to it all. We began the weekend by tracing out markings in the pavements in Newcastle. We finished by waving goodbye to the Roman commander of Arbeia and his family.

Okeedokee

It had to happen. As I crossed the main road to Swindons shiney new library the first signs of urban decay have been left upon it in the form of a dark blue squiggle. Nigel woz ere. Well thanks, Nigel, but perhaps if you learned to read and get of bed in the mornings you could drop in and enjoy the ambience instead of wasting your money on spray paint. In fact, there's a section on art, and if you peruse the books contained therein (is my english too advanced for you?) you might discover how completely talentless you are as an artist. Right. Got that off my chest. Now to pop upstairs and log on. The cubicles are busy so I dive on the first available PC... Tap in my password.... Wait for it to boot up.... Huh? Oh not again, the keyboard settings are wrong. Must be set to US - it usually is... Nope. Apparently I need a serbo-croat keyboard. Luckily the very attractive blonde lady two cubicles down is bored and giving her boyfriend grief, so he's going elsewhere.... Excuse me lady? Is this yours? I hand her the book on Mental Illness she left behind. Right, now I can log on. The guy to my right is suffering from terminal flu, and sniffs loudly every twenty seconds, coughing every minute. His mobile phone goes off every five minutes but luckily his answer is merely to tell the caller he's in Swindon Library. Must be an important guy. You can tell by the military surplus trousers. There's a businesswoman busy trying to organise transport the other side. She is merciless, sparing the poor receptionist on the other end no compliments, nor being fobbed off with some petty excuse that first class coaches don't go to Mongolia. Apparently, so I gather, she's organising one of those corporate team building exercises. Perhaps she could try delegating and building a team that way, giving them vital experience in organisation and bureaucratic obstacles that lifting plastic barrels over an assault course doesn't provide. Unless she works for Plasto-Barrel Direc, proudly delivering plastic barrels where no-one has delivered before. Oh dear, someone's fallen down the stairs... Amazing what mobile phones do to peoples sense of balance. And finally, to cap it all, AM turns up and begins a loud conversation with somebody else about the fashion merit of my military surplus trousers. Oh no. Its a fashion disaster.... Maybe I should reinvent my image? Or maybe tell AM what I think of his geriatric chic? Withdrawal of the Week The Irish have withdrawn pork products. Its big news of course, and as usual, everyones frightened of buying pork for fear they're going to blow up if they eat it. Always the same. I remember a big scare about beef some years back and that burgers were being considered for issue to British spies in case of capture. What was the point of not eating burgers? If I was going to drop dead from some horrible disease spread by infected beef products, I'd already got it. So now pork is cheap, I'm off down the supermarket for a game of russian roulette. Boy, do I live dangerously...

No, don't worry, I haven't discovered Jesus just in time for Christmas, and quite honestly, spending christmas day in a stable full of smelly farm animals with a screaming baby doesn't sound like heaven to me. No, I have a different nightmare.... Heavy snow has hit Britain again and the usual wintery chaos has begun. Homes without electricity, roads slippery, the whole country grinding to a halt. Except Swindon, which once again is blissfully free of the stuff. That means cars can travel freely, so in Swindon, they build loads of bus-only lanes to impede the car driver all year round. There's a green bus rumbling around of Swindon bus routes. Its painted in a lurid dayglo green colour - you just can't miss it - and there wasn't enough advertising space to display the message that buses are going green, so they painted over the windows. Can you imagine travelling on that? "Where to mate?" Oh right. High street please. "Correct change only mate." Err... Hang on... Got some pennies here... Ah, here we go. Love the badge, goes with the uniform... Ok, I'll just go and sit down... The bus driver starts off on his journey. The interior of the green bus is dark and gloomy, filled with people whimpering and rocking forwards in their seats. I chat to girl sat next to me, a pleasant german lady who's off to see her granny in the woods. The driver hunches over the wheel and steers the bus wildly through the traffic blaring their horns, swerving left and right in a manic attempt to keep the schedules. Excuse me?.. Driver?... I can't see out the window. Could you let me know when we get to the High Street? "Next stop, pie factory... Mwuhahahahaaaaaaaa". Sanity of the Week Now you've all recovered from my tale of horror, let me assure you that I woke up in a cold sweat. The heating hadn't come on, and it's still perishing cold out there. So cold in fact, that Honda have decided to stop their involvement in Formula One. Where on earth is Swindon going to find bus drivers now?

Money is the issue these days. Certainly for me, because I don't have any, but also for other people. It looks like a record number of mortgage repossessions this year. If that wasn't bad enough, fines for transgressing the law are rising steadily. Up to

Only the getting rich bit if what I read in the papers is true. I think he must have french ancestory...

Rather you than me

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 sports cars should be added to that list, but for the moment, lets see what I've got in the cupboards to complete my mega-fest of culinary inspiration...... I can see this is goiung to be a challenge. So having decided on a curious Italian Curry (or is that Indian Chillie?) I resist the temptation to plan it out like a military operation. Pasta in the pot, tins opened, contents washed, and into the pan. Cooker on... You know, I can't believe Gordon Ramsay earns a fortune from doing this.... Then, in a brainwave, I decide that some mint sauce would a great variation on a theme. Where's the bottle.... Can't beleieve I bought this rubbish.... Ahh, there it is. I 've not opened it before, and as so often happens in this situation, the bottle top is stuck fast. Ok, try again, tight grip and twwwwwwiiiiiiiiist.... Emulation of the Week The bottle tops resistance finally gave way, and it came off so suddenly it lifted clear. Unfortunately, I had the bottle sideways at the time, and.... Oh F.... My attempt to emulate Gordon Ramsay has ended in success.

Human beings are what they've always been. Civilisation is created with every new generation and if we fail then we return to the animal nature designed us to be, but then, human beings are a success because we act that way, not because we make philosophical decisions, and our 'moral' superiority is based on tribal culture. Plenty of cultures have regarded fighting as paramount. The ancient 'scythians' asked each other when they met an old friend "How many men have you killed?", with an answer of none being considered undesirable. So its also tribal status that leads us to adopt these attitudes sometimes, as we see on the streets on various inner cities, again, a primeval instinct so the trick is not philosophy, morals, or such, but an identifiable and competetive status structuere that eschews such violence. I should add though that the solution should be dynamic. Human beings also have a high degree of behavioural diversification, a survival strategy thats assisted humanity from the start. Within a complex society, different individuals adopt the role of herbivore, scavenger, carnivore, etc. For that reason, you will always find individuals who want to thrive by exploiting or eliminating others.

Just saving you from disappointment, onion breath and all

More developments under way in Swindon. There's something peculiar going on. Our old hospital was pulled down a couple of years ago and a new one built two or thee miles out in the country. The old police station was pulled down more or less at the same time and that too has been replaced by a station miles out in the country. Doesn't anyone want to work in Swindon any more? Or is this some fiendish plot to get people to use buses? An article in our local paper unveiled plans for the redevelopment of the police station site. It was pretty much what you'd expect, glass towers and wide paved boulevards so beloved of planners. I had to laugh though. The article also proudly boasted that "Swindon could be the Sheffield of the South!" Yeah. Ok. Surely though a town wth vision and plans for the future really ought to be calling itself the "Swindon of the South"? In any case, Swindon has been reinventing itself since the 1970's and is still only known for an odd roundabout in the town centre. My guess is that in twenty years it'll be known as "Eyesore of the South". Reminds me of a Simpsons episode... Hang on... Didn't they once try to get Swindon a monorail? Who's that guy in the blazer and hat running for the railway station with a suitcase stuffed with money? Job Offer of the Week I've been sent an email by some company about a job offer. They want me to be a part time regional representative, working from home, earning

Yeah, they have a huge sales tax on party balloons

The temperature has dropped alarmingly. It's actually cold getting out of bed, if that wasn't difficult enough on a Saturday morning. I glance out the window and see nothing but dreary english fog. It turns out to be so cold even the internet is frozen. I've been searching all morning for a place to log on, with internet cafe staff frantically trying to stop their customers wandering away. I think thee's a telephone company employee who's going to need stress counselling. Then again, the cold weather is down to the time of year. Its already the Commercial Season, with ads everywhere telling us that if we buy their goods, we too will have a happy smiley Christmas. How? How can you enjoy Christmas with all the Christmas songs played endlessly on the radio? In America, I imagine you're suffering "Walking in a Winter Wonderland". Here in Blighty, its "Merry Christmas" by Slade. It was cute in 1978, but we've heard it, ok? Thens there's good old Bing, brought out of the golden oldie cupboard and dusted off to remind us that placing a bet snow will fall on Christmas Day is not a good idea. Paul McCartney tells us that "We're.. all.. having... a wonderful Christmas time". I'll bet you are. You can afford the prices. Cliff Richard of course gets all his his songs direct from God, which must leave Somin Cowell a little perplexed. What we need are gritty, rough tough no-nonsense Christmas songs. I want to hear Ozzy Osbourne singing "Suicide Sausage Rolls" or "Mr Crosby". How about Judas Priest performing "Living After New Year" or "Breaking The Wind"? Oh yeah. Songs from the heart. Survey of the Week Customer surveys are such a waste of time. Did we really need to them to do all that research to discover that the French use the largest condoms on average? Mind you, I was relieved to discover that Greece use the smallest. Must be why they import so many british holidaymakers every year.

In the course of my search for gainful employment, I've gotten to know the vagaries of various employers. Most, thankfully, are straightforward to deal with, especially those offering enslavement at the National Minimum Wage. Our local council regularly offers vacancies and thats almost become a weekly hobby, printing off their application forms, handing the envelopes in at the Customer Service Desk, and awaiting the rejection letter. They're very polite and supportive - you get such a warm feeling when you read how they're not shortlisting you but please please please don't get upset or throw yourself off the bridge... We like your applications. We do, really.... I used to think our Council were something of a bunch of jobsworths. Now I know different. I've discovered another employer in our area, a government sponsored agency, who have the most rigid and terrifying bureaucracy known to man. They advertise a job in the local paper, so I take a note of the website and attempt to download their application form. Site not recognised. Oh, I see, part of the Intelligence community no doubt? I will not be beaten. I find their associated group website, and download it from there. Its a form in two parts and once filled in, I send it back to the address listed. Then I get an email saying "You haven't filled it in correctly. Please try again." What is this? A game? Have I not progressed beyond the second level? I scour through the file and discover there's no warning about the little box at the bottom that should say DO NOT RETURN THIS FORM UNLESS YOU FILL THIS TINY INSIGNIFICANT BOX WITH AN EQUALLY UNIMPORTANT ANSWER. Deep Breath. I complete the form, and send it back. Then they send a polite email saying "You've sent the wrong forms. Find the right ones attached." The search for my El Dorado goes on then. Hiker of the Week Recently the forecasted 'cold snap' has hit our green and pleasant land. We even had a brief snowfall one morning last week. As I stroll through the town I see old women shuffling the weight of thirty layers of clothes. This morning though I did notice an man in his fifties, backpack, shorts, staring at a map and looking for all the world like someone out for a summer stroll. Congratualtions mate. You finally found the Legendary Lost Town of Swindon.

I knew it was a bad omen. As I came into the library this morning there was a horde of children all sat cross-legged in a crescent, completely blocking the stairs... excuse me... just passing through... Ooops, sorry kid.... Ok. Up the stairs.... Woah! Didn't expect the hidden trapdoor opening onto a bottomless pit... But its ok, an old lady offers me a whip to grab on to. I wander along the long forgotten aisles of dusty books.... Walking in front of a beam of sunlight, spears extend from the reference section, with the skeleton of an ignorant teenager still hanging from the rusty barbed points.... At last! Cubicle thirty three. I tell me minions to wait , and I sit to sit down and do my internet stuff. Well, I was... Oh no.... A twenty stone library member is bearing down on me.... "Sorry mate (belch) I've booked this PC." He says. I make my escape as the hordes have gone back to their treasure trail. A crowd of keen treasure hunters run past my cubicle reciting numbers. At least I had the sense not to sit in cubicle thirty five. So, if you still haven't found the treasure yet, don't give up, because given the state of british education its looking unlikely the kids will find it first. New Order of the Week A little while ago Gordon Brown was telling the world he wanted to see a New Order. Thats just political rhetoric, right? Wrong. He wants to order us around and make us pay for it. Of course you already know that, but it seems now the government were planning to raise taxes where no taxes have risen before. I said somewhere else a few years ago that New Labour were slowly turning Great Britain into Britslovakia. Well whaddaya know? I was right. Now if you've excuse me, I need to find a polish phrase book in this library.

I wonder what would happen if the worlds population was decimated by a sudden deadly plague? Its not a pleasant thought. Without the restrictions of an ordered society, opportunism and lawlessness would rapidly take hold. A guy I knew at work once told me that since he knew all about nature and the wilderness and stuff, come the revolution he would survive. You know what? I doubt it. He might have an advantage - assuming he really does know something, and assuming he's actually had some practice at exploiting that knowledge - but even that doesn't guarantee survival. I told him that. As I write this I'm watching the opening episode of Survivors. Its a glossy remake of a budget 70's series that explored just this scenario. To be honest, I struggled to stay interested. The characters were so two dimensional that I now truly believe the world is flat. To compensate for the lack of depth, the actors played their roles in a painfully dramatic fashion, with an overbearing music score that seemed very familiar. It was opera, like so many recent BBC productions. Plenty of style and movement but remember to switch your brain off. I still prefer the original series. It may be stilted and a little wooden to our modern sensibilities, but at least it went beyond the comic book level of sophistication. Actually, this new series has all the same production values as the frankenstein monster that is the new Dr Who. Or just about every tv drama the BBC have trailers for. Someone ought to tell Auntie Beeb that some of us are getting bored with the same old formula. Offer of the Week Now I don't have any personal transport, walking from place to place is pretty well essential. The government will probably shake their heads and point out that public transport exists. Yes it does, but public it isn't. Its commercial transport, and for that I have to pay. Correct change only please. Since I generally go where bus routes are mythological, I have to take care of my survival and dress appropriately. British weather being what it is. Well whadaya know... I'm living out my very own Survivors. Perhaps the BBC ought to save money and film me. It'll be just as dull and they can always add a strong music score to liven the mood. At least then I'll be able to afford bus fares and make a living on game shows. Hey, just a thought. Mull it over.

There's a house I used to pass on a regular basis going back some thirty years now. As a dwelling, it wasn't anything special, but the combination of grubby stonework and detailed windows gave it a subtle hint of individuality. What really made a difference was the garden, a forlorn and neglected patch of withered trees and abandoned fishponds. It had that 'secret garden' feel to it, a real patina, almost a sense of camouflaged seclusion. Sadly the house has been bought by new owners. The garden is gone, paved over with red brick to park the junior management car, and the house plastered and painted bright cream. When the new brick wall was built, the occupant had a part demolished so he could park in a certain direction. Its become a sort of advertisement for the owners lifestyle. Nonetheless, the house, for all its renovated freshness, looks awful. The man just has to be an advertising executive. I hope he has a good burglar alarm. Map of the Week I stumbled across a map of Swindon dated 1890-something in our new library. Fascinating to see how much my home town has changed ovr the years. Most of it din't exist then, and the aborted Swindon, Marlborough, and Andover Railway tunnel site is clearly marked (its now Queens park, a local beauty spot - or at least until they paint it bright cream in the near future). It set me on a quest amongst the old photographs in the reference section. Lots of gothic shops and bemused workmen standing in the street. But it had atmosphere and plenty of it. Once again I've seen how unable Swindon is to live with its past.

There are some people who seem blind to it Actually, even though I hate to admit it, our less popular lead guitarist eventually got voted Best Guitarist In The World... in Lithuania. Boy are they starved of music....