Search the Community

"It's Starwars Day" proclaimed one of my colleagues at work. Huh? What's that all about? Well, it turns out that "May The Fourth Be With You" has become an annual urban festival amongst those who cannot tell fantasy from real life. My boss noted my disapproving expression and chuckled. So in order to restore the balance of the Universe and allow the Dark Side its right of public expression, I suggest "May the Sixth Be With You", which for those who have lived in backwoods cabin for the last three decades is a play on words between the date, sixth, and the alien dark side faction, the Sith (Who featured in Starwars Episode One, The Phantom menace. Okay. You can go back to sleep now. Wake Up Call Trumpy has done it. He's got the Republican US presidential nomination. A triumph for celebrity tycoonship. In Britain we're a bit more canny, preventing Alan Sugar from world domination by making him a noble. However international politics will change as a result if he wins the final vote. Expect hard bargaining and a gruelling thirteen week 'last man standing' battle as America seeks its Apprentice. Talk about the Dark Side.... Cute Moment of the Week The other day I discovered Herbie the Hedgehog has a friend. There they were, both snuffling in the grass together. Awww..... Funny thing is normally hedgehogs end up as a somewhat flat pile of squishy goo, and given that Herbie snuffles next to a main road, you have to admire his survival instincts. Or perhaps he stretches out with his feelings? Letting the Force guide him in his do or die struggles with Dark Side motorists?

It's open! It's all open! The supermarket at the Old College site is open for business! Drop everything and rush down there at once before everything goes in the Swindon store's grand opening. Or not. Depending on whether you actually care. It's still a building site of course but at least the public and wander in awe along the aisles admiring the low low prices and bargains galore. The supermarket isn't the only new store opening here recently. There's the toy shop at the old shopping cente too. As it happens that wasn't particularly of any interest to me but imagine my suprise turning a corner when I spotted an imperial storm trooper looking for androids in a Swinbon street. No really, fully dressed in up and carrying one of those short barrelled blasters they couldn't hit a barn door with. It's a wonder he wasn't arrested for carrying an offensive weapon. [My Jedi Training Begins This morning I dragged myself out of bed for that most unusual of job searching activities, the early morning start. For today I'm off to 'Boot Camp', Basic Training for Jobseekers 101, at the local college (the new one, not the mass of bricks, scaffolds, hi-vis vests, and bewildered shoppers at the Old College site). After a decade of intermittent quests for employment the Job Centre have decided I'm a useless klutz who must be re-educated and indoctrinated into the ways of the Force, findings jobs with the blast shield down, stretching out with my feelings, sensing terrible disturbances, although at my age leaping several hundred feet in one go and getting into intense laser sword fights isn't quite so easy. No wonder Ben Kenobi lost his final confrontation with Darth Vader, but then he was long term unemployed too as I seem to remember from the films. Mind you, living in a cave out in the desert wastes of Tatooine, he didn't have a brand new supermarket to find food in. The Job Centre couldn't wait to send me on this two week course, the joke being that it turns out only the first meeting was mandatory. But hey, let's be positive, at least at the end of this I'll be able to prove to employers that I, Old Ben Caldrail, am fully presentable and employable with my new certificate. What? Another one? Oh yes. In two weeks I shall be a Jobseeking Jedi, learned in the ways of employment. The Job Centre will expect nothing less. Jedi Prowess Of The Week There are roadworks along the pavements of the street outside my home. I know this because the local population collide with the plastic barricades in a drunken attempt to stagger from one pub to another each evening. You see, a little bit of Jedi training, and they would sense the presence of obstructions and dark holes in the ground.