Journal Entries
So it's goodnight from him...
Posted Nov 23, 2004
On Saturday night/Sunday morning, my father gave up what has been a somewhat lengthy fight with his ever deteriorating health and passed away. He had had heart surgery, nearly twenty years ago, and had been diagnosed with parkinson's for some time.
He was not a famous man, but most members of this site have one reason to be grateful to him. He was head of the design team for the Marconi Mark IX television camera which was used to broadcast Blue Peter amongst others. I suspect, though I do not know, that chunks of Dr Who must also have been filmed using the Mark IX.
I suppose his greatest triumph was in raising a family of three children without incident or fuss in a world where family tragedy appears increasingly to be the norm. We where never a rich family, but we never needed for anything, and a little wanting never hurt anybody.
I think really, I'd just like to say thank you to him for helping make me who I am today. Most of the bits of me that people like are in some way either part of him, or my mother. The bad bits are mostly mine. Philip Larkin might have been a good poet, but he didn't know all the answers.
So. Goodbye, dad. Thanks for everything.
Donald Alexander Pay. 03/12/24 - 21/11/04.
RIP
Discuss this Journal entry [24]
Latest reply: Nov 23, 2004
The malign thug strikes again.
Posted Mar 15, 2004
Got into work this morning to learn that not only is our former colleague with cancer unlikely to live out the week, but that an officer in the Essex police with whom I have always had the greatest of respect and friendship died of a heart attack on Friday.
I don't know how old Graham was, but I know he had kids and I'd guess that he can't have been more than 45. The world feels a little greyer and duller without Graham in it, this morning.
Discuss this Journal entry [34]
Latest reply: Mar 15, 2004
Time time time, see what has become of me...
Posted Feb 6, 2004
The wheel turns.
It's nearly three and a half years now since I arrived here. My motives weren't entirely random.
The wheel turns.
But something isn't the same anymore. I don't feel the urge to post as much as I did, and I don't have the time anyway.
The wheel turns.
I'm not leaving. There are still things I want to write, both for the Post (yes Shaz, I *am* still alive. I'm trying to get a Rock Around The Clock column together), and there are things I still want to write for the Guide (I am very aware for example that my Blues Project has gaping holes which are only correctable by further guide entries on some of the individuals that I had to leave out of the Project).
The wheel turns.
I'm spending more and more of my time here - http://www.thedevilsmusic.f2o.org/forum/ , a really nice little blues community with a thousand members, from all over the world. I feel the same way about that now that I did in the old days about HooToo.
The wheel turns.
So I'm re-setting my homepage. Maybe by being here less I can re-kindle the enthusiasm I once felt for this place. It doesn't help that I can talk to most of the fantastic friends I have made either on msn, or in real life, or by text. Some of you have even let me spend time in your homes and lives, which i am grateful for beyond reason. Somehow, though, that gives meless reason to be here, rather than more.
The wheel turns.
Discuss this Journal entry [24]
Latest reply: Feb 6, 2004
Morning Comrades or I'm Allright Jack or We'll Keep the Red Flags Flying Here...
Posted Feb 2, 2004
Well, life just keeps getting funnier and funnier.
We are presently being summonsed to the Small Claims Court in Kingston Upon Thames by our free-loading free-holding landlords. Something like £6,500. So off we jolly wel go to get that sorted out. I should be furious, but strangely I'm kind of looking forward to it because it will, at last, once and for all, sort out the matter of exactly what they are entitled to charge us for living here. If the court finds entirely in there favour then we simply can't afford to carry on living here and the place wil have to be sold, as that will mean they have carte blanche to carry on charging what they like without any justification whatever.
And i thought that rackmann-ism had died out.
I have also reached a fairly momentous decision about my job. It is clear I don't have a career in the CPS. They don't like my style or my attitude and they don't want to promote me so...
If they think I'm difficult now, wait until I take over as Branch Union Rep. When I start asking really difficult questions about budgets and manning levels, about how they could send oall the bosses to a five star hotel for a 'management meeting' despite having spent a small fortune converting the top floor of our building inro a meeting a training suite. When i start exercising my right to attend Arae manaegemnet Team meetings and the like a disagreeing with minutes because we all know they've been 'docteored' for years.
Oh yes, it just gets funnier and funnier in the Shark Tank.
Discuss this Journal entry [21]
Latest reply: Feb 2, 2004
I hate being ill...
Posted Jan 15, 2004
Four days off with the most foul cold/cough. The novelty of it all has worn off somewhat, I must say, and daytime tv really is still a pile of poop, even with satellite...
Fox's new channl, FX, advertised with much pomp, concerns itself with showing, in order;
Lost in Space
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
Batman
Land of the Giants (neatly answering the question as to why nobody has attempted to revive it yet)
Really, if this is the next big step in TV, then I despair...
Thank heavens for 
s and heaps of tlc, eh?
Discuss this Journal entry [28]
Latest reply: Jan 15, 2004
Blues Shark - For people who like this sort of thing, then this is just the sort of thing they'll like
Researcher U154264
Write an Entry
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It has been compiled and recompiled many times and under many different editorships. It contains contributions from countless numbers of travellers and researchers."