Journal Entries

Over exposure

Damn! They've gone and moved my desk so that my back - and more to the point, my screen - now face a main passageway.

The uptical pracshot of this is that I will be less able to abuse my employer's hospitality. So please don't feel offended if I don't join in as much as previously. And cease that applause!

I'll still check in when I can - but I've got 2 weeks holiday from next Friday (Derbyshire and Yorkshire). Then in August I'm having my wrist slashed, so I'll have to see how well I can type with my left hand. (Carpal tunnel syndrome. I'm having a more disabling operation than I'd been led to believe)

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Latest reply: Jun 27, 2005

Hometown News

This story is in the meeja today:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/news/story/0,11711,1506291,00.html

The beach pictured is at the end of the street where I was brought up. At one time it was notorious as the most polluted beach in Britain, having eight sewage outlets in the space of a couple of miles. As teenagers, a popular sport was to walk along the high tide line and see how many different kinds of condom we could count. They lay in drifts! Yet when young, we also used to swim there. Well – I *say* swim – it was more going through the motions. I seem to recall there were a few cases of diphtheria.

The place has an interesting history. It’s said to be the world’s first commuter suburb. The Victorians built some elegant terraced houses on the seafront, facing the Welsh mountains, built a railway line into the prosperous city of Liverpool and called the place Waterloo. When I was young, there were sand dunes, and the Victorians had had the good sense to build public gardens in front of the houses, which acted as a barrier against the occasional high tides.

Then in the early 70’s, someone had the bright idea of building a Marina. They tore into the dunes and built a few miles of sea wall. The whole enterprise was inherently doomed in that it was led by an architect named John Poulson, who was later notoriously jailed for fraud. He had also sold the topsoil for the project to a second project in nearby Kirby to build a dry ski slope – which later fell down. In any case – local residents had already spotted the fatal design flaw. The area surrounding the marina has since reverted to dunes.

Ah, memories, memories! It was also the place where we used to conduct pyrotechnic experiments. A friend from Armagh taught me how to make petrol bombs there.

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Latest reply: Jun 15, 2005

Compost Corner!

I've started composting. Just thought you'd like to know.

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Latest reply: May 23, 2005

A parcel of rogues for a government

Now that the polls have closed, I can safely let off steam without contravening BBC standards of impartiality. smiley - steamsmiley - steamsmiley - steam

OK - so I've never been what you call patriotic. Unlike many of my fellow citizens, I see no worth in denegrating other nations in favour of my own. But it's home. I belong here. These are my peeps. And I find it hard to stomach that we can do no better than a government whose members should by rights be standing trial in The Hague. Even under the darkest days of The Witch of Grantham, the Falklands Task Force only killed enemy combatants. They haven't even bothered to count the number or Iraqi civilians they helped to murder.

And as for the party that I joined on my eighteenth birthday? OK - so of course I voted for them back in '97. Who didn't? Some of us still had a vague hope that the remaining socialists might be able to lay down the law to that entryist Blair. But any illusions were shattered with the introduction of tuition fees for higher education. Whatever happened to "The first Kinnock in a thousand generations ever to go to university"? - words which exactly reflected my own position.

I utterly despair of a nation led by an incompetent fantasist who bases his decisions on 'belief'. No, Tony. That's not enough for me. Evidence. Truth. Justice.

So...here I am about to get stuck into a bottle of Chilean Merlot. Feck 'em all. Victory to the SSP!


(and bonus points for recognising the poetic allusion in my title).

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Latest reply: May 5, 2005

The Hitchhikers's guide to Hitchhiking

Recent publicity reminds me...whatever happened to hitchhiking. You don't see it any more, do you?

In my young days, I was an avid hitchhiker. It was a convenient way of getting around the country. I also hitchiked around British Columbia - despite scare stories from Ontarian friends (apparently a hitchhiker had been killed about fifteen years previouslysmiley - smiley). There was a difficult period in 1984 because I was at university in Leicestershire, and anyone standing within 200 yards of a motorway junction was assumed to be a flying picket and would be picked up by the police and dropped on a deserted road a few miles into the countryside smiley - steam

But after that it all seemed to stop. When I started driving, I used to pick people up. More and more often these tended to be itinerants travelling between homeless hostels, and I'd usually end up donating the price of a fish supper. Plus, for a while there seemed to be a spate of East European students backpacking in Northern Scotland.

But...you hardly see *any* hitchers these days, do you? And everyone seems so scared.

What are other peoples' experience?

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Latest reply: May 1, 2005


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Edward the Bonobo - Gone.

Researcher U803114

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