Today I found myself with an hour to kill on the south coast, in between storytimes, so stopped en route to look at some of the changes the recent weather has wrought. I couldn't get to the big things: the big cliff falls, the collapsed sea walls, and, worst of all, the stretch of main road - full of houses - that has half disappeared. ( But I did get a few pictures of the somewhat less drastic things: )

What do bunting factories make in between jubilees? I'm imagining factories full of depressed bunting specialists, getting every more droopy and depressed, until a jubilee comes around, and finally their machines burst into life again, and the workers can put into practise all their ancient hard won bunting skills ( Read more... )

I heard on the news the other day that UK petrol prices had reached an average price of £1.40 per litre for unleaded petrol. This surprised me, since it's been over £1.40 for many months at the petrol stattion I drive past every few days. At that petrol station today, it was 147.8p per litre, but I passed another one at selling it at 148.9. So ( Read more... )

Back when I lived in Gloucestershire, the fun part of any international disaster was the "local wasn't actually caught in it!" new stories that followed in the local paper. (Our local paper here on the island doesn't seem to do this quite so much.) Sometimes the paper failed to play the game properly, and actually included a local who really was ( Read more... )

Tonight, at home time, the industrial estate on which I work was eerily empty. Instead of packed car parks with queues to leave them, there was just silence and emptiness. Since I can't think of any reason why so many workers might have chosen to take the afternoon off, I can only assume that some hideous apocalypse is upon us. Mass alien abduction ( Read more... )

I have no interest in football or the World Cup, and will not be watching it. However, I'm getting increasingly annoyed by articles that sneer at the whole thing, dismissing it as stupid, and implying that the writer is superior in some way by not being interested. Everyone is interested in different things, after all. While I don't feel passionate ( Read more... )

So last week we had the revelation that stoned wallabies cause crop circles. Yesterday we had the mega-colony of ants that covers the entire world, and today we have a wall of dolphins and a cat appearing on a political debate show. Either these are signs and portents of the coming apocalypse in which all the animals of the world rise up and ( Read more... )

A few weeks ago, I read a very interesting book about the 1918 flu pandemic. At about the same time, I also read one about the Black Death, and did quite a lot of online reading about cholera epidemics, typhus on battlefields, and malaria in Britain.

I'm kind of wishing I hadn't done so now.

I've just been watching the QE2's final departure from Southampton (and seeing how busy it is, it's probably a good thing that Pellinor's in London for a few days, and not trying to come home in it.) It's got everything ( Read more... )

Wow! China plans to open 640,000 new libraries over the next 7 years.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/12/content_7772153.htm