Happy Friday

"Doing it all for the wonderful Clare White, every Friday."
- The Friday Thing

Of course, other Clare Whites are available, so I don't *know* that this is for me, but it's cheered me up no end anyway.

I've been meaning to give The Friday Thing a plug for a while, it pops into the inbox each Friday and is brilliant. I have to do something complicated to the formatting now to print it out since saying (sigh) farewell to Treo, otherwise it comes to 36 printed pages. It provides constant entertainment well beyond Rugby (one for their quotes column there). It also tells you a lot you no longer get round to reading in the newspapers because they're such nonsense. I have in common with them the preference for emphatic stars and wonder if they too have the irritation of having to say no, I *really* mean stars, when clever email programmes do their own formatting. I have generally been inspired by them every week in various ways, many plagiarous (sp? real word?).

It is one of the very few things I subscribed to, paying some forgotten amount of money ages ago for some magazine. I had concluded that I would pay for it again if their subscription system was up to asking me but this week they announced that I don't have to. TFT is going free. As some readers know, I have a bit of a belief in subscription-based fine writing, so I'm hoping they have an alternative model that is based on them selling enugh words to pay their writers. They probably do, the lovely chaps.

Anyway, enough gushing or I'll become a target for mockery. Fickle, fickle TFT.

Basic beliefs

I know I’m not the only one who feels they should be more proactive about getting their point of view across to decision-makers about the issues we care about. I have a rolling list of things to write to my MP about and am thus put off by the fact that it is too long.

But I also slightly resent the fact that it is these expressions of public interest that are deemed to be the most effective in Getting Things Done. In most cases, it seems a bit silly to be writing to my MP with sentiments like ‘I feel very strongly that the killing of hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Darfur should be stopped’ so that some parliamentary assistant can put it in the pile marked ‘against genocide’, stacked up against the Friends of Khartoum amongst Stoke’s populus.

Couldn’t the UN organise a massive survey to once and for all ascertain everyone’s views on certain key issues? They could then use this to spur governments into action at appropriate moments. It could go something like this:
* Should carpet/suicide-bombing, murder, rape or torture be allowed, ever? When answering this, bear in mind that the victim could be you next.
* Should people be locked up without trial, or should we find out if they’re guilty, just to be absolutely clear in our own minds?
* Should the trafficking of human beings for sexual or other forms of labour be tolerated in a free market global society, or should we come down on it like a ton of bricks?
* Should we allow countries to run their own countries in a way that has the consent of the people (with the option of peacefully protesting to show opposition if they wish), or should we use the supply of food aid as a gentle incentive to push out the democratically elected leaders we don’t like?
* How many deaths, by whatever means but lets start with starvation and civilian killings, are acceptable, before action is taken to stop the deaths?
a) More than 2 b) More than 500 c) More than 5,0000 d) More than 500,000 e) It depends on the country

Finally, one from the Sun
* Should the Human Rights Act be scrapped?
You can probably still vote on the Sun’s website, unless they’ve taken it down now - the vote when I looked was 81 per cent saying "er, *no*", which didn’t seem to be the answer they were looking for.

Answers to be returned to the UN, New York.

Cold Turkey

So, some of you know that my lova affair with the Treo 600 turned a bit sour, due to a combination of lost cables, stints in snow (my fault) and crashes, mangled emails and a huge bill ('their' fault). I was finally seduced by a good offer and a 100 song MP3 player to switch across.

On Monday, the Treo was Switched Off.

Suddenly I realised what a life without Treo meant. From frustrating emails to no emails, limited notepad space to *no* notepad space. And predictive bloody texting, didn't it all seem so clever once, before they actually managed to fit a keyboard onto a mobile phone. Oh, what a drag.

In theory, I can access the internet with my Motorola ROKR and BBC news works quite well on it, but I've yet to crack Gmail and am only even trying during the free offer period, after which data downloads become stupidly expensive. There are no downloadable applications, according to the official website, unless they involve pictures or ringtones. So no decent memo pad. The buttons are in really silly places.

Most of all, my email link on the train is Gone. I try to accept that email is an addiction. That, just like all the people who have their Blackberry by their right hand all the time, I want to feel that somebody has emailed me, that I am important enough to *need* to check my emails every hour, if not every five minutes, just to on the safe side. That email is a delightful distraction which can be dealt with just as adequately, if not more efficiently, in alotted periods of time, rather than every time my mind wanders and I want the buzz of the new message, even if it is only a notification that Blockbuster have received my DVD safely.

I can break the cycle, I can fill my ears with educational and entertaining podcasts while another part of my brain scribbles inspired ideas into a notebook. I can live without it. Money saved, addiction challenged, all for the good.

Today I missed my Treo.

Oh, heck

Nice one. Vote BNP, she says, below. Bugger it, they're not listening. And they do. Not exactly droves of them, but 5 elected in Stoke. Nick Griffin picks Stoke to come and celebrate. Nice one, voters (bless you for at least bothering).

Still, the nice thing is our council overall looks pretty multicultural to me. Lots of Asian names, no Labour control and a new leader. Should be a good learning experience for our new BNP leaders.

A sad state of affairs

As we approach local elections, there is a lot of talk about how the BNP are going to do ever so well and we'd better make sure we all turn out and vote for a safer pair of hands. Although one of the scare-surveys comes from a respoctable source (JRCT), I can't help feeling its being used as the latest distraction from Westminster. The one about how I didn't support the war so vote for me, not the party, was failing to fool the punters yet again, so they're trying Vote for me or the fascists will come for you and your kids. Even the Tories are getting in on the line, but then they seem to be sharing them these days - there must be a shortage.

How likely is it that either of these parties are actually listening to the concerns on the doorstep? The failure of the mainstream parties to listen - ever - has disenfranchised people so much that they're reverting to their own shock tactics in the hope of penetrating the brick wall of spin and nonsense.

I hate the BNP as much as the next 76 per cent, but if we wake up on May 5 with our councils run by a bunch of racists whose idea of good society involves having us all goose-stepping round our local squares every Sunday, I don't think we'll see much difference. It'll still be the inmates of Westminster with all the power and today's Baghdad-bombing-jail-without-jury-Charles-Clarke-the-lunatic reality will remain as scary as it is today.

As strong messages to the government go, I'm sure we can do better than voting for the BNP. In his references to cockroaches that haven't quite got him locked up as yet, Nick Griffin was using the same ideology that helped prompt nearly a million Rwandan deaths 12 years ago. I still don't believe the majority of the British people would have anything to do with him.

But if voters are using the same scare tactics as the government to try and get noticed, then it's pretty clever. I would join the 90 per cent of voters who told Margaret Hodge they'd be voting BNP. Like a shot. I'd tell her anything if it would wipe the smug expression from her face for just a moment (ah, the old hatred still runs deep!). But what does it say about the state of our politics?

Has anybody organised the revolution yet?

City scenes

Like most weekends since Christmas, Warhorse the Scooter had to go in to have repairs done on her wheels. I go to Foley's in Fenton, where my father and all our biking forefathers before him have gone, since the beginning of time.

She was going to take a while, so I set off with time to waste. On the bus up to Hanley, vast swathes of old terraces have been demolished, leaving behind toothy stubs of people's memories and exposed Victorian back yards. The big signs (by developers who have finally managed to spell Wedgwood correctly) say the land will be turned into deluxe canalside apartments, but these plans have been around for ages and nobody's quite sure that it will happen or whether anyone wants to live in them anyway.

"Can you ring in about half an hour duck, the lads have just gone off for some snappin''". So I carried on walking. This phrase reminded me of the terrapins that live in Hanley Forest Park lake. They must have been liberated in the post Mutant Hero Turtle era and seem to have survived several winters quite happily, eating ducklings and whatever else they can. Small boys in the area call them "terrypeens" and they are a famous attraction, though hated by the fishermen.

Beyond the lake, the new skating park is packed. Arguably the only good thing the local authority has ever done for the city, everyone under 18 in Stoke is now a skater. Next to it, a half finished adventure playground has been invaded by a family. The parents sit quite happily on a bench watching their tiny charges frolic on equipment still coated in plastic. Towering all around them is a site fence, a segment of which they or someone else has knocked down, with yellow signs saying 'Danger: do not enter'. The skaters have obviously given people a taste for risk. Hopefully they won't sue the council if the youngsters drop onto the gravel on their heads.

I hang around Hanley, managing to get two good lattes on chocolate brown comfy sofas. Five years ago this would have been impossible. For the first one I read the Sun and get very alarmed by its horrifying view of Britain and pornographic descriptions of child pornography. For the second I escape to Baghdad, with Chikitita's moving blog. She could teach the Sun journalists a thing or two about, well, everything.

Checking in at Foley's, Warhorse isn't going to be ready until Monday. Doesn't matter how long I hang around waiting, it isn't to be. I set off home, not able to face another bus. Between towns, I realise that nobody else is walking other than teenagers and ethnic minorities. Groups of women in veils and pairs of men who everyone assumes are asylum seekers but may well be bussed off to various low paid jobs in the early mornings of the week. The rest of Stoke drives cars, it's a kind of segregation. Buses are for old people and those who are trying to navigate a distance too far to walk. So if you can't afford to run a car or pay multiple fares to get across the towns, you're stuck in whatever part of the city you happen to have landed in.

Reaching Burslem, there are shops with flats above that look far too small for human habitation. The only reason they haven't been cleared yet is that nobody has ever got round to it, but I hope they won't. They are relics from a town in which rich and poor lived side by side, or the very rich lived as far as Cobridge or up the hill in Newcastle, and they came together to produce pottery and go to church.

Cars being the first ambition of everyone in Stoke, the second is bigger cars. Most people own their houses, which don't go up in value very much, so you might as well buy a better car. Since, by my measurements, the terraces I pass are as wide as a Metro, this means many people own cars which are longer than their houses are wide. They must be very proud.

There's not enough time to vent irritation in full - here's a start

Most of us can just watch while our leaders do nothing, some are lucky enough to be able to use their position of influence to encourage failure to protect.

In focusing on the wars being played out, Paul "Khartoum have a point" Moorcroft avoids referring to the massive humanitarian crisis in Darfur and now Chad. Help is unable to get to people because it is too insecure and too big an area for the current troops to provide protection.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed, raped and displaced. These are people who play no part in any conflict.

The whole point of intervention is not to bring a third party to the fighting, but to protect civilians. Only a large force of international peacekeepers can adequately achieve this. Fiddling around with racial or tribal definitions to say it isn't genocide is as stupid as the racism endemic in Sudanese society itself, but Moorcroft misses the point again. Hutus and Tutsis are all black, they all *look the same*. Western Jews don't look terribly different from the rest of us, unless you feel like emphasising difference to incite militias to kill and rape large amounts of people. Since September, genocide stopped being the point - the international community took on a responsibility to protect civilians if their own government could not.

This parallel with Iraq is deliberately unhelpful. Bush and Blair were wrong in that adventure, but you imply they are the only ones to want action. Millions of people around the world want to see protection for the people of Darfur. Of course a 'white, western force' would be innapropriate, but they would be joining the current AU force, which has included many Rwandans. Bush shouldn't be making the decision, it should be the UN, but force needs to come from countries who have the expertise and equipment to boost what the AU are already providing.

The world commuity have a responsibility to protect the people of Darfur immediately. Immediately, as in 2003. The International Crisis Group has made sensible recommendations about what should be done.

Simply, it should be 'whatever it takes' to protect, feed and heal people. Toppling the Sudan government does not need to be on the agenda here. But they should be held responsible if their continuing refusal to allow humanitarian oversight allows more people to die, whether by airstrike or starvation. Civil war is still used to distract and deny the genocide in Rwanda and this and other prevarications allow Moorcroft to support Khartoum's arguments to keep out.

After telling people all the reasons why 'we' shouldn't be involved, he quite rightly says that AU and Islamic troops should be strengthened. At least we can agree on this, but conveniently enough it will save us a lot of money and once again the West will be seen to do nothing while Africa and the Muslim world try harder. Given the strength of feeling in the West, this differentiation is ridiculous. This needs to be a cooperative effort.

With most of your arguments, you've probably convinced a whole lot of readers and policy-makers that we should sit this one out till its bitter end. May you be judged for it.

Spring comes to England!

A pastoral post

It is light enough for my commute through 188 miles of England and back to be very enjoyable. An Observer report I just read claimed that 20 per cent of start or finish in the UK, an amazing statistic considering our size (the report wasn't clear on the source of this figure or whether it was a projection) that if true shows how wealthy many Britons are, relatively speaking. We are colonising the world, though more quietly than we used to.

The English tend to forget the extent of beauty in their own country. I blame cars, for I've never appreciated our countryside as much until I could see it more clearly from train and scooter.

The break from Watford into open country is sudden and spectacular. From the train, the sky looks huge with miles of open fields where lambs are starting to roam and even gambol. The train regularly slows down and the countryside is broken up by towns, skyscrapers, a power station next to a golf course, farmhouses and chicken homes.

The canal frequently stretches alongside the railway along with old industrial buildings. A reminder of the visionaries who, in earlier centuries, carved Britain into a centre of industry with efficient transport lines to take pottery and people from the North to London in a flash.

Arnold Bennett saved his newspaper for the boring, ugly section after Rugby, but for me its extent of tracks represent the point when, if I have a table to myself and room to stretch, I can shake off the stress of the day and watch the sun go down.

Huntin' for a tool

Ask and you will receive, that’s usually the case. For once, Google isn’t giving me what I want, so I’ll need to resort to the blog, in the hope this gets picked up by someone who has already done it. Hopefully someone who doesn’t make their explanation too technical or expect me to download anything.

There is a lot around at the moment about how our electronic content is gradually replacing physical content and the various advantages and disadvantages that brings. One of the disadvantages is that you there is a need to hold more in your memory, to remember what you need to remember. One of the reasons so many people (that means you, most of my readers) horde books is that they serve as a memory-bank for us, we can idly scan over the bookshelves and they will remind us of something we once read that was useful, inspiring or just funny. The computer, though wildly rich in scope, is always looked at through a single window and I find lists difficult to scroll through. Search makes it easier and I am now fully converted to the ‘search don’t sort’ principle, especially as Google is generally intuitive enough to understand what you mean once you have conversed with it enough to understand the kind of fragments it understands.

But all of these methods really require the necessity to have at least a kernel in your head or a reminder set up. For me, cursed with a frequently blank memory, del.icio.us tagging helps to create an archive of my trawls through cyberspace. The tags mean you can also look through lists of what you think you might have come across in different groups. But despite my forays into some spectacular things (see right) I haven’t found quite the tool I want.

Which is:
Something that will make all my del.icio.us links look like bookspines, arranged on a bookshelf. Each different tag could have a colour and links with several tags can have several colours, of course. They could be arranged by order, colour or size, the size of the spine being dictated by how much text there is in the title - I feel this touch would give the variety I need when looking over the ‘shelf’, otherwise it will just be lots of similar looking blocks. Perhaps the size could also relate to the size of the page referred to, but I feel the former option is more feasible. Looking at del.icio.us soup and spacenav, I’m sure some exciting things could be done to create shelves that move around based on their relationships and even moving out into other people’s libraries a la LibraryThing and their books. Oh, but apart from all the fancy stuff I want to be able to put the shelves into a PDF so if I like I can print them to put on the wall or in a folder.   

It’s no big departure from the way del.icio.us works anyway, but this exact visualisation would really make me happy. Can anyone point me to where it’s already been built?

I - am - so - hard

.

Oh yes, and I still got to work on time (with the help of strong boys who picked up Warhorse and pulled me from under her). Making a fuss over snow? Yer pansies.

Small, but significant, question

I listen to a lot of pop now, but rarely see the videos. Does Pink's video for Stupid Girl do what I expect and feature lots of sexy girls wiggling and thrusting? Thereby allowing her to have a video that appeals visually to the audience and yet still making her point. I would expect that from the funkiness of her track and the prompts it has for Beyonce-like shimmying.

The more subtle alternative would be to have Pink in a black coat, no make-up and merely fill the video with funky dancing plantpots and perhaps some tiny dogs, if you must.

Please can someone tell me which she chose?

Adolescent anarchist dabblings

The 'peace through superior firepower' link to the right reminds me that through most of my teenage years (and maybe still now) I had a small poster on my wall saying "Bullets, not ballots. Put the bastards in the cemetary". For some reason this sort of thing has always made me giggle. Like many other sub-editors, I always have to resist the urge to write entirely inappropriate headlines or sell-lines, even as a filler (as they always get left there by accident and then Bad Things Happen). My sense of humour doesn't tend to appeal to the serious pacifist, religious types, as I learn every time I forget myself and write something in The Friend.

When I got the poster I was, with a few other readers of this blog, a member of the Potteries Defiance Alliance. We fought the tyranny of the Conservative government and the Criminal Justice Act which (I think still) makes it technically illegal for more than two people to gather without permission, especially if they are broadcasting 'repetitive beats'. We, aged 14 and too old for youth club, too young for nightclubs (just), spent a happy afternoon in the front garden of the local Conservative Club dancing to the subversive beats of Beethoven while the Staffs and Keele students with us drank beer and baited the Tories therein.

I don't think we ever actually achieved anything - except a lie-down protest to demand speed-humps in Chesterton did work, if my poor memory serves me right - but it was good fun. We took to the streets of Stoke each week, sometimes sitting-in at the police station or the MP's surgery, handing out flyers with striking communist symbols to passing shoppers for them to place in the nearest bin. I used to make a fiver a go by venting my rage in the Sent'null's Startwrite page once I realised that they would instantly put anything in that was anything a bit more well-written than "There is lots of litter in my road". Now I come to think of it, it was probably that profitable sideline of the protest movement that halted my development into a fully fledged communist.

Just stop it

The official line in our uninvited war against terror is to hike up the dehumanisation process, including anyone in the right place in the 'other side'.

Two examples: an American general on UK TV last weekend claiming that Al Quaida didn't sign the Geneva Convention so international law doesn't apply to them. Coincidentally, John Reid, the UK defence secretary, quoted in the Observer on the same day, said: "Please be very quick to condemn, and very quick to defend and praise our soldiers, because they work in the most extremely difficult circumstances [poor lambs] against an enemy who is completely unconstrained by any morality, any legal conventions, any human-rights standards and any scrutiny and that makes it difficult for the men and women who serve this country".

This was, need I add, in the context of a barbaric video in which soldiers beat up teenagers, cheered on by the film maker. In lumping together several groups of people: the suicide bombers with the ordinary Iraqis and the conscientious soldiers with the sadistic bastards, our governments dehumanise us all. How can we be surprised if Muslims see the West as one entity, blacks see whites as one entity, if our leaders fail to differentiate and treat any of us to intelligent statements? Extremism is being fuelled at the moment from all sides by blind statements, free speech and offense being bandied around from all sides.

Our governments are using the new war as an excuse to erode human rights standards signed up to after the most terrible world wars. Wars may not between countries any more but they are still between human beings. More to the point, people caught in places of war must always have the basic standards of justice, the right to a trial and the right not to be tortured.

They are committing a grave crime against all of us, overall worse than individual crimes of murder or torture because they are inciting hatred against groups of people. This war has got to stop before friendship across cultures are stubbed out completely. I am so sick of this regime that spends a fortune in our name on sheer wrong-doing, eroding our human rights step by step. I see this world of connections and essential goodness, basic, simple rights that were built up for centuries, against all the odds, now being neglected by a generation that grew up in the peaceful world of the safety net, people who will sacrifice any faraway people for our own expensive, flawed security. This war is going on without any oversight and it doesn't have my consent anymore. Something tells me I'm not the only one.

Revolution, anyone?

Thoughts from the train

What's worse, no reading or Media Guardian, I ask myself as I plough
through it out of some long-ingrained sense of duty, sickened by the tired
tiny circle of Hammersmith blondes puffing up each others egos, uplifted
for a moment by the newspaper sales falls, enjoying at least Office Hours
which always makes secretarial careers very tempting. Is there anything more
horrific, for this ex-wannabe hack*, than seeing a once-honourable industry
in its death throes, comment writers clutching desperately at blog-sticks as
they are engulfed in the waves of voices of people for whom opinions are not
hawked on the streets with glossy headers but simply shared and genuinely
felt. Enough of this reading that makes me irritated, there's enough to
plough through in this short life.

* Note: During these rants, do keep at the back of your mind that the mainstream media never did give me a job

British beats

Radio 1 are only playing British music over the next few days for the Brit awards. It's a nice excuse to pull out the Smiths and the Cure and all that, and how nice that Little Fluffy Clouds is British, all about Arizona.

If you haven't listened to Radio 1 for a few years, it's well worth giving it another go (from anywhere). They're riding the waves of the fact that pop music is Ace again and they've done a great job of cross promoting their programmes and drawing you into new music. Even the evening shows that used to be too cool to bother with now create a nice balance of involving people without becoming too local radio, so even Wayne from Cheltenham finds himself dancing away in his living room and texting in to Nihal & Bobby Friction.

This is the sort of British-celebrating that is good. You realise how much variety there is here, the country where a blonde teenager from Devon can win awards for Urban music. But I'm missing the American stuff, it has to be said. Less bumpin' n grindin' for a few days, except of course to the Arctic Monkeys.

Can't we all just get along?

I've been thinking a lot about identity and belonging recently, amongst other deep things prompted by the Never Again virtual retreat experiment I've been working on in the last week. And of course by That Cartoon Row.

Probably because I'm an only child, I've never been at all good at belonging to organised groups and can't say I like them much. Watching the Quakers regularly tear each other apart over what they should and shouldn't believe is rather sad. If they weren't always trying to keep it together as a coherent group (there is a popular saying that organising Quakers is like herding cats) they could get on with things they have real talent at, like abolishing slavery and reforming prisons. I've always felt their view of 'that of God' is perfectly compatible with the whole spectrum of spiritual beliefs, it seems to be the 'that' which is the most important element there, denoting a shared experience of something that binds us together as humans and the external mysteries that are forces for good (or bad). But people normally get cross when I make theological statements.

The only group I've really claimed membership to is Londoners and now that my London generally extends only from one side of Euston Road to t'other, I really miss being a Londoner. Londoners have really managed to crack the one problem that many other communities struggle with: including people and genuinely enjoying their diversity. My happiest London memories are of events like Respect at the Millennium Dome, dancing to Indian-inspired pop, or the riverside crowds milling around different ethnic food stalls. In Stoke there is a pervasive sense of natives vs everyone else and, despite its famed friendliness, in times of trouble the natives snap into fear and defensiveness. Whereas in London, ethnic areas tend to be adopted by the trendy young (partly because they are the cheapest for students but also because they like them, despite the dangers in some), in Stoke they are seen as ghettos and you are told you 'wont' be welcome' to areas like Cobridge. London was secure enough that even the bombs couldn't divide us: they probably had a greater effect on community relations and racism in the North than Bloomsbury, where people were actually killed.

So where does it leave me, left out? I hope it isn't too twee to say I feel part of humanity, the global community. Never Again, as an organisation in its very early stages, has given me a real sense of being able to act as an individual as part of a wider picture. I've learnt an emormous amount from people with totally different backgrounds from all over the world. I now see my own views as valid, but part of a greater tapestry of views and enjoy the challenge of engaging with perspectives that are totally different. I want to be part of a community that has one thing in common - its own humanity - and works to accept, even enjoy, different views and beliefs. Actions that infringe on others' human rights are indefensible but beyond that our different global systems are completely compatible if we accept that we don't have to be the same, we don't have to agree with each other and constructive conflict is natural, even healthy. Conflict, if partnered with dialogue, leads us to creative ideas that may never have been thought of in our own unchallenged worlds.

So that's my community, one that the internet makes more possible than ever before.

And finally a post that gets my hair off the top of the blog!

New hair!

(note to anyone coming because they've read a certain review that has this categorised as News and Current Affairs, sorry, it's probably not what you're looking for. Note to self: recategorise White Llama on blogger site as Messages to Friends)

So I had a haircut last week! And it is shorter than it has been since I was about seven. I may take a picture on my iFriend.

Most responses so far have been kind, but notable ones (all from men, which may be significant) have included:
"So why did you decide to cut your hair?"
"Aegh! You look different!"
"Grow some hair!"
Sigh.

After a few days of deep concern after the hairdresser made me look a bit like a Blair-babe ("You look very, I don't know, managerial") it has settled back into its impish wavy sort of look ("That reminds me, I was going to lend you some straighteners") in which I try hard not to look like Wednesday Addams.

It must have done some good as I got ID'd again on Saturday. Hehe.

Further adventures of Warhorse

It hasn't been a happy year for my scooter so far. Not content with a visit from the RAC and subsequent trip to the garage, she managed to get stolen on New Years Day. A good kicking and abandonment in a carpark followed before she was rescued and yet again limped home worse for wear. Now sadly skinned at the front and sans her useful right-hand mirror, she is bravely showing off the resilience of Italian engineering and ran quite happily to the station this morning despite her exposed breast.

As a consequence of this, I had new encounters with my neighbours, whose pluck (if you should use such a word for Stoke teenagers) in standing up to the gang in question and willingness to go after a scooter belonging to someone they barely know outweighed the distress about poor Warhorse's near miss from being blown up round the back of the local health club.

The police, despite having the best intelligence in the world in a population nearly as close knit as certain small central African nations, were not very optimistic about a prosecution for criminal damage. Neither did they seem to keen to boost my hopes that (a) the young criminals would pay for the damage and (b) that they might be given a nice skate park to keep them occupied, but they have been quite good. Still, we've learnt a lesson from this, I think. Mine: it really is true what they say, don't leave your possessions unlocked, even for a minute. The little beasts will be awaiting to swoop like magpies. I don't know what Warhorse has learnt, hopefully not to go off with strangers again.

Indulging in an update

It's snowing in Burslem and the mother town is looking very pretty indeed. Here's me suffering from Mac block - yes, the keyboard is working (see conversation, below) but the Mac remains a distracting, though lovely, thing. I find it extremely difficult to actually think on the computer. I will recommend Freemind, a mapping tool that also looks very pretty, but beyond that I don't seem to get a lot done once I enter the wonderful world of Tiger.

A holiday update: Christmas was very relaxing, almost comotose. Sadly swiftly followed by myself and the poor scooter Warhorse* breaking down simulataneously. I'm still on the lemsips and Warhorse is still in the scooter doctors waiting for a replacement pump, uphold her in the light and hope with me that it won't cost an absolute fortune and wipe out my Christmas no-train travel savings. I had many lovely presents including a New Yorker Cats diary, which I've actually wanted for two years and which has a lovely birthday planner, meaning that I hope to remember people's birthdays** for the first time since 1992.

2005 is nearly over, a year in which I have travelled around 90,000 miles, give or take a trip to Central Africa. An adventurous year for most, myself included and an exciting one to come. Should I not post again for a few days, Happy New Year!!



* Named Warhorse after a slightly higher than average number of bruises, knocks and scratches. O come back my pretty silver beast & I will not treat you so badly again nor let anyone else knock you over with cars, other bikes or hands, o no
**If, you have a birthday, please remind me of it unless you are Jess or Chloe in which case you come under the 1992 rule.

Wasting my life away with Apple-V

I promised 'many' people that I would update by blog on my lovely new iMac and so I will. Sadly on day 2 of the holidays, most of which I fully intended to waste on my new iFriend, the spacebar has broken. Having accepted that there are no free speech-to-text programmes (unless anyone can enlighten me?), typing has taken on a new zen-like quality as I am forced to copy-paste all my spaces. Yes, it is very tedious, but you get used to it.

Otherwise, iFriend and I are getting on famously. Trust nobody who says they wouldn't touch one (Riaz) for they are living their lives in a dark tunnel of PC madness. Tiger gives you Dashboard! Widgets! RSS feed screensavers! A squeezable mouse! Movies and tunes played from the other side of the room with a cool swoosh!!

That's just all I can be bothered to write.Pleasecananyonerecommendawayroundthebloodyspacebar?