Beagle Found

Not the Mars probe, but the vessel from which it took its name:

Darwin's Beagle ship 'found'

Cockle Picker Cock-Up

Oh dear. A Tory in trouble for making racist comments. What a surprise!

Tory leader sacks cockler joke MP


Michael Howard said:

"Such sentiments have no place in the Conservative Party.

"I deplore them and I apologise for them on behalf of my party."

Curious. I always thought the Tory party was the place for tasteless jokes.

Maya's Room V

I forgot to add the final update. So here it is.

The redundant LPs are up in the loft now.

We have two sorts of LPs (vinyl, for you youngsters); redundant and not-redundant. The latter are those which we don't have replicated on CD but which we listen to from time to time. This pile gets smaller, as if we like something enough to listen to it regularly we will tend to buy it on CD. The former pile has two categories. The first is those LPs that are not replicated, but which are listened to so infrequently that it isn't worth taking up valuable space having them to hand. I have some dodgy 80s Metal that lives in this group, for example. The other category is those LPs which have been replicated on CD but which we can't bear to part with. I have loads of Mike Oldfield LPs, for example, that I went to a lot of effort to acquire and just can't bring myself to ditch. It also includes those LPs which have covers worth keeping; Jeff Wayne's 'War of the Worlds' might sound better on CD, but you need the LP cover and book to get the full 1970s 'multi-media' experience.

I said this was the final update. I lied. Maya's bed has yet to come, so stay tuned for that. Will it arrive on time? Will it arrive at all? Can we assemble it? And will it even fit in her room?

And is this all really a desperate attempt to pad this Blog?

Today's Mystery

Why do all Israeli politicians interviewed on Radio 4 sound like Elmer Fudd?

Be vewy, vewy quiet; I'm hunting Awafat ...

Maya's Room IV

It's done. Catherine (with a little help) decorated it this week, and moved the surviving furniture back in. Her bed is now on order (ten weeks!), so that's it for now, aside from a few items still to go up into the loft.

And we've had our hot water/heating boiler serviced at last; I haven't recorded that particular saga, but it's been long and unpleasant.

Happy Anniversary

To Catherine and me; married for eleven years today!

Diamonds Are Forever

I remember a 1960s sci-fil film that revolved around a sapphire asteroid. But this is incredible:

Diamond star thrills astronomers

Babirusa

I think babirusas are fantastic (I sound like that guy from the Fast Show - 'Aren't South East Asian pigs great!?'). A few years ago I sponsored one at Dudley Zoo, and always like to see them when I can. So it's nice to see that there is a small hope for their diminishing wild population:

Curly-tusked boxing pigs rejoice

Oink!

Marwell Animal Park in Hampshire has some, if you want to see any.

Maya's Room III

Well, we got the van, and shifted two wardrobes, a chest of drawers and Maya's bed out of the house. Maya now no longer has a bed and will probably be without one for the next few weeks until we can order her new one. This won't happen until after her room is decorated which, I think, is a task I will miss, as Catherine is at home all week on half-term holiday, and I am at work.

The house is a mess (well, more of a mess than it usually is) with loads of stuff displaced whilst we work out where it's going to go and what we are going to replace the removed furniture with. Still, at least all of the major heavy lifting is done.

One thing that has come out of it is that Catherine and I are considering getting a cabin style bed for ourselves, opening up a whole load of space in our room at the expense of sleeping with our noses touching the ceiling.

Not just my nose, actually ...

Maya's Room II

A week later ...

It has begun. This weekend we started clearing out wardrobes ready for them to be removed next week. However, this meant clearing out other cupboards in order to provide space for the contents of the wardrobes. And this meant putting those things in the loft.

We now have two empty wardrobes. All of our clothes are now in a walk-in cupboard. And the contents of the walk-in cupboard (which can best be described as 'accumulated possessions') are now in the loft. Oddly enough, because of the precarious way they were stacked in the cupboard, many things are now more accessible now they are in the loft than they ever were before! I might go and sit up there one afternoon and re-read my comic collection, now unearthed from the bottom of a big pile of boxes.

Next weekend: We get the van and start moving furniture. And half of the LPs go up into the loft.

Maya's Room

The horrors of DIY have caught up with me. Catherine has decided that it is time that we Did Something to the House, and we're starting by redecorating Maya's room. Please bear with me as, over the next few weeks, I unburden myself of the horror this induces in me.

As part of the process we will be getting rid of a load of furniture as well, which is going to be chaos. Over a couple of days we've got to ditch three wardrobes and a chest of drawers; most of them will have to be taken apart and lugged downstairs. This is not going to be fun. Then we've got to invest in a new bed for Maya; probably one of those cabin style ones that you can have a desk and chair underneath, although we're not sure whether her room has enough clearance for one of those.

We did venture up into the loft yesterday, for the first time since we moved in. We've looked into the loft before, but until yesterday have never had a ladder long enough to actually climb inside. I think a lot of stuff currently cluttering the house is going into Mr. Loft. More work. More heavy lifting. More woe.

Anyway, we now have the paint and wallpaper for Maya's room. There's no going back ...

Georgia Petition

In an attempt to foist their own standards of ignorance on the poulation, creationists in the state of Georgia are looking to remove all mention of evolution from school textbooks. The following is a link to a petition opposing this:

Georgia Petition


Please add your name to it if you care about creationist ignorance being foisted on the young. It appears that you don't have to be a resident of either Georgia or the USA in order to sign it.