Grrrr Postmen

The post office have decided to introduce some new features to the mail delivery. The "great" thing about the post round here is that it seems to get delivered now sometime after 12pm, instead of just before 9am like it used to. Not really a problem as I am out at work so its still all there when I get back in afterwards.

However the only day of the week when they do manage to deliver the post bright and early is saturday morning when it comes at about 7.30am. Or in other words, my day off, when I was sleeping in having been out for a curry the night before. Grrrrrrrrr.

To make it worse, it wasn't even for me, but a box for the neighbours who were away.......

And don't even get me started on the fifteen items of junk mail leaflets that he pushed through beforehand. I signed up to the do-not-send-me-junk-mail list and I get nothing addressed to me any more. All of it is stuck through the letterbox as "specially hand delivered by the postoffice" and not addressed to anyone in particular. I was tempted to shove it into the postmans "letter box" but he had a close escape.

All I can say is its a good job its bonfire week

Grrrr Postmen

The post office have decided to introduce some new features to the mail delivery. The "great" thing about the post round here is that it seems to get delivered now sometime after 12pm, instead of just before 9am like it used to. Not really a problem as I am out at work so its still all there when I get back in afterwards.

However the only day of the week when they do manage to deliver the post bright and early is saturday morning when it comes at about 7.30am. Or in other words, my day off, when I was sleeping in having been out for a curry the night before. Grrrrrrrrr.

To make it worse, it wasn't even for me, but a box for the neighbours who were away.......

And don't even get me started on the fifteen items of junk mail leaflets that he pushed through beforehand. I signed up to the do-not-send-me-junk-mail list and I get nothing addressed to me any more. All of it is stuck through the letterbox as "specially hand delivered by the postoffice" and not addressed to anyone in particular. I was tempted to shove it into the postmans "letter box" but he had a close escape.

All I can say is its a good job its bonfire week

Sad news. John Peel has passed away

I got back from lunch just now to check the bbc news website to sadly discover the announcement about John Peel's death. I feel very hollow now.

Legendary radio DJ John Peel dies

I've listened to his shows on Radio1 for the best part of the last 20 years of my life, and his genuine passion and enthusiasm for music in all its various forms was fantastic especially when compared to his fellow DJ's and all the other playlisted music that pollutes the airwaves today. Forever pushing the boundaries and never afraid to play bands and the non-mainstream music that noone else would touch, the airwaves will be sadly diminished by his absence. My CD collection has been greatly influenced by the music I have heard on his show and I will personally miss that variety and exposure to new bands/music immensely.

There is a huge hole now in radio that I think very few people could fill, and its likely that I'll never find another radio show that will have such a big impact on what I listen to. (Andy Kershaw or Steve Lamaq come the closest and they are miles short). I now don't think there is any reason for me to tune into radio1 again, as it feels thats Tom Petty's song the last DJ pretty much describes what John Peel stood for and fought against.

Well you can’t turn him into a company man
You can’t turn him into a whore
And the boys upstairs just don’t understand anymore
Well the top brass don’t like him talking so much,
And he won’t play what they say to play
And he don’t want to change what don’t need to change

There goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey…

And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice
There goes the last DJ

Well some folks say they’re gonna hang him so high
‘Cause you just can’t do what he did
There’re some things you just can’t put in the minds of those kids

As we celebrate mediocrity all the boys upstairs want to see
How much you’ll pay for what you used to get for free

There goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey…

And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice
And there goes the last DJ

Well he got him a station down in Mexico
And sometimes it’ll kind of come in
And I’ll bust a move and remember how it was back then

And there goes the last DJ
Who plays what he wants to play
And says what he wants to say, hey hey hey…

And there goes your freedom of choice
There goes the last human voice.
And there goes the last DJ


We miss you John, and the music you championed for so long will miss you even more.



His favorite song seems the fitting way to finish this longish blog entry

The Undertones - Teenage kicks

Teenage dreams so hard to beat,
Every time she walks down the street,
Another girl in the neighbourhood,
Wish she was mine, she looks so good.

[Chorus]
I wanna hold you,
Wanna hold you tight,
Yeah teenage kicks right through the night
(Come On!)

Im gonna call her on the telephone,
And have her over cos im all alone,
I need excitement and i need it bad,
Cos its the best ive ever had.

[Chorus]

Teenage dreams so hard to beat,
Every time she walks down the street,
Another girl in the neighbourhood,
Wish she was mine, she looks so good.

[Chorus]

Im gonna call her on the telephone,
And have her over cos im all alone,
I need excitement and i need it bad,
Cos its the best ive ever had.

I wanna hold you,
Wanna hold you tight,
Yeah teenage kicks right through the night
(Alright!)

I wanna hold you wanna hold you tight,

Get those teenage kicks right through the night yeah!
Alright.

Where have I been?

Liz, Ok, ok I'll post something. Anything to be a more active poster than Mr Cullen

So where have I been. Well, nowhere really. I just could not think of anything to post. Well I still can't but I'll try. I do find it quite hard to open up and talk/post about stuff, even if its just what I have done today. Thats just the way I am I guess. Everyone else appears to find it much easier to disclose what are often very personal subjects/topics. I don't tend to bring those kinds of thing into the open in any situation, especially in the very public blog universe. Although I do see some parallels between myself and a few of the other infrequently blogging bloggers in this little circle of ours.

Over the last week I have been building a new pc from bits, which went very smoothly, apart from when I accidentally connected the harddisks power cable across the live-earth connection whilst it was switched on, resulting in a blue spark, the pc shutting off and a few choice words to flood the room. Fortunately the only victim of this accident was the 13amp fuse in the power supply's plug and not the expensive and very electrically sensitive pc componants.

I think I now have everything installed and running as it was on the old system again. It takes ages to reinstall and configure everything from scratch, especially when there is 150Gb of it. Not going to run out of space for a while on this new system though as it has > 0.6Tb of storage space.

I settled down this evening to watch Ray Mears doing one of his Bushcraft programmes. He was trekking across the Masai Mara with a native Masai warrior, who was going to show him some of the Masai survival skills. They settled down for the night, making a traditional masai camp, which effectively involved chopping down some really sharp thorn bushes and making them into a big hedge. They sat down by the fire and started to have some food. The Masai warrior reaches across the camp to poke the fire into life and what do I spot on his wrist?. A wristwatch. They seemed to live about 700 miles from the nearest road, in mud huts, with no electricity or any other obvious modcons, so why on Earth would they need a wristwatch?. Its not as if they need to worry about being late for meetings or anything is it?.

• 8am : Sun rise. Get up
  
• 8.05am : Check to make sure no one has been eaten by Lions in the night
• 8.15am : Breakfast
• 9am : Tend herd of cows and make lunch
• 11am : Meeting with Lions to discuss their concerns re Project Wildebeast
  
• 2pm : Pose for visiting film crew
• 3pm : Networking with the Hyenas
  
• 5pm : Go home for tea
  
• 8pm : Eastenders
• 10pm : Bed