Saturday 31 December 2011

Kids! Who'd have 'em?

31 December 2011

There's no News today so we have to make do with the Telegraph.  The front page story is about a lady from Coventry who over the last 35 years has fostered over 150 kids.  That is a remarkable record and well worth being on the front page.  Well done to Janet Finch, who gets an MBE in the New Years Honours List.  As for kids in general ... I love 'em, especially when they are tucked up in bed fast asleep or between 1 and 2 am playing on the fast lane of the M6 with lanes 1 and 2 closed!

Tesco is the news again, and for the wrong reasons yet again.  This time it was because a 10 year old boy was in Tesco Arena in Coventry looking at some iPhones and testing them.  He tried one and got a message, "Shut the f*** up, you ugly t***".  Not at all nice!  It seems that someone nutter had managed to hack into it and leave the message.  The lads parents are rightly very angry over it.  Tesco says, "We have arranged for the handset to be sent for diagnostic testing and we will investigate this issue as a matter of priority with Apple."  The mum is still unhappy seeing that 24 hours after the incident had been reported to the store management the same handset was still on display and still showing the same message.  Not good Tesco, not good at all!
I don't need to tell you that it's New Years Eve do I?  Well, I have done so anyway ;-)))  Are you making any New Year's Resolutions?  I'm not - for two reasons; a, I never keep them anyway; and b, I'm going to be original and break with the tradition ;-)))  You do realize don't you that if you do anything the same way twice it is a tradition?  Honestly, it's true that.  Talking of which ...

While we were out the other day we called in to a pub called the Tudor Arms, about half a mile from Slimbridge and in there was a young lass who actually worked at the Centre.  We sat talking to her and I asked her why she didn't break that tradition and start a new fashion by letter her hair grow in its natural colour - it was the most strikingly vivid green I think I have seen at the time.  She took it in good humour and laughed' not I'd have worried if she hadn't.

So that's it for today then.  Happy New Year to you all.

Friday 30 December 2011

Slight change of plans

30 December 2011

Our plans for New Year's Day was for a birding trip to Norfolk to get our 2012 year list off to a  good start.  Well, instead of heading off to Titchwell and Holkam Hall we will be heading for Norwich to collect Jan's new 70-300mm telephoto lens.  From there we will head to Hickling Broad to do some birding.  Hopefully it might turn out even better really seeing as the common cranes roast there and I hope to get Jan there in time to see them arrive.  I saw them a few years ago at the same place.  It will be nice to get the bearded tits and harriers that are fairly common there too.  Enough of that for now ...

Dorktown is wet and miserable today - just like the bulk of the country it the BEEB has got the weather right for once!  No plans for today other than taking Kile back home later and fuelling the Golf ready for Sunday.  Other than that I hope to get started on some writing but I'm not sure on what yet.  I had a new idea come to me yesterday after watching something on telly.  It will fit in well with one of my story plans I've already laid down.  What I really need to do is to get back on with Happyman!  I still haven't had any ideas as where to take that on from where I already am with it.  My other major project is getting my NaNo effort ready for Kindle.  It will be a freebie though I think.  It's not really long enough to make a charge for it but it might interest some folk to buy The Mission and House of Pain later.  Got to be worth a try methinks.

Mobile phone companies are getting uppity again.  The council refused planning permission for a number of mast to be erected within the town.  Now Vodaphone have appealed to somebody or other in Bristol.  Both councils, town and county are warning that winning that appeal will be the thin edge of a very large wedge that will see mast grow in number all over the town.  I'm not sure as to why they need new masts.  As far as I am aware there are no blind (or deaf) spots here in Dorktown so I fail to see why they need the new masts at all.  There are areas around the country where there are no coverage at all and perhaps they should be sorting those out before trying to install new masts where there is ample coverage already.  Which reminds me ...

At one point we were looking for a move to Weymouth in Dorset and we were packed and ready to go.  At that time we had Orange mobiles on a new 18 month contract.  We contacted them to see about cancelling it seeing as there was no Orange coverage anywhere near there.  They refused to even consider it, which didn't say much for their customer care did it? 

So what's next for today then?  Well, we will be taking Kile out to PC World this afternoon - so maybe the writing won't get done.  We have had a large windfall of dosh so I'm getting my netbook now while we have the dosh to get it.  From there a trip to Morrisons I think.  We like it there but it is rather pricy but the quality of their goods is great.  Some time ago we decided to shop there regular but found we were paying around 25% more for a weekly shop than we did at Asda.  We went back to Asda pretty quickly. 

I don't know about you good folks but I'm stuffed up.  I'm fed up with eating for the sake of it!  Yes I know, it's my choice and I could have said, "no," but I didn't.  I don't think I will be eating much at all today.  Mind you, I did enjoy my glass of malt last night.  Ardmore is not the best malt I've had but it's not a bad one either.  Maybe another tonight ;-)))    

Thursday 29 December 2011

Have you noticed the days drawing out yet?

29 December 2011

No, neither have I, but it is a bit too early just yet.  Towards the end of next month and we will see a difference.

So what are your plans for today then?  For me, I won't be doing much at all seeing as we have Kile for a few days.  He's a good lad and no trouble at all although his mum says he can be a real horror at times.  That's the beauty of having grandkids; you can have them and spoil them rotten and give them back to mum and dad to sort out later ;-)))  Actually, we don't spoil him really.  As much as we can we take him out in the car and usually go where we don't have to spend a lot of money, simply because we don't have a lot.  He loved the air museum at RAF Cosford.  Those sort of days are for summer time, or at least when it's nice and warm - today it's raining hard here in Dorktown.

I began reading David Lindo's The Urban Birder last night.  It's a nice easy read and so far I'm enjoying it.  Birders use their eyes to ID a bird obviously, but a lot of them also use their ears too.  Bird song and call is a certain way of deciding which bird is which in some of the more difficult species to ID.  It was the difference in songs that caused the split between chiffchaff and willow warbler in the 19th century.  The point is, David Lindo caught mumps when he was a kid and it has left him nearly deaf in his left ear.  That means of course that he sometimes has difficulties in hear bird song when he's out and about.  
The question now raises, "What has that to do with Dorktown?"
Dorktown was a mining town in years gone by.  By their very nature coal mines are very noisy places so a lot of the older men in the town with some degree of hearing loss.  So when you speak to them they might not be being ignorant by not replying, they just didn't hear you. 
Personally, I have tinnitus which can cause problems at times.  During 12 years in the army I used to go out on the ranges for shooting practice and to 'classify' every year.  That means that I was able to carry a firearm basically.   
The army issued ear plugs for use on the ranges but I always used to forget mine with the end result is that after a shooting session I would have ringing ears.  Now it's permanent.  Normally I don't notice it seeing as there is plenty of back ground noise going on but when it's quiet, like now - even with Kile here, I am very aware of it.  All of this has reminded me of something from 1996.

My OU career began in 1996 and at that time when you registered for degree program you had to complete a summer school.  Seeing as I was reading An Arts Foundation Course (A102), I of course did the summer school that related to the course.  Off I went to Manchester for a week and I really enjoyed it.  Anyway, in our group we had two guys with special needs.  One named David was almost blind.  He used to be a quantify surveyor for a civil engineering company.  The other was Arthur, another ex-miner who was almost totally deaf.  David was able to join in most things but Arthur always felt isolated from everything simply because of his lack of hearing.  Therefore we rarely saw Arthur at any of the socials that were put on.  It is situations like that which really bring home the problems that so many people face on a daily basis.

Nothing much happening in Dorktown at the moment other than rain and getting wet if go out in it!  Kile is happy playing on the Wii in the front room while Jan is playing games on her lappy.  I'm sat typing this and will move on to something else soon enough.  I might even try to get some writing done today.  That would make a change, I've not any interest in it for some time now.  Perhaps NaNoWriMo has written me out!  I hope not, I enjoyed writing.         

Wednesday 28 December 2011

Birding and hate crimes

28 December 2011

Yesterday we had a day out birding.  We left Dorktown at just after 9am and arrived at Slimbridge WWT site at Just after 11am, we like at least one comfort break on the way.  On the way down we saw only 15 species of bird, which was a tad disappointing I suppose but we soon made it up when we got around the site.  There we saw 39 species but that included a number of birds that were part of the collection, not that it would have helped our year list anyway.  The biggest disappointment was that the bittern wasn't showing at all yesterday.  As per usual, on Boxing Day it was showing well for most of day we were told.  Ah well ... here's a few shots from there ...
Blacked headed gull
Goldfinch
Smew
Golden eye
Eider
Mandrin duck
This lady was hand feeding one of the red brested geese that are part of the collection - which means I can't 'tick' it for this year :-(((

Last night I finished reading a book called The Birdman Abroad.  It's the story of the far off travels of the Sunday Express environment editor Stewart Winter.  I had already read his Tales of a Tabloid Twitcher some time ago and enjoyed that so was looking forward to reading his second offering.  The second book starts back in 1970 and his mother putting her foot down with a firm hand and insisting that they Winter's go aboard for a holiday while the World Cup was on.  This was not to be a misery over not watching football although I would have agreed if she had done so, but no, it was to protect them all from her hubby's anti-Germany rants.  Young Stewart still managed to get himself in trouble over it anyway.  But it was while he was away that his budding interest in birding really took a hold on him.  He saw a hoopoe, a magic bird I have to see! 

From there he goes on to visit places all over the world, many of them on the paper's penny too - bloody good job if you can swing it!  He tells of his meeting with a cottonmouth snake and a 1 foot long rattler in Arizona; of being stung by a bullet ant in Panama; of joining the World Birding Series in New Jersey.  Winter claims to have seen over 600 species of bird in the States - that's more than there is on the full UK list.  But the one story that struck home to me was the last one, the story of the albatrosses.  It seems that 19 of 21 species of albatrosses are on the at risk of extinction list.  He travelled to the Falklands with John Craven and a BBC film crew who were doing a film for Countryfile.  It was there he came face to face with an albatross chick, a bundle of white fluff with big staring trusting eyes.  As I read it I thought, "You lucky sod!"  But luck has to be on the side of the albatross now so that we don't lose such a magnificent bird. You do see them occasionally here in the UK.  I remember reading in a magazine of one being seen down at Dungeness.  The writer was saying he pointed out the bird to the only other person in the hide at the time - and he just shrugged his shoulders as if to say, "So what?"  I couldn't believe it when I read that!  If it had been me I would still crowing about it to anyone who showed any interest at all.  Enough of birding for now ...

This morning we had a ride to Asda on our scooters and we both were pretty well fed up of people past us or just ignoring us all together.  Jan had to go to Customer services so I got a basket and began doing the little bit of shopping we needed.  When Jan finally caught up with me I could see she was angry.  A man had knocked into her and then blamed her for it.  It was just an accident, neither was hurt but his reaction was over the top.  But neither Jan nor me are the sort to allow something like to go by quietly - Jan had a go back.  Then she came and told me and as we were there talking about it he saw us an came and began again.  He threatened violence - there was no way I was latter that go!  One of the staff came to sort it out as we were leaving he was still on about going outside.  It wasn't till later that I thought about it but it was as clear a case of 'hate crime' as you wish to see.  What I should have done was call the cops and let them sort it.

The things is though, this is not an isolated incident.  It happens on a regular basis not only here in Dorktown but throughout the country.  The miss-use of disabled parking spaces on car parks is one of the worst manifestation of it.  yesterday we saw a Porsche parked in one at the services on the M5.  But there was a disabled badge on display so nothing could be done.  The security people could ask to see the badge but won't do so for fear of their safety.  So disabled people have to walk a lot further so they can do their jobs in comfort. Dropped curds at road junctions being blocked by parked cars are a regular here in Dorktown.  I left a note on one such car once and when we came back I also saw that a parking ticket had also been stuck on there.  There was a blue badge on display, but they are still required to keep clear of dropped curbs.

Pedestrians seem to think it's OK to walk around with disregard to anyone else and expect people to get out of their way.  Texting is a real danger to them but until they get hurt they will not change their habits.  Groups of friends meet up and will regularly block pavements and grumble when you say, "Excuse me please?" to go by.  Queue jumping is another on that happens regularly.  They seem to think that we don't have any rights or should even be considered.  Things will continue to get worse as long as disabled people remain meek little lambs and let these people get away with it.  I've had enough of it and will now fight back, legally of course, to be treated with respect and consideration.  The saddest thing is that we should have to do so! All over with for now though at least.

Back to birding ... we are hoping to get out of Sunday to start our year list off to a good start pretty quickly.  Just hoping for good weather now ;-)))