Category Archives: Parochial

Con Artist

4

The guys are bringing things in from the van, we are busy moving things around inside. One of the men sticks his head in the kitchen door and yells “Your landscaper is here”. What ? J is closer to the door and I’m busy so she heads out. I hear a voice – a thick Irish voice. The guy is telling J that he is the landscaper for the house, that he did the trees for the last house owner and that today is his regular day so he’ll “just get started”. I wander outside, glancing at his small truck. That’ll be the truck with “Tarmac Contractors” on the side along with a (probably false) telephone number. He sees me and starts to repeat his tale. I have an overwhelming urge to yell “F*ck off you scamming b*stard – you saw the removal van and thought you’d pull a fast one”, but instead I tell him we don’t need his services. He pushes the issue. I tell him that I will do the trees if they need doing. I stand my ground. He gets lost. Guys like that deserve to be beaten and locked up.

Parochial stones

2

Peculiar example of journalism:

which is from our local paper. Would it have been less cruel to have said “Abandoned cat left in a perfectly sized box” ? or “Abandoned cat left in huge box – feels lost as well as unloved” ?

And if I could be anywhere this afternoon, this would be top of my list: World Stone Skimming Championships. I loved doing that as a kid… shooting pebbles into the North Sea from Whitley Bay. Memories..

Rawhide

Nope, nothing to do with the program, but it’s a different way of saying “Round-up”.

The little scrote who I mentioned a couple of entries further down is being prosecuted by the Police. He has previously had orders against him and although any conditions associated with them have lapsed, this latest behaviour is being viewed very dimly so up in court he will go. Damn good thing too.

I purchased Feeddemon earlier and although I’ve got all my feeds imported I’ve yet to dig around and see what’s what. But this program, combined with the indispensable PubSub allows me to soak up all the info I want to.

Gym. Talked to one of the guys down there today as I’ve a small problem with my left shoulder which means two machines cause me some issues and also because I don’t seem to pushing my upper body as much as I want to. I think it’s a case of repeating sets or upping the reps rather than increasing the weights. It’s really cool at the gym though, and my next goal is to do 1000m on the rower (level 5) in 4:15:00 or less. For that I need to knock 10 seconds off what I can do now. No small order ! And I have fallen in love with the cross-trainer – fantastic piece of kit.

And tomorrow is being spent online meticulously constructing a blog for someone and I can’t tell you any more than that .. even if I wanted to ;)

Lastly – go check this superb photograph of a fly.

Online naming of a child ?

Yet again, I rang the local constabulary, and yet again a constable has been round to take details.
A little shit (aged 11) has been racially abusing a couple of my youngest daughter’s friends, threatening my daughter, “showing off” the knife he carries, throwing items at them and also aiming some particularly cruel taunts at her regarding her mum. If I got my hands on the fuckwit, I’d hit him for this stuff – it is far far far from the first time this has happened, and my calling the police was because of the new powers which they not only have, but they also use effectively around here. If there was any mileage in complaining to his mother I would do that, but from many others I have heard that she isn’t so much the sharpest knife in the block as the block itself (or even the wood from which it was hewn).

So, given that this future occupant of HMP is not yet 16 and has no right of redress, should I name him ?

.info

I now own the .info for our village.
Around us some of the villages have good websites – active, maintained sites that will undoubtedly act as useful points of contact for people moving into or back to the villages and also as good ‘PR’ sites. After all, why not make a noise about a good village ? But our village has some quite poor sites – having a “Bobby standards” logo does not a good site make. No. They also seem to be in the control of local govt at some level – and since when is that ever a great idea ? So.. seeing as the site will be about information on the village, and it was only a fiver, I bought the .info (easily.co.uk before you ask).
If I get time and the inclination I’ll start putting together a front page and a “Help make this site” better type thing later for when hosting is sorted. No huge rush ….. and this should be fun !