just ask

Well, I'm back home from the jolly. I see Spaces have added a lot of new features although the comment with profile information turned on doesn't seem to work, one of a few bugs I've noticed so far. As regards my trip would it be more interesting if, rather than tell you what happened, you just asked? No reasonable question will be turned away.

Who's first?

booze, birds, business

Yes, I realise that has a slightly 70's sound about it but I just couldn't resist the alliteration . In fact I liked it sooo much I stuck some more in that last sentence. How fucking clever.

So, the second instalment of the fish tale (get it? groan) will have to wait as I'm off for a couple of days on a work conferency, drinkfest meeting type of thing. Now I know I appear to be developing some sort of a pattern at these events like this or this and this but THIS time it WILL be different. Fingers crossed.

I mean, armed with a sackful of determination and a suitcase full of stoicism, what could possibly go wrong?

2 saved, 2 dead part 1

Yes, still no broadband. Still on the 32 kbps dial up modem (on a good day).

Tuesday night, 8 ish. After picking my daughter up from the child minder I had taken her to visit granny and granda. So a happy mini-me returned home looking forward to her bo-bo. Lights on, defrosted home made lasagne into the ove...HOLY FUCK! Why's there no water in the fish bowl ? Why is the floor wet? Shit, Shit!! The fish (both called Nemo by the way - my daughter's idea) are lying on top of the pebbles in an other ways empty spherical bowl which has a series of spiral cracks running around it. Tiny (put your thumb and forefinger up to your eye when you say tiny) is completely motionless. Big (punch the letter B when you say this) seems still but flares his discoloured gill once. I rush to find another bowl big enough trying at the same time not to alarm mini-me who is still oblivious to the drama playing out on the kitchen worktop with what is/was her very first pets. Cupping equal amounts of fish and stones I gently lay tiny and big Nemo in a salad bowl. No wriggling in my hand, no movement in the water. Fuck. I don't want to be doing the life/death conversation yet. A wetted gill moves, both fish. They start to right themselves. After 30 minutes or so the trauma seems to be past and they return to more or less normal.

There is a God. Today he is my friend. Nemo lives!

no words

I'm still just bloging via an old v. slow modem while I wait for my ADSL line to be switched on at my new house, too slow to browse properly but had to comment on this recent story.

It's not every day that you hear a story that leaves a lump in your throat. What do YOU think the sentence should have been ?

Babysitters jailed for baby rape

Alan Webster had a "malign influence" over Tanya French

Two babysitters have been jailed for raping a 12-week-old baby girl and taking pictures of the abuse.

Alan Webster, 40, and his girlfriend Tanya French, 19, both from Hatfield in Hertfordshire, pleaded guilty to rape and making indecent images.

Webster was given a life sentence at St Albans Crown Court; French was jailed for five years.

International law enforcers alerted police after Webster downloaded 7,000 indecent images from the internet.

There are no words to express the abhorrence such offending generates Judge Findlay Baker

The baby's mother was unaware of the abuse until detectives visited her home after finding photographs detailing the abuse at Webster's home.

Sentencing Webster, Judge Findlay Baker said the offences were committed against the "most vulnerable victim - a little baby".

"There are no words to express the abhorrence such offending generates," he added.

'Malign influence'

Sentencing French, he said: "You did not shrink away from the acts in which you joined, but looked forward to them."

But he said French was also a victim and had come under Webster's "malign influence" and was to some extent "corrupted by him".

French admitted four charges of rape, five indecent assaults, two charges of permitting indecent images to be taken of children and two counts of making indecent images of the child in February and March 2004.

Webster admitted one charge of rape, four indecent assaults, two charges of permitting indecent images to be taken of children and two counts of making indecent images of children.

Webster also admitted a separate charge of indecently assaulting a 14-year-old girl and seven offences of possessing child abuse images.

link to story here

"..I may be gone some time...."

The predicted fuck up by my ISP in changing telephone numbers has happened. After 3 weeks of waiting (and wondering why my old telephone number was still working for the ADSL) I got an email from them stating that as their record of my postcode differed from my telephone service provider's they couldn't do it. I would have to contact my telephone service provider to have them amend their records. What a load of twat. So the address is identical, they have the first half of the postcode meaning they can narrow the street down to a particular area of the city I live in, they know I created the order (the person who they both had the correct old address, postcode and number for) but they can't be SURE that it's me or the right house and street even though I provided the ISP with the new telephone number. Who the fuck else apart from me would the telephone company have given that new number to ?

Yes, I'm slightly peeved.

I'm moving the office to the new house today so god only knows when the new number will be active for ADSL. In the meantime amuse yourselves by delving into my archives or making up a resolution for me (see previous entry).

resolutions are dead, long live resolutions

I know it's the time for resolutions. I normally don't make any based on the fact that I don't stick to them. Don't even try. But I would like to draw a line in the sand and change some things and a new year seems as good a time as any. The first thing I asked myself was "why don't we stick to resolutions?". I believe the answer is that they're usually arduous, stretching (perhaps more often unachievable) goals that we find generally unrewarding and unsustainable. If we made resolutions that were fun, that were spiritually enhancing (I can honestly say I've never used those 2 words together before!) then we'd

1. probably stick to them
   
2. probably make more of them
   
3. have a shite load of smiles this year

So that's my starting point. Of course I'll have some goals too - but they'll be material and mostly work oriented.

And we all know that the most important step to achieving goals (and I'll include the fun resolutions in this) is writing them down then putting a bit of planning round each so, and I'm still mulling this over, I might put them up here via an entry or list.

Think of a fun resolution for yourself this year. If you want to share it stick it in the comments bin below or suggest one, tongue in cheek, for me.

same old

Rewind.

7.15am January 1st 2006. Time for bed. The red wine, Bisongrass Vodka and MDMA are cancelling each other out. I have to pick up my daughter around midday (even in my drunkenness I'm giving myself a hard time about being a bad father). All night people have been giving me compliments of one sort or another, "don't look your age", "must be doing well", "etc. I don't take compliments well. A friend of mine who's leaving to live in Australia in a few weeks kept telling me how I'm one of the his favourite two people in the world and how much he'd miss me. His emotions are always kept well under wraps and it was nice for him to say things like that. He wants to arrange a small ski holiday before he goes (a first for me) and I dare say I'll be putting myself in danger in any number of ways - stories will be posted. Yesterday was spent watching my daughter amuse herself (thank God) after a few hours sleep before the residual MDMA overcame the diminishing alcohol left in my system and tortured my exhausted sleepless body.

A two day hangover is halfway spent, I fall further behind in my decorating/moving plans and I return to work tomorrow. "30 lottery tickets please" will probably be my next spoken words. You know where I'm coming from don't you ?