I've not had a proper full time job in ten years and have absolutely nothing to lose and yet I still have enough self respect not to go looting, and find the people who did to be utterly disgusting. That's how low they are. Worse than dog shit.

 

Don't blame unemployment. Hell, at least they're on the dole.. I've got too much pride for that! I make do with what money I have coming in from freelancing work and the Pit to see me through the week. I don't have an XBox or £100 Reeboks. I don't want them. But if I did, I'd save up all my pennies and get the satisfaction out of knowing that I've earned them.

This is not about the gutter classes rebelling against the Government not caring about them or anything... It's Greed and peer pressure and a sign of weakness.

Interesting to note, they were interviewing a group of these so-called-people on Sky earlier, and they insisted on having their faces covered with bandanas and hoods. Now, Why would that be? Let's analyse this?

They don't want to be identified. Because they are fully aware that they know that they are criminals. They fear the retribution that identification may bring, either from the Police or vigilantes.

This suggests that they know the difference between right and wrong, but they seem to have drawn a vague line between Laful and societally Moral.

They know they have broken laws, criminal damage, theft, assaults. And they know this to the extent that they fear the consequences. They do not however appear to have any morals whatsoever. they think they're lashing out at the government when instead they're lashing out at members of their own community, but blinded by sheer greed and adrenaline.

One particularly steamy lump of shit in a red bandana claims to have written a CV, got suited and booted and gone for job interviews, but was overlooked. This has happened to me countless times. Countless. I shrug it off as tehy found someone more suitable for the job. You do not try and make the government sit up and take note by destroying potential employers. Have they ever applied at Currys? They might have had a chance there, earned some money and bought a television with their hard-earned wages. Probably with a staff discount on top.. and they could then appear on television as a proud member of the community without hiding behind a bandana.

Another claims that he was "providing for his family" by stealing nappies. I shan't go into that one.

One thing that has actually surprised me, is that in all the looting, rioting, muggings and murders, I've not heard one single report of a rape. This is very good, but I wonder why that is? They'll stoop low enough to beat someone to death for trying to put out a fire, but not so low as to satisfy one of the basic primal urges. Food, warmth and sex. They're stealing food, lighting fires.. Again.. Is this just a glimour of morality showing in these animals... Or are the media glossing over sexual attacks?

Gawpfishing. A fun game for all ages.

If you are unfamiliar with Gawpfishing, which you probably will be, since I invented it, I shall forthwith offer an explanation of gameplay:

The game is played in an arena comprising any form of public transport with London Underground being the favoured. Play commences at or after 

sunset. No sooner. This is a sport for two players. One may play alone.

 

Powdered Wigs not compusory

  

Described here are THE LAWS for a two-competitor tournament.

The Anglers locate themselves in the middle of the arena and sit facing eachother. The direction of travel is "upstream". The player facing upstream takes first honour.

 

The "Angler With Honour" casts his Seeding gawp (the gawpcast). This is done by yawning- The second most contageous bodily function the human body is capable of, second only to vomiting, which is a completely different sport alltogether. After the Gawpcast, the Angler in play then "Retreats",or, sits back and waits for either a "nibble" or a bite. If before the next station, his Seeding Gawp is taken and reciprocated by any other passenger seated in "his" end of the playing field, it is counted as "One bite" Subsequent passengers who then yawn as a result of the bite score one point each. A Bite constitutes a full on yawn. A "Nibble" is defined as any detectable sigh. Nibbles count as half a point each.

For any bite or nibble that travels into the "downstream" end counts as two or one points respectively. When the round has finished, ie, anyone who was going to gawp has gawped and it is agreed by both parties, The Angler sitting downstream then has the honour, fishing upstream.

After both Anglers have played one gawpcast each, they must leave at the next stop and move to the next carriage. They then must take their positions opposite to the previous (Previous upstream Angler sits downstream etc) and play resumes.

AT NO POINT does a gawp committed by either angler score any points.

In the event of a scoring dispute, you're obviously taking it all a bit too seriously and need to chill out.

Got all that?

Tonight, Matthew, I'm going to be an emo and have a fucking almighty rant.

Yeah.

Before I begin typing, I should mention:

•  I have not thought about this. I had a thought earlier which was the seed.
• The following is merely a stream of conciousness and follows no structure
• as such, my grammar and factual accuracy may well be somewhat fucked.
• This is a rant. Don't take it too literally. Don't worry about me if I start getting too down. I'm fine.

I made a concious decision a while back that I would not post anything in the style of the typical moany bitching onto Facebook. Everyone does that and it's possibly the single most irritating thing to do. I find it obnoxious, especially if the frequency of such whinges is sufficient. See, whatever you post on FB immediately gets propogated to your entire friend list's wall and all of them have no choice but to have to read it... Unless they delete you as a friend, of course, ehich, until it starts getting you labeled as a psyvamp is a tad extreme. Oh, I've had energy vampires on there as friends. In cases, they've been very very old friends who it has pained me to get shot of them, but when you can't log into FB and get more than two statuses down your wall before the inevitable "woe is me", Every single time you log in, regardless of the time of day... Well, they have to go, I'm, afraid. With this blog, you can always just stop reading it and go and find someone else's - Or one of my more lighthearted posts, or go and see what's happening on Facebook.

Anyway, I made a decision as a New Year's Resolution to only ever post happy fluffy stuff. If I was in a blue mood, I would rather than say so, simply post something ridiculous, or if I couldn't think of anything ridiculous, just log out. For the most part, I've stuck to it and it's been a successful little experiment. By only "having happy thoughts", I've found that I am indeed, happier and I at least hope that it has had some knock on effect to people who have been reading my statuses on there. Sure, I've slipped a couple of times. Who doesn't? I've simply tried to consider that no matter how shitty things get, there's always going to be someone who is much worse off.

The fact of the matter is that this approack does indeed work fine and as an experiment, has broucht about some interesting revelations. Because I've pretty much kept my inner emo locked away in its gimp mask, there's seven months' worth of ranting, however. And I'm going to have to spill my mind onto the blog.. And subsequently, through your eyes, and my emo mind will meld with your own... Funky.

So, yeah. Pramble done with, Shit's been pretty fucking low for me the last couple of years and by some strange virtue, I'm still around to blog about it. Yes, I appreciate that I'm relatively doing alright and you probably have it twice as bad as me.

So what's so imperfect about my life then, as far as I'm concerned?

Well, Firstly, the main problem. Chronic Insomnia. This has been going on since Summer 2009 now, with maybe a maximum of ten proper night's sleep in that time. Right now, it's 03:45am on a Wednesday morning. I'll be awake until maybe 6am and then go and crash out from pure boredom. This is not some sort of stubborness, where I deliberately sit up all night on Facebook and watching telly.. Or simply a matter of a screwed up sleeping pattern. If I were to go to bed now, I'll lie in bed, wide awake.. Moreso than awake. You have probably experienced insomnia yourself.. Transient or maybe acute as the huge majority of people do at some point. Perhaps you are chronic and know exactly what I mean. Basically, what will happen is that I will lie in bed, in the dark and my mind will switch on. I will think about everything at once. Sometimes I will be able to devise an entire scheme.. maybe sometimes there'll be flashes of concepts firing that don't form anything coherent at all. There are pictures, words, basic emotions. Memories from my childhood. Everything. But, all of this stuff being like watching some dream sequence in a 1970's horror flick, whilst my body is screaming out for me to get up and go for a long walk or to cook something. This is now two years of it.

The insomnia, I can handle now. Indeed, I've come up with some pretty cool stuff from these little sessions of cerebral superactivity. What I'm suffering with is how it's knocking me for six during the day. I'll eventually pass out at sunrise and get a few hours' sleep. Unfortuantely, this whole thing is a vicious cycle:

I don't sleep because my brain is going mad, mostly worrying about the state of the union. Because it's kept me up all night, I'm having major problems finding work and so on, which is the main factor in these brainfarts.. keeping me awake... and so on. Of course, it used to be much much worse. I was once so depressed that I didn't have this rock video from hell playing in my head every night. In fact, all I had were thoughts about how should I not wake up at all, whould it be such a great loss? What was the point? You get the picture. Pretty dark shit. That's all mostly behind me now though (only occasionally do those nights happen now.. Maybe once or twice a month).

Then of course, there is my employment.. Or hideous lack thereof.

I am currently pretty much unemployable. I don't mean this in a woe is me kind of way. I mean it in a I can't get a job unless it involves below the minimum wage kind of way.

I have academic qualifications. A handfull of computing NVQs, half a degree and some other bits. Unforunately, these are all worth bollocks-all. They're computing qualifications, which, as we all know, might as well be a certificate with a picture of Postman Pat, a gold star and a smiley face and "V.Good" handwritten next to them. The sort of thing your nursery teacher gave you for gluing pasta to a bit of card and writing "mum" below it in crayon.

Computing qualifications are bullshit. Computing degrees, however are what employers like to see. It would have been lovely if before doing these courses if they'd told me that no matter how well I did, I'd still not claw up the UCAS points to get onto a degree course, and when I did get one, I turned up one Monday morning to be told that they'd stopped running the fucking course. Besides which, I absolutely loathe computers wth every last cell in my body. Well, the concept of computers, I like. The endless stream of information on the internet, the great and cool things you can do with graphics and music and so on. As a tool, computers are fantastic things. It's everything else about them that I hate.

I also have City and Guilds in traditional signwriting techniques, business ownership and management, electronics servicing and a couple of others... however, these are very outdated and useless to me now as I've not practiced in years and have forgotten most of it.

Experience-wise, well, this is mostly in the entertainments industry. 15 years of it. I've worked in some of the biggest events to have hit the UK as well as some of the smallest, shittiest little holes. This is what I do. It's what I'm fucking good at, frankly. By no means am I the best.. but I'm certainly not below average... However, I seem to have "MUG" etched into my forehead which only employers can read. I've been desperate to get as far away from the industry as possible for a while now because I'm sick of getting fucked over, screwed out of work and lied out of money. It's endemic to the industry, apparently. I'm not saying it because he's my current and only employer, but Nick's the only one who hasn't tried too hard to piss me off yet.

I've been turning down work lately. Work from those fucking crooks at G F**** (censored because I don't want a libel case). Basically, They've offered me two jobs this year. One was in January. The other, I told them I was already working elsewhere. As it happened, I was working at the museum, voluntarily. See, I'd rather work at KBSM for free for a day than for a vague "promise" that if I sent in an invoice for a day's work, I might just be lucky and get a cheque for £30-odd quid at some point around the next blue moon. At KBSM, I do get a sense of satisfaction, even if I'm just putting flatpack furniture together or polishing a lump of brass. Unfortunately, I need to really work out how to do something equally satisfying AND get paid for it!

So, employers like Experience and Qualifications. I have both... neither are relevant to eachother. I could go and do a proper uni course to do with technical theatre or something, but I don't have that sort of money and it isn't an industry I intend to remain in for much longer. I'm going to need a complete career change.

Now, my sex life.
What fucking sex life? I haven't had that pleasure in about five years. The problem here is that my ex was a fucking WHORE, who, whilst we were together, she was (unbeknownst to me) still married, AND fucking some dude behind my back (to be fair on him, he had no idea about me. We met at a party once and had a Loooooooooooooonnnngg conversation). Then, when she'd decided who she'd rather fuck and ditched me, whe then proceeded to go and fuck no fewer than eleven of my closest mates in the following two months.

She was the third consecutive (that I know of) girlfriend to have been shagging around behind my back.

This kind of left me with a couple of niggling issues to do with selfconfidence and trust. Niggling issues roughly equates to absolutely fucking decimated. I decided after that to take thirty months of celibacy. The way I saw it, this was so that I could clear my head and sort my life out. It wouldn't have been fair to have bounced straight into another relationship from that and try and split my attention between myself and silly personal problems and a girlfriend. In my opinion, a relationship requires 100% attention and I couldn't give that. Anyway, after those thirty months, I was in kind of a worse state than I was anticipating and took an extension to fifty months.

After things began to improve, I realised that I'd been in such a state that I'd kind of let myself go a bit. I'd lost two dental crowns (Purely down to shoddy dentistry) that I couldn't be bothered to go and get re fitted, so I'm left with half a head full of teeth. I have long since forgotten how to speak to a female other than purely "friend zone" and to be honest, I'm certain that I still have pretty enormous trust issues if there was anything even remotely deeper than that. So, I'm hideously ugly both inside and out. Splendid.

Health... This is where I've been lucky. Aside from the insomnia and what I believe to be some form of arthritis-y type of thing in my knees which varies between nothing at all to being unable to stand up, depending on the temperature (Come the beginning of winter, when the temperature begins to fall is worst), I haven't had any great issues health-wise. I know people who have spent more time in hospitals than out of them. I know people who by rights, should be dead by now but aren't and I know others who sometimes are so ill that sometimes they wish they were dead, I'm an olympic athlete in comparison to some.

So, yeah. I'm pretty fucking fed up right now, if I'm honest. I'm treating this blog post as some form of free therapy. I'm not expecting anyone to read it. In fact, it's pretty personal shit and I might delete it tomorrow anyway, but I've said what I felt that I wanted to say and in half an hour's time, I'll either remember something else to add, or start feeling a little better.

We'll see.

Your friend, P.v.G.

Leopards. They can fix the unfixable.

I hereby present a short list of things that can be fixed by Leopards. Sometimes, something is so terrifyingly poor that it might at first seem to be broken forever. But when you bring Leopards into the picture, well, redemption is but a spotty apocalypse away.

1) Terrible movies. Take, for instance, The Davinci Code. The second worst film* I've ever seen. The plot is so far fetched that it should have been billed as a comedy/fantasy, yet everyone took it so seriously. The acting.. Well, Ian McKellan and Tom Hanks working as a double act couldn't do anything for the film.. It was that poor.

Kitty makes it all better.

So, the whole thing would have made more sense and have at least had some sort of action in it, should the final scene featured a marauding leap of Leopards who turn up and eat everyone. I watched the movie to the end in the vain hope that this would happen. It didn't. Instead, the ending was a limp wristed as the rest of the film.

2) The London 2012 Olympics. As I've already said, I don't see it going so well and London will, in a little over a year, become the biggest laughing stock on the planet. HOWEVER, Should they scrap the format of the games and move back to a far more entertaining theme of Roman Gladiatorial combat, make Steve Fucking Redgrave and Philips Oduwu fighting to the death (except that Philips would be armed to the teeth). And of course, we can throw Johnathon Edwards, the world's most boring christian (worse than Ned Flanders), to a baying pack of Leopards.

3) The SODDING Royal Wedding. The idea is to release a huge pack of leopards halfway through the service upon the congregation. All they have to do is to stay alive for twenty minutes, after which time, the doors will be unlocked. Anyone still alive can then freely run screaming into the street where the Cheetahs will be loosed to pick them off. I would quite happily pay towards that and it might even make me want to watch it.


So that's the general theme of my point. Leopards can improve absolutely any overhyped piece of shit.

*Confessions Of A Dangerous Mind was the first worst.. I couldn't sleep in the cinema so I had to walk out. I'm not going to use it as an example, because for all I know, It could well have been salvaged by a Leopard ending.

The Supermarket Game

This isn't my idea. I'm just joining in.

The originator of TSG is Cubinoid. Here's his introduction to the game and subsequent efforts.
Photographs are judged marks out of ten in two categories: COMPOSITION - Camerawork, scene set up etc. and POSE.

View his original blog post, rules and his own entries here:
http://supermarketgame.blogspot.com/2011/02/supermarket-game-welcome.html

From Cubinoid's own blog, here are the laws of the game as written by the grand Master himself:
 +++++++++++++++++
"The game is simple: Whilst your spouse or partner is busy shopping "hands free", leaving you to push the trolley, you reach into your pocket and whip out your trusty camera-phone device.

Wait until they are looking at the object of desire, wait...wait...until their eyes gleam with wanting to touch the object of desire...wait until the magic moment and SNAP!

Take a photo of them. It's that simple".
++++++++++++++++++



And here is my first entry into what will surely become a future Olympic Sport (but not next year, as they're.. rant rant rant...)

So, she isn't my partner, she's Tigger, my sister, but I'm quite sure it still counts. Here she is looking for some cosmetics. Also, Superdrug is not really a supermarket either. In fact, I don't think this is a valid entry at all.

COMPOSITION: Well, Considering it contravenes most of the laws of the game (subject is not my partner, location is not a supermarket), I don't think the photo's too bad. There's an annoying black spot on the tile by her foot, but I do like the way the floor tiles and the line of the shelves run off into the distance, drawing the viewer's eye up the aisle. The lighting isn't too bad and for a camera phone, the shot actually came out okay.

I'm going to give this ●●●●●●○○○○ (6/10)

POSE: Great pose. I call it "Crouching Tigger, Hidden Nailfile". She's cradling the febreeze as Indiana Jones would cradle solid gold Sun God Idols whilst tinkering with some unseen boobytrap in a wall. Speaking of which, Stop looking at my sister's boobies.

I think for pose, this gets a ●●●●●●●○○○ (7/10).

I'm being really generous with this, but for a first attempt, I'm rather pleased. I am of course, very open to criticique and will adjust the score accordingly.

A day of meccano, photos and water fountains.

Once again the London and Western Home Counties Steampunk Society met up at our adoptive home, the Kew Bridge Steam Museum. The occasion was for one of the guys, Scott to take a load of photographs as part of his university course. He wanted to document the Steampunk in its natural habitat, so where better than this cathederal of brass and steel?

I arrived very late, having had to visit my tailor beforehand to be fitted with a new pair of trousers. My own tailor, the Prime Mark company, Hammersmith could not furnish me with anything other than silver breeches in my size. Silver? No thanks. So I went over the road to Messers Marks and Spencer Gentleman's Outfitters. They're more expensive than the Prime Mark company and I've never patronised this particular emporium before, however, I managed to purchase quite a nice pair of plain black pants for £16. Cheaper than Prime Mark and they fit.

I awaited an omnibus for transportation home for the usual 45 minutes. On my return, I pucked up the Boy King from my sister's dweling place, which she was painting. Armed with a five and a half year old ball of energy, we made our way to the museum.

On arrival, I realised that I'd overlooked that they were holding the Magic Of Meccano exhibition. The Entire place, every availble inch of space was filled with tables covered in whirring, buzzing and clicking contraptions, built by men with beards and adenoids. The kid loved this, but I found that there was only so much meccano you can look at, and so many bearded, adenoidal men who were extremely proud of bolting this stuff together, before it all whiteouts that part of you brain and it all just starts looking like bits of metal with holes in. Enjoyable, but I suppose one just has to have an obsession with the stuff to be able to cope with that volume.

I eventually convinced the boy, after the ninteeenth time around the place and looking at a hundred little tin trains that we should seek the real reason for being there. We met with the rest of the group and went out into the sunshine for some more photos. At this point, he discovered the pump fountain. A metal drum with a handpump on the side which sprays gallons of water all over the operator and anyone within range. Now soaked, he then thought it'd be really funny to hug-and soak- anyone he could catch, including half a dozen immaculately dressed and otherwise distracted steampunks, who all put on their very polite faces and brushed him off as "being just a kid", although, I could tell that they were getting somewhat annoyed. Controlling my nephew, who doesn't listen to me at the best of times, with such a wonderful toy as a device for soaking people was frankly impossible. I took a phone call from Fern who had just arrived out the front which I used as an excuse to get the child as far away from the proceedings and let them get on with it.

This was Fern and her partner's first visit to the museum so naturally wanted to take a look around the place (although there wasn't much museum to see for all the Meccano). We went and got some teas and were told that the group had moved onto the pub. We took the boy for a ride on the train and then went to meet them.

At this point, he began to settle down and we got to relax a little and chat, whilst he latched onto Cubinoid and Tixia like a limpit, his new bestest friends. After some confusion and realisation that in that part of the world, on a Sunday evening, there is no food other than a local "chicken" shop, most of the group went and forraged and the boy settled.

I really regret not being able to have taken part in the day as much as I was absent for the most part. For this reason, I can't offer any report on the day other than an account of my babysitting experience.

That said, I'm glad he enjoyed the Meccano exhibition and museum, I hope Fern and Matt enjoyed the museum and I hope the photographs from the day came out to be what Scott wanted.

This is going to be a big mess.

Yup. They can't even make a basic clock work. Something a first year Electronics student could knock together as a project and still it fucked up and stopped. This, my friends, is just a tiny glimpse into the inevitable crushing failure and embarrassment that will be the London Olympics. I told you this when they first announced that they were going for the bid. I said it when we won and I'll say it a thousand more times before the opening ceremony. If you "backed the bid", I hope you're proud.

You see, the big problem with London is that it has that problem that most inadequate men suffer from. A 30 year old man, maybe a tad insecure in himself walks into a public toilet and starts to piss. Something he's been doing all his life. All of a sudden, someone else walks in and mr. Insecure finds it absolutely impossible to continue pissing. London can't piss if the rest of the world is watching.

We saw it before with the "Millenium celebrations". Anyone remember the River of Fire? A fucking FIREWORKS display. Something we're meant to do every November. But no. As soon as the rest of the world starts looking, it all goes to shit- So we had instead, the "RIVER OF WATER!!!" Woo.

The Dome. A big, expensive plastic tent built on a landfill site, that nobody went to that is now a big, plastic tent. They put on concerts there now, but the tickets are so bloody pricey and accoustics are so fucking horrible that you'd be mad to go see anything there now. We're british. We've been rather good at pitching tents in the past.. But as soon as anyone starts watching, we get all tangled up in the guyropes and put a pole through the groundsheet whilst the flysheet blows away in the breeze. All the while, shouting "No, I'm alright! I can do it!"

They built a Millenium Bridge. Nice idea and just what London so desperately needed.. a way to get from one side of the river to the other.. North and South connected together after centuries of division - or having to go all the way around the Thames via Reading.. Oh.. Hang on.. No.. London HAS bridges. Dozens of the fucking things. Some of them are really old as well, so obviously, we're capable of building a decent bridge. What can go wrong? Oh, right.. The world was watching and the bridge was remeniscent of something out of Indiana Jones.

and then...
The win the bid to host the olympics.

They start off with the Logo for it. London is home to some of the finest artists and design houses in the world. But to do something really special, they come up with.. well.. you know...

The handover ceremony in Beijing was a roaring success. What do we want to show the world what they can expect from the next host city? A thousand years of culture, perhaps? incredible architecture? Beautiful parklands? A diverse multicultural society where anyone who visits from anywhere in the world will be welcomed with open arms, perhaps?

Nope. This is London, remember. That impotent little man in the public pisser, and he's being very, VERY watched. What do we see then?
A double decker bus that err.. explodes in some kind of camp terrorist attack. And Beckham hoofing a football into the crowd. And some hasbeen guitarist who everyone presumed to be dead many years ago. And of course, Boris Fucking Johnson, trying very hard to simply wave a flag.

If you really want to relive it, I've found the entire nightmare on Youtube. The really crap bit begins at about 7:20 ish. The link's below. Embedding is disabled, which is probably just as well. If you're reading this from abroad, you'd probably not be shocked to learn that London's Public Transport System is a laughing stock. It is overpriced, unreliable and disgusting. Believe me, if you come for the Olympics, you'd probably do well to hire a car while you're here. Fuck it, for £200, you can borrow mine for the week. It's got a slippy gearbox, there's something sticky in the rear footwell and there's a strange smell, parking is a bitch and the offside rear tyre has a slow puncture (bump it up to 33PSI once a week) but it still beats taking the tube.

http://youtu.be/QprSn_D31U0

And that was the very very beginning, when things were going relatively well...

London 2012.
Prepare to be extremely embarrassed.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
An update.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


Well, plenty has happened in the last few months since I originally posted this, hasn't it?


Most lately, this wonderful idea of putting Rapier Surface to Air missile silos all over London. Really? Now, I'm not an engineer or expert on warfare, but I would have thought that shooting down a hijacked aeroplane is not like in the movies. It doesn't somehow simply vapourise in mid air. I'm pretty sure that what you would end up with is massive amounts of debris, most of it very big, heavy and on fire, raining down onto residential areas of London. By which, of course, almost everywhere in London is residential. I don't know if you've ever seen one, but the engine off a airliner is mighty big and not what you'd want falling through your roof and "smooshing" you.

Donnie had a countdown timer that never counted down AND ended up under a jet engine. Prophetic. Will there be a massive scary rabbit to light the flame?

So yeah. Putting half a dozen fucking great big SAM missiles in the middle of the capital, eh? Puts my mind at ease.

It's funny, but I found this on Dictionary.com:

ter·ror·ism

[ter-uh-riz-uhm]

noun

1.

the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

2.

the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization.

3.

a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government.

I don't understand how having a missile silo on top of your Tower Hamlets block of flats, or having 13,500 gun ho soldiers roaming the streets is not going to terrify people.

There was that security guard who also got herself arrested with explosives. Remember her? Well, Having worked with the poor imbeciles at G4S, that doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I'm just amazed she didn't try to eat it. they aren't very bright, you know?




The PreGames gig has been announced. To be held in Hyde Park, I think featuring music from bands representing the countries that make up Great Britain. The Stereophonics to represent Wales, Paolo Nutini representing Scotland and some other pop band I've never heard of for N. Ireland. They've picked Duran Duran as the best that England has to offer. Duran Fucking Duran. I presume the one and only reason is so that they can sing "Gold". But if that's the pinnacle of the musical talent to have come out of this country (of whom the entire band's still alive, anyway)... I dunno. Speechless. The whole thing has been cobbled together by politicians and idiots who are out of touch with everything.

It makes me sad. I haven't even touched on the Ticketing saga yet.

It isn't too late to give it to the french. Who wanted it.

A rather jolly excursion

In January, I suggested on Brassgoggles that perhaps a visit to the Kew Bridge Steam Museum might be a good idea. It was to coincide with the 175th birthday of James Watt.

Unfortunately, the day was a Wednesday and with people working, and limited time to publicise the event, I had only one person who could attend.

The event was rescheduled for Feb. 27th. The museum was running a "Giants Of Steam" weekend, where once a month they run the big Cornish engines.

The event was put out once again on BrassGoggles and promoted on the steampunk Facebooke page, and with more time. There was a great response, with about 13 people saying "yes" on the forum, and another 10 or so on FB. Knowing how Facebook works, one can expect at best, one in ten acceptances to an event actually turning up to it.

On Sunday, about 25 people arrived.

The museum did something unexpected and ran the rotative engines in the steam hall as well, which they don't usually do on these weekends. By all accounts, everyone in attendance had a thorougly pleasant time and we went onto a local pub afterwards for drinks and a chance to get to know eachother better.

I met some of the most pleasant people. It was a fantastic day spent in brilliant company in amazing surroundings.

I shall be requesting permission and posting some photos taken.

I have tried arranging various meets and gatherings before, wth very poor results. This is by far the most successful thing I've ever done. The last thing I tried to set up resulted in my sitting in a pub for three hours, alone, so I'm very pleased indeed.

The Great Flea Market Raid ~and~ other such adventures

Went on a walkabout this week.

Charity Shops are beautiful places with usually friendly people working in them.

And BARGAINS are to be had!

 A nce pair of Oakley sunglasses. They're brassy yellow metal with brown lenses. Only £4.

Bought this shirt. It's collarless (grandad style), in a kind of beige/faded yellow linnen or coarse cotton material, but isn't as rough. Very comfortable.

 

And a waistcoat. It came with black plastic buttons on it.

 I picked up this badge. It had four small charms on it, which when removed and cleaned up a little, fit perfectly onto the pocket of the waistcoat. It is silver (coloured) with a coppery coloured enamel.

 

I replaced the plastic buttons with these metal ones, which are an extremely good match for the badge.

 

Also a lovely little pair of binoculars in a (very worn) leather case. These are all brass construction with shargreen grips.

 

And got this little pin badge for a dear friend. Cute, isnit?

I didn't buy the following. I work at a steam museum and this work-in-progress is parked in the workshop.

It's a beautiful old horse-drawn, steam powered fire engine. The steam engine is purely to pump the water.

 Rear.

 Side. The rusty grey thing is the boiler, which is like a Doughnut-ish sleeve. Not pictured is a firebox, which is bolted underneath and through it. When it's finished, that will be clad in bright brass.

 And the front of it. Magnificent, isn't it?

 

And presenting "Wicky" Wicksteed, who owns and runs the museum from his office beneath the fire engine. His brother and (business partner) was unavailable to pose for a photo.

This has been flying around over the house lately. It didn't really deserve its own article.. Just a curiosity.

What fun! If you click on the image, it's animated. This is my Brassgoggles avatar. :)