Bunch of savages in this town

So, after yesterday’s heavy rain in Southampton, which school found out that its roof had been stripped of lead on Monday night? Why, the one that the starts at next Monday.

Home again, home again

Back from the monster tour of England and Scotland (Southampton to Windermere and back, via Dunblane), and it turns out that we had monster produce waiting for us ( – did I forget to tell you to help yourself?): That’s 7.26 kg of courgette (1st2lb in old money). I had to get the bathroom scales to find that out!

Give me the child until he is seven

: Tonight, I want you to make me a statue when we get home. : Oh really, what sort of statue? : I want a statue with a cross with somebody on it. : o_O : Uh, why do you want a statue of someone being crucified? : Because I think it would be good. : No, I mean why do you want a statue of that rather than of something else? A crucifix is a religious statue, and we’re not religious. : Because I like cross statues. : o_O

Signal Boost: Stop it!

While I am as narked as the next user by the alleged actions of certain arms of a certain state towards my blogging platform of choice and the embattled citizens of that state, I’m sure that most of us by now have seen double-digit reposts of ‘s original. It’s not often that my first experience of an LJ feature (in this case, the repost facility) gives rise to the urge to kill, but I’m very close to that point now. Please stop pressing the bloody repost buttons:

Plus ça change

When I was at school, I used to get anxiety dreams in which I found myself sitting tests for which I hadn’t prepared. Usually, I’d also be naked. When I was a student, I used to get anxiety dreams in which I turned up to exams only to find that I’d forgotten that they were open book and that I was naked (this actually happened to me in real life – the former and not the latter, I should add). Now that I’m a lecturer, I get anxiety dreams in which the students turn up to the exam, only to… Read More »Plus ça change

Kay Dekker

As his partner Justin posted yesterday, Kay – – died on Wednesday night. I first met Kay when I was a callow CS finalist at Warwick in the early 90s. He’d come up to DCS from Cov Uni for a research seminar on autostereoptic displays (odd what you remember), and stayed on to chat afterwards. I’d heard of Kay much earlier; I recall seeing him and his .sig all over the same bits of Usenet that I read, and had spoken about him quite a few times. I can’t say that he was the sole or even the main reason… Read More »Kay Dekker

Fun with scammers

Just taken another call from an Indian scammer. 37 minutes! A new record! And they’ve just called back to insult me further! Victory is mine!

That trip to the Chocolate Factory in full

Not in any way useful. It didn’t help that Glorious Leader (now reinstated) got confused between Brad Fitzpatrick and Brian Fitzpatrick. Both Googlers, very different lines of work. It also doesn’t help that he declared that our destination was only a short walk from Westminster tube, despite all evidence to the contrary (the Google office is by Victoria), so we both arrived in a lather. The meeting was not especially productive and of only fringe relevance to me; I was effectively meat in the room. I’d also failed to notice, when I bought my train ticket, that I’d been sold… Read More »That trip to the Chocolate Factory in full

A Clockwork Aranji

There was me, that is Alex, and my three bencoves, Julian, Sandy and Bim, Bim being a naff bimbo, and we sat in the Korova Milkbar making up our moyekhs what to do with the evening, a flip dark chill winter bastard though dry. The Korova Milkbar was a bijou milk-plus logo, and you may, O my sisters, have forgotten what these logos were like, things changing so rapido these days and everybody very quick to forget, newspapers not being read much neither. Well, what they sold there was milk plus something else. They had no licence for selling liquor,… Read More »A Clockwork Aranji