The gas should be connected to the new cooker.

That means I can cook.

For the first time since July.

I think I shall celebrate, with a take away curry.

Links page recontructed as best I could.

Older links are now archived.

Hurrah.

Do feel free to add a link to me from your pages. Particularly if you promised to do so. And your name is Nick.

In the unlikely event that anyone has a copy of my links page (or bookmarks of what was linked), could you send me a copy? I’ve accidentally reverted to a prior version, and the latest one isn’t on the hard drive. Grr. Maybe it will appear in the internet archive one day – but not yet.

BMW should be ashamed of their quality control. The indicators don’t appear to work on any of their cars.

Allegedly, the roll out of the counter will allow me to track visitor movement across the site. This way, I shall be able to see what it was that drives you all away. Maybe its when I rant.

There was a lorry in town with a red phone box on the back, stolen from the street. (A K6, I think, for those who are intested. Also known as the Jubilee type.)

The man removing said box was quite knowledgeable about them. Said he’s like one himself. And that the one that had been removed would most likely be refurbished and then reinstalled somewhere else.

New street furniture is so dull, and I simply can’t imagine it capturing the emotions in the same way. Sure, Alec Clifton Taylor was emotional about concrete lamp posts, but that was in terms of hatred, nothing more. And it must have been about 20 years ago, at the very least.

Modern technique seems so often to be to remove the detail, to the extent that there is frequeently no room left for the expression of anything more than a purely functional design. It seems amazing that so few people notice the reduction and cultural homogenisation of their environment. New phone boxes are based on a US design – gone are the glory days of a GPO competition. Clifton Taylor would no doubt applaud – and then be appalled – to see that lamp posts are replaced, but are perhaps worse than ever, with the current plain cylinder. No room, even, for the weathering and bedding in afforded to the concrete design, or to the fantastic wrought struts of the victorians.

The environment about us is bastardised by the removal of the familiar and the well made, and its replacement with designs whose only appeal is that of cost. The aesthetic is lost, as pavements are blocked with badly placed steel posts and advertising boards. Worse still, the long term sense of cobbles or blocks that weather well and can be relaid when works are required is thrown out for the convenience of tarmac, smoothing over everything for the two weeks before cracks appear or it is torn up to replace a leaking main.

I blame that attitude that says that a car is simply for getting from A to B. That’s no more true than clothes are simply to keep us warm, or TV is to stop us from thinking. Sure, it may be true for some, but it wilfully ignores the benefits of a well designed environment.

Can anyone tell me what trackback does?

run away

send an email

call a friend

take the rollercoaster

fly a kite

paddle

cut the grass

listen to music

read a magazine

paint a wall

break a window

kick the bin over

scrape the car

walk down the stairs

watch the waves break

write a blog

hold hands

buy some matches

get engaged

have a fag

In Manchester there was a reverse bungee at Parr’s Wood entertainment and themed vomit fun-plex. Apparently it was the largest such bungee in Europe.

From the road, it looked like a giant catapault. £15 for certain death. At least, it would have been if I’d had a go. The cage would undoubtedly have come uncoupled, and I would have been catapaulted out into orbit, before re-entering the atmosphere as a burning sphere that would take out the post office in Glossop.

Because of my concern for the safety of others, and the pension collection needs of a local town, I didn’t have a ride.

My take on the 2 minute project. Things may be shorter.

Say I love you

Read the Sun

Flick TV channels

Eat some chips

Smell flowers

Look at pictures

Sit in the sun

Swim a length

Have a beer

Talk to a friend

get undressed

Walk by the sea front

Surf the web

Foreplay

Boil and egg

Fill the car with petrol

Spin on a roundabout

windowshop

plan the future

have a wee

clean your teeth

Buy a ticket

Watch the sun set

Have a cigarette