Tony Bannister writes in liontower that James Currey gave him some tapes of J P Martin reading some of his Uncle stories. He hopes to restore the tapes and release a CD.
Uncle: His Master’s Voice!
work as if you live in the early days of a better nation
Tony Bannister writes in liontower that James Currey gave him some tapes of J P Martin reading some of his Uncle stories. He hopes to restore the tapes and release a CD.
Uncle: His Master’s Voice!
The Energy Minister wants your thoughts on the Supply Mix. Quick, do you know what the supply mix is? Do you care?
I’m guessing that, as long as the lights are still on, that you can read my blog, the fuel bills aren’t too high, and acide rain hasn’t caused the cat to rust, you don’t really care about the Supply Mix.
But Donna Cansfield wants you to care. She’s sending everyone a brochure Our Energy, Our Future (online here) to make you think that they’d give a one before they go build nukes anyway. And since you were consulted, it’s your fault when the cost overruns roll in.
… [the] process is only projected to be completed by the end of this century, as it is not considered safe to start dismantling the highly radioactive core until the 2080s
— BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Tackling the UK’s nuclear legacy
Clean coal seems to be in vogue, but when I read about it, I thought — hang on, isn’t this just the old town gas technology?
I’m guessing the new clean coal guys don’t want us to know about the old town gasworks in the UK, most of which still have toxic wastes lurking deep down.
Golden Wonder Crisps are gone; and a large part of my childhood went with it.
That Walker’s should have stolen the crisp crown is terrible. They’re just rebadged PepsiCo Lays. Yuk.
(But I still think that Seabrook’s are the current best in the UK.)
A real BBC News headline: Cold Weather Hits Scots Fixtures
<insert obligatory kilt-related humour here>
After picking up my UK passport form at Bay & College, I walked to Spadina Subway. Not far, you’d say. It is if you go via College all the way to Dufferin, and back. 7.3 km, I make it, from the amazing Gmaps Pedometer. I went via Canada Computers (where I got a fantastically quiet Vantec case fan) and Soundscapes (where, of course, I bought too many CDs).
And you know why it was such a long walk? I was looking for a Timmy’s. Sad, isn’t it? It would seem that Little Italy is almost totally free of Tim’s. Yes, I know I could have had fantastic espresso and some kind of pastry there, but I wanted Tim’s, and I was prepared to walk for over an hour in sub-zero temperatures to get it, dammit.
You can’t know how happy it makes me to read about the survey that shows that over 90% of people living closest to the Dun Law site supported their local wind farm. The early planning stages of this project were particularly fraught with opposition.
Even though I haven’t seen him for more than 20 years, I’m pretty sure that Dr Euan K. Brechin is the same person who used to visit his grandfather (and my next door neighbour) in Newton Mearns.
He’s grown a bit since then …
So there was a stramash that the RSPB published a map showing where the Lewis wind farm would reach if it started in Edinburgh. Oh noes! Looks like it’d go all the way to Methil.
I’ve been working on a couple of medium-sized wind farms in Ontario. For top laughs, I tried overlaying them on Scotland, using streetmap.co.uk for the measurements.
Since I’m a weegie, I started at George Square. One of the farms would stretch all the way west by Wishaw, near Murdostoun Castle (and the comically-named town of Bonkle). The other would run north to somewhere between Fintry and Kippen, in Stirlingshire.
For those of you unlucky enough to be based east of Falkirk, I tried the same starting at Edinburgh Castle. The first wind farm would run west to the hamlet of Gilchriston, which is just north-west of Dun Law Wind Farm, which I worked on in the distant past. (If you run the farm west from Edinburgh, you end up in Bo’ness, which no-one would want to do.) The other design would end up somewhere between Kirkcaldy and Glenrothes, near Thornton — and not that far from Methil, a distance that the RSPB would have us believe is just too far for a wind farm.
So, where’s the news, RSPB? How did your land get somehow more precious than ours?
I’ve just been listening to BBC Radio 4‘s dramatisation of Edmund Gosse’s Father and Son. It’s rather good.
I think I can safely say that this household knows more about Edmund Gosse than any other in Scarborough. Catherine‘s PhD was based on on the Gosse family, and I’ve read the book and proof-read the thesis. I suspect we’re also the only household in Scarborough that relates episodes from the young life of Edmund Gosse as if they were family anecdotes.
I know, we must get a life …
I’ve archived an MP3 copy of Arnold Brown’s Radio 4 programme here: Ivor Cutler: Glasgow Dreamer. It’s a good introduction to Ivor Cutler’s work, and it’s a bit more accessible than the RealAudio format I had to convert it from.
BBC NEWS | Scotland | Crews face bonfire night attacks:
Firefighters and police faced a series of attacks from gangs as they attended bonfire night call-outs in the Strathclyde area.
When I read this, I’m glad I left the Land of Ned.
Anent George W. Bush’s “God Told Me To Do It …” revelation, was it purely coincidence that the week’s quotation in Catherine‘s Women Artists Datebook is:
I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.
— Susan B. Anthony
?
My folks have been visiting for the last couple of weeks (we’re just about to leave for the airport), and Dad asked for some links we discussed. The following will probably make little or no sense to other readers:
My late grandmother’s intense dislike of them notwithstanding, it looks like a shopping cart from Rolser Canada could be just the thing for the carfree-about-town. Lugging shopping bags about is teh suk.
The intensely tony Pepper Mill in Hazelton Lanes seems to be the stockist for Toronto.
So how do you write it?
I use the former. Some people might say that the latter is more correct (one doesn’t refer to a pigfarm, after all), but we’re not really farming wind here. That we leave to the bean farmers (hohoho; I do believe that was the very same joke that Lord McAlpine used to use when showing bigwigs through the RES Ltd office in Hemel Hempstead).
I’d really prefer to use the term windpark, using the original meaning of park for an enclosed field. I guess it’s a bit European for most folks here, so it’s windfarm for me.
(One shouldn’t confuse a windfarm with WindFarm, the toolbox of choice for the leet wind haxx0r).
I can give blood now: Canadian Blood Service drops restrictions on donors who lived in Britain and France. But is their donation system ready for me? Ah, no; it seems I still can’t, and maybe never will.
uh oh, indeed. On Sunday, I bought that beautiful Dawes Super Galaxy that they had in Cyclemania on the Danforth. Reynolds 531 ST frame, SunTour Cyclone M II gears, Maillard hubs, and a Brooks saddle. I’m guessing it’s a 1984 model from the date on the gears.
Its sky-blue “Handbuilt in England” frame is a little dusty with age, but it’s still got the E. Chamberlaine & Son dealer decals on it (and they’re still at 77 Old Kent Rd, too). When I was a bike-obsessed 14 year old, I so wanted a Dawes Super Galaxy, after reading too many articles in Bicycle (long gone, sadly missed; some images from it here) magazine.
It rides like a dream. If the legendary Reynolds 531 Super Touring frame was always reviewed as being a little less lively than regular 531, it must’ve been a bronco. It’s a sparkling ride, with the beautifully thin forks taking up a lot of the vibration. I took it out for a spin down to the lake this evening. I’m usually too pooped to go anywhere after work, but not when I’ve got this joyful vehicle to ride …