Day Jar View

Bit of excitement around these parts last night. Or at least I heard there was, as we slept through the whole thing.

Turns out a deadbeat student from around the corner decided to kick the wing mirror of our car last night at about 12ish. Luckily for us, but spectacularly unfortunate and bad for him, our neighbour Helen spotted him doing it and steamed out.

A melee of sorts ensued, with 3 (yes, 3) police cars showing up, and carting her around the side roads in search of the chap in the white t-shirt. Anyway, she spotted him, and he spent the night in clink.

Can’t fault the service: we had 3 calls from various police officers and victim support bods. I said that it been my BMW Touring rather than the crappy Zafira that had got the boot, I might have needed some victim support, but otherwise I was fine.

Thing is, the chances of my getting the cost of a new wing mirror out of him (if needed, not sure if I can repair it yet), are about as likely as the police turning up when you need them. Err, hang on….

For the past ten years, I’ve had a plant. It’s been in a few offices, and now resides in my house., above the fire. I don’t know what it is – I think it might be an Amaryllis, but don’t quote me – but it is still around, and is the only thing we haven’t managed to kill.

Each year I am consistently amazed by the appearance around this time of green stalks, from a bulb that has all the hallmarks of a dessicated cricket ball. How does it survive? How does it know it’s spring? How on earth can it go without a drink for 4 months when I forget to water it?

Who knows. All I know is that around the same time that the Business minister was busy putting her foot in her mouth about the green shoots appearing in the economy’s flower bed, my plant was busy putting up a few of its own. Here’s to another ten years!

Received an uncharacteristically good joke via email this morning – also very topical in view of the current washout.

“It was announced today that the local climate in the UK should no longer be referred to as .”British Weather.’

Rather than offend a sizable portion of the population, it will now be referred to as ‘Muslim Weather.’

In other words – partly Sunni, but mostly Shi’ite.”

I’m all for promoting alternative languages, but the Council’s insistence (indeed legal obligation) on producing everything in both English and Welsh is puzzling.

In almost every other area of my life I can opt out of receiving paper: bank statements, gas bills, company invoices. But with the council, everything I receive is in both languages, and therefore sometimes on two separate bits of paper.

Why not ask me just once whether I want English or Welsh and be done with it?

My route to and from work takes me past most of the Estate Agents in town, being located as they are pretty much all on one main road that runs through the town.

Over the past year or so that I’ve been walking that route, I’ve noticed on a number of occasions various members of staff playing games on the pc, surfing the net, chatting, and generally not doing much Estate Agenting.

Today when I looked in the window, two of the offices of one particular branch are empty – phones siting on the desk with the cable wrapped forlornly around. I can’t say I’ve ever felt huge sympathy for Estate Agents at the best of times, and I reckon that the current housing situation is in some part their fault, what with over-valuing over the past 10 years amongst other crimes.

However, there are people behind those shiny suits and company 1-series BMWs , and it seems that there a few of them now twiddling their thumbs at home, wondering where the next cheque is coming from. Not a nice situation for anyone.

Benjamin Franklin said: “Beer is living proof that God exists, and that he wants us to be happy.”

In and around the coastal towns of West Wales this week, I think that the happiest people in the UK must live here. I haven’t seen one chain pub, but instead of these soulless behemoths, there are literally dozens of independent pubs lining the streets, all presumably making enough to keep going.

It may be that the culture of these towns is centred around the pub, so they keep them afloat, or it may be that the pubs themselves keep the towns together, acting as the hub for all the gossip and socialising. Every so often a politician or other bleats about the demise of the Post Office, and I seem to remember it was Prince Charles who said something about the demise of the country pub.

Now, flower-talking notwithstanding, I think he had a point. It makes for a nicer visit, and if I was a local, given the choice of either 5 smaller pubs with different beers, characters and banter, or one giant brewery with euro-lagers and big TVs – I’d go for a mini-crawl every time.

Just spent 25 mins in a sauna at an indicated 70 degrees. Felt pretty hot when I came out which is no surprise.

Compared to the world champ of the other week, though, I’m an amateur: they managed 18 mins at 110 degrees.

Wonder if there was anything left?

I’ve watched most of the Olympic coverage on the BBC this time around. From 8am to 6pm, then the highlights show at 7pm, I’ve been pretty much glued to the screen. Of course this hasn’t always gone down well with the missus, but then plus ca change eh?

A comment by Michael Johnson, the best visiting pundit on the BBC, made me aware of one of the most important reasons why I enjoy the spectacle so much.

For the past 20 years, my life is punctuated with key memories, which meld into one another with the passage of time, and don’t usually conjoin with a particular news event in my head. With the Olympics, however, it seems to be different.

What is it about sport that makes me remember watching Ben Johnson’s astonishing 9.79 in the 100m in Seoul 1988 on a 4″ black and white TV in my dorm room, under the duvet so that we wouldn’t wake anyone; Chris Boardman’s triumph on the track in 1992 as my girlfriend and I sat cross-leggged on the grass outside our tent on our first holiday away together; Michael Johnson’s 200m World Record in Atlanta whilst at our family home in France with my Dad and younger Brother; Steve Redgrave’s 5th Gold on the radio whilst in my bedroom in 2000; Kelly Holmes’ first gold in 2004 cooking in the kitchen.

I’ve watched so much of this Games, and seen all of the highlights, but I think I will remember the pool hall in Guildford where I saw Usain Bolt’s embarrassment of his fellow runners in the 100m, and Rebecca Adlington’s unadulterated joy at winning her first whilst I was busy helping change the worktops in our kitchen.

Who knows, in 20 years’ time, something else might flash in there, but that’s the beauty of memories; they are at once fluid and fleeting.

One of my pet hates, especially in today’s world of instant access to spell checkers and websites devoted to grammatical correctness (is that a word?), is the seeming increase in the use of the greengrocer’s apostrophe.

It’s one thing to see a scrawled sign on my way to work every day that says “lunch’s”, but quite another when one of the world’s largest companies, Dell Computers, makes a similar faux pas on its offers home page.

I don’t know what’s worse; that Dell don’t have a single person in their organisation who has spotted it, or has and then hasn’t reported it, or that the probable thousands who have seen it since haven’t contacted them to flag it immediately?

Of course I am included in that bunch. And at the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I don’t want to be the one who tells them – I can imagine it wouldn’t be warmly received and I don’t want to be “one of those”.

So, instead, I will post up their mistake for everyone here to see and everyone else to potentially stumble across in year’s to come (geddit?).

I was wondering whether a single “Hundreds and Thousands” would be called a “One”, or a “Hundred and Thousandth”?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprinkles