planet impiazzi

January is drawing to a close and I won't be sorry to see the back of it. To add to my woes, this week has been so frustrating:

Every day this week I have got to my bus stop at a different time, and every day I have missed the bus by seconds. Yesterday I went shopping for groceries on my way to the bus stop so was laden down with bags. The bus was at the stop when I came round the corner, but I couldn't run and had to wait to cross the road anyway. It was pouring with rain. I got to my stop, stood patiently in the rain. A car drove past close to the kerb, straight through the puddle in the gutter and splashed me from mid-thigh to toe. I was soaked! All I could do was laugh. At least it wasn't as cold as it had been the day before.

My telly is on the blink. Its gone all yellow. Everybody is jaundiced and the sky is green. About 4 months ago it went all red which was unwatchable. I got it fixed, which cost me £50, and there was a 3 month guarantee on the repair. I'm not going to bother getting it fixed again. I'll put it in my bedroom (I'm not likely to watch it very often and I can just about live with yellow), and buy a new one for downstairs.

The light switch in the bathroom isn't working properly. I think its a loose wire. Sometimes it comes on, sometimes it doesn't. Bah! Its nice bathing by candlelight, but not so good for putting on make-up.

The security light outside isn't working. Dunno why. But my dad is coming round tomorrow with a ladder.

The antibiotics have done their job in clearing up my tooth infection, so my hamsterish appearance is no more, which is a good thing. What a week! What a month!

Goodbye and good riddance January.

The snow has been and gone. We didn't get much, and what we did get soon turned to ice. Snow I like, ice I don't. Anyway, its all gone now and its just very cold.

We had a Northern Green Gathering meeting last night. NGG organise a 5 day annual camp to highlight environmental issues, let folk do a bit of networking and hopefully spread a few ideas about living sustainably. It started in 1999, and I got involved with organising it in 2000. It grew from several hundred people coming along, to getting on for 3000 in 2002. But in '01 and '02 we got an increasing number of people coming for a boozy, druggy festival and it became a big security headache. Last year we took a break. We all needed to recharge our batteries and have a think about where the organisation and the event were going. All those who work to put the event on do it voluntarily and most of us have full-time jobs too, so its quite a big commitment. Actually, its a huge commitment.
Anyway, I'd not been feeling very positive about doing it again. All those meetings, all that pressure...all that stress. I definitely wasn't prepared to do another event like the one in 2002. The meeting yesterday pulled together the half dozen or so people still around who had been on the team before. We had a good discussion about the problems we encountered last time, and what we want to do this year. I was really surprised to find my enthusiasm returning!
We decided that we do want to try and put on an event this year, albeit much smaller than last time, and on a different site so that we can avoid the crowd who caused the stress in the past.
We want to put on a small camp, with workshops and talks.
We want to keep the whole thing local, sourcing as much as possible of our supplies and materials from local, sustainable suppliers, inviting craftspeople and facilitators from the North to come and be part of the event.
We want to limit the distance people are travelling to get to it, thereby reducing the environmental impact.
We want to reduce the amount of power we consume. Any power we do use will be generated sustainably (as always) by wind and sun. So there won't be big marquees and sound systems.
We want to encourage people to barter and share, to help each other instead of purchasing ready made food and ready made services.
This is taking NGG back to its original aims. And I think its EXCITING!!

I'm sitting waiting for the snow to fall. According to the weather forecast it will probably arrive tomorrow.

I got my security grille fitted to the kitchen window first thing on Saturday, so now I feel much safer. If anyone wants to put the window through now they will have to come very close and then they will be on camera.

So I had a much better weekend. Went out for a drink on Saturday night with a friend I don't see very often. We went to The Palace, a pub which always has a fine selection of ales, and very few belly buttons on view. I don't have a problem with belly buttons but prefer to drink somewhere where conversation and good beer is valued over loud music and flesh. You can see The Palace here, The site features lots more panoramas & pictures of Leeds - have a look, there are some great buildings. (There is a lot of rubbish too!)

Anyway, on Sunday I woke up looking like half a hamster. My slightly niggly toothache of the day before had developed into an infection leaving my left cheek swollen. It wasn't especially painful but did (does) look pretty awful. Undaunted, my son and I went bookshopping. He had finished the books I bought him for Christmas and as I mentioned the other day I'd been itching to buy some more myself so a visit to Waterstones was required. I bought Going after Cacciato by Tim O'Brien, If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things by Jon McGregor and Poor Things by Alasdair Gray. Ooh I do love buying books!!

Today I felt quite grotty and toxic thanks to the infection, so went to the dentist at lunchtime and came home with 2 different sorts of antibiotic. I worked in the morning but wasn't really up to it so didn't go back after the dentist. I'm feeling a bit better now though, after 2 doses of the medicine. Really though, things have got to improve, haven't they?

I 'borrowed' this from Richard at Background Noise. Good, innit?

I finished reading Hoping for Hope by Lucy Clare. While it was readable enough, it was all a bit too neat. Family with grown up children; one a 'career mother' who lives for childbearing, one a career woman unhappy with her body who can't bear the thought of being pregnant, and a gay son who wants a baby to cement the relationship with his lover and legitimise them as a family. Their parents have both had affairs and Liddy, the mother, finds herself pregnant at 49. Trauma, heartache, birth, death, they all lived happily ever after. Thats about it really. Ok if you like that sort of thing.
So why did I pick it up in the first place? There's a mail order book company - The Book People that I buy from sometimes (very cheap). They do packs of 10 paperbacks for £9.99. The packs include some very good, some middling books. I find that I will read something I wouldn't normally pick up in a shop, and have been pleasantly surprised by quite a few. I must admit that this pack hasn't been as good as previous packs though, and I'm feeling very tempted to head down to a proper bookshop to find something a bit less orthodox. If I have any money left after securing my house.
Speaking of which...
I am so cross with the tradesman who promised me he would come and fit the security grille to my kitchen window. He was supposed to do it this afternoon. He had asked if I would pay on completion of the job, so I got the cash and took the afternoon off work so I could be here. Of course he didn't turn up. My neighbour fitted my security light to the back of the house. It worked when he had finished. Did it work when dusk fell? No it bloody didn't. Wouldn't come on at all. I tried changing the fuse in the plug, tried turning it off and on again to reset it, tried setting it to manual. Nothing. I'm too short to reach it to check the bulb and wiring, and anyway it was dark by the time I realised the damn thing wasn't working. Bah!!!
Anyway, I muttered and swore for a while but being unable to do anything about either of those problems, I settled down and ordered our Friday night take away. "30 minutes" said the man, as usual. We order from the same place nearly every week, so I expected the food to arrive in the usual 30-40 minutes. 55 minutes it took. We were so hungry! And they didn't bring our samosas. So I was not a very happy bunny at all. Muttered and swore a bit more, rang the take away back and was very assertive, so that at least the missing samosas were dispatched pretty sharpish.

But the good thing is I managed to get my 'Campaigners' links back up. Hooray!!

The sun does occasionally make an appearance.

We've been watching Hercules on BBC3 over the last 11 days. Its quite grotesque viewing at times, but ridiculously compelling. It started out with 12 athletes, and they've been eliminated day by day til we have just 3 remaining. These 3 are battling it out to find out which one of them can endure the most physical exertion. Each day they have had to spend at least 6 hours doing something extremely strenuous, like running up ladders or running in a big hamster wheel. Being a bit of a couch potato, I find it amazing that someone would want to put themselves through such feats of endurance. But it has been entertaining. Tomorrow is the final day. Will the little man with the funny moustache catch up and take the title? Or will it be the bloke who has picked up so many injuries he is more bandage than skin? Or maybe it will be the cyclist? The finalists are the oldest men in the competition which just goes to show that youth isn't everything!
( Actually, I wanted the Extreme Gym Champion to win, but that was purely on the basis of his good looks. He was eliminated on Day 9, being unable to cope with spending several hours running round in little circles).

We've had no trouble from the local youths for a couple of days, so I'm beginning to relax a bit. Tomorrow I'm getting a security grille fitted to the kitchen window which should mean no more bricks through the window, though I'm not at all happy at having to turn my home into a fortress. The new Anti-Social Behaviour legislation should help, if there are enough police to go round. Once upon a time I would have been with the civil liberties groups who say the new law is too draconian, but now I know how it feels to be scared & intimidated by these youths and I welcome the efforts to do something about them.

I seem to have lost a few links, while trying to fix the recurrent problem I have when adding new links or making any alterations to my template. Now half of my 'Campaigners' have disappeared. This happens when I save my changes. Blogger say they can't see a problem. A very helpful person at Blogging Brits has been helping me, but I can't ask her every time I want to make an amenment can I?

I got my cctv camera up yesterday, then tonight had my window put through again. Its all on video which the police now have. I'm really fed up, worried, scared. Skint from having repairs done. Can't sleep, which is why I'm here instead of in bed. I'm hoping a bit of time online will make my eyelids start to droop.

Crazy day at work. When I arrived this morning the heating wasn't working. We all had to keep our coats on to avoid freezing. At about 10.30am the fire alarm went off, so we all trooped out into a cold & windy city. We wondered if someone was burning papers to warm themself up, but there really was a fire down in the basement. It didn't take long to extinguish it though, and after about half an hour we trooped back in again. It hadn't warmed up at all though, and we were told the heating wouldn't be back on today. So we huddled up and got on with it. Until 2pm when we realised the water was off. No heat and no water to make hot drinks? No thanks! Fortunately management were sympathetic. They said that if the water wasn't back on by 3pm we could all go home. It wasn't so we did.

Its going to be a busy day today. Yesterday afternoon I had my kitchen window put through by the teenage morons who loiter around here. It was not a football accident, but a very purposeful lump of concrete, big enough to cause serious injury if anyone had been hit by it. It took me ages to clear up the glass. Fortunately I managed to find a glazing firm who could come out (within an hour) to fix the window. Not having transport to go and find a glass shop, and not being especially handy, I couldn't have fixed it myself. The police, of course, could do nothing to help, because I don't know which individual did the deed. There were 8 or more of them out there at the time. I only know the names of 3 of them.
Anyway, I'm going to get a cctv system installed and replace my vandalised security light, which means a trip to the DIY shop, and a visit to a friendly neighbour who will hopefully give me a hand to set it all up.
When I've got all that sorted I've got Creating Webpages For Dummies waiting to be read.

I completed yesterday's Guardian prize xword all by myself, which means it was probably a really easy one and thousands of others will be trying to win that dictionary. Nonetheless, I'm quite pleased with myself!

Today has been such an awfully dull, grey day. So I dug out one of last summer's holiday pics to cheer myself up. This photo was taken in Valencia.



The other thing I did to dispel the misery was to eat a large plateful of sausages and mash. I just love mashed potato. Smooth and creamy, in a puddle of gravy. My sausages were Quorn. My son prefers Sosmix. Yum yum!

Last week at work I read a book called Freaks, Geeks and Asperger Syndrome, written by a 13 year-old boy with Asperger Syndrome. Its an excellent book. Luke Jackson comes from a family where his 3 brothers are all autistic to some extent. He writes about life with Asperger, how he deals with it, how society treats him. Then last night I watched a BBC documentary about Luke and his family, which was equally fascinating. The documentary had been shown before but I missed it - so it was very handy that it was shown again just after I read Luke's book. I was really interested to actually see the family after having read about them. The mother of the boys (and 3 girls) is amazing. She is bringing her family up on her own (she admits her ex-husband never really got much of a look in), and seems to take it all in her stride. The youngest boy is the most severly autistic, while the next youngest has AD/HD. She really has her hands full! While she obviously has her low moments, for the most part her sense of humour sees her through and she appears to have a great relationship with her children, as they do with each other.
One of the points that Luke seeks to drive home in his book is that difference is cool. I couldn't agree more!

"Sweatshop labour is modern, global capitalism stripped bare. From the small, backstreet sweatshop to some of the biggest corporations in the world - child labour, forced overtime, poverty wages, unsafe conditions, harassment of women workers and intimidation of trade unionists are commonplace."

Have a look at the No Sweat site.

A woman got on the crowded rush hour bus this evening with a bicycle. Now, I know the weather was pretty grotty; icy wind, frequent showers, so not pleasant cycling conditions. But it has been like that all day. It's not like it was a beautiful sunny morning because it wasn't. Having trudged the extra 100 yards to the better bus stop, I at least had a seat, so didn't have to suffer her pedals bashing against my shins as the bus lurched through the traffic. The little kid in the buggy didn't have much fun with his face pressed up against her spokes though, as she had parked the bike in the buggy space. I'm all for getting people out of their cars and finding alternative means of getting to and from work, but really, that was a bit much!

Playing Sardines by Michelle Roberts

This is a collection of short stories, mostly set in France but some take place in England, one in Italy.

Roberts is particularly good at descriptive writing, and successfully evokes a sense of place – not unlike Joanne Harris’s France-set novels. At times you can almost feel the warm scented breeze of an evening in rural France. She seems to have a penchant for food, and has the ability to make your mouth water with descriptions of delicacies.

The stories are light and quirky, easily readable. Some are particularly touching. I enjoyed “Playing Sardines”, “No Hands”, “Lists” and “A Feast for Catherine”. Some of the stories, however, seem a bit trite or contrived, and consequently rather disappointing.

Nevertheless, this was a good book for reading on the bus journey to and from work, providing bite-sized distraction from the frustrations of traffic and a gloomy English winter.

The world outside my office today

I've seen an unusual amount of my son this week. It seems that Baldurs Gate:Dark Alliance for PS2 is just the thing to keep him on the sofa and off the internet. We tried the 2 player co-operative mode, but since I'm really crap at these games, I spent most of my time dead in a corner while he scurried around collecting treasure.

Fancy a bit of salmon? I don't. Even without new health scares its a bad idea. Farming salmon causes so many environmental problems. For example, "farmed salmon are fed meal and oils from wild-caught fish. Each pound of salmon produced requires at least 3 pounds of wild-caught fish".
Intensive farming of fish produces intensive amount of waste, just as intensive farming of, say, pigs does. That waste usually ends up polluting local water. And keeping large numbers of any creature in a small space just invites disease and the spread of parasites. Both the disease and parasite problem infects wild populations when fish inevitably escape from the farms. Isn't that such a crazy way to treat our environment and the creatures we share it with?

Just heard about a new direct action group called Leeds ARC - Action for Radical Change - that is starting up here in Leeds to give the powers that be something to think about. They are producing a newsletter which can be downloaded from the website.

This escalator is outside the building I work in. It has been out of order for as far back as I can remember - since I was a little child. There used to be a subway at the bottom, going under a busy road, but that was blocked up a couple of years ago. Somehow, they never got round to taking the escalator away.

Today I had one of those eyes meeting across a crowded room moments. Except it was at the bus stop. I was getting on to go home as he was getting off. We made eye contact and didn't want to break it. He walked off along the street looking back at me. He was very well groomed, very smart - much more so than your average bus passenger, and certainly much more than me. I had my scruffy old green parka on. Its lovely and warm, and has huge pockets so I can carry all sorts of junk around with me, but the cuffs are frayed and it has definitely seen better days. I don't suppose I will ever see him again, but I'll be looking.

It took half an hour to get to work on the bus this morning, compared to 10 minutes last Friday when the schools were still closed and some people were still off work. Oh well, more reading time for me! (which is always a good thing). But I'll be starting walking to work again this week, I think, unless its really wet or icy.

I'm single again, as my xword puzzling romance sort of fizzled out last week. Maybe I've spent too much time on my own, and I'm not good at having someone around. I hope I haven't lost a friend in the process though. But I didn't complete the xword on Saturday - only managed half of it. Probably never win that dictionary now! I wonder if I'll end up being one of those eccentric old women with lots of cats?

Had a small success today. My son completed Prince of Persia in 2 days so I dragged him into town this morning to take the game back and choose another. After we had got a new game and a controller extension cable (for me - I'm more likely to play if I can stay in my corner on the sofa) I managed to persuade my reluctant offspring to have a quick look in a shoe shop and we actually found a pair he likes!. The ones he chose don't have that white line along the edge, but you get the idea. Oh, and they are huge - he wears a size 10.

Looking at what my neighbour has put out for the binmen, I've come to the conclusion that Christmas is rubbish:

We had a snowy New Year's Eve. I'm glad I hadn't planned to go out anywhere, but a walk with the dog in the early hours was essential.



The cemetery was eerie.