Fade to Grey

Kitchen renovation, Phase I is now officially complete. I need to do a little tidying, but the extractor fan went in yesterday. There was a certain amount of swearing and brick dust, but I think that's to be expected. It nearly went all wrong at the eleventh hour when I discovered that the wooden conservatory is in fact cavity walled. I suppose I should have known. I had to redesign my extractor exit strategy. But, as I say, pending a little tidying, it's in. I feel special.



I've discovered that the most difficult part of this has been finding time for my family as well as the kitchen. I was intending to spend whole weekends doing this, but it's not fair on them. So I've been spending a day with the family and a day with the kitchen.

On Saturday we went to Bristol and spent the afternoon at the Chinese supermarket there. We go about once a month and stock up with Asian supplies. The dragon bought a sack of frozen clams and made soup. I don't really eat shellfish as I have an allergy, but recently I've become braver and I'm beginning to suspect that my only real problem is crab. I've had crab three or four times in my life, and each time I've wanted to die within two hours. I tried a few clams this weekend anyway, and I seem to have suffered no ill effects.

We also bought Dumpy a new tricycle thing from the Early Learning Centre, which he seems to like very much.



It's that time of year again when the king of Swaziland gets to choose a new wife. He has 13 already, but you can never have too many can you. As is the tradition in Swaziland, around 100,000 young topless women present the queen mother with reeds for her windbreak, and her son gets to pick another wife. The man must have an ego the size of Mars.

Here's an interesting story from my neck of the woods. Apparently a 43 year old man from Chippenham, Stephen Strange (didn't he used to be the lead singer from Visage?) has been given a suspended jail sentence after being discovered in the ceiling cavity above a tanning salon booth, spying on a 22 year old woman. It seems that the young lady was naked, there was a crash, and Strange's face appeared from a gap in the ceiling. His defence was originally, "I was drunk and don't remember", but he did eventually plead guilty. He was sentenced to three months in jail, suspended for two years. I thought that was harsh. I wasn't sure that voyeurism was an offence.

A group of clowns calling themselves the "Animal Rights Militia" claim to have contaminated tubes of Savlon antiseptic cream. It's probably not true, but Boots, Superdrug, and Tesco have taken the product off the shelves. According to the Animal Rights Militia, the company behind the product, Novartis, has links with Huntingdon Life Sciences. Huntingdon Life Sciences conducts tests on animals, and the company has long been a nutter target. I'm thinking of buying shares and I'll certainly be buying some Novaris products as a protest against the Animal Rights Militia.

As if that wasn't bad enough, A guy from Wantage, just a spit from here, was yesterday convicted of 89 sexual offences on children. The offences took place over 11 years and included 10 girls. The offences included rape, attempted rape, sexual assault, and indecent assault. He appears to have had a habit of recording his attacks. Some of his victims were as young as three. What I can't understand about this case is how the guy managed to commit so many serious offences, against so many children, over such a long period, before he was caught.

Apparently he was only caught when a five-year-old victim told her mother that she had seen his penis. How on earth do you keep 10 little girls, at least one of which was 11 years old, from talking about what happened? That's astounding isn't it?

Actually I have other stuff to write about, but this is already a huge entry. Well done if you got this far. I'll report tomorrow on the Taiwanese giant pig contest, and my new magic trick.