I smell of fish

I took fish and rice to work for lunch today, and Curious George accused me of smelling. It was probably a fair comment. But Curious George upsets people every day, so I don't feel too guilty. I quite like the guy, but he has a filter missing or something, doesn't know when he's offending people, or doesn't care. It's also the boss' birthday, so I had to eat cake, and now I feel like a sea cow.

Here's an interesting story. A bunch of loonies in Wales decided to canoe 100m down the spillway at Llyn Brianne reservoir. I didn't know what a spillway was, but the pictures tell you all you need to know, and there is some video footage. These people should by rights be dead of course.

OK, beauty contests, why are they called "pageants" these days? Anyhow, I'm somehow drawn by the concept of these contests. I don't like them, but I'm drawn to them in the same way that I am to Big Brother. It's the freak show element. It was this freak show element that was aroused this morning when I saw the headline, "Teenage beauty queen stripped of title over village row". To be honest, I got less interested after I realised the headline extended further than, "Teenage beauty queen stripped", but I read the story anyway.

It would seem that a 17-year-old girl won a beauty contest, was presented with the prize, had her photograph taken, and was minutes later stripped of her crown when mothers of other contestants kicked off and it was discovered that she lived one mile outside the designated catchment area and was not eligible to enter. She had to watch the 14-year-old, second place contestant take the honour. See what I mean, freak show element. I don't know who the biggest freaks are here. I can sort of understand the young girls wanting to compete. The pushy stage school mothers who waited until the child had won before kicking off are pretty foul, and then there are the organisers who allowed the child to be crowned and then publicly humiliated. Mercury drinkers the lot of them.

I want to have go at making soap. Apparently the thing is to make it from vegetable oils and caustic soda. Caustic soda (sodium hydroxide) is apparently really nasty stuff, sometimes used as a drain cleaner. Doesn't sound like it should go into soap does it. Anyway, I have sourced some of the stuff and I'm intending to proceed with soap experiments in the near future. I'm sure it will all be documented here. It looks fun, and slightly dangerous.

I've been thinking; if there is some killer virus breakout and 98% of the world's human population dies in two weeks, and I'm left, could I look after my family? This is where the idea for making my own soap came from you see. Soap has to one of the more difficult things to get hold of when society crumbles. I've got a plan, just in case the worst happens. I'm going to move into a watermill I know of in North Devon, killing the current occupants if necessary, and hook up a generator to the wheel. I need to get guns from somewhere to defend the place. It's currently a trout farm, so it's a good source of fresh protein too if I can keep the fish alive. Also it's right in the middle of the countryside so I can catch rabbits and deer too. Anyway, don't tell anyone, I don't want competition.