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Running out of clean underwear

Heard in the office today:
"Is Malcolm still stranded in Madrid?"
"Dunno"
"Must be running out of clean underwear by now"

Haven't seen an aeroplane for a week now. Astounding isn't it that one volcanoe can cause this much disruption. People are starnded all over the planet.The airlines a re now questioning how dangerous it actually is to fly. There don't seem to be any ssafe limits defined and some airlines have sent up test flights without issues. I'd have said sending up a test flight was a bit dodgy. I'd want danger money if I was the pilot.

We spent the weekend in Devon. It was very lovely weather and we had lunch on Sunday at the Tarka Inn. It was all very nice. I had the beef and Guiness pie.

Finally Mothercare came through yesterday and delivered the final piece of our order. It's taken well over a month, countless phone calls, bitten fingernails, etc. I am currently composing a sarcastic complaint letter which will be published here.

Gordon Brown came to Swindon yesterday and made an utter arse of himself because the Tory council banned him from visiting a school. I don't understand what's going on inthis election campaign any more. The Lib Dems are doing better than expected but won't get into bed with Labour, despite it being their only hope of power. Labour are desperately trying to get into bed with the Lib Dems anyway, but at the same time telling everyone that voting Lib Dem will mean a Tory government. Meanwhile the Tories are claiming that a vote for the Lib Dems will result in a Labour geovernment. All most odd.

Do you know, and this is facinating, that there were 143 NHS sex change operations in UK in 2009. In 2000 there were 54. And, over the last 10 years, there have been 853 male to female operations, and just 12 female to male. Read the article, there are loads of other cool facts and figures in there. I love the final two paragraphs in that article:

"For a man wanting to become a woman, surgery involves the removal of male genitalia and the creation of female genitalia."

And, wait for it,

"For a woman to become a man, the breasts, uterus and ovaries are removed and male genitalia is created."

I'd never have worked that out for myself. We've been discussing this article in the office and it started an argument about whether hens turn into cocks after they have stopped laying eggs.

Padded Bras

Clothing store Primark has landed itself in sea of controversy by selling padded bikini tops for girls as young as seven years. The Children's Society criticised Primark for "premature sexualisation and unprincipled advertising". David Cameron commented that it was "completely disgraceful". I'm interested in that phrase "premature sexualisation".

If by "premature sexualisation" they mean that padded bikini tops are going to make seven-year-old girls more aware of their impending sexuality, I would disagree. At least I would say that a padded bikini top is no more likely to make them aware of their potential breasts than seeing their mother in a bra, or adult bikini. A seven year old girl knows that she will develop breasts. No seven-year-old understands what that means in sexual terms. A bikini top on its own will not change that because it won't teach the child anything about what breasts are sexually.

If "premature sexualisation" means that these tops make seven-year-olds seem more sexualy mature in the eyes of adults than they acctually are, well of course it's true, that's self evident. Is it important? I'm not sure. Several news services are carrying the story and it's interesting to see how they report it differently. The Telegraph carries the report, and makes much of the fact that there has been, "criticism that the items were encouraging paedophilia". That is clearly a concern if it's true, but I would suggest that paedophiles looking for seven-year-olds are probably by not looking for breasts. I'm not saying that the statement is wrong, just that I don't understand how the link is established.

It's not that I think that padded bras are OK for children, I don't. I think there is something sinister about parents who dress their girls as women. But it's cultural and everyone seems to have missed that point. No one bats an eyelid when you put a seven year old boy in a little suit and tie at someone's wedding reception. I would suggest that it's possible, even probable, that the padded bra on a girl is no more damaging to the girl in itself than the suit and tie is to the boy. It's just tasteless. And it may or may not encourage unwanted attention from adults. That said, it's none of my business what other parents dress their children in, and Primark as a business, must react to the supply and demand pressures of the market. I dont' think it's a big issue myself, just interesting.

Primark has withdrawn the range and said that they will make a donation to children's charities.

Something less cerebral; check out this student stop-frame video. I think it's really funky. Thanks to Dickie for that link.

Let me tell you a story about Mothercare, the crappest children's goods comapny on the face of the earth.

You may know that we ordered furniture for the boy's bedroom in early March. The idea was to get him installed by his birthday in Mid March. We didn't quite make it because the goods we ordered from mothercare take 10 days to be delivered. I'm not blaming Mothercare for that, although, 10 days does seem kind of ridiculous. I guess we should have got our act together earlier. The order was for a chair, a bed, two storage drawers to go under the bed, a bed guard (to stop him falling out), and some bed linen.

Astoundingly Mothercare can't arrange for all the order to be delivered together, so it arrived on about three or four separate days. OK, that's hugely inconvenient for working parents, but again, I can live with it if I have to.

The delivery man dropped one of the parcels as he delivered it. It was the bed side rails, one of which was damaged and had to be replaced. Also, one of the front panels for the storage drawers arrived incomplete, so I couldn't assemble it. It only required two plastic inserts to allow the fixing of little metal posts. Mothercare can't send the two plastic inserts apparently. They have to send an entire drawer front.

So we reordered the bed rails and a storage drawer front. The rails arrived, several days later than we were told they would. The drawer front didn't.

So I called them about the drawer front. They had no record of it being ordered, but I needed to talk to Laura who would call me back, but she didn't. So I called the next day to find out what was going on, or at least speak to Laura. Laura wasn't there, but we did establish that the drawer front hadn't been ordered and I still needed it. Another seven days of course.

They actually managed to give us a day of delivery for the new drawer front, but it was the wrong day. The dragon stayed in the entire day waiting for it and it didn't come. It came unannounced the following day. Luckily I was there to receive it. Sadly it was the wrong piece. They sent a drawer back panel, not a front one.

So, that's where we are now. It's been over a month. We have a complete bed now, but still only one storage drawer. I called again today. Apparently a complete drawer is on its way (ordered on 12th I'm told), and a £20 gift voucher. I'm guessing £20 will just about cover the cost of all the phone calls I've had to make chasing the bastards.

So many quirky stories

My back feels better, thanks for asking. The doctor says I have an inflamed or torn something in my shoulder. He said take Ibuprofen. I don't like things medical much and I tend to trust doctors without question, my theory being that they have spent years training and therefore must know more than me. I apply the same theory to accountants and lawyers. I do whatever they tell me because the consequences of doing it myself and getting it wrong are potentially catastrophic.

We went to Bourton on the Water this weekend. They have a very good little motor museum there. I was somewhat dismayed to dicover that the car I learnt to drive in, A Mk1 Triumph Herald, is apparently a museum piece now. It smelt the same as I remember. I think we will be returning. There are other attractions there, Birdland for instance. Though I don't know what that is. Also, a perfumery, and a model railway exhibition.

Loads of quirky stuff in the news today. The Telegraph seems to have moved into Sun territory with two lead stories, Students eye UFO degree, and Braille pornography launched.

The UFO degree story is actaually quite boring. An academic from the Niagara County Community College thinks we should investigate UFO sitings because there are so many of them. There really isn't enough material there for a degree though is there. You might be able to do something interesting investigating why nutters think they see things that don't exist. That might even be a PhD thesis.

I'm more interested in the braille pornography story. Apparently it's not a magazine, it's a book with raised images of naked people. There are 17 images it seems. It's the idea of Lisa Murphy from Canada who claims it fills a gap in the market. She claims that visually impaired people have been excuded from a society saturated with sexual images. The book apparently costs £150. That strikes me as a lot of money for 17 dirty pictures. I'm not sure what the going rate for a lady of the night is in my town, but I'm pretty sure you could run your hands over a real live woman for a fraction of that cost for half an hour, which seems like a much better deal to me.

Apparently a lorry load of pigs turned over on the M4 yesterday, spilling livestock onto the road and closing the motorway. The boy was super interested in this story when I told him. He wanted to go and see the pigs running around I think. There were however three hour delays and 20 mile tailbacks, so we didn't go site seeing.

Oh there are many more quirky stories in the news today, but I shall not list them all here. I want to mention something more serious. Three Labour MPs and one Conservative peer have found themselves in court over fraudulent expenses claims. The peer, Lord Hanningfield, is accused of claiming falsely for travelling allowances, the others have been accused of claiming for rent or mortgage expenses that didn't exist, and services that weren't carried out. All sounds pretty dirty doesn't it. Well, it turns out that the three MPs have all denied any wrong doing, but are also claiming parliamentary privilige. Parliamentary privilige is supposed to protect MPs from slander or libel laws. The idea is that they can say anything in Parliament without fear of prosecution. It's funny though that they are all claiming they are innocent, but would rather use parliamentary privilige to avoid court than go to court and clear their names.

A judge must decide whether they can use parliamentary privilige. If they can't they must go to court and they would face up to seven years in jail for theft by false accounting. This has been kicking aorund in the news for some time but emerged again today because all three MPs have been granted legal aid, meaning the taxpayer must fund the court case. They have no shame.

Oh, and the pope appears to be in very deep smeg indeed for his alleged part in the cover up of abuse by a Catholic Priest. It seems that Richard Dawkins is calling for his (the pope's) prosecution. Now wouldn't that be something?

Agony

I'm in agony. Actually, that is something of an exaggeration. I was in agony this morning due to backache. I have now taken enough painkillers to knock out a donkey, and I feel much better. I've had the backache for a few days now. I have no idea what caused it. It appears to be mostly in my shoulder. Anyway, I'm going to get it checked out on Monday because I'm running out of painkillers, and I can't sleep. I've been using prescription painkillers left over from my knee surgery. When they run out I'm going to try and score some heroine.

On Tuesday of next week we've been asked to dress smartly for work because we have important clients visiting. I'm oddly excited by this. We were originally told it would be Monday and I was quite sad about it because it clashed with my doctor's appointment. I know I sound odd, but I really miss the days when we used to have to put on a tie to go to work. I used to like bow ties. We've not been asked to wear a tie next week, but I think I might anyway.

Yesterday the boy and the dragon were making jam tarts. I had to eat a marmite one when I got home, and I had to make it look like I enjoyed it. It's not as awful as it sounds actually.

Malcolm McLaren has died apparently. Brilliant man, bit of a bastard. I had no idea he was married to Vivienne Westwood. Now she is cool. I'd also completely forgotten about bow wow wow.

The Duchess of Cornwall has broken her leg. I wonder if she'll have to be shot.

There is a story on the BBC news about the Taiwanese Susan Boyle. Apparently they have a talent show there that has uncovered a 24-year-old male soprano singer. I thought it sounded a bit weird when I read "male sprano", but just have a look at the video. The guy is creepy as hell. He's clearly made a pact with the devil and stolen some woman's voice.

Agonising Backache

First off let me tell you I have agonising backache. Actually I think it might be shoulder related. It's agonising anyway, that's the important point. And it's behind me. I think I'm going to have to call the doctor. It's not getting better. I'm going to take painkillers when I get home.

The long Easter weekend was great. It has meant I'm having to work like a loony because it coincided not only with month end, but also quarter end. BUt it's better to be busy than idle I suppose. Over the break we visited Farleigh Hungerford Castle, which is a ruin about an hour from our home. It has a 600 year old chapel and a crypt still standing, and there are bodies in lead coffins in the crypt, so it's quite cool.

You know something that really pisses me off? I'll tell you, pot smokers. I was outside Sainsbury's the other day with the boy and a couple with a child went wandering by sharing a joint. They didn't give a toss. Why can't these dickheads piss off and be disgusting in private? I don't care what they do in the privacy of their own home, they don't have to stand in the supermarket doorway being antisocial. Makes me so mad. The police don't seem to care.

Here's a story from the news that interests me. A crowd of women have paraded topless through Portland, Maine in protest at double standards. Apparently they want to be able to walk shirtless in public like men. The thing is, they can. It seems that nudity laws in maine allow women to go topless already, they simply choose not to. What exactly is the protest against? The organiser, Ty MacDowell, 20, appears either to be unbelievably naive or just thick, I can't decide which. She apparently expressed surprise that men turned up to watch. She is quoted as saying, "I'm really upset by the men ... watching it like it's a parade."

I was listening to Radio 4 yesterday morning and they had wheeled out Neil Kinock, the Welsh Windbag, to comment on the impending election. I'd like to point out by the way that I predicted a May 6th election back on 5th January. Anyway, predictably Neil was singing the praises of the Labour Party. But when asked why Gordon Brown never once uttered any warnings about unbridled spending and borrowing in the boom years, Neil said, "well name one politician, apart from Vince Cable, who did". So I think we can assume from that that Neil wil lbe voting Lib Dem.