Drat, started writing a rambly blog entry and
Rob's computer had an internet explorer death moment. Grr.
Just received a junk text message. I seem to be getting more of those lately. Odd.
Anyway, what had I been saying? I said about how I thought I'd blog since I'm ill, and sitting in front of a computer, so blogging seemed easy enough to do. I don't feel like doing much. I always feel bad when I don't go into work. I tried to make a doctor's appointment but the nice doctor (I don't want to see the one I saw before, who said my symptoms were all caused by 'anxiety', because he just made me more, well, anxious, and I didn't feel anxious before that!) was all booked up. I have to phone Monday morning at 8am and I should get an appointment.
Hmm, enough about my illness. What have I done in the 20 days since I last blogged? My Mum, Dad and brother visited last week, and we went out with
Rob's Mum, Dad and sister. And
Ali. My family's visits always seem too brief, especially when there are always wedding things to discuss. There's not much time for fun. Although we did have a barbeque on Sunday. Woo-hoo!
One thing that's been giving me amusement lately is local newspaper reporting. I mean, we all know that they misquote people regularly, and tend to exaggerate or just plain get things wrong, but I've noticed some... oddness. And I haven't even been looking. These showed up without me purchasing a single paper. So if I looked, I could probably find hundreds of amusing things to blog about. Or not.
The first of these was in the
Leicester Mercury, which I read over someone's shoulder on the bus. Well, the headline caught my eye, and I had to read again to figure out what it meant. The article was this:
Gun thug shoots dead family's pet. For a while I thought the article was about some sort of tragedy, where a family met with a terrible end and the only survivor was their pet, and then a thug savagely finished the job, ending the poor cat's life. But it's more a case of "Gun thug shoots family's pet dead". Good news for the family, apart from the tragic loss of their pet, obviously.
The other weirdness was in the free paper that gets given out to all us commuters in the city centre each morning, the
Metro. I don't think the article in question is online, but the paper's website is
here. It reads as follows:
---
Floods and chaos as gales lash the South (Thursday, June 24, 2004) by Suzy Austin
Thought those weeks of glorious sunshine were too good to be true? Well, they were.
Someone, somewhere really opened the tap yesterday, unleashing gales and torrential rain that left misery in their wake.
Weather warnings were issued across the South, as some of the most unseasonal weather for years caused landslides, flattened trees and brought severe flooding.
In Brighton, gales sent remaining parts of the already devastated West Pier tumbling into the sea.
Channel ferries were cancelled, including P&O sailings from Portsmouth to Cherbourg.
In London, rain and 55mph winds caused localised flooding.
Wimbledon was a washout, with not a ball struck.
"It's a bad day to be a tennis fan," said Met Office forecaster Wayne Elliot. Flooding at Waterloo caused the complete closure of the Waterloo and City line, while a fallen tree delayed services on the Metropolitan line.
In Glastonbury, the first of a predicted 150,000 music fans gathering for the weekend festivities were deluged.
The bad weather began on Tuesday evening, sweeping its way in from the West. People in Porthtowan, Cornwall, were evacuated from their homes after a landslide.
In Swansea, a girl of 12 broke a leg when she was hit by debris blown from a roof.
In Northampton last night, a man was fighting for his life after being struck by a lorry when he ran naked across the M1.
Forecasters said heavy rain would spread across most of Britain today. But it should start to dry out overnight tonight, with some sunshine over the weekend.
---
Now, although at first glance this strange piece of news just thrown into the middle of a list of flood related things is amusing, I decided to find out more. I mean, why was there a naked man running across the M1? Had all his clothes been blown off in the high winds? Had the reporter made something up to fill the gap and not changed it, or was this news in the wrong place, or is something else going on? Back to the BBC news portal, then, where we can count on reliable news stories.
It turns out that this is the
actual news story:
---
Naked pedestrian hit by M1 lorry (Wednesday, June 23, 2004)
A naked man was hit by a lorry after walking on the M1 in Northamptonshire.
Police said a pedestrian reported walking across the motorway between junction 15a and 16 at about 0750 BST on Wednesday morning was at some point hit by a lorry.
He is believed to be a 23-year-old man who had been reported missing from his home in Leicestershire.
His parents were at his bedside at Northampton General Hospital on Wednesday where his condition remained serious.
---
Now we know that he
wasn't running, but
was naked, and he'd been reported missing, it appears to be the tragic story of someone whose mental health might not be all it could be. The
Metro should be ashamed of such shoddy reporting, throwing something like that into a completely unrelated article in a way that makes it appear amusing!
And while I'm in pedantic mode, I also find the way she says 'overnight tonight' amusing, as if either of the words 'overnight' or 'tonight' wouldn't have been sufficient by themselves. And the way she split everything into tiny paragraphs except for the bit where the Met office guy talks about Wimbledon, and that's somehow connected to rail transportation.
Enough complaining then. I'm sorely tempted to complain directly to the
Metro.
Better go and do something more constructive. I was thinking of eBaying some stuff, maybe the majority of my autographed
Stargate photos, although they do say 'Helen' on them. I won't have anywhere for them, once I live in the flat and am a married woman. ;)
Bye bye then.
I have been mostly.... READING: river god (wilbur smith) / LISTENING: a short album about love (the divine comedy)
Just a quick post to answer
James's question (namely "what is Matt LeBlanc going to do for a living?"). I'm shocked that you haven't been keeping up with the entertainment news,
James, but he's starring in his own Joey spinoff show! After a brief internet search I have turned up
this Joey Cafe website.
Apparently the show's quite good.
That's just what I've heard.
Not that I know where I heard it.
So that probably doesn't mean much.
Ho hum.
Besides, I liked Matt LeBlanc in
Lost in Space. Can't think of much else he's been in.
And, er, does that mean you think the other
Friends actors can actually
act?
Hehe.
Well, best be off to
Argos again. The shop not the planet.
Flat related purchases again, see. ;)
I have been mostly.... READING: notes from a big country (bill bryson) / WATCHING: have I got news for you (bbc 2) / LISTENING: the matrix soundtrack / PLAYING (PC) star wars galaxies
Ali said I had to blog, so here I am. I don't know why she's so bothered about me blogging, since she's the only person who seems to care, and she knows pretty much everything what with living in the same house. If that makes any sense.
So, hmm, what have I been up to? Many, many exciting things. So many that it's really hard to actually blog about them. *sigh*
I last posted a week and a bit ago. Hmm.
On Friday
Ali went to Wales, so
Rob and I were all alone. Ooooer. So we tried to do constructive things.
Friday evening we went to the cinema and saw
Van Helsing, which was okay... I mean, it was good. It just wasn't great. It looked pretty.
The most exciting thing about Saturday was that
Rob took me to a Goth club. It was the first time I'd been clubbing, and I went to a Goth club. Weird. And what made it weirder was the fact I borrowed some of
Rob's clothes and he helped me do my nails. I mean, that's more than a little surreal.
The club itself was quite fun. Probably a lot less scary than normal dancey type clubbing. It was smaller than I thought it'd be, and dark and smoky. And loud. Which in some ways is exactly what I'd have imagined a Goth club to be like, if I'd thought about it. We sat on a little sofa thing and listened to the music, and watched people dance, and I clung to
Rob quite tightly, just in case he left me all alone. Not that he would have done that. He clearly wanted to dance though. Maybe I'll be brave enough if he takes me enough times.
I am trying to get together some Goth clothes and things though. I'm trying to find my inner Goth. Hehe. I'm more of a tomboy-esque clothes covered in buckles type Goth, I think. I'm severely tempted to buy some boots. Possibly
these ones. They're a lot of money, but it was pointed out that they'd probably last forever. They're cool...
Ali wondered whether stompy boots are part of the Goth/Geek crossover. It seemed that there was a crossover, you see. Both types of person are very shy, but one sort hides in their room, and the other hides under a sort of disguise in order to go out. Of course, there are probably exceptions within both categories, but it's something to think about. Probably.
So that was the fun weekend things from a week ago. A lot of the past week seems to have been taken up with moving into our new flat. Well, moving
Rob into the flat. I can't move in until we're married, obviously. But it's fun sorting things out for our new life together, and he'll be even closer to our house than he is now. Which is good. So we've been buying essential things for the place, and trying to make it more homely. We have to dismantle the bed that's in there and move
Rob's kingsize bed in, which will
not be fun considering it's on the top floor of a 3-storey terraced house.
That's about it, really. I may take some pics of the flat. There are probably things I've forgotten. I must have done many, many things in the past week, after all. :)
You people could always add your thoughts about the boots. And indeed the whole Goth/Geek thing.
Or not. ;)
I have been mostly.... READING: utopia (lincoln child) / WATCHING: friends (c4); neighbours (bbc 1) / LISTENING: timo maas / PLAYING (PC) star wars galaxies
