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:

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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.

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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:

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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.

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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)