Files and Records

Category: Stuff that doesn’t fit in another category

  • On My Birthday…

    Linking up with The Five Fs “On my birthday” linky, supplying March 27th…

    Pick three people who share your birthday and share what you know about them.

    • Nathan Fillion, actor.  Any respectable Browncoat will know Mr F as Captain Mal from Firefly/Serenity, before that he was in Buffy (contributing to the “Crew of Ultimate Evil” that was assembled on Firefly), he’s starred in Dr Horrible’s Singalong Blog and is currently in Castle.  Personally, I keep hoping for more Firefly.
    • Ben Webster, saxophonist.  I have only the 1 album from this genius of the sax – Gerry Mulligan meets Ben Webster.  It’s sublime. Truly sublime.
    • Dick King-Smith, author of “The Sheep-Pig” (filmed as “Babe”) and dozens of other superb children’s’ books.

    March 27 turns out to be a good day.  Michael York, Quentin Tarantino and approximately 1/365th of the rest of the world’s population. Wikipedia has no-one famous born on exactly the same day as me

    List three people who died on your birthday and tell us what you know about them

    • Dudley Moore, actor and comedian. On top of the “Dud and Pete” sketches where Peter Cook managed to get Dudley Moore to corpse on more than one occasion, my all-time favourite sketch of his is “Mr Spiggott, the One-Legged Tarzan”.
      “Your right leg is fine! Your right leg is lovely!  I have nothing against your right leg.  The trouble is, neither do you.”
      One Leg Too Few
    • Ian Dury, of Blockheads fame.  One too many hits with the rhythm stick.
    • Stanislaw Lem.  Hands up if you knew who he was before Googling?  Some of the most amazing speculative science fiction ever written.  A true giant in his field.

    List three notable events that took place on your birthday

    • M.L.Byrn patented the corkscrew back in 1860. I’d like to raise a glass to that one.  Good man.
    • “Singing in the Rain” had it’s debut at the movies in 1952
    • Fingerprint evidence was used to solve a murder in 1909.
    Not, it has to be said, a day of earth-shattering importance.  Except for literally earth-shattering stuff when Mount St. Helens erupted in 1980.
    Tell us about a holiday that falls on your birthday
    World Whisky Day.  I did not know this.  Now that I do, I shall be cracking open the Laphroaig.

     

  • Privatising the Roads – A Vision of the Future…

    It’s an unspecified number of years from now. In 2012 private investment was sought to fund Britain’s road network.  When the companies demanded to make a profit, the not-privatisation-at-all-no-siree deals became pure privatisation.  Now more than 90% of Britain’s road network is in private hands.  Somewhere on a remote Scottish island, a family plans their holiday…

    “So, we book the car onto the ferry, drive through Aberdeen then south, yes?”

    “Yep.  With the ferry crossing we get 10% off the BP fees for using Aberdeen’s roads.  That’s good until Perth when Tesco takes over.”

    “Okay, but we’ll get the clubcard points on the mileage from there to Glasgow?”

    “Or Edinburgh, yep.”

    “Right.  Then we’ve got a choice to make.  Edinburgh or Glasgow?”

    Maps are consulted, comparetheroadprices.com consulted.

    “If we go Edinburgh we’ll lose the Tesco roads when we hit the Forth Road Bridge.  There’ll be the toll for that, the Edinburgh Tram Consortium toll for using the ringroad but we can use our National Trust Membership when we get to the A1.”

    Collective intake of breath.  Since the National Trust took over the A1 they’ve maintained it as they do every historic monument – exactly as it was at whatever date they considered it’s “peak”.  That means very little dual carriageway between Edinburgh and the English border and all that lovely 4-lane stuff through Yorkshire’s been rolled back to 2.

    “Not pleasant, but it’s cheaper than taking the Shell M74.”

    “But that’s faster.  Plus we’re aiming for Hexham, it doesn’t matter which side of the country we go down.”

    “Alright, say we take the Shell road.  Who owns that after the English border?”

    “Er, the map doesn’t say.  Must still be a public road.”

    “That’ll mean roadworks for most of the way.  Not pleasant either.  What about the A64?”

    “That’s all owned by the logging companies.”

    “So lots of freight but a good road, then?”

    “Definitely.”

    “Okay.  So it’s looking like BP, Tesco, ETC, National Trust, loggers.  Only one thing left to organise.”

    “What’s that?”

    “The visas.  We’re visiting England, after all. “

  • Maverick – Closure at last.

    Maverick

    Back in November last year, I let Maverick out of the back door along with his buddy, Urza.  I’d do this every morning.  5 minutes later they’d be back at the door, yowling to come back in.  It was their routine and I loved it.  Loved letting them out into the garden knowing I’d see the pair of them trying to open the door, pawing at the glass in a few minutes.  Only that day Urza came back.  And Maverick didn’t.

    Mav had been an adventure.  A 4am start to drive down to Wales to collect him, getting lost when relying on Google Navigation on my phone to get us to where we would collect him.  A 2-day journey back to Shetland with him – trains, boats and automobiles.  Settling him in, watching him play with the other cats and the kids.  Magic.  And then he just went somewhere.

    All the while, the not-knowing was a kind of hope.  Not knowing he was dead meant he was alive. Very Schroedinger, I know.

    This morning, though, we got the visit we had been expecting.  Mav had been found.  Dead.

    Surprisingly, he wasn’t roadkill.  It looked like he’d slipped climbing a fence, got his head stuck, and his own weight had broken his neck.  It seems to have been a quick death, there were no signs of a struggle.  Little comfort, I know, but comfort nonetheless.  And he hadn’t been there very long, days at most.  But this is where I get into things I don’t understand.

    We lost Mav in November.  He died in early March.  He didn’t look like a cat who’d spent the winter, mild though it’s been, surviving in the wild. He’d lost none of his muscle, his coat was as gorgeous as it had always been.  Someone‘s been feeding him, sheltering him, generally looking after him.  When we lost him, we asked everyone to look out for him.  We’re a small village.  Everyone knew we’d lost the cat, everyone knew we were desperate to find him.  And yet someone, knowing all this, still kept quiet.

    I just want to know why.  Why, knowing all of this, did you not pick up the phone?  Why, when you knew we were looking for our cat, did you not tell us you had him?  Why, potentially, did you lie to either my wife’s or my face and deny having seen Mav?  He’s a fucking Bengal, you moron! They’re not common!  What you’ve done is stolen my cat. It’s microchipped, I can prove ownership.  You’ve obviously never taken him to the vets – they knew to look for him.

    So. I owe a debt of thanks to the neighbours who broke the news today. It’s never pleasant finding a dead cat in your garden, much less when you know whose it is.  And I owe something else to whoever’s been looking after him these last four months.  Pray I never find out who you are.