Clare Townhill

Final Confirmation of Everyone's Worst Suspicions

The Quiet Carriage

I confess that I'm one of those people who will tell you to move or be quiet if you use your phone in the optimistically named 'Quiet Carriage'. It's one of the angriest bees in my hive of a bonnet. Happy to read this today via Gulliver:

C2C, a British train company that runs commuter services into London, is conducting trials of a new technology that will make certain carriages genuinely mobile-free. A high-tech coating on the carriage will stop mobile-phone, Wi-Fi and radio signals from entering (and leaving) the compartment.

Pull the Plug?

I've just read this article from the latest edition of Wired. The article is called ' Twitter, Flickr, Facebook make blogging look so 2004'. Hmmm. I hate the idea of Twitter (not that I've ever used it). I loathe the Hotel California of Social Netorking, but I do love Flickr, although if I'm honest I just tend to use it as a resource to plunder for inspiration; I'm a Flickr voyeur. Perhaps I am being passe in keeping a blog. But it works for me. It is my scrapbook, a place for the things rattling around in my mind that I want to keep a record of. I'll think about it, perhaps I am being unfair to Twitter since I've never properly played with it. Facebook; nope, not now not ever. Flickr - I should be contributing to. Perhaps it is time to change. Watch this space while you still can.

(Thanks to WhiteAfrican for the image)

The Daily Papers

Some days I resent every penny put towards a newspaper during the week, and yet, on days like today it's worth every single shiny copper button. The Times:

Feckless Ferenci

'A motorcyclist who posted footage of himself on YouTube performing "lunatic and grossly irresponsible manoeuvres" at up to 130mph was today jailed today.

Sandor Ferenci, 28, performed wheelies, skids and raced on the opposite side of the road around Banbury, Oxfordshire, and then put the footage on the video-sharing website.

Ferenci, a carer, then inadvertently spilt the beans to police about the YouTube footage after being reported by a member of the public who saw him performing wheelies and other stunts on his Yamaha R6 bike on the A422 Banbury to Brackley road on June 10 this year.

When officers called at his home after the complaint, and before they had a chance to say anything to him, Ferenci asked them: “Is this about the YouTube video?” Police then discovered that he had posted the video clips of himself on the internet.

Dib Dib Dib

“Be prepared” is the motto of the Scout movement, but it is unlikely that Robert Baden-Powell intended it to mean that Boy Scouts should know how to procure and use condoms.

They should now, though. After more than a century of teaching boys how to tie knots, sing campfire songs and help old ladies across the road, the Scout Association today starts teaching its young charges about sex, with sexual health advice and even visits to sexual health clinics. Baden-Powell would unquestionably have disapproved. In Scouting for Boys he advised those who feel sexual urges to “wash your parts in cold water and cool them down”.

In a later book, Rovering to Success, he wrote that young men should not indulge their “primitive sexual urges”, but should put their energies into “hiking and the enjoyment of the out-of-door manly activities”, rather than “aimless loafing and smutty talks”.

Colin Powell:
'Journalists stopped mentionning the fact that I was black, I said to them, "don't stop, if I shot someone you'd sure as hell mention it".'

Lazarus

If my blog was comparable to a life ECG you'd be forgiven for thinking I was dead and smelling several shades of putrid. I join Jimmy Saville and countless other indignants when I say, 'I'm not dead' just been out of touch with the keyboard of late. Here's a rather crude and swiss-cheesy kind of photo dump of what I've been up to (I've omitted shots of me dying in bed of flu - a priest was called on more than one occasion. Not pretty):

Blustery cycling on the Southbank

Evicting some waffley old things from my Grandad's food-of-the-eighties freezer archive (free admission to curious members of the public).

Tor Scaling
Up the hill, up the lanes, round the corner, up the lane and to the top in time for sunset.

 

Expeditions on a Brompton into the wilds of the Somerset levels, a bit like going hiking in stiletto heels; fun but not for the fainthearted.


Stopped to give way to a herd of cows and a Massey Fergusson.