Kostnice Ossuary Beinhaus

As mentioned in Euan McGregor and Charley Boorman's The Long Way Round there is, in the Czech Republic a church where, during some war or other 40,000 people were buried there.

Some few hundred years later some people dug up all the bodies for some reason (I'm really informed aren't I?) and proceeded to decorate the entire church with the bones. The above picture is one of many examples of this.

Check out the gallery here

Looks Like Something Graham'd Appreciate

Portia!

Radio Show 4 - 23rd July 2005

Yep, the latest and greatest radioshow was broadcast this evening, and you can listen to it here. If clicking on it doesn't work (Muther) right-click and select "save target as...".

These week's show (they're now every Saturday, 7pm-9pm) has a special guest DJ with us: Yosemite Bob, and is somewhere approaching 2 1/2 hours in length.

Check it out.

Holy Crip, I'm Dying!!!!!

I've not really done anything particularly touristy in my time here so far, so I decided I should go and visit the mosaics, especially as they're only about 5 minutes away from my regular Internet Cafe. (I should point out that, on my way to the Internet cafe, I spotted this place (another Internet cafe) and am trying it out - it's manned so I can't drink my water from outside, I have to buy a bottle here, but it's much nicer, Nirvana is playing quietly and it's really cold).

Anyway I ventured into the mosaicy place, which is basically an ancient town from 1,800ish years ago so it's spread about all over the place. It's built on an even older Roman town, so the sights consist of a mix of both Roman and Ancient Greek archeology and architecture.



Anyway, I visited the house of mumble-mumble and looked around at the holes in the ground that don't tell you anything about what they are. I then wondered into the indoor bit that was a lot more interesting. They'd built a bit wooden building over the mosaics with elevated wooden platforms that you walk on to look at them. The two pictures in this post are of the mosaics. So yeah, they were really nice. They even had a Roman one that predated the Greek ones, and indeed looked even older.

I then wandered randomly around the place and headed for The Odeon (not the cinema, the ancient Greek theatre)...



I wondered around this for a while, and gradually realised that I was sweating all over and starting to feel a little dodgy. I decided I should get to a place of shade. Unfortunately, ancient civilisations never build their houses to last long enough to provide shade for future tourists, so I had to make my way as fast as I could to the visitors' centre.

I should point out that all of the above wandering was a lot more fun than it sounds. I was writing and enacting in my head comedy sketches around the old ruins. I then extended these to the Odeon and it got really funny, but I guess you had to be there. Also I listened to my walkman all the way round - Guns 'N' Roses for most of it (Hi, Paul!).

Anyway, I eventually got to the visitors' centre but didn't really hang around for long. I decided that I should have a look at another thing and then get out of there and back to coolness. I could have left there and then but I didn't want to miss anything cool there might be there, and I had paid one pound fifty to get in here.

So I meandered across to the next major part of the town, but as I walked there I started to feel quite a bit worse. I undid my shirt to try and get rid of some of the burning feeling. I then realised that I must just look like this fat English tourist walking round the place, but then Guns 'N' Roses sang very loudly in my ears "you're not the only one, you're not the only one" so I felt OK.

When I got to the next place to look at I realised it wasn't really sufficiently different to the other places I'd seen. Now I know that shouldn't be a reason to be p'd off, but I was dying at that point. So I wandered around some more elevated wooden platforms which, it's got to be said, are nowhere near as fun when you haven't got loads of incompetent baddies to kick off them, or at least some gold coins to collect as you run along them. I looked around the place and thought sod this, there's nothing new to see and I'm in no mood to appreciate anything even slightly subtle. I did spot some five pillars in a row and thought "ooh, pillars, they're new" so I gave them a 5 second stare and headed out of there.

As I walked back to the entrance I spotted a bird on a wire and proceeded to talk to it, sing at it, and shout at it as I passed. It was only when I noticed the confused looking couple walking a few metres behind me that I thought that maybe I looked a bit mental. I knew I had to get to shade and get a cold drink.

I left the mosaic complex and walked along the seafront towards the Internet cafe. I noticed three Cypriot young women watching me (probably not for good reasons - I was dripping from every body part, staggering, and had only one button done up on my shirt). Two of them were, shall we say, malformed (that meaning not very pretty). One was well-formed. I became aware of thinking of things to say to them, but then I realised that they all included the words 'malformed' and 'well-formed' so I was able to stop myself.

It was only when I got to the cafe and sat down that I realised quite how cabbaged I was. I was ready to collapse. It was only about half-way through writing this post that I started to feel normal again.

Finally I think I should mention my sun-tan / sun-burn. I've got on extremely well this week. I've burned a little, but not to the point of peeling or anything. After day two of the holiday I gave up on the suncream. Every time I put it on I ended up sweating so much that it ran everywhere. Then I'd have to jump in the pool to feel fresh and normal again, and I wasn't going to put it back on again while I was wet. And I've been fine without it; I've just tried to be sensible. However today I've developed a horrible burn on just one part of my body: my right knee! It feels on fire! I think it's because I was sitting next to the pool earlier, in the shade, and the sun slowly crept across the patio until it was shining on my right leg. So, with all the walking in the sun this afternoon it's just become too much. Not bad though: just the one casualty of the trip.

That is, of course, apart from my toe. I put some washing on last night, much to the excitement of the Cypriot women in the vicinity, and the confusion of the Cypriot men (I got at least 3 "well done, Dave"s from the guys). This morning I went to get it out of the drier (although I've no idea why there use an electric drier in a Mediterranean country) and stubbed my little toe on the corner of something. It hurt like hell, but I tried to ignore it, until I noticed the blood. I'd split my toe right open and had pulled off a huge flap of skin that now hung onto it. I put a plaster on, and freaked out the children with it. It'll be OK, but it still hurts.

Right, I'm off now. I don't know if I'll be able to blog again before I'm back. I'm flying home tomorrow and land in the UK at 4.20am on Thursday.

Oh, Go On Then...

I wasn't going to blog today because nothing's really happened in the last 24 hours, but here I am.

I know I mentioned that Kula Shaker (one of my neices) was in a swimming competition in Nicosia over the week. Well she came back with two bronze medals and two silver medals. So that's cool.

I'm trying to think what I've done today and yesterday. Ah, yeah, yesterday me and Peter watched 'War of the Worlds' on DVD. It was cool; a little weak around the ending, but cool. A little short, but cool. Great effects.

We then watched 'John Q' with Denzil Washington. Cool too.

The only problem with the lifestyle here is the mornings. You lie in bed in the morning trying to have a bit of a lie-in and then the sun starts shining obnoxiously brightly through the window, the dogs start barking, the crickets are doing mental, the Sonia's are shouting, the water-feature next to the pool is turned on, and you're forced to get up. I could shut the windows but then I'd just bake. I don't think they've heard of double glazing.

I'm sitting at the moment in the extremely cool (temperature wise) Internet cafe. The guy to my right is playing Texas Hold'em on Party Poker and the wee lad to my right is chatting to his friends and browing what appears to be a porn site (worldsex.com I think, though I'm not going there to check).

Payday, tomorrow! Exciting!!! If I get bored in the departure lounge at Paphos airpot then I can at least entertain myself by spending!!! Although I doubt it'll have much of a departure lounge compared to the UK.

I'm looking forward to getting home. It'll be weird not having a pool. Maybe I can get Paul and Brian to dig one in their garden.

I got another cat to play with me yesterday and today. This one's much more cooperative. Although all I need to do it peer at it from the pool and it runs over to me and bites me. I think that's cool. Innovative even. I may go into partnership with it; bring it to the UK and make it into a televised sport.

I should point out that, although I'm in an Internet Cafe, I've installed Ultimate Bet (and played two games of Poker) and now I'm installing Bearshare (even though I've got nothing I want to download. I just like to live on the edge. I know that when I walk out of here in a few minutes I'll be hit by a sheer wall of heat like I was yesterday. I'm not looking forward to that.

Right, I'm going to go now and play at investigating just how secure and indestructible these Internet Cafe PCs are.

Byeeee!

It's Amazing What You Can Find on Google

After finding pictures of my work the other week I just searched on Google and have found a picture of my Brother, Peter:



and one of my neice, Eleanor:



They're both from the website for the property development company that my Brother works with.

Eleanor got back last night from spending the weekend in London with some boy, so hopefully I'll get to see her a little more over the next couple of days. In fact I'm going to meet Stammy in one of the shops in half an hour, to get a lift back to my Brother's. She should be there, so that'll be cool. I'll find out what she thought of England.

PMG

Lovely Morning, No?

It's Monday morning at 10.20am and I've wandered into an Internet Cafe that, annoyingly, advertises itself as £1 per hour, but when you pay and login it's actually £1.10 per hour, so I only get 55 mins. I smell Mr Ripoff.

Hmmmm, let me think what I've done since last we ... spoke. Saturday afternoon? I've no idea. I think I just swam and sunbathed all day. Yes, that's right. Then in the evening we went to O'Neill's to watch Stammy's band play (the same band as Friday night, which was, as I forgot to mention, a beer festival). Then we went on to Woody's, which is Peter's bar and is also the biggest bar in Paphos. He's a silent partner and so we met the guy who runs the place for him, had a quick sit around and then went. It was actually much more of a night club than a bar. It's £30,000 sound system banged my head a little too much. It wasn't as good as Stammy's band. We then drove home and chatted into the wee hours.

Ooh, I just yawned and stretched and inadvertantly punched a "Break Glass Here" fire alarm button. It didne break though.

Ah, Saturday afternoon, yes. Stammy, apart from being the bass player in Cyprus's biggest band, and working for Peter's company, is also a DJ. He has a 2-hour slot each Saturday afternoon on Cyprus's most popular radio station, Rock FM, 98.5. So Peter and I sat in the garden listening while I read my book drinking Pina Colada (that's a lie, I think it was 7up). Then, just as I was beginning to crave getting back in the pool, the oh-so-familar opening chant of The Garden started coming out of the radio. Now, most people's responses to hearing one of their songs played on national radio might be "oh wow, how exciting", mine however was, "oh no, now I'm going to have to stop reading my book so that I can looked pleased and respond to people's comments and jibes, and I hope it doesn't sound crap, and I've always had issues with that third verse; I should never have changed the lyrics at the last moment in the studio". Still, it was great, and it would have played at thousands and thousands of homes and pubs across Cyprus. Can't complain I suppose.

After Saturday came Sunday.

This is family and friends gathering day over here. Peter's (and Dea's) sisters brought plenty food, and plenty kids and husbands, Stammy came round, and a few British ex-patriots (gold chains and tattoos a'plenty). Another day was spent in and out of the pool, with loads of wicked looking food, more repetitive explanations as to why I don't eat meat. The blissful monotony was broken only by a game of No-Limit Texas Holdem (the men) and Gin Rummy (the women and one man). Peter won. I came second.

What else has happened? Hmmm.

Oh yeah, yesterday morning was sad :(. Between Peter's house in the country and the centre of Paphos there is a canal that supplys water to his little villagy-thing. His dogs like to frolic and prance in this canal when they get a chance and at some point on Sunday morning two of them must have wandered out of Peter's gate to engage in some professional frolicking. Unfortunately, when Peter and Sonia came down at 7.30am only one of them had returned. They awoke me with their shouting for the other dog, and it didn't take long for them to deduce where he was, as the other dog was totally soggy yet there were no soggy-doggy prints around the pool. Peter went out in the car and after a couple of minutes found the dog, trapped. The canal is only about six feet wide, and it's sides are V shaped. The dog had jumped in yet was unable to scrabble it's way out. It must have been there for at least and hour as, when Peter found him he was absolutely terrified, had barely any claws left and had bleeding paws. :(

By the time I came down Peter had taken the doggy for a walk, given it lots of love and it was pretty much back to normal. Still, sad though. :(

I played ongoing mind-games again with Mrs Cat on Saturday. It didn't go that well this time. She just ignored me and refused to look at me. In fact, as soon as I did the 'pop up from the side of the pool and look at her' bit she just scowled, like cats do, and turned round. Now I'm unsure if this counts as a win for me or her. I'll try again today and see how it goes. At worst it's a 1-1 draw right now, so there's everything to play for.

Maybe when I come back to England (if the plane doesn't crash) I could make this into a televised sport.

Anyhoo, I'm going to go now and email my boss (and maybe other V initialed people), and sulk for a bit about no one being signed into MSN (apart from iamdecal (Away)).

I may post again in a bit, if luck's on your side.

The Sea Was Angry Today My Friend

It's now nearly 12 o'clock on Saturday and I've just got in from a morning's wandering. I've been sunbathing on the beach, chilling with some cold drinks and then finally I hired myself a speedboat(!!!).

I only had it for half an hour, but that was plenty. You know, I've no idea what high octane means, but they were the 3rd and 4th words to go through my head as I put the thing into high (badass) gear. It was absolutely amazing. I'm sure it wasn't wise to listen to my walkman while I sped around at 70-80 miles an hours, but I didn't care.

But when I say the sea was angry I'm not lying. The Mediterranean was well rough. I spent a lot of my time cruising around quite slowly, but found myself being thrown about all over the place. In fact at one point the boat nearly toppled over to the right, although it did seem to be constantly leaning over to the drivers side the whole time, for some wholly unknown reason.

Anyhoo, I found that the sea was in fact much less rough when I travelled absolutely bloody fast. I was just carried over the tops of the waves, albeit with that slight jumping up and down thing that you see speedboats do on TV. Anyway, this was a lot of fun until I saw 'the big one'. It only took a split second judgement to realise that I wasn't just going to be carried over the top of this wave like the others, so I just had to brace myself, thinking "it's either him or me".

It was me.

I think I went ten feet in the air. I was going to put 15 feet, but that would have been an exaggeration. As the boat and I hit the water, flippin' hard, shouting, I believe even swearing. But excitedly. It was me and the Spindoctors, a mile and a half out to sea, overdosing on testoserone, singing 'Little Miss Can't be Wrong' extremely loudly.

Ahhhh, I felt like I was a man and the entire ocean was my home. Until I spotted that the harbour looked an awful way away, so I headed back, slowly.

Saturday Morning at 9 O'Clock He Was Far Away

Good morning!

As I can only get to a PC when I leave the side of my Brother's pool and venture out into the world I wasn't able to post yesterday. But here I am, you lucky people!

Anyway, first off, ow! Why didn't anyone warn me about the sun???

OK, everybody warned me about the sun.

My shoulders hurt, and my arms, and my chest. Fortunately my face, probably my brownest part, is OK. The problem is, when you're in the pool you can't feel the heat of the sun so you don't notice it slowly killing you. Still, I'm coping.

What have I been doing? OK I'll tell you.

Thursday afternoon - sunbathing next to pool, into pool, out of pool, sunbathing, into pool, out of pool, reading in the sun. I met my neice, Alexandra, she's very cool. She's like most intelligent seven year olds. Firstly you're like, "wow, you're clever and articulate". Then, three hours later you're like "wow, you never shut up or let go of me". Finally after seven hours you're like "hey, can someone get this thing off me!!?!?!" OK, that's not really true. She's adorable, and calls me 'Uncle Dave' all the time, as long as she can remember my name, which is most of the time. We swim a lot together and she likes to tell me about every time she's ever been ill or injured. It's great.

Friday (morning and afternoon) - Basically the same as Thursday afternoon. In and out of the pool, reading one of Paul's books, chilling with Alexandra, teaching the dogs to talk, playing mind-games with the cats (I'm winning). At lunch time one of Peter's friends came round for a dip in the pool, and his and Dea's two sisters came over for the afternoon.

In the evening we all went to a gig in the harbour of Peter's friend's band, who just happen to be the biggest rock band in Cyprus. One of them is Cypriot, one is Russian, one is Ukrainian and one is English. They were good, even though blues rock is soooo not my thing. Also the delivery of Dire Straits' "Money for Nothing" in a Russian accent was a little strange.

Anyway, that pretty much brings me up to now, and now I'm about to head off around Paphos to do some shopping, look at things of historical interest and examine the beach in closer detail.

Something for you to try until my next opportunity to blog - my aforementioned mindgames with cats. This provided nearly an hour of fun for me so you should try it, but vary it to your own pool-less situation:

Firstly, get at least one cat to sit near you when you're in the pool. This is easy when they're all really soppy and just want to rub all over you. Then swim around underwater for a bit and then pop your head up at the side of the pool where they are, with just your eyes sticking out over the top of the pool. Then gradually slide yourself along the side of the pool always maintaining eye contact with the confused looking cat. Then swim off.

Now you have to repeat this several times. The cat will start to look really quite bemused / peturbed, but this is OK. It means it's working. After a bit the cat will look p'd off and will try and not look at you, but if you stay still just out of it's line of sight for a few seconds it won't be able to resist turning to look at you. At this point you've won the current round.

Now my plan is to do this daily for length of time that I'm here. I think it will, in some way, be an experiment in conditioning. But I'm not sure quite yet what I'm hoping to prove / discover.

_______________________________________________________________

Before I forget, I was in one of the souvenir shops on Thursday and they had a selection of badges for English football fans. They were amazing. If they weren't £1 each then I'd have brought a few home. I'll try and remember some of them:

* F*** off Wolves, I'm a West Brown fan (yes, Brown!)

* F*** West Brown, I'm a Wolves fan.

* I support Man Utd. We're the best! (edgy huh?)

and my favourite, and I'm serious, this is exactly what it said:

* "My old man said to me, "be an Arsenal fan", I said "F*** off, B*llocks, you c***".

OK, I'm going to have to go back there to remind myself of some more of them, because they were really funny.

Anyway, I'm off shopping now. Byeeeee!

So I totally landed, after a bit of a freaky flight. The whole journey here was absolutely unpleasant to tell the truth.

After mapping out my itinerary in my previous post my actually journey went:

10.10 - Leave house (10 mins late!!!)

10.30 - Catch Metro (took it's bloody time!!!)

10.45 - Catch Number 50 bus to Digbeth (Driver didn't speak English so he couldn't tell me when he'd be leaving)

11.00 - Catch Coach to Coventry (to get connection to East Midlands airport

12.25 - Miss Coach to airport (the guy I asked where to catch the coach from lied to me so it went straight past me. I panicked, but there was another one at 15.15, though that'll be cutting it fine.)

15.15 - Coach doesn't turn up! (there's been an accident on the motorway so it'll be 40 minutes late!!!)

16.00 - Catch coach

16.50 - Arrive at airport (I stagger in, gasping for water and completely stressed. I run up to the My Travel desk and pant 'hi' at the woman there. "Mr Tomlinson?" she said, "I've been trying to ring you, but have only got your landline. There's only 10 minutes until the cutoff, you're just in time".)

17.30 - Get on plane.

17.45 - Plane can't take off, technical problem. (Oh how I like the sound of that. Makes you think of the Challenger space shuttle that exploded after various technical issues that should have made them abort).

18.10 - Take off! (Yay ... ish)

20.30 - Panic attack (to the bathroom for me! Too much turbulence; nothing familiar to ground me; can't contact friends; can't get off the plane!)

20.35 - Calm down (Decide to sleep, in the worlds most uncomfortable chair. Just about manage this for a bit.)

22.40 (English time) 00.40 (Cyprus time) - Land (mysteriously still alive.)

I then met my neice (aged 12) who's name I think is Kula ... something, although I can get away with Kula. It might be Kularagi, although I think that's a Greek sausage. Or it might be Kula Shaker, but I doubt it. She's super wicked, is a competition swimmer and a quad-biker.

I sat up until about 1.30pm chatting to my Brother then went to bed in my other neice's room (Alexandra).

I woke up this morning and sat and read for a bit, then had a shower and wandered downstairs. I had breakfast and struggled to wash up my bowl and stuff while the maid kept saying, "Sir, me clean!". A swift backhander shut her up (not really).

My Brother has the family animal-loving genes, so I've been lounging around by the pool with his 4 soppy soppy dogs and 5 cats. They rock the most.

Anyway, I'm off touring round the island at the mo. We're already discussing my next trip - we want to take a cruise to Egypt to see the pyramids.

Before I dash though, it's been amazing to meet my neices over here. Alexandra (7) is really excited about meeting me, and I'm really excited about meeting her. Also I met Eleanor, my oldest neice earlier. She's 23. It was quite emotional for me actually. Ever since becoming an Uncle at age 6 I've wondered she she's like. She's lovely.

Byeeeee!

Time to Kill

It's 8.15am and it's flippin' ages until I leave. I'm pretty much finished packing, although I can't find my travel insurance documents - I'll dig them out from somewhere.

Today's going to be a hell of a day. For those of you I haven't already moaned at about today's itinerary, here it is:

10.00 - Leave the house

11.00 - Coach leaves Digbeth coach station

13.15 - Arrive at Nottingham East Midlands airport

17.30 - Flight leaves

22.20 (English time), 00.20 (Cyprus time) - land in Cyprus

So, that's 12 hours and 20 minutes travelling in total, with a lot of waiting around. Fortunately I've compiled 3 minidiscs full of choons. I think that's approaching 9 hours of music so I might have to repeat one of them!

By the way, the weather in Paphos is...

At Last the Day Cometh, If Only Just

Today I fly to Cyprus. Right now I'm knackered and need to go to bed, but I'm quickly throwing together a couple of new minidisc compilations to listen to on the journey.

I'll be blogging while I'm away, hopefully every day.

And finally, as inspired by Des:

Leaving on a Jetplane

How Long Now?

Oh, By the Way...

more days to go!



You know what'd be funny? If I got to the airport but was too scared to get onto the plane!

Oh, how we'd all laugh.

For nearly 10 years I couldn't get on a plane. For the entire period of August 1994 - February 2004 I didn't set foot on a flying machine of any kind, not even once. Then I did Edinburgh and back, and India and back. So, with a bit of luck there will be no issues here whatsoever.

Of course, maybe I shouldn't have downloaded and watched 4 or 5 episodes of "Aircrash Investigations", the best one being when they completedly ran out of fuel halfway across the Atlantic.

The thing is, crashing or being blown up doesn't bother me. It's the period of time immediately preceding death that bothers me - lots of people freaking out and shouting "we're going to die" in your ear. That's exactly what you don't need just before you're going to die.

I'll take earplugs. You know, just for the crashing and dying part.

It's Sunday!

I've done my washing.

I've got my passport, flight tickets and currency in the same place! That relieves quite a bit of subconscious anxiety.

Post Secret has updated again. They've got an item on eBay: an oversized postcard with a secret on it. If you're really quick you'll be able to see me as the highest bidder - I thought "$201? If I win it'll be motivation to raise the money to fly to America and visit Maryland".

It's really hot!

Dave's 50 Times Song of the Day

I saw this band at Live 8 performing in Philadelphia, and I thought this tune was supa cool (almost as cool as spelling super supa). Here it is in all it's punky glory.

Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict a Riot

Watching the people get lairy
Is not very pretty I tell thee
Walking through town is quite scary
And not very sensible either
A friend of a friend he got beaten
He looked the wrong way at a policeman
Would never have happened to Smeaton
And old Leodiensian
La-ah-ah, la la lalala la
Ah-ah-ah, la la lalala la

I predict a riot, I predict a riot
I predict a riot, I predict a riot

I tried to get in my taxi
A man in a tracksuit attacked me
He said that he saw it before me
Wants to get things a bit gory
Girls run around with no clothes on
To borrow a pound for a condom
If it wasn't for chip fat, well they'd be frozen
They're not very sensible

La-ah-ah, la la lalala la
Ah-ah-ah, la la lalala la

I predict a riot, I predict a riot
I predict a riot, I predict a riot

And if there's anybody left in here
That doesn't want to be out there

Watching the people get lairy
Is not very pretty I tell thee
Walking through town is quite scary
And not very sensible

La-ah-ah, la la lalala la
Ah-ah-ah, la la lalala la

I predict a riot, I predict a riot
I predict a riot, I predict a riot

And if there's anybody left in here
That doesn't want to be out there

I predict a riot, I predict a riot
I predict a riot, I predict a riot

Hysterical, Surreal and Classic eBay Feedback

Now this probably won't be new to many of you, but to me it's one of the funniest things ever.

Back in 1999 this person, andy46477, appeared to have found a way to hack into people's eBay accounts and leave random feedback messages. Maybe he worked for eBay or something, or maybe he was just clever.

Anyway, his messages are surreal and extremely funny. A lot of them relate to the name of the person he's leaving feedback for, so it can be useful to check their name out first.

Anyway, click here to check out all the feedback he left for other people.

This is a Test Post

This is me posting to my blog via email, to see if it's a smooth
way of doing it. Of course I won't be able to make my post title a link. Or will I?
I'll try.

Here's a picture as a test:

Ow, My Foot!

I've been diagnosed with plantas fasciitis (or plantar fasciitis, depending on who you believe). It's an inflamed tendon just next to the heel of my left foot (see above diagram).

The doctor diagnosed it with the immortal words "does this hurt" and shoved her thumb into my foot. I was able to confirm the pain with the word "aaaaaargh" and she turned away to her computer, saying "thought so".

The pain has been getting progressively worse over the last year or so, but recently it's affected the way I walk. Apparently I'm unconsciously changing the way I walk to avoid the pain, and this has been causing problems in itself, namely a burning agonising tension on the top of my foot, my ankle, my calf, and occasionally my knee.

Fortunately the condition will get better. I have to take painkillers, buy rubber insoles for my shoes, wear cushioned slippers at home and wear a tubigrip support bandage. If this doesn't get rid of it after a few months then I have to have a steriod injection into my foot. But for this I would have to take 3 days off work to recover from the pain.

Ooh, looking forward to that!

Guess Who I Just Saw

Go on, guess.

Well, I'm afraid I don't know who I just saw on Colmore Row. He's a newsreader, I think from Central News, but I can't remember his name.

If I do remember then I'll let you know.

Incidentally I just found a load of pictures of my work on Google. Really interesting. I bet there's no pictures of your work on Google.

Here they are.

And here's one of them:



Now, you see the two coffee machines that the woman's using? Well the right-hand one of those is the Vimto machine. It distributes free Vimto day and night to all who want it. And all who want it consists of me, so it keeps running out.

___________________________________________

EDIT
___________________________________________

I found him! It's Bob Warman!

How Many Days Until I Go, I Hear You Ask

Radioshow 3

Yes, I know that Paul has done a post about this on his blog, but we do have a slightly different readership.

So, yeah, check out the latest (greatest) radioshow here.

Post Secret - Update

13 Years

Back in the head summer of 1992 (I think it was actually the spring, but spring isn't heady) I was listening to Radio 2 and taping anything that sounded interesting. One of the things I got down was two folk songs sung by two strange middle-aged men.

These songs were repeatedly listened to by myself and my friends throughout that heady summer, but then, somehow the tape was lost.

I have spent the last 13 years trying to find it, but to no avail. Fortunately young Graham somehow found reference to the two songs on a CD last week, so I immediately bought it and it was delivered this morning.

I now present to you the two songs that, arguably, culturally define that heady summer. I can't guarantee that they'll be your cup of tea, but here they are nonetheless.

Cosmotheka - Kangaroo Hop

Cosmotheka - Don't Do It Again Matilda