Now then...

Silence

2009-08-28T07:43:00.001Z

...

...

Quiet, isn't it?

That's All Folks!

2006-08-21T20:19:00.000Z

I am moving all my online output to my new home. Please re-tune your browsers to http://arksanctum.org, where you will find more of the same, only better.

Note - this link has changed slightly, so if you've not managed to make it work before, please try again now.

First of the apologies.

2006-08-20T11:13:00.000Z

Click to enlarge

In case you missed the ten second long article buried deep in the early morning news so that nobody would notice it, the US government has decided that the tobacco companies must apologise for lying to the public about the harmful effects of smoking, but has fallen short of making them pay for rehabilitation of nicotine addicts or funding any sort of after care for lung patients.

Slow News Day

2006-08-18T21:53:00.000Z

Thanks to the speedy efforts of the Home Office and the Police, we have all been saved again. Hurrah!

We now have police from every single force in the country involved in tracking down the bombing conspirators. And many of these brave individuals are quite experienced in hunting criminals.

The break through came today when an anonymous tip off from Mrs Windershins, of 23 Sudbury Terrace, High Wycombe called the police to tell them she had found a suspicious hide-out in the local woods.

Police encircled the woodland area and arrested every non-white within twenty five miles of the Al Quayeda base, so as to eliminate them from their enquiries. Under Home Office regulations the terrorists will now be held for up to twenty eight days before having their documents lost.

The Local Police chief told our reporter “There are terrorists here somewhere. I can smell them. I can feel it in my bones…” Before reaching in his pocket for a selection of lollipops.

Soon after, the law enforcement agencies held a press conference to announce the scale of their find. “We did indeed find a very significant find.” The spokesman said. “It seems that there is a hole in the woods that might conceivably be used to store detonators in. It is round, smooth sides, and has small currant shaped objects littering the its opening.”

“Further to this, we have also found traces of very small footprints and a slight amount of brown fur hairs on nearby thorny hedges, so there’s no telling just how long this has been a major AL Quayeda stronghold..”

Later in the day, the police also announced that they had found a “significant number” of dried leaves and twigs, all of which were combustible and could easily have been used to burn false passports.

Plane Diverted

In related news, a plane was diverted to Italy when a misunderstanding caused a panic. Mrs Theresa Bombenborde, a citizen of the Netherlands explained the matter to our reporter. “I have great worries about personal hygene, and did not want to think that anyone else might have used my sick bag. I took the precaution of writing my name on the bag, but I’m afraid my pen wasn’t working very well.”

Iraq Objects

Meanwhile, dispirited after the death of their leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, CAMRI, the Campaign for Real Insurgency, has announced that they will be auditioning for another leader to take his place as the organization’s front man. So far both Jeffrey Archer and Robert Kilroy Silk have indicated that they might be interested if the money was right, but it is increasingly likely that CAMRI officials will be seeking to maximise their publicity by enlisting the help of Simon Cowell and Sharon Osbourne to run an X-factor style leadership contest. “We think there is a lot of energy in this part of the world.” Simon told our reporter, “And it’s just a matter of searching hard enough. If we can find just one homicidal fanatic capable of beheading civilians and soldiers indiscriminately then we can regard our time as well spent.”

Pardon

2006-08-18T15:06:00.000Z

After the success of the Shot At Dawn campaign, posthumous pardons seem to have become rather fashionable. Thanks to inside information from my stolen MOD soft drinks dispenser, I am happy to be able to report the planned pardon of around twenty five thousand people who were wrongly executed for being German civilians on the night of February 15th, 1945.

“It seems that those killed in Dresden may not have been Filthy Nazi Huns after all, but actually a large number of men, women and children, including refugees and wounded combatants.” A Brigadier told our reporter, whilst fiddling in his pocket for small change to buy a can of Idris Ginger Beer.

“Of course, it was a more brutal time back then. But it seems that we might have been just a little hasty in deciding that they should all be incinerated in an attempt to terrorise the nation into surrender. Of course, we had been reluctant to overturn the earlier decision. We used over five hundred Lancaster bombers and dropped almost two thousand tons of bombs on the place. Obviously when you’ve committed that much material outlay into a precision operation you want to jolly well make sure that your viable targets aren’t needlessly declassified as human beings.”

However, further executions may be re-examined in the light of our new found spirit of enlightenment. According to a highly respected Jewish scholar, it is possible that the events of the Passover may need to be re-examined.

“It seems that God might have been a teensy bit hasty in slaughtering the first born son of all Egyptian families. So we’ve asked God to consider granting them a posthumous pardon. There are one or two amongst us who think it might be a tiny bit distasteful to celebrate and glorify what some lefty types are describing as a human tragedy, so we’ve asked God to mediate.

“Effectively, if God agrees that he was maybe just a little bit out of line to slaughter those children for the crime of being Egyptian, he should give us some sort of sign. Nothing drastic. A simple display of power such as the inhalation of every Arab on the planet would suffice.”

Pottery Corner 15

2006-08-15T15:33:00.000Z

Nurse

I watched the nurses blame their bosses
Screaming for their losses and their closures
And maximum exposure’s going
To the tosser in plaster
Who wished he’d been faster.
Rather than traumatised
In ward three, while the MP (allegedly gay)
Lamented the day
Our health was privatised away
No money left. It’s all been used
He accused.
The money’s spent.
The system’s bent
Avoidable drama. It’s causality.
Which confused me.
I thought it was Newsnight

Yours to cut out and keep...

2006-08-14T20:46:00.000Z

DIY Home Office Kit

Click to enlarge both images.

Instructions

Once you've printed the images out on a handy pair of A4 (210x297mm) sheets, cut out the cross shapes and gum the flaps, folding on the square edges to form four dice.

The Action dice (sheet 1 – Yellow) will then dictate your new policy.
The Target dice (sheet 2 – Orange) will then dictate who this policy applies to.

For best results you should roll all four dice to be sure of enough working material before any press conferences.

Sore fingers

2006-08-13T10:08:00.000Z

My fingers are crossed so tightly I can't even feel them. A couple of weeks ago I attended an interview with Keoghs, a company of solicitors who specialise in business law.
The job advertisement was unusual because it asked specifically for "intelligence analysts" with either military or police backgrounds. Talk about square peg for a square hole!
So, after two hours of psychometric testing, an hour of sample casework, and an hour long interview, I left the building thinking that I wanted this job more than I'd ever wanted any other job before.
The results will be out by next Wednesday. I'm almost finding it difficult to sleep. If successful I'll be working to track down gangs involved in staging car accidents to make bogus insurance claims. As well as a big pay rise it will also be a chance at a job that actually involves thinking for a living.
I would have blogged about this sooner, but I almost feel like it's unlucky to announce it. I just keep telling myself that there's no such thing as luck. But it doesn't make me any more willing to uncross my fingers.
I had a dream a couple of nights ago that I hadn’t got it. It was a very bad feeling.
Hold your breath with me…

Breaking News from 1983.

2006-08-12T00:45:00.000Z

click to enlarge and read the news as it would have been 23 years ago. If we'd had the same attitude as our "allies".

Pottery Corner 14

2006-08-08T23:28:00.000Z

I swapped my Grandad for Carrots

I can see in the darkness at night
My eyes are lamps so bright,
I have to keep them screwed up tight
At night or I might blind you
With the light from my little eye,
That lets me spot the things that fly
And scurry or scrape around the dark places,
With tiny white fingers and hair on their faces.
They rustle and ratchet right under my bed,
Or sometimes they’re under the pillow instead.
But as long as I keep both my eyes shut so tight,
The bad things won’t see me and I’ll be alright.
Or at least, I might…

…It worked last night..

Bo! Wood

2006-08-08T22:50:00.000Z

You can tell I'm on holiday, can't you? More photos for the album.
And thanks again to Val and Lucy for a cracking day out!

Schindler's Lunch.

You wouldn't believe how rank that water smells on a hot day.

My worst nightmare: Jessie Squared.

No. they really were that high! Check out the website to see the adventure playground. It's outstanding.

All images taken at Bowood House, which I strongly recommend.

Dead Bishop Sketch

2006-08-07T21:48:00.000Z

“Right! Men, the chase is on! Now we should all kneel!”

Proud winners of this week’s So Completely Barking You Could Put A Collar On It And Call It Fido Award is the Lincolnshire branch of the Christian Police Association, who have decided to pass on the details of unsolved crimes to a prayer group in the hope that enough prayer might persuade the Almighty to turn Columbo and flush out the guilty.

Could anyone who considers this lunacy to be a great idea kindly collect their lobotomy kit on the way out, please? You obviously won’t be needing your brain any more.

To paraphrase Richard (Or Steven - See comments) Dawkins in The Root of All Evil, (see the links to the free video on the sidebar): Is it moral to give someone hope, when that hope is so obviously a false hope?

Let’s just look at this simply for a moment. If God’s too busy to stop the Israelis from flattening their neighbours, if he’s too tied up to prevent a Tsunami’s worth of children dying every week from poverty, do you really think he’s going to tackle the blight of unsolved burglary in the English agriculture belt?

And what sort of God is it anyway, who will quite happily see these crimes go undetected until enough people have gathered together to pray for him to do something about them?

Surely, rather than praying for these crimes to be solved, the good people of Lincolnshire might want to pray that they never happen in the first place, or that the police might actually invest some time and effort into catching criminals rather than wasting time and resources on fairy tales?

Perhaps we could send Thor after them? Or Odin. They’ve not had much to do for the last few thousand years. A few unsolved mysteries might just relieve the boredom for them.

This latest version of Neighbourhood Watch is a step too far. Frankly, it is an unsult to those who work in forensic and psychological sciences in the pursuit of crime detection.

Prayer – To ask God to suspend the laws of physics to suit your own ends, just because you think your request is worth it.

(See Dead Bishop Sketch - Monty Python)

Related links:

Independent Online
Times Online
BBC News
Daily Mail

Serendipity at Cannon Hall

2006-08-07T09:37:00.000Z

I wasn't expecting much from Cannon Hall. Last time I'd been there it was pretty quiet. Imagine how disappointed we were to find medieval archery, sword fighting, Punch and Judy, cornfield maze, falconry demonstration, dog agility show (complete with dogs that ran away - how funny?), marching bands, dancing ladies and more free activities than you could shake a stick at.

Top marks to Barnsley Council, and thanks for a great day out!

waiting

2006-08-05T18:39:00.000Z

Image taken at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park today.
Click to enlarge

Going Down - New and improved video footage!

2006-07-29T18:13:00.000Z

I’m sort of getting the hang of this active lifestyle thing. And when it comes down to a fiver a week for gym membership or taking myself out into the hills, I’m afraid body sculpting loses out every time.

Fortunately I’ve got a bike. It has two tyres and a saddle. It even has brakes that slow me down, eventually. No suspension, or anything like that. None of your fancy stuff here. I don’t even have any lycra. Shame on me! Call myself a cyclist?

I’ve got a huge purple helmet, though. Not many people can say that with a straight face.

Anyway, mountain biking is brill. Official. I’m getting to grips with some quite tricky sections, even though in doing so, I’m learning a very valuable lesson: Falling off your bike is only funny when you’re in company. When you do it on your own it’s just tedious and quite painful.

Just for fun I thought I might show you one of my favourite trails. It runs down from the moors on the edge of Barnsley and down to Holmsyles Reservoir via Hade Edge. It only takes about three minutes to get down, but it’s a joy to ride.

This video was the third attempt. The first time, I attached the camera (using tape) to my mouth, and managed to record the floor whizzing by. The second time I attached the camera to my helmet, and managed to record a great view of the tree-tops. This third attempt was recorded with the camera strapped to my left hand.

I’m disappointed with the result, though. Out on the bike you get a great 180 degree panoramic of the surrounding countryside and the feel of the wind against your face. The video doesn’t do justice to the feeling of freedom and speed.

Having said that, since this was the third trip down the hill I was pretty tired by the time I did this one. I think this final run took a minute longer than the first!

New Video!

I wasn't at all happy with the old video, so I decided to go back and re-shoot it today (Sunday. This time I had the camera strapped to the helmet, and miraculously managed to keep most of the image in the viewfinder.

Good fun nearly killing the hikers on the way down. To be fair, they were expecting me. They'd had a bit of a giggle with me while I was trying to find a way to fit the camera and operate the buttons at the same time.

This one is less jerky, and because it's filmed from a higher vantage point, it's less likely to induce motion sickness. (He says)

Words Fail

2006-07-27T17:50:00.000Z

I was going to write something about Israel and what's left of Lebanon. But What's the point? Anyone with even an ounce of human decency must be absolutely horrified at what is being done over there, and if you support the flattening of civilians by a nation that should have learned some fucking HUMILITY seventy years ago then there's no point in even engaging you in debate. And let's face it, while so much money is tied up in the region, it's obvious that America isn't going to lift a finger to stop the slaughter.
Ironic point - USA is exporting aid parcels to Lebanon. Way to ease your collective consciences, guys.
So I thought I might write a letter to my local Member of Parliament asking her to represent my distress to Yo Blair. I wanted to tell her that I find it unacceptable to have a supposedly socialist government that will not stand up to the massacre of civilians and doggishly aligns itself to the USA regardless of what evil it sponsors in the name of its fictional War on Terror. However, it seems that they all broke up for their summer holidays this week.
Can you imagine that? Britain is standing against the wishes of every country in the United Nations except for Israel and the United States of America, and our government has gone on holiday.
Last one out turn off the lights.

Pottery Corner 13

2006-07-25T11:29:00.000Z

Box Nine

Could you be the one?
Neurotic, insecure, materialistic, spoilt, petulant, depressive, image-obsessed, greedy, arrogant, selfish, unreasonable, self-absorbed, tantrum prone, sulky, loud-mouthed, two-dimensional, vapid, emotionally-bullying, empathy-lacking, unfaithful, money-driven, consumerist, racist, attention-seeking, contrary, bitter, misanthropic, clingy, binge-drinking, label-centric, immoral, insensitive, shallow, duplicitous, judgemental, gossiping, intellectually stunted, twisted, slovenly, abrasive, spiteful, sarcastic, pedantic female, 24.
Seeks Prince Charming for fun and friendship.
Maybe more.

Cyberpunktastic

2006-07-22T08:18:00.000Z

I've posted this one on the discussion forum of Cyberpunk Review. If you'd like to join the debate there I'm sure your comments and input would be warmly received by SFAM and the others. Once there, click on "Virtual Meatspace" to plug in.

We've often heard about scientists "playing God". It's a charge that's levelled at scientists just about every time they come up with new ways of doing things. Rutherford was accused of "playing God" when he split the atom, just as Copernicus was accused of "playing God" when his model of the Solar System removed Terra from its centre.

Did you know that nineteenth century Irish sailors considered it unlucky to learn to swim, because to escape drowning would be to cheat destiny?

Anyway; my point: We're often told that there is a limit to how far scientists will go or how far they should go in making the world a more manageable place. But are objections to science consistent enough to actually keep the brakes on?

For example, In the USA President Bush has made history by vetoing government funding into stem cell research, calling it "murder". Where as the Chinese government is lobbying hard to get its state run stem-cell research company into the NASDAQ listings. (It's backed, of course, by American investors)

Here in the UK we're losing good pharmaceutical scientists involved in research that requires animal testing because homes are being fire-bombed, dead family members are being dug up and kidnapped (I kid you not) and families supplying the animals are living in fear. However, if you'd like to pop across the channel to Europe, scientists are free to experiment with impunity.

In most of Germany and France you'll find an opposition to Genetically Modified crops that will result in just about any trials being sabotaged before they germinate. Even African countries which are on the verge of starvation, such as Zambia and Ghana, have turned down GM maize from the World Health Organization.

Compare and Contrast with the USA, who have routinely been using GM Soya and corn products for so long that there is virtually no unmodified stock left in the production line.

And of course, we can all get hot under the collar about human cloning, unless we're from South Korea.

It seems that every culture has its demons. Whether for religious or ethical reasons there are certain aspects of technology that we instinctively shy away from. But on a truly GLOBAL scale, these local taboos become irrelevant. There will always be somebody who will pick up the torch.

Do we have a duty to establish a globally acceptable ethical code? And who should set the agenda?

Should there be global laws regulating scientific endeavour? And who should have the responsibility of policing them?

Is it fair for any nation to back away from the development of technology that it will eventually benefit from?

Discuss.

Sideways

2006-07-20T19:12:00.000Z

Just for the fun of it I thought it was about time I worked on something other than the second book of i-con for a little while. Since i-con isn't meant to "sell" on the commercial market I'm painfully aware it's only common sense to keep a hand in writing something that a publisher might actually want. I'm not money mad, but a book deal within my life time might actually be quite useful.

So, enter the first plot draft of "Sideways" a children's story similar in style to Marris and Wade. I won't be releasing it online, but if anyone's interested I'll be happy to email chapters to you.

Sideways is the story of Isobel, who decides to explore her boring old ordinary street "Sidings Way" during a gloriously long school holiday. Through the course of that enchanted summer, Isobel discovers that her neighbours are far from ordinary, and the street holds secrets of whispered magic, forbidden places and dangerous delights."

Man and Boy

2006-07-16T10:02:00.000Z

Click to enlarge.

Red Letter Day

2006-07-16T08:29:00.000Z

Yippee! I've lost 10% of my body weight since April and now I can finally fit into the pair of jeans that have been waiting for me to re-claim since leaving the army.

Top tip: Slimming World. Go on... You know you want to...

Twenty two pounds lighter. That's like eleven bags of sugar. Urge to shop for new clothes rising!

Role Model

2006-07-13T20:47:00.000Z

Pottery Corner 12

2006-07-13T15:57:00.000Z

Merlin

We found this baby bird,
Kim and me, one summer.
Looked alien and stupid.
Grey-black eyes and
Old man's skin.
Pale swollen belly
And a head too heavy to lift.

We fed it milk,
Mixed with bread and sugar.
It didn't like it though.
Next day found him dead,
In his little shoe box bed.
I made a cross of wood
And we had a new game.

Thwarted by Pincer Movement.

2006-07-12T20:48:00.000Z

We'd been out all day. One of those Tom Sawyer style weekends where the sun was shining and nothing was boring. Towards the end of the day we ended up by the river, kicked off our shoes, and waded out to hunt for bull-heads under the rocks.

Bullheads are pretty dull things. They lie about at the bottom of the river and wait for a passing nine-year-old to snatch them up. Seen one, seen all.

So after a few minutes we turned our attention to the cray-fish. Much harder to spot and quick off the mark. Armed with Chris' hat and a good dose of enthusiasm, we started tracking them down.

Anyway. We may not have caught one, but at least one caught Jessie. That girl sure can scream when she's not happy. Still, you live and learn. I think we'll stay on the grass next time. Much safer with the cows at this time of year!

Caption Competition

2006-07-08T22:00:00.000Z