THE LONG LOST LAGOMORPH

STOP

2006-05-04T08:33:00.000+00:00

GO HERE NOW, BECAUSE THIS SITE, THE ONE YOU ARE AT NOW, DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE. THAT'S RIGHT, IT'S A FIGMENT OF YOUR OVERACTIVE IMAGINATION. I'M NOT KIDDING, YOU'RE REALLY IMAGINING IT. REALLY REALLY. LEMON SQUEEZY. OKAY PLEASE SOD OFF.

a new beginning!

2006-04-12T08:26:00.000+00:00

Well hello there, how are you, haven't I been gone a long time? Yes I have and well, I'm not really sorry, cos it was nice to have a break, so I'm back, but I don't live here anymore because I HATE BLOGGER.

You heard it right, I HATE BLOGGER.

I could go on all day, but instead I now love TypePad.

My new website is at: http://www.timtim.typepad.com/timboland/

Please go there now and admire the smooth sexy layout, the smooth sexy writing, and my smooth sexy picture of a knife and fork! Great!

I'm never coming back here ever again (apart from maybe checking the comments box) so please, don't ever come back here again either. Go there.

Bye!

year in review

2005-12-31T08:32:00.000+00:00

I come to the end of yet another year in the life of me - oh how they seem to be piling up all of a sudden - and what a rollockingly bastardish yet somehow satisfying year it has been.

A year full of happiness, sadness, grief, relief, frustration, love, and a bit of blogging (only a bit mind you; I've had things to do...) is almost at an end, and I for one am looking forward to 2006. Hopefully I can get something constructive done in the next 365 days.

As a nice summary I thought that I'd put together a little picture gallery which demonstrates pretty thoroughly what the last twelve months has entailed. Click on the images to enlarge them:

From top left to bottom right we first see our lovely lovely Hope (we will never forget you and your wonderful fluff), The Lick with Ralph Nelson, Hazel in an extremely unflattering position, Honey showing all and sundry his belly, a big-arse Christmas turkey (granted, it's an old photo, but it is relevant so bollocks to you...), and the most gracious of all Derek's: Derek.

This year I have:

- Been a bastard but am getting better.
- Endured having a hole in the side of our flat. A very big hole. A patio-door-size hole.
- Discovered a frisbee that doesn't hurt when you catch it.
- Had my grandad and rabbit die.
- Discovered the joys of 'Most Haunted', 'Malcolm in the Middle' and 'Futurama'.
- Learnt how to use a plane and a saw properly.
- Placed some bets and won nothing. Typical.
- Not been on holiday. Natch.
- Got very fast broadband.
- Dyed my hair (and most of my face) blue-black.
- Purchased a decent wok and roasting tray. Very important.
- Worked out how to do sit-ups properly.
- Had three fillings and a root canal.
- Blogged a lot and then not very much at all. You know how it is.
- Sold a chair and given loads of stuff to charity.
- Cooked my very first yorkshire pudding!
- Not had very much money. Oh sad day.
- Started feeling old even though I don't look it, and yes, I am grateful for that.
- Put up with a terribly shitty job, and through doing so have managed to get an ever-so-slightly better one. Joy.

Nothing particularly outlandish or startling it's true, but it's certainly been an eventful annum.
And just to top it all off I cooked the mother of all Christmas dinners, and have now been eating roast turkey and gammon for the last 7 days and still have 3 or 4 days worth of food left. Now that's a lot of nosh.

I now intend to finish work as quickly and painlessly as possible, and then get well and truly trolleyed as is the norm on occasions such as these I hear.

I bid you all a joyful and prosperous new year cos you all deserve it you lovely people you.

See you soon and thanks for reading.

Tim

we see rufu

2005-12-01T21:18:00.000+00:00

If I wasn't straight I could quite fancy this guy.

Last night we were treated to a downright bloody fantastic evening. I'm not being dramatic, it really was great. Rufus Wainwright is one of those special musicians who somehow doesn't seem capable of putting a foot wrong. Not one note was off key, nor any song choice unfitting, and when he needed to up the ante it was done with aplomb. I've been a late convert to his stuff, but Mrs L has been championing him for a while now, and it's not hard to see why. Not only can the bloke play guitar, piano, and quite probably any other instrument that were to be plonked in front of him, but he also has THE MOST AMAZING VOICE, in capital letters. If you were to ask me to pick a favourite song I wouldn't be able to do it. They were all great, he was great, his band was great, even the bit where they all went a bit Polyphonic Spree and started dancing around in togas was great beyond description. And all this pleasure was had while sitting down! God has obviously started work early in preparing me for the big three oh.

Robyn Hitchcock and The Minus Three are my next top gig event. I really do have such impeccable taste. If I wasn't me I would probably make myself sick.

Back

2005-11-11T12:44:00.000+00:00

I'm listening to Jimi Hendrix, and it's good.
It's drizzling on the rabbit a bit, which isn't quite as good.
I'm being productive and attempting to locate old friends pon de internet mun, and that's pretty good.
But I've had four hours sleep and feel like a donkey has shat on my brain, which frankly is a bit rubbish.

Welcome back Tim to your biannual blog. It wasn't like this before but it has become such.
Thankyou all and sundry for coming here to have conversations amongst yourselves. I'm a terrible host, I'm fully aware. I would have dropped off some jaffa cakes but I was far too busy doing my hair the last two/three months... you know how it is. Hair.

A question: does anyone know how to get themselves removed from the Westlife mailing list? I need to find out for a friend.

Another question: how do you tell binmen subtlely that they're fucking idiots? That one's for me.

Brilliant news! I won an auction on eBay by 1p with 7 seconds (with Neneh Cherry, who I passed on the way to waitrose a couple of weeks ago) to go. How thrilling! I would have been mightily peed off if I had been the bloke beaten by 1p instead. I hope he's crying into his Thomas the Tank Engine slippers at his schoolboy error; NEVER bid £**.99 you berk, or you will lose.
Ha!

The most important thing that's happened since I've been gone is that our rabbit populous has decreased by one, and then increased by two.
Poor lovely fluffy baby Hope (the lagomorph of the title) passed away into bunny heaven and we really really miss her. May her beautiful little hairy paws rest in peace.
In her stead we have brought in little Hazel and little Honey to keep Ralph company.
They are all very sweet but obviously completely mental being young'uns, so as of yet they haven't really been getting too friendly other than when they've been trying to kill each other through the bars of their hutches, or trying to shag each other through the bars. Ralph has been resorting to humping my arm, which as you can probably imagine is hilarious to watch, but not really that much fun for my arm (he always goes for the same arm - why?), and the other two just shit and spray everywhere, which is lovely.

They will be allowed to get to know each other properly when they've had their bollocks chopped off. Hazel is already bollockless, Ralph will be next, then Honey (or Ginge as I affectionately call him) to follow. That should calm the randy fuckers down.

Here's a picture of them all chowing down:

That's Ralph up top, Hazel in the middle, and Ginge at the bottom. Aren't they pretty?
Right that'll do you. Back with more pictures as and when.

See you in February then.

We Are Family

2005-07-30T18:44:00.000+00:00

Meet the newest member of the Lagomorph clan.

This beautiful ball of fluff is called Ralph, and is the most friendly and energetic little creature I think I've ever had the pleasure to meet.

Suffice to say, there are bound to be a whole heap of posts on here dedicated to him.

Also, Big Blogger is coming to a screaching halt in seven days time. It's all very thrilling, and I'm pleased to say that it's been a roaring success, especially seeing as Watski and myself didn't have a fucking clue what was going to transpire or how we were going to organise it. But organise it and transpire it we did, and 30,000 visitors in two months can't be wrong.

It has, however, turned this blog into a bit of a ghost town; random posts about not very much at all, and lots of pictures - nice pictures, but pictures nonetheless - where there really ought to be some writing.

But I shall return with more energy and youthful vim than before, you'll see!

Adieu...

Of course...

2005-07-25T20:53:00.000+00:00

I knew I'd seen that bloody Makosi woman before.

And yes, I do have a history of hanging around in phone boxes on Tottenham Court Road.

The Everyday & The Mundane: No. 3

2005-07-25T15:44:00.000+00:00

Alternative Title: 3.48% of Mr & Mrs L L Lagomorph's Music Catalogue

Finally, a list.

2005-07-20T17:00:00.000+00:00

This is what I get to feast my eyes upon every day when I hop and skip to work and back.

I'm reasonably lucky in that respect.

Most people get to stare at the back of someone else's head from approximately three inches away, and/or get to revel in the pungent odours emitted from that fat greasy blokes pits. But not me.

I get to walk to work.
I get to smell the grass and the flowers.
And I get to look at this brilliant yet bizarre piece of architecture.
The chap who built it (a king or some such..) clearly had more money than sense, yet despite it's downfalls and ridiculous over-the-topness it gets away with it, and fits into the town perfectly.
In doing so it supports my argument that this place is fucking weird.

Anyway.

I haven't done the whole linky linky thing for a while, so here's a whole bunch of stuff that's been twiddling my knobs in the last few weeks:

First up, films. We have seen a whole bunch of movies recently. Some good, some not so good, some positively shit. I wholeheartedly recommend that everyone go and see Batman Begins and rent out Sideways, as they are both bloody ace. Mrs L didn't like Batman too much; thought it was a bit too modern, and she says that she prefers the Tim Burton original. But I thought it was fun, exciting, and a really good re-working of the character. And the Batmobile is ruddy amazing. Sideways we both liked. It was funny, moving, clever, well written, and I actually really cared about the characters - something which doesn't happen very often.

We've also seen Sin City (looked really good, but the story was all over the place and the dialogue was laughable), The Life Aquatic (could have been good but was actually shit - seemed as if there were whole massive bits of film missing all over the place), and Birth, which was good, if a little risque with the old subject material, but worth a watch despite having Nicole Kidman in it.

I turned on the telly the other day (shock horror) and had the strangely pleasant experience of watching a decent video to a decent song on a cable tv music channel. Twice. One after the other. It was amazing.

I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn't in a coma.

So I immediately went on the interweb and found the videos and songs in question and here they are for you courtesy of me because I love you all so and understand that you need guidance when it comes to matters of taste and quality.

First up is this song by Audio Bullys. It's called 'Shot You Down' (no, really) and we like the Nancy Sinatra sample. We also very much like the video, which is by some dude called Jonas Odell who works for or runs these guys, who in turn seem to be owned by these guys - it's a cut-throat confusing as buggery market out there folks! He's done loads of other stuff which looks really really stylistically simliar, but I'm going to let him off on this occasion because the bit where Nancy's face has got lots of pink starry stuff going on behind it is blimmin' great.

Second up is this tune by Tom Vek, who we like a lot, and it's called 'C-C (You Set The Fire In Me)' for some reason. The song is pretty okay but not as good as some of his other stuff, but the video is just bonkers. Are they monkeys? Aren't they monkeys? Why is he dressed like a dandy old soldier? Somebody help me out here.
All I know is that it's clever, looks good, and I haven't the faintest idea how they did it, which is always a good thing.

Lastly, I've been pointed in the direction of this geezer, who is a fellow Brightonite, and who seems to make very pretty prints and pictures, as well as having an uncanny knack of making very boring brick walls look positively sexy. We like!

Playtime

2005-07-17T11:42:00.000+00:00

What is so wrong about being a 28-year-old Lego lover?

Sod all, that's what! (Exclamation mark definitely and defiantly required, thankyou.)

I've been to Legoland in Denmark twice you know. The second time I cycled there. I was that desperate to go. Granted, my Lego-lust has waned somewhat in the last decade and a half - I no longer plead with my parents every Christmas for giant Technics racing cars or ridiculously humungous space monorail sets with battery powered trains and flashing lights and heaps of other fancy tosh - but I still have an ache in my soul for that piece of my youth which I never want to let go of. That little piece of the brain (or is it the heart?) that powers my imagination and which constantly wants to try new things and explore the world and everything around it. And yes, when all is said and done, it all basically boils down to Lego.

Where the fuck is the stimulation in My Little Pony??

And it gets worse.

2005-07-16T22:58:00.000+00:00

I'm going to keep posting this stuff, so that I never forget that people are dying for no good reason, and so that I can rationalise the hysteria that seems to preoccupy a large number of people in both the UK and the US regarding 'National Security'. Whatever that is.

Read THIS and remember that we are the lucky ones. Who is having a two minute silence for these innocent people?

The Everyday & The Mundane: No.2

2005-07-14T10:03:00.000+00:00

Perspective

2005-07-13T10:33:00.000+00:00

So you think we've got it bad?

Read this.

The Everyday & The Mundane: No. 1

2005-07-13T00:49:00.000+00:00

NEWS! - JonnyB Accepts Award Graciously!

2005-07-13T00:20:00.000+00:00

"I'm not much good at acceptance speeches, having never had to accept anything in my life.

Apart from my guilt.

I'd like to thank... no, hang on. I don't want to thank anyone. It was all me, you know. Actually I would like to thank RachelM for her logo hosting services for which I am eternally grateful. But she hasn't got a website to link to, so we can't link and she'll never see that I thanked her her. So that was a bit of a waste of time really.

Summer always brings blog ennui. Hopefully this'll be kept to a minimum. There will be new and dramatic developments in the Post Office campaign at some point in the future. That is an exclusive for the awards committee."

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Three Things

2005-07-10T22:14:00.000+00:00

1st Thing

2nd Thing

3rd Thing

I wrote so much in the last post that I'm all out of things to say. So you don't have to listen to me ranting on for a change. Feel free to let me know in the comments box what you think about it all.

After a think...

2005-07-10T11:20:00.000+00:00

Over the last few days I've been contemplating how I feel about what happened in London on Thursday. It was a bloody horrible thing to happen, and I wouldn't wish that kind of pain or misery on anyone.

Plus it was especially meaningful for me and Mrs L because we lived in the Aldgate East area for two years from 2001, and used those tubes and that bus route on many many occasions. But despite the awfulness of it all, I can't help thinking about the reaction of the media and our politicians to this most tragic of events.

To be honest I don't know where to start. A good place is with the persistent bombardment (excuse the pun) of our senses with images and sounds of suffering, carnage and grieving. The meticulous pulling apart of evidence, footage, eye-witness accounts, and all the CG models and plans and details of how everything happened (the BBC website is particularly guilty of this). Is all this really necessary? Does the general public actually want to see every gory detail? Or are we being force fed this mountain of information to frighten us, and conversely to dehumanise what has taken place? What does this achieve? It certainly doesn't make it any easier to deal with, for exactly the same thing happened when the Madrid bombings happened last year, and also when 9/11 occurred; yet Thursday showed everyone that you can never be prepared for the unexpected, especially not in a place as busy and impersonal as London.

And for the politicians - by this I predominantly mean Blair and Bush - it is such an aptly timed and convenient thing to happen. Yes, I am cynical, and with good reason. Politicians get an easy time with this kind of thing; it deflects the attention from them, and gives them an easy opportunity to build up brownie points by using heavy-handed and emotionally charged rhetoric to 'condemn the terrible events' and 'show that we will not be defeated'. How easily we forget that Bush and Blair have sent hundreds of US and British troops to their deaths, and condemned countless thousands of innocent Iraqi and Afghan civilians to death by declaring meaningless war with Iraq, and overthrowing the corrupt Taliban regime in Afghanistan. While we're on the subject let's not forget Kosovo either. And have their overblown reactions to this imaginary threat, their 'War On Terror', achieved anything constructive at all? It certainly hasn't dulled the perceived threat to our safety at home, as illustrated beautifully be Thursday's bombings. They haven't found Bin Laden (if he is the one to blame for 9/11), and they haven't achieved anything fundamental or worthwhile in Iraq, other than unsettling the entire region and creating a situation they can't resolve. I must admit to feeling a kind of miserable pleasure about how Bush has backed himself into a corner with the Iraq debacle. It's good to see someone so evil and with such misplaced motives (no-one can tell me that Bush is interested in the safety of the American people; if he was he would sign up to the Kyoto agreement like a shot, and wouldn't have sent so many troops to their deaths needlessly) get their comeuppance.

So I hope that the attention soon turns to why the bombings happened, rather than constantly focusing on who did was responsible. I haven't seen one news report alluding to the ongoing problems in the Middle East, and the sustained western presence in the region. A possible invasion of Iran, the sustained US presence and the failure of the US-installed government in Iraq to maintain any kind of peace, aligned with consistent US support for Israel, has created the most potentially explosive climate for years - completely the opposite to what was intended. Oh well, put an idiot in charge of your country and what do you expect to happen?

I'd also like to see more attention paid to the people who die in Iraq on a daily basis. Sure, fifty people have died in London, and countless more have been injured or crippled, but dozens are killed in fighting, raids, attacks, and suicide bombings in Iraq every day, yet do we hear how terrible and awful this is? Of course we don't. It's not close to home enough. The government only wants us to worry about ourselves, as that keeps the attention on the 'good' work they do at home promoting homeland security. (I have literally just been shown this. How very very apt. And I just cannot believe that the scaremongering has begun already.) And all of this has happened because Tony Blair decided it would be in our interest, and in the world's interest, to send British troops in to back up the Americans. Well hasn't that plan backfired fantastically?

I'm sorry for ranting, but I really feel passionately about this issue. It affects us all, and if you don't pay attention to what's going on you'll never be able to make a difference, no matter how small.

For further information as well as some refreshingly different points of view visit:

Cannonfire
Michael Moore
Bush Watch
Why Are We Back In Iraq?

UPDATE: Here is a brilliant link I've nabbed from Vanessa's website. Shows all those bigots out there that it's not Muslims who are doing this, it's idiots.

Because of all this brouhaha I've been thinking about my previous travels a fair bit. So what follows is the first part of what will possibly be quite a few installments about my time in the Middle East. If I can be bothered.

Part 1

In autumn 1996 I decided that this poxy island had nothing that I wanted, or could make use of, so I packed what little possessions I had into a holdall, and bought an open return ticket to Israel.

I didn't know what to expect, had little or no prior knowledge of the country or what I was going to do when I arrived, and to be perfectly honest I didn't really care. I had always had an urge to go - probably something to do with the alluring historical and religious stories I'd heard so many of at school - and it sounded like it was a completely different place to where I was from, and to what I was leaving behind. Why go for the safe option of say, Sweden (even though I'm sure Sweden is wonderful, and being 20 years old at the time, the lure of many young Swedish girls was not lost on me), when you can go for the dangerous option of Israel. The place you always hear about on the news. The place where someone gets shot or blown up every five minutes, or at least that's what it appears like. The place that is seemingly surrounded by countries and people that don't like it very much and keep on threatening to do quite nasty things to it if they don't push off any time soon. The place your mother would really appreciate it you don't go to just in case you die. That place.

Apart from perhaps Cambodia or Antarctica, Israel was possibly the most utterly different place to Felixstowe, England that I could think of. It also had the added benefits of not being really far away from the UK (which I imagine pleased mummy a little bit), and of not being very expensive. The last one was the important one.I only had £500 saved up and the ticket cost me £230, so I had to find the cheapest way to stay out of the country for the longest period of time.

Luckily, I knew a fair amount about kibbutz's (or is it kibbutzes?), as I had purchased a book which dealt exclusively with what to do on a year out from university. It contained all sorts of bizarre things, like being a tomato-picker (been there, done that) on an organic farm in the Shetlands, or teaching people to windsurf in Afghanistan (I might have made that one up), but most importantly it had a suitably large chapter dedicated to volunteering at a kibbutz. Through this I found out that just by working five or six shortish days a week, I would get a room, three square meals every day, my washing done for me, and plenty of time left to get a nice tan. All for virtually no cost at all; it is volunteering after all.

I calculated that apart from the small cost of commission I would have to pay to some organisation in Tel Aviv on arrival to help me find a kibbutz to work at, and the cost of a couple of nights at a hostel when I got there after the flight, there shouldn't really be a lot else left for me to fork out for. And I was right. It was the cheapest year of my life. I managed to travel all around Israel, Sinai and Egypt, and have a sneaky peak into Jordan, all for the measly sum of £500. If anyone's ever done better than that please let me know, because personally, between you and me, I think that's some kind of record.

Anyhow, Israel really was the alien world that I was expecting it to be, but at the same time was completely unprepared for. For a starters it was really bloody hot, and for seconds my first point of arrival, the airport, was a total free-for-all. queuinging as such for the passport checks, more a general thronging. And absolutely no quietly ponderous waiting for my bag to appear on the conveyor belt thingy, oh no. It was best compared to a rugby scrum, with Orthodox Jews and mad old Israeli women climbing all over each other to get to their luggage. And I couldn't understand anything that anybody was saying, and none of the signs for anything were in English, which didn't really help. After the scrum had died down and the people had cleared away, I moved out of the terminal to try and work out how to get into town and find a place to stay.

As you can probably tell, I was winging it. I find this is a good way to keep oneself on one's toes.

After trundling my way from bus stop to bus stop for half an hour, and generally appearing (in case anyone was watching) totally lost, I gave up, and resorted to sitting on my bag dejectedly. It was now evening time, it was dark, and I was all out of ideas. Luckily for me though, I had happened to sit on my bag dejectedly right next to a friendly American guy who worked in a hostel in the middle of town, and who was looking for people to come and stay at said hostel as he probably got free booze for doing so. Tim's first lucky break (the first of many).

So I had a place to stay - a dingy, smelly place, granted, but a place nonetheless - and could now focus all my effort on getting some sleep, which I duly accomplished with no fuss whatsoever. In the morning I took advantage of the free breakfast (bread, tomato, and cheese.It it was free so I wasn't moaning) and then headed out, with the directions I had taken down from the barman/receptionist at the hostel, to find the nearest kibbutz placement office. I wandered around for a while, but again, everything was in Hebrew, so I found it pretty difficult to ascertain exactly what was what. I did eventually find the place however, and they were very kind to me. After I'd given them the shekel equivalent of sixty quid. But I didn't care. The lady I spoke with asked me some questions; what kind of work I wanted to do (not factory work) , where I'd prefer to go (the desert please), how big a kibbutz I'd like (small to medium) - it was a bit like choosing a stereo - she then showed me some pictures of the three kibbutz she'd whittled it down to. They all looked a bit rough, apart from one which had some trees and a bicycle in the picture, so I went for that one. 'If it's got trees it can't be bad', I thought. She called the kibbutz up, spoke to Nati, the volunteer leader at the kibbutz, booked me in, then gave me a piece of paper with a phone number on it (just in case) and the number of the bus I needed to catch to get there.

I went back to the hostel, got my things, and went to catch a bus to get to the main bus station on the other side of town. The bus station was like nowhere I'd ever been before. It was chock full of soldiers. Young men soldiers. Young girl soldiers. All sorts of soldiers. All of them with big guns, M16's, Uzi's, etc, etc. And all of them just milling about waiting for buses to get to wherever the hell they were going, just like me.

I'd never really thought that what with their country being constantly at war/defending itself against attack, Israeli's have to go into the army in some way, shape or form. And they all do it at seventeen I think (correct me if I'm wrong), so seeing literally hundreds of very young soldiers, both male and female, is not such an unusual sight after all. The first five minutes was the most shocking. After two hours of waiting for my bus I was starting to get used to the guns. After three I was bored of them. But I'll never forget that feeling I felt when I first saw a group of kids, not much younger than myself, in their uniforms with their M16's casually hanging at their sides, laughing while they waited for their ride. I realised that this was not only a different country, but a different mentality, and a different take on life.

I remember sitting on the bus for the first time, and I remember that I was slightly paranoid. I sat near the middle of the bus, and the kids got on after me and sat at the back like they they always did when you were at school. Only difference is this time the kids are soldiers with big guns. I don't know why, but I worried to myself that one of them would go nuts and start shooting. I think this is what's known in the trade as culture shock. Two hours into the journey though and I'd forgotten all about the guns, and nobody had been shot yet, so I kind of figured everything was going to be okay. As it happened, when the bus got to the kibbutz, one of the soldier kids that had been sat at the back of the bus got off at the same time as me. Turns out he was just a kid going home, and that put it all nicely into perspective for me. Just because someone's got a gun and looks threatening doesn't mean that they are. And you have to consider the circumstances behind a situation before you judge the protagonists and the participants. These things are key, and I needed to take them into account on every single day of my time in that wonderful country.

For extended periods of time while I was on the kibbutz, I remember being told by the kibbutzim (the people who lived there) that Israel was the closest it had been to going to war as it had been in years. These people were properly frightened, as you would be, and I did discuss with Nati what would happen in that eventuality. It turns out that everyone who isn't an Israeli national gets flown or shipped out asap, but luckily enough that situation never arose.

Because the kibbutz was situated right in the middle of the Negev desert, and the Israeli government has strategically placed all of it's defences, ie. airbases, army barracks, etc, in the middle of the desert as far away from major towns and cities as possible, we would very often wake up to the sound of tank fire and what sounded like explosions. I did eventually get used to this alternative dawn chorus, but for the first month or so it thoroughly scared the crap out of me. I thought we were under attack.

It's funny how you react in that situation. Everyone probably reacts differently, but I seem to go quiet, then I wait for someone else to react. On a couple of occasions some fighter jets flew reasonably close to the kibbutz, maneuvers or something, and created a sonic boom by breaking the sound barrier. I had never heard a sonic boom before, but to hear one while you're sitting about in your pants after a hard days graft in the fields, in a country that is on the brink of war and which is where people regularly get blown up by suicide bombers, and where the place you're staying in not ten kilometres from Gaza City where Israeli troops quite often shoot Palestinians or blow up their houses, and so on and so on, is something else. It was possibly not the ideal environment for it. In short, I shit myself.

Everyone froze and waited. I'm pretty sure we all thought the same thing: "This is it." Then, after what seemed like an age but was probably only a matter of seconds, we all relaxed upon the realisation that we weren't being bombed.

To be continued...

Thursday Part 4

2005-07-07T11:36:00.000+00:00

THIS has just happened.

I hope no more people have been killed, and my thoughts are with everyone who has been injured or killed, and also with their families.

When we lived in London two years ago there were all sorts of threats about this sort of thing happening. It was just after 9/11, and paranoia was rife, but luckily for us nothing bad ever happened in the two and a bit years that we were living in Whitechapel and Hackney.

So right now I feel extraordinarily lucky, and so does Mrs L. But I also feel sick to my stomach. How can human beings do this to one another?

UPDATE: Read what those involved or nearby to the explosions have to say.

Thursday Part 3

2005-07-07T11:00:00.000+00:00

It's that time of the month again. and I do apologise to everyone involved for being slightly slack around these parts lately, but I am finally getting round it.

What am I talking of, I hear you ask? None other than the monthly Swampy award ceremony, that's what.

This month the lucky recipient of this most prestigious of all blogging awards, and let's face it, all the awards that ever been awarded to anyone ever before in the whole fucking history of time full stop, including all that Oscars and Baftas and Nobel Peace Prize crap. They are all just a load of pissy shit compared to this.

So anyway, the winner of this month's award for outstanding blogness, is Mister Jonny Billericay of JonnyB's Private Secret Diary, who is being recognised for the following:

1) His quest to Save The Post Office.
2) Recording a song to drum up public support for this most worthy of campaigns.
3) Through his blog, reaching all the way to Africa (although whether their post offices need saving is beside the point).
4) Prompting one gallant chap to mow ‘Save The Post Office’ into his lawn. In Hungary.
5) Simultaneously blogging on at least three other sites at the same time as regularly updating his own. Bravo!
6) Being voted into the Big Blogger house.
7) Services to humankind.
8) The Mitt.
9) Finding out that he's going to be a father. Bravo again!
10) His post about needing a poo really badly.

That last one was the clincher. As it were.

So yeah, well done young Jonathan. With any luck we should have an acceptance speech some time next week. He's on holiday this week, which isn't really much of an excuse in my book - something this important you make time for, I think - but I'm letting him off just this once because I'm awfully nice.

It is also the time of the month when I recognise a bunch (well, ten) new or not so new blogs for their brilliance and/or entertainment value. Here they are:

A Girl With A Dot Com
:anglosaxy:
Blaugustine
Brom-man
Chase Me ladies, I'm In The Cavalry
Ian Comatose
NML
Oddverse
PostSecret
Random Burblings

All absolutely brilliant the lot of them. Well done chaps! If my blog was even half as good as your little lot I might actually get some people reading it. Oh well, I can still dream...

Thursday Part 2

2005-07-07T10:45:00.000+00:00

I've finally managed to hook my phone up to the computer after two months of wondering whether or not it would ever happen. I picked up a neat little cable off of this here internet thing, which is just the best most useful invention there ever was, for a little under eight quid, and am now able to send pictures and photos to and from my phone, as well as putting mp3's on to it so I can listen to them in my breaks at work or when I'm on the bus or train. Bonzer.

So I've downloaded all the dodgy photos I've taken in the last eight weeks or so, and have now realised that alot of the pictures I've taken are shit. They all looked the same on the phones little screen, but in reality most of them are gash, for wont of a better word. I have henceforth been fiddling with the settings, and will no longer be taking pictures of any old shit just for the sake of it. Quality control is being introduced, and I should reap immediate rewards. I wish the sun was out though, because the dull light makes all the colours really bloody boring and washed out - it's not a digital camera after all, it's just a cameraphone.

Anyway, here is a selection of some of the not-quite-as-boring-or-shit-as-the-other-one's pictures that I've taken recently:

Thursday Part 1

2005-07-07T10:04:00.000+00:00

So far today we've had the man from British Gas round to check the boiler and stop it from leaking, the bloke who painted the front of the house to give an estimate on painting the back of the house and a rough idea of when he'll be able to get someone round to do the work, and the handyman chap to mastick (if that's how you spell it) around the bath, as it has yet again been going mouldy and allowing water through down the side of the bath. Not pleasant.

The gas man was extraordinarily efficient, turned up at 8.40am which in my book is amazing, and had it plugged and working within five minutes. That said, it'll probably start leaking again by this time tomorrow. The paint man didn't really do anything apart from go "oooh" and "ahhh", and then hiss through his teeth in that 'blimey this is going to cost you a bit' way that all British handymen/workmen have an unpleasant way of doing. Not that I really care seeing as I'm not the one who's paying for all this. Sometimes it is good renting, knowing that you'll never have to pay a penny for any of those annoying repair jobs that need doing. Granted, other aspects of renting are shit, but I'm going to overlook those for the time being. The other bloke, the bath guy, was very efficient too. He was going to do his masticking, then took one look at the bath, noticed some orange bits (for orange read rusty), and decided it would probably be best to get the whole thing ripped out and replaced. Result! He proceeded to remove the side of the bath to have a look, and to absolutely nobody's surprise found that all the wooden supports and joists that hold it in place are mouldy. Soaked through. So when we get in the bath the legs that the bathtub sits on sink into the wood, which is why a big gap opens up around the bath whenever anyone gets in it. All very entertaining, so thank the lord it's being ripped out and replaced with a brand spanking new bath tomorrow morning.

The outside is going to be painted before the end of summer, the bathroom and kitchen windows and the back door are coming out as well, and apparently the landlord has decided that the concrete patio is crap too, so is having that ripped out and replaced with nice new slabs.

This is all perfectly pleasing, and believe me when I say that we are very lucky to have such a conscientious landlord. Most would rather watch their own mother freeze to death than get her central heating fixed, but our chappy is ace. I won't go on about it too much or I'll jinx myself. He'll sell the house tomorrow, just wait and see.

Some Things Wot I Found

2005-07-03T08:54:00.000+00:00

Okay, scrap that. I was going to do a long convaluted post all about some brilliant new links I've found and all the music and videos that are pressing my buttons at the moment, plus I'd probably have found the time to wibble a fair deal about my boring life. You know, how I washed the rabbit yesterday and she still smells like a farm, and how there's a company that are literally backed on to our flat that I might like to work for, which is good news of sorts, and that THAT cricket game yesterday was amazing, as was the tennis, even though we wanted Lindsey Davenport and Thomas Johansson to win (and how I'd put a tenner on Johansson to go the whole way, and so won't be seeing that again, but ho hum..), and about how we got TWO numbers in the national lottery draw which is more than we'd got in the last two months combined but is still not enough to win us any fucking money, and probably about how I am yet again working on a Sunday becuase the money is good, and trust me, I wouldn't be working on a Sunday if I didn't have to because I do have better things to do, but at least because it's quiet I do get a reasonable amount of time to work on this blog and that other blog, although I haven't done too much today because it's actually slightly busier than normal. Who the hell does stuff on Sundays? Me, it seems.

I probably would have written about all of that, and a bit more.

Probably some stuff about Live8 and how it was all a load of middle of the road claptrap, and how fucking Keane were playing which turned it into a farce within seconds, and even though it was impressive to see millions of people all over the world united in the same cause, all I could think about was how awful it would be to be in the middle of one of those enormous crowds needing to go to the toilet and then having to stop my internal organs trying to escape out of my ears because of fucking Keane and the godawful racket they produce.

Probably all of that and some more besides, and on and on...

But I'm not going to write about that stuff. Oh no.

Instead I'm going to put a link on here to THIS. And I'd like to say thankyou to the good doctor for pointing me in it's direction and then thankyou to Birdman for pointing the good doctor in it's direction. I would thank some other people too but I don't know who they are.

This thing is fucking amazing, and is easily the third best thing in the world behind Mrs Lagomorph (at number one, obviously) and squidgie frisbees.

I don't know when I'm going to get any practical use from it, but it is just span-dabby-blimin-fabulous to zoom around and in and fly about and zoom right down so you can see cars and swimming pools and what have you. What I'm waiting for is for them to make it in realtime, so that you can see people walking around or sitting in pub gardens drinking cider. These are the only things that will make it better. That and putting the detail in for the rest of the world other than just Los Angeles or San Francisco (slight California-based bias there dear Google; wonder why that is...) but that will happen soon enough. Until then I'll just keep floating around, loitering about, and waiting for them to release Google Mars.

Little Blogger - A Smaller Version of Big Blogger

2005-06-30T12:02:00.000+00:00

To keep everything up to speed, I'd just like everyone to know I've been working with the template, fiddling with the html, and generally being a busy little bunny updating the Big Blogger site so that it all makes sense, looks the same in IE and Firefox, and isn't three or four days behind the actual posts.

If you haven't had a look at it please do. There's a lot of effort going in to it from pretty much everyone involved - the wheat has been seperated from the chaff it seems - and it's trundling along very nicely indeed at present. As creative writing goes, it's really good to see lots of talented and imaginative people getting into the spirit of it. In case you were worried, it's not like Big Brother. Big Brother is all about shouting, drinking, swearing and taking the piss out of people who seemingly have a complete lack of shame or dignity. Big Blogger is about writing and having fun. There might be the occasional naughty word, but that's it. No bitching, slagging, whoring, or rudeness, and the only nakedness is virtual nakedness, so it doesn't count.

Granted, for anyone who has visited the site in the last few weeks, it has probably seemed like a mad kind of free-for-all, so with Mike's help (he obviously has way too much time on his hands), and with a bit of careful organisation, you can now see quick rundowns of the last three weeks, details of all the tasks and the blogmates responses to them, as well as a day to day archive of all the goings-on in the 'house', via the sidebar.

So go and have a look. There's really no excuse not to.

I'd like to say thankyou to Vit for fulfilling her obligations and producing this quite stunning portrait of moi/Little Blogger. Aren't I gorgeous? Only problem is that it's not completely accurate - in real life I have a ginger afro and man-boobies - but you can't have everything can you? Vit is the latest recipient of a Swampy award, due to the wonderfully ramshackle nature of her site, and all the wonderful pictures she posts to it. We at Big Blogger mansions are fortunate enough to have her as a blogmate, so the site has been constantly adorned with her colourful, witty creations. I may have to add another section to the sidebar specifically dedicated to them. Whatever, they are yet another reason to go there. So what are you waiting for??

And lastly, so that I have a permanent record of it, I need to document the fact that we are famous. Ish.

Big Blogger has had write-ups in The Times, The Guardian, The Observer, LinkMachineGo (June 8th, 2005), and now in Web User Magazine! (Click on the image to enlarge)

I never imagined I'd be seeing the Big Blogger logo in print, but it's happened, and I am flabbergasted. Next stop local TV!

My Kind of Humour

2005-06-28T23:25:00.000+00:00

Check out this link: Interesting Poetry

He doesn't do it often enough, but when Daddykins finds something funny I'm so glad he shares it with the world. I may possibly have wet myself.

Squidgie?

2005-06-28T22:36:00.000+00:00

THIS is a Squidgie Frisbee. It's a frisbee. It is made of squishy stuff. It doesn't rip your hand to shreds when you catch it, or knock you out if it accidentally hits you in the face, or break your windows when you throw it in totally the wrong direction.

It is idiot-proof, and more importantly, it's Mr and Mrs Lagomorph-proof (they are possibly the same thing).

Our one is bright orangey-red, rather than the vile yellow colour you see here, so you can't miss it. And despite being wibbly and wobbly it flies like a beast; although like all frisbee's it's absolute rubbish when it's a bit on the windy side out.

Best £5.99 I ever spent.

HAYFEVER UPDATE: I'm on my new tablets, and have been okay. However, I fell asleep on the settee for four hours this evening (not normal behaviour I can assure you) so the claim that they act as a sedative may have an element of truth to it. Now all I have to do is time it so that I fall asleep at work...

UPDATE UPDATE: Do this for no particular reason. I haven't a clue what it'll achieve, and if someone can tell me I'll be mightily grateful.