I'm trying to think

Airport Terror Prevention - Not!

Or, should that be called 'Carry on bombing.' What a surprise that someone has attacked an airport terminal, where masses of people queue to have their moisturiser confiscated. Taking bottles of water off old ladies was never going to stop someone attacking a terminal was it? It shows our anti-terrorism policy up for what it is, badly targeted, misguided reactive poppycock. Because in the past someone had a plan to make a composite bomb on a plane, let's stop normal people taking small amounts of fluid onto the plane, meanwhile large cars and trucks pull up outside the front door unchecked. If we behaved like this we'd take the front doors off our houses but have a mousetrap at the bottom of our stairs to stop burglars. Oooooh, it makes me mad.

Highway wobbery

Here are some companies I suggest you never do business with:

Europcar - Becuase they take £650 off your credit card for damage you didn't cause and give you no way to get your money back. A complete bunch of crooks and I'm not the only one.

Vodafone - For changing my contract from 12 to 18 months which means I have to wait until 2008 to upgrade my phone. Haven't they noticed that technology moves faster than this. I can buy my way out of my contract for £350 apparently. I've got a better idea, change my tarriff to the granny tarriff, cancel my insurance and pay them £10 a month whilst I switch to Orange.

Ikea Kitchens - For making it so difficult to buy a kitchen. Did I really have to spend 5 hours in the Edmonton branch listening to 'bargains, bargains, bargains' every 3 minutes over the tannoy. Prisoners get treated better in Guantanamo bay. We've had to go back another 3 times to return the stuff we didn't need and get all the little bits we did. Not the vision of Sveedish design I had in mind.

Sunday Ramble

There's a great piece in today’s Observer by Richard Dawkins, it's a ramble through his week, his views, his interests and his frustrations. He's spot on about all the hoops we have to jump through every time we go anywhere near an airport. He links to a fascinating piece about just how impossible it is to cause a chemical reaction capable of bringing down a plane with the contents of one's hand luggage. In spite of this, every time we go to Stanstead airport, my girlfriend has to put a tiny bottle of moisturiser in a clear plastic bag before going through security - but they only tell you this at the front of the queue. After which she is then made to take off her flip-flops in case they contain explosives. I'm thinking of writing a screenplay for Samuel L. Jackson called 'Bomb in a flip-flop.' It's no more ridiculous than snakes on a plane except the resulting explosion would only be enough to blow the lid off a milk sachet/carton (what do you call those things anyway?)

We should all take a leaf out of Richard Dawkin's book. He doesn't rail against religion because he doesn't believe in god, I'm sure he's more than happy to let individuals believe whatever they want, just as long as it has no impact whatsoever on the rest of our lives. Reading his piece, he clearly allows this common sense to steer the rest of his life and he can't understand why the rest of us blindly walk into a police state every time the government plays the terrorism card.

When are we going to remember that we live in a democracy and that the MPs we elect are meant to represent our interests? We need to start blogging about meaningful things instead of - 'Check out this new twitter application', or 'I really like this new ad'. It reminds me of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy when the hairdressers and economists have the chance to set up a new civilisation and all they do is create money from leaves and then invent a blue hexagon and call it a wheel. We have a chance to change things, to exchange views, influence society rather than just exchange random tidbits in the playground of advertising, swapping today's equivalent of football stickers and other trivia. What a waste.

It's why I haven't blogged for ages. I'm genuinely disheartened by the all the pseudo Russell Davies blogs. He does it, that's his thing, he does it well. Please, the rest of you, blog about something you really care about, write something that matters, that represents who you really are rather than just some very narrow industry version of yourself. Have an opinion, don't just jump on the bandwagon and blindly follow the crowd. Don't be afraid to have views on real subjects and real issues. It will be a hell of a lot more interesting than all the cobblers that's flying around on most of the blogs listed in the left hand column of this page.

If the printing press had just ended up being used to print bibles, court circulars and village news letters where would we be today? The blog is the new printing press. We all have the chance to really take a stand and make a difference, even if we only write something of real value every few weeks, do it. Don't worry about your 'brand' - if your blog is full of youtube videos 9 out of 10 posts, make the 10th post count and send it round. Look at Zefrank, he manages something really exceptional with his mix of comedy and political insight. The rest of us can only dream of being that smart - but he's not afraid to have a real opinion and express it.

I'm going to stop ranting there, and I'm going to try and practice what I preach and fill my blog with things that matter, not just some narrow Alan Partridge - 'let's keep it light and entertaining' view of the world. Comments please.

With Eli and I

Withnail and I and a trip to the countryside go together like young farmers and UKIP membership. Classic quotes from the film start to echo around my mind as soon as London passes into the rear view mirror and a ‘randy bull’ appears on the horizon. The first one to pass my lips is, ‘I’m making time’ as I gun the Punto up the motorway whilst Eli tells me to slow down.

The next compulsory quotes generally go in this order, ‘we’ve come on holiday by mistake’ when you arrive after dark in the piss-pouring-rain, followed by ‘I’m sitting down to enjoy my holiday’ as you do just that on a hard-backed chair in the kitchen with a glass of wine in your hand, knackered by what should have been a two and a half hour run from London but that’s not including roadworks and getting lost - because they haven’t replaced the road signs in Norfolk since they were removed to fox the Germans in WWII in case of invasion. Come on people, you’ve had 60 years to replace a few road signs!

It wasn’t long before the next quote sprang to mind. On our first Friday in South Norfolk we cycled to Reedham and hopped on the river ferry. (We’ve all read in the papers how a trip on the London Underground is the most expensive journey, per pound, per mile in the UK, I think I’ve found a more expensive one. As you can see from the pictures, 20 yards is £1 a person…)

Reedham itself is a nice enough spot, a couple of decent pubs on the river, but I’m always suspicious of anywhere with only one road in and one road out, not counting the ferry because it’s not, strictly speaking, a road. My suspicions were quickly realised as I cycled up a hill, overtaking a parked van, when all of a sudden I had a car right up my arse beeping. My London programming kicked in and I shot the car the blind-reverse-middle-finger which was greeted with shouting and abuse from the ‘girls’ in the car. It wasn’t long before we caught up with them since they’d parked up and the conversation went like this:

Me: What’s your problem?

Vicky Pollard: You’re meant to get out the road when a car’s comin!

Me: It’s a public highway.

VP: You were right in the middle of the road.

Me: I was overtaking a parked van.

VP: Yeah, but, what if I’d been speeding? I’d uv run you over… [She really said this.]

Me: What?

Eli: Don’t be so ridiculous

VP: If I’d been speeding I’d have run right into you.

Eli: You’re being ridiculous.

VP: I might catch you up and run you off the road.

Me: Oh go and shag your brother.

At which point I cycled off realising that you can’t reason with a cabbage whilst Eli told her to stop being ridiculous a few more times.

The Withnail quote that came out as we cycled off was ‘Not the attitude I’d come to expect from the H.E. Bates novel I read.’

She didn’t come after us, she didn’t run us off the road, although she no doubt hopped into the sack with at least one close relative that evening.

And finally, here's one you don't get to use very often - "A coward you are Withnail, an expert on bulls you are not." Just substitute 'bulls' for 'spiders' and 'Withnail' for 'Baylis'. Seriously though, would you tackle a beast like that armed only with a glass and a bit of cardboard. I think she was lucky not to lose an arm.

Hello world from Norfolk

I've got away for a week and a bit, so expect an email from me if you havn't had one for a while and some blog action - that's if the BT Yahoo account in our friends' holiday home stops going down every five minutes! Off to bed now, all that tea and sitting around takes its toll you know.

Remember, an Elk isn't just for Christmas...

...if you're lucky there'll be some left over for boxing day. Altogether now, "On the first day of christmas my girlfriend gave to me a small can of processed Elk meat."

Eli went to the Finnish Church yesterday with her Finnish friend Maria. It must be the only Church in the country with a sauna (click English at the top and then click Services in the menu.) In this menu you'll also find a link to their Christmas Bazaar, which is where Eli had been.

She came back with Pickled Herring, Pilchards, Cheese and of course Elk Meat. Christmas really has come early in the Baylis-Beaumont household.

But seriously, what a great thing - why do only Finnish people know about this? Forget the implications about why are expat communities stronger than native communities? Or what the Church of England can learn from this? I just want a go in the Sauna.

Surely, there must be loads of places like this all over London that we are missing out on - does the Polish church in Kings Cross have a Vodka Bar in the basement we don't know about? Multi-culturalism has a lot to offer, let's all get out there this Christmas and mix it up - get your presents from your local community and give the West End a miss.

Sodoku

It seems that Sodoku is still popular and the raft of free papers are playing to the commuters' hunger for more and more puzzles. Although it's clearly not to everyone's taste.

Dog Racing

We had a work outing to Wimbledon dogs a few weeks back, I found this picture on my phone and it reminded me of how utterly fleeced we all got by the likes of the guys in the picture. The favourite never won, and the dog that no one backed romped home. I'm sure it was just coincidence and had nothing to do with which trap they were put in or how much they'd eaten 2 minutes before walking onto the track.

Wow, scaffolding

When do you know you're a proper grown up? When you move in with your girlfriend, when you have kids or when your parents pop their clogs? How about when your new flat is covered in scaffolding paid for out of your own pocket. It's a small coming of age thing, but when you were a kid it's the kind of thing your dad sorted out and it was dead impressive. I don't have kids, so I'm just going to have to be dead impressed with my own scaffolding.

Beware of the Bears

Last weekend the clocks went back and that extra hour seemed to magically transform Sunday into a glorious day that went on for ever. Eli and I went for a walk up the Parkland Walk old railway track from Finsbury park that runs up to Muswell Hill and Alexandra Palace, taking in Highgate Woods along the way. It was great until we stumbled across a Teddy Bear Show at Alexandra Palace exhibition space. This was a lesson in how to take an iconic building and completely fuck it up - right down to the loud and unnecessary mobile disco next to the tacky food hall. The other lesson is that just when you think you understand the human race, you see grown people paying hundreds of pounds for toy bears.