The Blog Returns! (Again)

Yes, it's true - once again I have been too lazy to post a blog for months, so then feel a need to make a big hoohah about getting my backside in gear and writing one. I've already had more comebacks than Mike Tyson, and more false endings than The Return of the King. Long may it continue.

Not only that, but it is now on Facebook for the first time. Wonders never cease.

I was watching Prime Minister's Questions yesterday (doesn't everyone) when I saw the moment that everyone's been talking about. The Speaker made an arbitrary ruling, the dough-faced public school tosspot challenged him, and all Hell broke loose. What particularly struck me, though, was the sheer uselessness of Michael Martin in the role of Speaker. He spent about five minutes trying to actually get out the word "Order" and then ineffectually brayed it repeatedly while the MPs all hurled insults at each other. It occurred to me - isn't it time for a new Speaker? And then I realised that I knew the ideal candidate.

Samuel L Jackson.

If Samuel L Jackson stood up to speak, you can bet your life that there'd be no interrupting - everyone would be cowering in their chairs, whimpering gently. If he needed to demand silence, instead of the traditional "Order" he could simply draw a pistol from his jacket and fire it into the ceiling, or, failing that, wade out into the morass of politicians and start stomping them one at a time. Instead of referring to people as "The Honourable Gentleman", he could use the more succinct "Bitch".

"I've told you before, Cameron. Now sit yo' punk ass down and shut your mouth before I come down there and rearrange your motherfucking face!"

Five and the Mysterious Comments

While carrying out some tidying up of this site, I suddenly noticed that on almost every post, there were 3 or 4 comments. This bewildered me, for it is one of my standing moans that nobody ever bothers commenting, and I was sure that these had all sprung up overnight.

When I read them, the plot thickened. For a start, they were all anonymous. Secondly, they said the most ludicrously complimentary things.

"Super color scheme, I like it! Good job. Go on."

My site is black and grey, the two least interesting colours in the universe. Stylish, perhaps. Super? Probably not.

"Hallo I absolutely adore your site. You have beautiful graphics I have ever seen."

I have a picture of a plastic duck wearing a judge's wig. It took me five minutes in Fireworks to glue together two images that I stole from the Interweb, without even bothering to fix the fact that the wig faces forwards while the duck faces the left. This is the sum total of my "beautiful graphics".

After reading a few of these, I soon noticed a pattern - on each post, there were a few random complimentary comments, followed by a comment linking to an online poker site. Ahah! There was no insane stalker issuing nonsensical compliments as a prelude to visiting my house in the early hours. Instead, there was an automated comments-hijacking system of fiendish simplicity.

I have now set up one of those irritating word-verification things to stop it happening again. This won't affect anyone human because, and I think I've mentioned this, nobody ever writes a comment anyway. What have I done with the ones already there? I've deleted the ones with the link, and left the complimentary ones intact to allow myself to pretend that they were written by real people.

Needless to say, I had the last laugh.

Sailing - It's a Mini Adventure

As promised, here is the story of my sailing adventures. You might think it slightly late, but then, I only said it would be "tomorrow", and as the wize old druid guy in Asterix used to say, "tomorrow never comes." So there.

There wasn't much wind to begin with, so we started off by learning all kinds of crazy knots - I can now bend a rope in a number of bizarre ways to do such exotic things as stopping it slipping through a hole or tying a boat to a post.

Next up was capsize drill. We were all taken out onto the lake in a larger boat and then all took turns in being capsized out of a smaller one, and then trying to get it upright again. The temperature of the water was, as I have written in a groundbreaking article in science journals, actually below absolute zero. Nevertheless, we cheerfully pulled on ropes and things until the boat was once again the right way up. Huzzah.

The wind then picked up, so we went for our first sailing trip, with our every move being carefully co-ordinated by an instructor. For any nautically-minded people, this was in a Wayfarer boat, which is nice and stable and roomy. Lovely.

The next day we were thrown to the lions. (Metaphorically, obviously. Lions don't swim.) We were all sent out in pairs sans instructor. I was in a Topaz, which is a small, fairly fast boat that put me in mind of a plastic bathtub, with a 14-year-old small child. Thus, responsibility was on me to make sure that we didn't cause the deaths of everyone on the lake, including, most importantly, me.

We were clipping along nicely when one of the random guys who'd helped us with the capsize drill pulled up alongside in his Laser and asked me if I wanted a go. Not wishing to appear impolite, I agreed, and so we switched boats. I soon found out, to my chagrin, that the Laser was, being a racing boat, the least stable craft ever devised. The merest breath would make it tip alarmingly, and I imagine that if a squirrel in the woods bordering the lake had farted, all would have been lost. If the Topaz was a bathtub, the Laser was a teatray.

I managed to keep it upright for about 15 minutes, but finally the inevitable happened. I capsized. I managed to right the boat, and then 2 minutes later, capsized again. At this point the boat's owner, realising his mistake, relieved me of command and I returned to the Topaz, which we carried on sailing for the rest of the morning. The afternoon was spent sailing a Seafly, which was similar to the Wayfarer, and thus joyously did not capsize at all.

That's a long blog. But overall it was great, and I can highly recommend it as a place to learn!

Glenridding Sailing Centre

Miscellaneous Adventures

I had originally decided that I wouldn't blog during the holidays. After all, I thought, the whole idea of this crazy endeavour was to be a work-avoidance technique, and I currently have no work to avoid! I realise that my failure to tell anyone that this was my plan has almost certainly caused great inconvenience to my many readers. I can imagine people across the land hunched over their computers and desperately hammering the Refresh button in their browsers, waiting for the next installment.

I apologise for so irresponsibly leaving a wailing chasm / howling void (couldn't decide which phrase I liked more) in everyone's lives. But never mind, you'll get over it. C'est la vie, as they say in Spain.

The reason that I changed my mind about the whole "blogging during the holidays" thing was that I heard word of new blogs begun by two friends of mine, Jack and Cecily. (Rotate your eyes a few degrees to the right for links.) Inspired by their noble example (or should that be consumed with jealous rage?) I have decided to regale you with exciting tales of my recent visit to the Lake District, during which I learnt to sail several small boats and enjoyed several Cumbrian sausages.

Yet I realise now that this post is becoming rather inordinately long. Thus, delighted with the irony of explaining that I had decided not to post whereas now have changed my mind and am intending to post, and then not actually posting about anything at all, I shall end. Updates on sailing exploits tomorrow(ish).

Thank you to Jack for kindly linking to here, thus probably trebling my readership at a stroke.

Politicians Being Silly

Exams are finished!!

Yes, after months of torment, finally I need no longer feel guilty that I am spending time doing something that is entirely unrelated to law. What, I wondered, would be the best way of celebrating this event? And then it hit me. I shall write an article that is, ironically enough, obliquely related to law!! What an excellent idea.

This was largely prompted by John Reid following in the hallowed footsteps of the Blunkett and Clarke eras by, quite frankly, being a moron. Specifically, jumping on the bandwagon to criticise a judge for giving what he believes is too lenient a sentence.

The point is not the correctness or otherwise of the sentence. The point is that it's nothing to do with the Home Secretary. It is not the place of politicians to stick their noses into judicial decisions. They have no idea about the judicial process and they don't have a clue how the legal system works in reality. The whole point of having an independent judiciary is that they judge each case on its merits rather than taking any notice of public opinion. Politicians do nothing but take notice of public opinion, which is why they should stick to their proper constitutional role and stay out of the judicial process.

To my absolute lack of surprise, everyone's favourite idiot-sheet, The Sun, has come out in favour of Mr Reid. They are campaigning for judges who make "loony" sentencing decisions to be sacked. Possibly someone should explain to them that judges are unsackable precisely because they must be able to carry out their functions without worrying about pleasing the politicians.

If The Sun had its way, our legal system would disintegrate into trial by tabloid. Judges would be at the mercy of journalists who don't know a sentencing tariff from their backside. What fun.

"Exam replaced after papers leaked"

...was the headline that struck me when I last looked at the BBC News website.

How, I thought, was it possible for exam papers to leak? And even more significantly, what exactly were they leaking? Was it simply water, or something more sinister? Was there an oily trail of knowledge oozing out of them, soon to be lost beyond all recall? Or was it blood, or some ghostly form of ectoplasm? Scenes from Poltergeist and Ghostbusters flashed through my mind.

Woe to ye who fail to use the passive tense correctly when writing headlines. And woe to pedants - I hate people who pick holes in everything.

Hitting Balls with Hammers

Croquet is, apparently, less painful than its conceptual description seems to suggest. It's a sport that I've always considered to be simply a gentle pastime for the elderly, when they become too decrepid to withstand crunching sliding tackles. Bless them.

But apparently I was mistaken. According to the BBC News website, and seemingly every newspaper in the country, it's actually an amazingly vicious game. Curious as to the basis of this claim, I read further. Was there, I wondered, a dimension to this game that I had entirely missed? In between each round, did the competitors lay down their hammers and undertake a fist-fight? Or, more promisingly, did they keep hold of their hammers and have a highly entertaining hammerfight? Was the aim of the game, in fact, to bludgeon one's opponent to death, and all the hitting of balls merely an elaborate form of foreplay?

Sadly, I could find no such feature to the game. I say sadly, because there is seldom any game that could not be improved by the addition of violence. But nay, the sole justification I found for the claims of brutality was:

"At the same time you would try and position your balls in a certain place, you can hit your opponent's ball off the lawn."

So in other words, at the same time as trying to win, you try to make your opponent lose. I must confess to being slightly dubious as to the uniqueness of this aspect of the game.

The reason why the newspapers have been so excited about croquet is, of course, that John Prescott was pictured playing it. This, bizarrely enough, actually took up the entirity of the front page of that well known oasis of intelligent comment, The Sun. The accompanying article seemed to suggest that his previous misdemeanours of groping every female within reach, presiding over the most demoralised and unhappy department in government (an impressive achievement, considering the continued existence of the Home Office), punching people, and having an affair with a civil servant, were trivial in comparison, and that he should be sacked immediately.

The most worrying thing about the whole incident is it meant that, for the first time in history, I actually found myself defending John Prescott. When that happens, you know that something is very, very wrong with the world.

Galloway Watch - Episode 1

To avoid the horrendous prospect of yet more depressing musings on revision and exams, I have decided to begin an occasional column chronicling the life and times of the Rt. Hon. Mr George Galloway, MP. In other words, every time that Our George says or does something stupid (and I have a funny feeling that this might not be the rarest of occurrences), I shall report it in gleeful detail.

His recent gem occurred when he was asked whether a suicide bomber would be justified in blowing up Tony Blair. I don't know whether such a bizarre question was a genius attempt to catch Galloway out, or just plain idiocy. (But given that it was asked by Piers Morgan, I'm going to assume the latter.) George responded:

"Yes, it would be morally justified."

Oh dear. Even George realised he'd gone too far this time, hastily backpedalling in the press, claiming that what he meant was that he could see, in a calm, objective, disapproving way, how a suicide bomber could construct a moral argument. Now that clearly isn't even close to what he said, but it's what he says he said, so that must be okay.

What's really disappointing is that in starting this new hobby now, I've missed the opportunity to comment on Galloway's disgraceful election behaviour, his antics on Big Brother, and the hilarity of his arrest in Egypt. But I'm sure that more will follow soon...

Revision

...is the Destroyer of Souls.

Happily, though, the largest part of it is over. My exams begin soon - on the 31st May - and end on the 13th June. Two weeks of sheer terror, followed by blissful nothingness. Nothingness in the relaxation sense, not in the death sense. Hopefully.

In our desperation, we have had to find various ways of allieviating the tedium. Yesterday was the turn of the Paper Aeroplanes Flying Championship of the World. It was a beautiful sight, five planes of different designs all gracefully flying through the air in formation(ish) before nose-diving into the ground. Brought a sentimental tear to my eye.

And now I must return to the pit whence I came. The library awaits, eager to draw me into its cavernous maw, there to devour me, slowly, for the rest of time. Or until June 13th, whichever is sooner.

Ducks and Cold Water

But, bizarrely, not together.

I always thought that ducks tended to stay by such bodies of water as rivers and lakes. After all, (and I'm moving into entirely guesswork territory here) they mostly survive on little water-based swimming things, and bread thrown by small children and tourists.

All of this would no doubt be news to the ducks in Cambridge. Not for them the quiet, placid life of swimming along a river. These ducks want some action. They want to paint the town red and hang around on street corners. Which is why, every time it rains, they all start wandering through the town centre. My college is about ten minutes (at human speed) away from the river, yet a couple of days ago there were a couple of ducks apparently trying to get into the library where I was working. They can't have meant any harm, for they were not wearing hoodies (the Gospel According to Bluewater, Chap 3, Verse 17), but were a strange sight nonetheless.

In Other News:

In what perhaps can best be described as a fit of genius, the nice college maintenance people have been round to turn off our hot water. They're supposed to be turning off the heating for the summer, but clearly don't have a clue what they're doing. Showering this morning was a disconcertingly bracing experience.