Aurlog

Cow Christmas cracker jokes

As an addendum to yesterday's post, here are some cow Christmas cracker jokes, of which there are many. Based on a trawl of the web, I think it is fairly authoritative. I can't guaratee they have actually come from a Christmas cracker: some of them are just clearly short jokes, but I think they are worth including, if nothing else to kickstart the sad barely started list of cow jokes elsewhere on this site. I have given the source of each joke, at least where I first found it. I have, however, performed minor editing on them to standardize the formatting, tidy up punctuation, correct spelling, and so on. I did think about putting them in some kind of meaningful order, but they are instead in the order I came across them. I would, of course, be interested to hear any more you have to offer.

The last joke is a little intellectual: I have put a link to Wikipedia next to it which might help elucidate it for those of us without a head for physics.

Two cows stand in a field.
First cow: Are you worried about this Mad Cow Disease thats going round?
Second cow: Not really, I'm a chicken.
Source: PC Pro Interactive Forums

Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A: To get to the other side
Q: Why did the cow cross the road?
A: To get to the other side
Q: Why did the sheep cross the road?
A: To get to the other side
Q: Why did the farmer cross the road?
A: To get his animals back
Source: PC Pro Interactive Forums

Q: What do you get when you sit under a cow?
A: A pat on the head. Source: Ice In Space Forums

Q: Why did the cow jump over the moon?
A: Because the farmer had cold hands.
Source: Ice In Space Forums

Q: When do you know it is time for the cows to go to sleep?
A: When it is pasture bedtime.
Source: Ice In Space Forums

Q: Why do cows lie down in the rain?
A: To keep each udder dry.
Source: Pure FM Forums

Q: What goes boo boo boo?
A: cow with a blocked nose.
Source: Digital Spy Forums

Q: What goes 'oooooooooooooooh!'?
A: A cow with no lips.
Source: The CommanderBond.net Forums

Q: What do you get from a pampered cow?
A: Spoiled milk.
Source: JokeEmail.com

Q: What's the difference between roast beef and pea soup?
A: Anyone can roast beef.
Source: JokeEmail.com

Q: Why did the cow ring its bell?
A: Because it's horn didn't work!!
Source: Wrexham Today Forums

Q: What do you get when you put a cow on a trampoline?
A: A milk shake.
Source: Some Christmas Cracker Jokes compiled by Owen Williams

Q: Where do cows go for a night out?
A: To the Mooooo-vies
Source: CPFC BBS Forums

Q: How do cows subtract?
A: With a cow-culator
Source: CPFC BBS Forums

Q: Where do cows go on holiday?
A: Moo York!
Source: Gamestyle Forum

Q: What do you get if you cross a cow, sheep, and a goat?
A: The milky baa kid!!!
Source: Natasha Bedingfield Forum

Q: What goes oom oom?
A: A cow walking backwards.
Source: CharlotteChurch.net Forums

Q: What game do cows play at parties?
A: Moosical chairs.
Source: CharlotteChurch.net Forums

Q: What do you get when you cross a cow with a duck?
A: Milk and quackers.
Source: CharlotteChurch.net Forums

Q: How do cows move house?
A: They call the Mooooovers.
Source: Gush Forums

Q: Why did the milking stool have only two legs?
A: Because the cow had the udder one.
Source: Christmas Cracker Jokes compiled by John Dubery.

Man in butcher's shop: I bet you five quid you can't reach the beef of that top shelf.
Butcher: No, the steaks are too high
Source: BBC Radio Lancashire (Google cached version)

Q: Why was the butcher worried?
A: His job was at steak!
Source: Observer Magazine

Q: What did the great explorer eat in the jungle?
A: Steak and pygmy pie.
Source: H2G2

First man: Do you want a game of Darts?
Second man: OK then.
First man:Nearest to bull starts.
Second man: Baa.
First man: Moo.
Second man: You're closest!
Source: Zedge

Q: What do you call a tiny cow?
A: A Moo-on. *
Source: BioWare Forums

Lastly, I forgot to say happy new year yesterday, so merry Christmas and a happy new year!

A.D. XIII KAL. IAN. MMVII

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Merry Christmas

Tradition is traditional at Christmas so, to continue the tradition of previous years, I offer you more Christmas cracker jokes! This year there are three, one of them written by me. A special prize* if you can work out which one:

  1. Knock, knock.
    Who's there?
    Wayne.
    Wayne who?
    Wayne in a manger.
  2. Why does Father Christmas have three Gardens?
    To Ho-Ho-Ho
  3. Why didn't the lawyer get any Christmas presents?
    Because of the Santa clause.

Sources (in no particular order): Telegraph, me, Susan Hill. Those of you who like bad puns like these may also be interested to read about the Punic Wars.

Lastly, to complete your Christmas joy, why not look at this page through the Lolinator (via Tom Roper).

* Christmas goodwill.

A.D. XIV KAL. IAN. MMVII

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Queen of cheese

To us it is a glorious theme
To sing of milk and curds and cream

While cataloguing some poetry books I came across a book called Pegasus descending : a book of the best bad verse / edited with notes and an introductory dialogue by James Camp, X.J. Kennedy and Keith Waldrop. In it is a superb poem, written in Canada in the 19th century by James McIntyre, called Queen of cheese. It was written about a prize 4 ton cheese made in Ingersoll, Canada, which later went on a tour of Toronto, New York, and Britain. The third stanza particularly appealed to me:

Cows numerous as a swarm of bees
Or as the leaves upon the trees
It did require to make thee please
And stand unrivaled, queen of cheese.

Now that's poetry! McIntyre became known as the Cheese Poet. Wikipedia quotes one of his other poems about cheese in Canada called Oxford Cheese Ode:

The ancient poets ne'er did dream
That Canada was land of cream,
They ne'er imagined it could flow
In this cold land of ice and snow,
Where everything did solid freeze
They ne'er hoped or looked for cheese.

Interestingly, the last stanza of the Oxford Cheese Ode also re-uses the comparison of many cows to a swarm of bees:

Cows numerous as swarm of bees
Are milked in Oxford to make cheese.

If you want to read more, which I am sure you do, Poemhunter has the full text of James McIntyre's poems, including the two above, although beware of pop-ups, even with Firefox with the pop-up blocker on.

A.D. IV KAL. DEC. MMVII

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Milton and Viz

Every now and then, one finds a perfect combination of complementary reading material. Some time ago, I pointed out the happy combination of Saul David's The Indian Mutiny followed by George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman in the Great Game.

Now, I can heartily recommend John Milton's Paradise Lost and Supergod and The Son of Man Wonder in issue 170 (November 2007) of Viz (p. 42-43). Supergod refuses to help a bus full of orphans teetering on the edge of a bridge:

You see, I'm not generally speaking what you'd call an interventionist God. When I created man I gave him free will and those orphans were exercising their free will when they boarded that bus. So you see, if I'd prevented those orphans from dying, I would have been taking that freedom away from them. Or something like that. It's all quite complicated.
fr. 7-8

Similarly, Milton's God, after letting Satan escape from Hell by putting Satan's own daughter (Sin) and son (Death) on guard at the gates (who, naturally, let him go), keeping an insufficient watch on Paradise where his angels do not spot Satan's entrance, and giving Adam and Eve one day's warning of Satan's presence in the Garden of Eden, makes clear where the blame will lie in the foretold fall of Man:

so will fall
He and his faithless progeny: whose fault?
Whose but his own? Ingrate, he had of me
All he could have; I have made him just and right,
Sufficient to have stood, though free to fall.
III, 95-99

After failing to save an old woman who is the victim of a mugger on the grounds that the mugger will receive a harsh punishment in the afterlife, Supergod replies to the woman's thanks thus:

Think nothing of it, Ma'am. The only thanks I require is to be praised and worshipped in your every word and deed.
fr. 20

Milton's God emphasises the need for free will in worship:

What pleasure I from such obedience paid,
When will and reason (reason is also choice)
Useless and vain, of freedom both despoiled,
Made passive both, had served necessity,
Not me.
II, 106-111

They are both ace, especially the escape from Hell by Satan in Paradise Lost where I also stumbled on the quote about His dark materials, which made more sense in context. The Supergod strip is, however, considerably shorter. You also get read the exploits of Flush Gordon on other pages.

ID. NOV. MMVII

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Library pr0n

Tom Roper points out a series of photographs of beautiful libraries. I did mean to at least pick a favourite, but it is too hard: they are all so breathtaking in different ways, such as the ceiling of the Abbey Library St. Gallen, Switzerland, or the sheer height of some of them, such as the Real Gabinete Portugues De Leitura Rio De Janeiro, Brazil. However, in terms of what I want in my country house, I would like something like the Theology Room at St. Deiniol's library, North Wales (not unlike the Great Hall of Matfen Hall, where I got married) with a spiral staircase like the one at the Handelingenkamer Tweede Kamer Der Staten-Generaal Den Haag. One day.

Finally, I must apologise to Tom Roper for stealing the title of his post.

A.D. V KAL. OCT. MMVII

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David Bailey

Multangular Tower, York

My photographic talents have finally been recognised. Schmap chose this picture of the Multangular Tower in York to grace the 3rd edition of their online guide to York. This picture was of course taken during the GPSOE's visit to York last year, so it is fitting to see academic endeavour and artistic excellence reap their just reward.

A.D. V KAL. OCT. MMVII

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Sandy on the web

Sometimes for the sake of it and sometimes not, I have been creating Sandy, Bedfordshire sites all over the web on social networking sites. I started with Facebook, as documented earlier; I have also created a group on Flickr, as promised. Below is a list/directory of Sandy sites I have set up:

And a couple that I haven't set up:

Go thou and contribute. While we're listing Sandy things, some sources of Sandy news:

Any further suggestions welcome.

A.D. XV KAL. OCT. MMVII

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No evidence on bibliographic issues

Lorcan Dempsey makes a much overdue point:

In all the discussion about bibliographic data and catalogs, and about their advantages or disadvantages when compared to other approaches, it is striking how little appeal there is to actual evidence.

I've noticed this on email discussion lists where appeals are made to personal experience (of the librarian/cataloguer) and to how a user should use a catalogue, but rarely is this backed up by research as to how library users could use catalogues most intuitively and effectively and how they want to use catalogues to find material. I think this has profound implications for the cataloguing rules and OPAC design.

I expect the framers of RDA are using a wealth of such research data diligently compiled by the researchers at our library schools to compile the rules. With this much academic research behind us, Amazoogle doesn't stand a chance!

NON. SEPT. MMVII

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Public library cataloguing savings

Tim Coates thinks the unthinkable about cataloguing in public libraries: Fifteen million pounds each year to re-catalogue books that have already been catalogued. If I understand him right, he wonders why all the public libraries in the UK are all cataloguing the same books, when the booksellers supply perfectly good records in the first place. This kind of idea has occurred to me in the past:

Why are thousands of trained cataloguers around the world all cataloguing the same books so we can all put variant records onto international cataloguing utilities? In the vast majority of cases, we would surely only need local holdings appended to one centralized catalogue record.

My idea differs in one significant point, in that I would prefer to see at least one library cataloguer go near the record, with great care, to make sure it is properly up to scratch. Vendor records are sometimes, though by no means always, a bit iffy. I'm not familiar with Neilsen Bookdata and or Bibliographic Data Services records, so I can't comment on them. As long as someone dedicated and trained in the relevant standards looks at the records and is willing to vouch for their quality, then that is good. A second person shouldn't have to.

The great difficulty here is arguing myself and my colleagues out of a job. For the forseeable future, I don't think this could possibly be an issue. There are the still enormous backlogs of retrospective cataloguing, upgrades to cataloguing, and bumping up the newer cataloguing units to a strength that they are able to deal with swift and very high quality records that everyone else is able to trust (I'm thinking in terms of academic libraries more than anything). It would also release cataloguers to deal with special collections, really have a proper go at decent serials and electronic records to share, not to mention journal issues and articles. That wouldn't save the money that Tim Coates would like, though.

Mr Coates also has a go at CILIP:

I see that CILIP are organising conferences to teach public librarians how to do cataloguing at a rate of 400 pounds per admission for 3 days in London. Why?

A.D. XVII KAL. SEPT. MMVII

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CILIP advocacy

After using the word advocacy a lot (but being rather shy about it), it seems that CILIP are actually going to do some public advocacy of the library profession and support the quality of the public library service. They have just written a letter to the recently appointed Culture Secretary James Purnell. Bob McGee, who rather baffled me once at a chartership talk some years ago by explaining that CILIP did all this kind of thing behind the scenes and we should be grateful, is now saying things like:

We'll certainly be referring any Public Library Authority which we believe to be in breach of its statutory responsibilities to the Secretary of State for investigation," said Bob McKee, "and we'll also be asking the Audit Commission to take the availability of professional expertise into account when reviewing library service as part of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment of local Councils.

More importantly, he's saying it publically on CILIP's website. Ian Snowley, the new CILIP president, is quoted as saying:

It's time to campaign vigorously for the value of libraries in society and the for the importance of ensuring that local people in every community get the professional standard of library service which they deserve and to which they're entitled.

Arguably the time was ten years ago or more. However, at least something is being said if not done. I wonder how much is Mr Snowley's doing, and how much is a more fundamental strategy shift (or both). That's two positive posts about CILIP in a row. Whatever next?

A.D. XIX KAL. SEPT. MMVII

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McCann RSS feed

Following the rampant success of my Big Brother RSS feed (now defunct and Channel 4 now provide their own feed (not to mention the separate feeds from Digital Spy and The Sun)) and CILIP Lisjobnet RSS feed, I bring you an RSS feed for another very prominent site that strangely doesn't have one, although it does describe itself as a blog/diary: Gerry's Blog/Diary, which is part of the Missing Madeleine page (I would advise you to turn down the sound before entering the site (not to mention images, as the many pictures of eyes are unsettling to say the least)). It is the daily diary of Madeleine McCann's father and is frequently quoted in the press. The feed can be found at http://www.aurochs.org/internet/blogging/madeleine.php.

I must say that I am in no way connected to the case and I don't honestly think this will contribute to the effort to find the missing girl at all: there's a fair case for saying this case needed less publicity, not more, although it is clearly too late now. However, it may be useful to someone wanting to keep track of the affair. I am not making any more comment on the rights and wrongs of the parents' actions, the police investigation, the press treatment of the story, or what might have happened. I kind of really want to, but I won't, at least for now*. If nothing else, I don't have the time to write a post of the length to say everything I would want to say, which is also what prevents me having a general rant at the quality of BBC news, a post that has been brewing in my head for some years and which is not unrelated to the subject of this post.

* Except for not recommending you visit Madeleine McCann Latest News where you can dowload a Maddie toolbar (version 1.7), vote for Madeleine McCann Website Blog at the Madeleine McCann Top-Site-List (there's only one site there, curiously), send on an email that will apparently save Madeleine McCann's life, find out precisely how many days, hours, and seconds she has been missing for, download a "Maddie News" Google search bar and a Madeleine Latest News Widget for your website, and find out the lastest news on her disappearance.

A.D. VII ID. AUG. MMVII

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CILIP on Second Life

After all my criticisms of CILIP not embracing new information technology, in particular RSS feeds, they went and opened an office in Second Life. Ian Snowley (IanSnowley Allen), CILIP president, explains how he gave the inaugural address at the office (which can be found at wales1 28, 122, 24) and how the office has already hosted a session during our recent Conference (see the Umbrella 2007 blog). See also Mark Taylor's Blog for pictures, including IanSnowley Allen and Sheila Yoshikawa [a CILIP member] having a chat. All this is to be applauded.

However, from the two entries on Sheila Yoshikawa weblog it looks as though the launch was a fairly low-key affair with only about three people there, one of whom was late for the speech. Anyway, that is probably missing the point: at least CILIP are establishing a presence in an online environment early rather than waiting for everyone else to do it first as happened with RSS, although I'm not really sure how involved CILIP was in actually setting up the SL office, or whether it was set up on the initiative of a member. Does it matter?

Spurred on by this and a general curiosity about SL, I decided to join up, have a snoop round, and visit the CILIP office, as it is at least somewhere on SL that I knew about. Downloading SL was not hard, even though I have Ubuntu and SL is only available in an alpha version for Linux. The only problem I had was getting dressed. That, and my body was female. This seemed to be resolved when I logged in a second time and I've had no problem since. After floating around aimlessly for a while I managed to teleport to the address given above (linking from SLURLS didn't work from Firefox for me, for whatever reason) which is the arrival point for wales1, the island where the CILIP hq is and which is, apparently, a virtual Wales (there are some sheep there, but I couldn't see too much else Welsh). There wasn't much in the CILIP office besides some chairs to sit on, an RSS news feed (ironically) which was a bit confusingly presented, and some posters on the wall. It is one room on one floor. However, this is all you need for a meeting place and it looked smart enough. Needless to say, there wasn't anyone else there, or on wales1 as a whole.

I don't know what to make of SL generally. As I'm not prepared to pay actual cash money to buy land or to invest in some activity to acquire virtual money (Linden dollars: $L), my options are limited unless I have a brain wave and can get a virtual job. Even if I could, I don't want to spend that much time on it. I do find it fascinating, however, and I will go back and have a look around when I have the time and inclination. BTW, In the unlikely event you run into Orangeaurochs Woodget, that's me.

A.D. IV NON. AUG. MMVII

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Da Vinci Code condensed film

Those of you who enjoyed my Drown Ban, Not Chav deicide, or The Mongo code or Ward Bonn's Digital Citadel may also like to read Scaryduck's Condensed Films: The Da Vinci Code. Excerpt:

A. Tatou: Listen very carefully I will say zis only once. Les Cops r stitching u up for ze murder of my grandfather.
T. Hanks: ONOZ!
A. Tatou: Also, he has 'ad you bugged. With a bug. FFS.
T. Hanks: ONOZ! Luckily, I have thrown teh bug out of teh window, so Les Cops think I have escaped. Now to spend several hours wondering around a murder scene surrounded by Europe's most expensive art works, where there appears to be no security whatsoever.

More on the condensed films here.

KAL. AUG. MMVII

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Pictures of Sandy

I have started putting some pictures I have of Sandy onto flickr. They are all tagged sandy and bedfordshire and all appear in the Bedfordshire group. I might look into setting up a Sandy group at some point.

The Sandy entry on Wikipedia, which I try to contribute to, also has a long-standing request for a photo. I'm not really sure which view of Sandy really sums the town up best.

A.D. XV KAL. AUG. MMVII

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WorldCat puns list correction

Following my post about my list of author-title puns on WorldCat, Andy Havers (Manager, Branding and Creative Services at OCLC (who run WorldCat)) contacted me to let me know that the book I said wasn't on WorldCat is on WorldCat: Wieber E. Bijker's Of bicycles, bakalites, and bulbs. I have duly added it.

I'm not sure what this means for my 133t catalogue searching skilz.

A.D. VI NON. IUL. MMVII

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WorldCat puns list

I discovered via Outgoing (via Planet Cataloging) that you can now create lists on WorldCat. This sounded a good place to maintain the list of author-title puns compiled by a recently retired colleague. I have now therefore created my Author and title puns list on WorldCat. There are a couple of small tiny problems with it, in that the punning name is not always the main author so the joke is less obvious (in the case of Insects and gardens the photographs by Carl Goodpasture are not mentioned in the record at all so I had to add a note; but at least you can add a note), and one of the titles was not even on WorldCat (Wieber E. Bijker's Of bicycles, bakalites, and bulbs).

Anyway, do let me know if you come across any more.

A.D. IV KAL. IUL. MMVII

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Strange news

One of the following current news stories is actually true:

Although I did get my information from the BBC, so you have to take it with a pinch of salt.

A.D. V KAL. IUL. MMVII

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Sandy on Facebook

Dismayed by the poor geographical coverage of the UK on Facebook, I requested Sandy as a new geographical region. After several weeks of silence, I am presuming that they are not going to approve that one. This week I asked for Bedfordshire. Surely they can't turn that down. In lieu of a proper network, I have set up a group called Sandy, Bedfordshire. I expect this to fill up quickly.

A.D. XIII KAL. IUL. MMVII

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Condensed films

In lieu of any original content: Last week, Scaryduck did a series of condensed films: we take popular movies, boil them down, and deliver them here in easy-to-understand chunks. These were ace and I recommend reading them. My favourite was Jaws, which included the following excerpt:

Naked drunk girl: Swimmy swim OMFG!

Shark: Om nom nom nom burp LOLZ

Featured films were:

Also of note is Scaryduck's neat pictorial summary of the Christian religion in l33tspeak which you can see at the head of his post On religion:

Jesus: BRB!

Disciples: LOL!

The post goes on to describe Christ's reaction at the Second Coming to the church's activities over the last 2000 years. Please go and read it before I quote any more.

I hereby claim the OBN.

A.D. VIII ID. IUN. MMVII

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Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction

The shortlist for the Orange Broadband Prize for Fiction has been announced. They are:

Your broadband will be reconnected within 15 working days.

and

You'll get an email address that you can access from anywhere online.

My money is on the first one: the second one is technically true, except that an increasing number of email addresses bounce off it, notably gmail addresses, but also including on occasion .ac.uk and ntlhome addresses. I have had two explanations for this. The first one was:

known server issues at this moment in time with regards to sending emails from or to yahoo,hotmail and gmail addresses.

The second one is more disturbing:

The most likely cause of the problem you are experiencing is most likely caused by the mail filter which appears to be recognising the email messages as spam. This is especially prevalent in issues of this kind when the same message is sent to a number of recipients simultaneously, and also when any of a number of phrases are used in the subject line of a message, or if a non-trusted file format is used for an attachment.

Unfortunately there is very little we can do to prevent messages being blocked by the spam filters in future as they are trained over time and use by the messages that pass through them, and to retrain the filter to accept message types that were previously blocked would, in effect, be to nullify the positive spam-blocking effects of that filter.

What I understand from the second paragraph is that I'll just have to live with a non-functional email address which will always bounce emails from several friends, relatives, and other people who might be contacting me so that I don't get spam. Maybe if I didn't use email, I wouldn't get any spam. This is made worse by the fact that the Orange filters are not that reliable in my experience, mistaking routine commercial mailshots for genuine spam and missing a great deal of genuine spam. The Gmail spam filter, on the other hand, I have found to be excellent.

This a shame as we have been with freeserve/wanadoo/orange since we got the internet years ago and, despite their bad press, I have never had a word to say against them. True, they took one non-working day longer than promised to re-install broadband when we moved house and were confused about when exactly we should notify them of our moving, but we have very rarely had a connection problem or anything like that. If, however, we are paying for an email address we can't use, our loyalty may begin to wane.

A.D. X KAL. IUN. MMVII

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New children's tv programmes

My son asked me a little while ago why the initial run of (the excellent) In the Night Garden had come to an end. I explained to him that they sometimes had to stop showing programmes so they could put new, different ones on. After all, if they didn't change things round now and again, we'd still be watching shit like Andy Pandy, the Flower Pot Men, or Muffin the Mule. We wouldn't want that to happen.

A.D. XII KAL. IUN. MMVII

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CILIP Lisjobnet RSS feed

I have now created an RSS feed for library jobs presented at CILIP's Lisjobnet vacancies site: subscribe to http://www.aurochs.org/internet/blogging/ciliprss.php. As I've said before, I am amazed that the professional organisation representing those who are meant to be at the forefront of information delivery haven't already done this. They only have a simple search interface and an email sent every fortnight. I would like to add the ability to refine the RSS feed, much as you can refine the search on the site itself, but that will have to wait until I have the time/inclination/etc. As I am not actively looking for jobs at the moment, this is not such a high priority.

That there is a clear demand for this service is shown by the fact that I've had an unadvertised not-fully-functional version of this working for ages, only really findable through Bloglines, and two other people (sadly anonymous) have signed up for it. It was not fully functional before as the full list of Lisjobnet vacancies is presented over an unpredictable number of separate pages (at the moment 8). The old version could only read page one, so it threw up only a handful of vacancies and ignored many of them. The new version reads the number of pages from the first page of results and then checks all of them. In the end, the final fix would have taken 2 or 3 minutes were it not for me missing off a $ in a really stupid place in the php code.

I must really stress that there are some caveats to its use: firstly, it is not official and should be taken as is. Secondly, although the prototype version has been stable in serving up jobs in the correct format, I cannot guarantee what CILIP will do to the format or availability of their vacancies: even a small change in the HTML coding will bring it down until I can correct the code. Thirdly, I have done as much testing as I can to determine whether it shows all jobs, but have not done enough testing over time to be 100% sure. Yesterday it showed all 75 jobs with no problems in Google Reader; I'm not so sure about Bloglines, but I think it is OK. If you have any findings about this let me know.

Finally, I would be very interested to know if anyone uses this RSS feed and if people find it useful or have any comments.

A.D. XVII KAL. IUN. MMVII

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Thoughts on the Eurovision 2007 final

See, I said Serbia would win. It was a strongish song and right in the middle of a voting bloc. The entry from the Ukraine- the favourites before the final- was bonkers and entertaining but not good. Novelty will not, however, win on its own: Lordi were novel- both in the sense of having silly costumes and in terms of genre- but they also had a good song. Moreover, they benefited from both Scandinavian and Baltic votes. Anyway, the Serbian entry was so-so in my opinion, my main thoughts being for the poor singer, who seemed to be suffering from constipation at several points, with a red face reminiscent of the expression and hue that babies pull when they are about to fill their nappy. I got really quite worried when she won and had to sing it again. Maybe she should try singing the theme to the OC.

Overall, I thought the quality was high, without there being many exceptional ones. Marking out of five, I only gave two fours: one to Belarus (see previous posts), and one to the UK, partly because once you've heard a song a lot, it grows on you, partly because it was the UK entry, but mainly for the innuendo (would you like anything to suck on sir? and all that business with the exits and inserting seatbelts). Their performance was not great on the night- they seemed nervous and lost in the big set- and much of it was lost. While we're on the subject, it was a bad song, but it wasn't that bad that it deserved to get almost nul points, which is a pity. Again, we return to the bloc voting, which means that the UK will probably never win again, although even with bloc voting, you still need a strong song and we haven't had one in years.

Among other entries, Russia should just have left fliers in Helsinki telephone booths, Finland thought metal would do although a bad Evanescence-style song was not strong enough, France had a very catchy song and cracking routine which wasn't too wierd; and Sweden were also almost normal and weren't too bad. A couple of noteworthy entries were Germany who went for swing, Hungary who went for blues, and Romania who went for what was essentially a multilingual cabaret act which tried, a bit like the UK entry's many flags, to appeal to lots of nations. All three rubbish.

However, the very worst, to my mind, were Ireland, Turkey, and Armenia. Ireland's entry was just cod-Irish crap, which deserved to come last. One of the funnier moments of the evening was Ireland dumping themselves in last place by giving the UK 7 points. Turkey's song was just a stereotypical Turkish entry, which was catchy in the way Turkish entries are. I can't believe the UK gave it 12 points: I can only think it was because Terry Wogan kept mentioning that the belly dancers were actually British and that the British public thought we might at least win something that way. Armenia's was the worst by a long way, which made it astonishing how it did so well. Dull was the wrong word for it and I can only imagine that bloc voting lifted it a little this time.

The big question is with bloc voting and how can the UK (or Spain, France, Germany, etc.) ever win again? I think the problem is not a myth anymore and is a serious* problem, going way beyond the traditional Cyprus/Greece mutual 12 points and the Scandinavian friendship society. The Eastern countries did it comprehensively and rigorously, there being so many other neighbouring countries that there weren't many slots left for musical votes; other blocs, such as Scandinavia, also seem so much more solid now. It was so easy to predict some of the scores, even in non-traditional areas, such as Turkey's 12 points from Germany. The Big Four's privilege of not qualifying now looks more like a sop. The semi-final saw no Western European countries go through, even the much favoured (although very pants) Switzerland. Some solutions:

Roll on next year!

*As much as Eurovision can ever be serious.

PRID. ID. MAI. MMVII

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Eurovision 2007 final

My thoughts before the voting starts:

Where oh where are Israel?

A.D. IV ID. MAI. MMVII

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The influence of Lordi

Watching the Eurovision 2007 semi-final, the influence of Lordi, last year's winner, is clear. No one dressed up as monsters or dabbled in the dark side (bar Switzerland perhaps, although they smiled too much), there are:

There were a couple of other curious themes: fans (as in paper and feather fans for dancing with), opera, and the that thing where people stand behind eachother and wave their arms (or fans) in such a manner that it looks as though the front person has lots of arms. That kind of thing.

My thoughts so far are Israel to win for audacious wierdness, catchiness, alleged political controversy, and the singer's attempt at auto-dj'ing. Ace. I would like to see the four guitars of Iceland go through in the hope that they'll add some more in the final. Finally, the Belarussian dance routine was easily the best.

Update: Belarus through: Yay; FYR Macedonia, so so classic Eurovision; Slovenia, "opera wierdness" my notes say; Hungary, not bad bluesy thing; Georgia, swordsmen, can't remember the song; Latvia, more opera: the Il Divo nonsense; Serbia, like, whatever; Bulgaria, bizarre drumming thing, only a drumkit though a humdinger of a drumkit; Turkey, a Turkish song [one place left and still no Israel!]; Moldova: I can't even remember it and made no notes about it. No Denmark (poor version of Dana International), Israel, nor Switzerland (one of the favourites). Ah well.

A.D. VI ID. MAI. MMVII

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Queen wins in taller than Mickey Rooney competition

News: the Queen enters and wins a Taller than Mickey Rooney Competition as part of her US tour. I think he let her win. In context (photo 2).

A.D. VIII ID. MAI. MMVII

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New cow games

A couple of people have suggested some new games for my list of cow games, which is, incidentally, by far my the most popular page on this site:

Thank you to those who suggested games! Further suggestions are always welcome.

I have also checked the existing links and removed a couple of games that no longer exist. Fling the cow will be particularly missed. I now need to go on a general trawl of the web to see if there is anything else I have missed.

A.D. VIII ID. MAI. MMVII

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New coffee shop in Sandy

Hooray, there is a new café in Sandy, Archie & Mabel's. We went in there on Friday to see what it was like, and again on Sunday in order to make sure they are encouraged to stay open on Sundays, there being almost nothing else to do on a Sunday in Sandy, excepting the pubs and Budgens. I also made this point to the proprietor, although there seemed to be enough people in there at the time to justify some hope. In addition, there were lots of people floating past the window while out walking who looked interested.

Anyway, the cakes are lovely, the coffee is very nice, and the people/person (Archie and Mabel's mother according to the menu) is very friendly and, along with the decor, gives the place a very welcoming air, especially for families. There are toys, a chalkboard, and books, and so forth. We now have two children so descriptions like "child friendly" are a good thing. One lady came in on Sunday asking if this was a creche or parents' morning, such is the clientele and ambience. There is also artwork for sale from the Artists Network Bedfordshire, although not really my cup of tea or price bracket, as well as a selection of gifts and things, which I predict will be replaced by a chiller cabinet at some point in the future.

The only real problem (aside from the slatted tables that make balancing cups difficult) is that they don't serve lunch, although in an overheard conversation the owner suggested that she was aware of this. Perhaps she wants to get the basics working right first.

I would recommend Archie & Mabel's. Go there on a Sunday!

There is of course another recent eatery, Gaffneys, which I haven't tried yet. It aspires to be fine dining, which the prices on the menu appear to confirm. It might be wonderful for all I know and I would like to try it; however, I wonder how such a place will thrive or survive in Sandy. The most high-brow place in Sandy before Gaffneys was China Express which, although also expensive, has an extremely popular, high quality, and not particularly expensive take-away business on the side as well as Sandwich Express, another busy café round the corner. Whereas China Express often seems busy, Gaffneys looks empty at Sunday lunch time, unless there is more seating hidden away from the public gaze somewhere. I predict Gordon Ramsay will be paying a visit...

A.D. VIII ID. MAI. MMVII

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Oh dear PCWorld

I've just been to PCWorld on Tottenham Court Road to buy a printer cartridge. There was a significant delay at the till because the system is down. They had to use manual carbon sheets and the really old fashioned card crunching machine. It wasn't funny at all.

It made me glad we got our new computer from somewhere else.

KAL. MAI. MMVII

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Digital Citadel

Those of you who enjoyed my Drown Ban, Not Chav deicide, or The Mongo code may also like to read Digital Citadel by Ward Bonn (sent to me my sil). The opening line should give you an idea:

The shadow creeped across the cryptographer's face as the sun rose. As the shadow reached his nose, he clicked twice on his e-mail program, which had been written by a shadowy group in another country in order to serve as a plot device.

To be fair I haven't read Digital Fortress although it seems similar enough to The Da Dan Vinci Code that I don't feel the need to.

A.D. VI KAL. MAI. MMVII

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Strange smoked cheese ingredient

Below are the ingredients of some Austrian* smoked cheese I bought earlier today. See if you can figure out which one freaked me out. Hint: it is not the E number.

CHEESE, WATER, BUTTER, MILK PROTEIN, EMULSIFYING SALT (E 452), STARCH, SALT, LIQUID SMOKE.

*As opposed to Bavarian smoked cheese which is, of course, completely different.

A.D. VII KAL. MAI. MMVII

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Realunching

I clicked on a link in the BBC website's gardening section and got the following 404 message:

The BBC gardening Techniques section has been realunched and some of the content may have moved or been removed. Use the links below to explore the new content. We apologise for any inconvenience.

I'm quote concerned as to what realunched might mean. I wish this kind of error were an isolated example at the BBC. More curious is the website of the International Paralympic Committee which you would have thought would have slightly more concern over accessibility but has a homepage with no title and which requires me to scroll horizontally to read all the text.

Anyway, I'm off to alunch. If I am peckish later in the afternoon, I may realunch. Although perhaps if I eat too much I might realunch over my desk, which I will have to clear up. Who knows?

A.D. XV KAL. MAI. MMVII

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Water and information shortage

There was a water cut in Sandy yesterday. I thought the shower had just conked out. We had some water in the tanks for the bath and so forth so I didn't think much of it and went to work. It was then interesting to see how far I could follow developments at work. I first found out about the cut, and could tell my wife about it, as the RSS feed I have set up for Biggleswade Today had the information in my feed reader when I came into work. Hurrah.

To follow developments, I looked up the Anglian Water site. A search for Sandy gave me an incident page which, although grammatically awful and low on detail, at least had the main points and was time-stamped. I had a meeting from about 2 till 4. When I got out, Biggleswade Today had triumphantly added another news item saying that the water came back at 3 (again, I could tell my wife at home and she could start actually using the water); the Anglian Water page just disappeared: there was nothing to say there ever was a problem and had that been my only source of information, I wouldn't have known what that meant. A bit rubbish. As for the BBC, they had eventually put an article via RSS saying that there was a water cut. It still says so now and they haven't issued any updates yet.

Conclusion: hurrah for Biggleswade Today; almost good but boo for Anglian Water; ho hum for the BBC.

A.D. III NON. APR. MMVII

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Professional and non-professional librarians

Tim Coates has written a post suggesting that the distinction between professional and non-professional librarians should be abandoned, something I am whole-heartedly in favour of. He argues this from a public-library standpoint and with two main observations:

  1. That the librarians the public see are often not the professional ones although they are the ones the public, superficially at least, judge the profession on.
  2. In a situation where budgets are to be cut, to be a professional makes one more likely to be targetted by councillors, who also don't understand the distinction between professional and non-professional, aiming to get rid of staff.

I'm not too au fait with the public library situation. However, the following paragraphs I think are valid anyway to librarianship as a whole:

I think it would remove an obstacle that prevents modernising the library service if the "profession" would stop making this distinction in every possible sense. Library services should stop referring to jobs which ones which only a "librarian" can do. There should be no more demarcation.

This doesn't mean a lack of respect for the qualification or experience that trained librarians have; on the contrary. It means that experience can be as usefully obtained in doing the work and can be as valuable to the public when it is. It means that jobs and tasks should be given to the person most able to carry them out, and not on the basis of a paper qualfication.

(My emphasis). I made a similar point, though from a different angle, in a comment on the CILIP president-elect's weblog:

A library qualification is a sine qua non for many jobs whereas chartership is not (at least in the academic sector where I work). As someone who has sat on interview panels, I would also value a candidate's proven skills rather than whether they are chartered or not. For similar reasons I only value qualifications as far as they confer the relevant skills on an individual. For instance, neither qualification nor chartership can say whether a librarian can catalogue or not; we have to test candidates at interview for this.

I've seen a number of librarians arbitrarily and needlessly halted or delayed in their careers by the need to acquire the necessary bit of paper. On the other hand, I've seen enough to know that the bit of paper is by no means a guarantee of any skills or aptitude. The distinction between professional and non-professional (as opposed to qualified and non-qualified) also goes some way to create a degree of elitism within those who work in libraries: "proper" and "non-proper" librarians. They are all librarians in my opinion.

A.D. IV NON. APR. MMVII

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Train crashes again

This is a somewhat belated post on the Grayrigg train crash following on from my previous post on Ufton Nervet. I wonder whether this one will wind sil up as much as that one.

There were a couple of decent weblog posts soon after the crash that once again pointed out the over-reaction of the media to the crash which, although spectacular and tragically fatal in one instance, pales into insignificance compared to the situation on the roads. From Duck News:

In the three days since this crash, the arcane science of statistics tells us that somewhere between twenty and thirty people have died in road traffic accidents on British roads. A random flit around the local news pages on the BBC News website reveals a weekend of death and destruction on the roads that barely registers on the national radar.

From Where Railways Collide:

A few weeks ago, a National Express coach overturned on the slip road connecting the M4 to the M25. The casualties were worse than Grayrigg. Many people suffered horrific injuries; there was an entire family all of whom lost limbs. The story lasted one news cycle in the media. The coach was towed away and the road reopened within 24 hours; no suggestion that the whole area be sealed off as a crime scene for days before any work started clearing the wreckage.

Part of what was shocking with the Pendolino was the fact that it appears to have been the result of negligence with maintenance of the points, as at Potters Bar. The post just quoted also makes the point that "criminal recklessness" also has a far greater impact on the roads:

Potter's Bar was five years ago. In that time, Fifteen Thousand people have died on Britain's roads. And a good proportion of those were the result of criminal recklessness an order of magnitude worse than the maintenance failures that cause Friday's derailment.

My only comment on that is that most recklessness on the roads is the result of individual actions- speeding, drinking, carelessness- rather than a maintenance firm's failure to do its job. In the end though, really, it comes down to the responsibility of the individuals involved: no matter how good the procedures involved or the theoretical supervision employed, if someone doesn't check that point properly, then it becomes dangerous.

A.D. XIII KAL. APR. MMVII

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Making Your Mind Up

Oh dear, we're not going to win Eurovision again. Of course, given the geopolitical situation and all that, we're probably not going to win for years anyway: the Finns were particularly blessed last year in straddling the Scandinavian and East European blocs. However, what I mean is that we've chosen the wrong song again. The sub-Steps cabin-crew-themed slightly-pretending-to-be-Bucks-Fizz campness of Scooch might have done passably well five years ago but is essentially an updated but still out of date boom-bang-a-bang entry. Look what won last year. Look at Dana International even. Politics aside, it isn't simply novelty that wins Eurovision any more; it's that something Xtra (LOL), and Flying the Flag (for You) doesn't have it.

On the bright side, it wasn't (though nearly was) Cyndi, who sang a faintly Celtic (i.e. Irish-sounding) dull ballad. She is actually French and said in an interview that nationality doesn't matter at Eurovision. I think you'll find it does, otherwise it would be an individual competition and not nearly so much fun. The national element of Eurovision is part of Europe's safety valve that helps the nations of Europe from engaging in world wars when they get bored. This is why it is important to keep the Middle Eastern countries involved (although Israel are seemingly sailing close to the wind this year). Maybe we should get Iran, Iraq, and the US involved, although I can't imagine what the Americans would come up with: I suppose it would give Britney Spears something to do when the kids have gone to school.

You can listen to the other entries on the BBC website. The only reason to vote for Brian Harvey was pity. My hopes were with Hawkins and Brown who I thought might bring some of the absurd metallish spirit of Lordi with them, but which was merely high-pitched and disappointing. By far the best act in my opinion was, not typically for me and despite the spelling of their name, Big Brovaz. It still wouldn't have won, but it would have picked up points for having at least some quality, which Scooch just doesn't. Scooch just aims to entertain. Fair enough, Lordi did that, but their song was good too: it even had a good tune as well and was entertaining even if you were blind.

That said, I really do hope Scooch win. Although a good song is important if someone else wins, it matters nought if we win.

A.D. XIV KAL. APR. MMVII

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Parsnips of love

In a break from the usual high-brow fare, some amusingly shaped vegetables. We got these parsnips from the River Nene organic vegbox scheme and I thought I'd share them with you:

Parsnips of love

It is exactly a month since Valentine's Day, after all. Some more pictures can be found at Flickr if you are a glutton (geddit?) for punishment.

PRID. ID. MART. MMVII

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001 with a good excuse.

001. To be fair, I have acquired a daughter since my last post.

PRID. NON. MART. MMVII

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Blackpool mobile library service prepares for terror threat from space

As part of its Special Investigation into the Terror Threat From Space, the February 2007 issue of Viz (only free samples online) discusses the special measures to be undertaken by Blackpool's Leisure, Tourism, and Commerce Committee to deal with the alien invasion. These include:

Suspension of the Mobile Library service, including a fine amnesty for books whose return date coincides with the date of, of falls within the duration of, the invasion. This concession will not extend to books which were already subject to a late return penalty at or before the time that the alien hostilities commenced. Any pro rata fines on late books will not continue to increase during the emergency period, but will be frozen at the amount calculated up to (but not including) the day of the flying saucer onslaught. All fine tariffs will recommence on the first day after the defeat of the Martians (not including Sundays or Bank Holidays, when the library service is non-operational).

I can't see anything to suggest that Bedfordshire library service is anywhere near this prepared.

PRID. ID. FEB. MMVII

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Comment me do

Please comment on this post. My previous attempts at comments rss seemed sluggish to appear in feed readers if they did at all. I guessed this was because my makeshift rss feed lacked guids. I have rectified this, which was fun. So please comment so I can see what happens. For once, a moderate quantity of spam wouldn't be totally unwelcome.

You can even follow along by subscribing to the comments feed and tell me when nothing happens.

A.D. VII ID. FEB. MMVII

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Dies natalis

As today is the Nones of February, "Natalis laetus mihi! Vixi XXXI annos." Go figure.

NON. FEB. MMVII

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Chance for free CILIP membership

CILIP, the organisation that brought you £20 Amazon vouchers for members who recruit new members, and an exclusive car buying service with Nexus Cars now says:

Renew your CILIP membership by 14 February and you could win 1 of 10 free memberships for 2008.

I understand this kind of marketing approach for baked beans or magazines but it doesn't quite seem right for membership of professional bodies. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

KAL. FEB. MMVII

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Bunch of RSS

The CILIP RSS feed threw up a training session from UKeiG which, untypically for the CILIP RSS feed, amused me. It said:

Don't know your RSS from your elbow? Haven't a clue where to hang the blogroll?

That's the stuff. It was however sad to see one of their reasons compelling people to come as:

Awareness of them [RSS, blogs, and wikis] amongst users will increase as Microsoft incorporates RSS and blogging into Office 2007, Outlook and IE 7 so don't get left behind.

Do we all have to wait for Microsoft to integrate everything before we jump in? Isn't half the point of all this that the platform shouldn't matter?. Never mind.

A.D. X KAL. FEB. MMVII

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RSS feeds for Blosxom writeback-based comments on Aurlog (at least for individual posts)

After finding some of Sil's RSS feeds for comments on particular posts extremely useful and galvanised by his recent comments that

It really massively annoys me when I post a comment to someone's site and then have to keep checking back to see if anyone's followed it up

I decided to do something about it. Sil mentions co.mments which sadly doesn't work for Blosxom weblogs, definitely not those using the now rather dated writeback plugin as mine does. I also don't like the idea of using what is essentially another aggregator if, for example, I wanted to monitor one of my own posts. I wouldn't want anyone else to have to either, although having tried co.mments out on a few other sites I think it is very good.

In the true spirit of Perl-based Blosxom, the script that produces the comments RSS is written in PHP. This was originally obvious until I discovered Google Reader doesn't like .php on the end of the RSS feeds (Bloglines, which I use, doesn't care either way and I haven't checked any others). Anyway, this is no longer a problem. I have also included a Subscribe link which, like the one on the left for the weblog as a whole, uses Aquarion's SubscribeMe service. It doesn't yet use Sil's idea implementing one button for submitting a comment and subscribing to a feed, although I shall review that when he releases his promised generic version.

I haven't yet thought of a way to produce an RSS feed for all comments but am not sure I'm really bothered anyway. It would generally get bogged down in spam, this not being a high traffic site for comments and would be hideous to produce with writeback's data structure, lack of timestamping, and lack of unique identifiers for individual comments. I could (further) hack the writeback plugin, as I have already done to implement spam filtering, but then I wouldn't have time to write needlessly long posts such as this one.

Do, gently, let me know of the inevitable problems I have missed.

A.D. XV KAL. FEB. MMVII

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Morrissey on Eurovision?

The BBC reports that Morrissey may be singing the British entry at this year's Eurovision Song Contest in Helsinki, although his possible involvement might possibly be limited to possible writing of a potential song. Anyway, I'm sure Tim will be overjoyed that there is another reason for him to watch the contest this year over and above the usual excellent entertainment and Greco-Slavic politics.

In addition, something I didn't know:

He has been linked to the Eurovision song contest before, working with the UK's first winner, Sandie Shaw, in the 1980s.

Good stuff. After Lordi's appearance and triumphant win last year, it will be fascinating to see how it develops this year. More metal, perhaps? Is the Morrissey touch too late?

A.D. V ID. IAN. MMVII

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Pete's cornershop under new management

On Christmas Eve, I noticed that Pete's newsagent/off-licence/corner shop, the Sandy landmark at the end of our road, has now changed hands. It is now open till ten in the evening (not till eight as before), and was apparently open on Christmas Day of all things, which means there was no need for me hurry out at seven to buy eggs (for the next day's Yorkshire pudding) on two counts.

I will be sad to see the former occupants go. Since I started taking my young son in there regularly, they were a lot more friendly as they obviously like children (or she did anyway) although they seemed to forget who I was if I went in alone. Never mind.

The big question with Pete's however has always been Is it still Pete who works in there?. I have it on authority from a former Potton resident who went to school in Sandy that it was called Pete's some years before we moved to Sandy in 2002. We can be pretty sure it is not Pete in there now unless:

  1. One of the new people is also called Pete
  2. Pete, whoever he is, still owns the shop and the new people are simply new managers

These things are important.

A.D. IV NON. IAN. MMVII

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Tom