Like a trip back in time

Last week was my friend Gabe's birthday (see that you lanky fuck, that's what a blog link looks like!). When given a range of choices as to what to do, Gabe decided he wanted to go to Oakwood. For those of you who don't know, oakwook is an amusement park in West Wales.

Now, I had been to Oakwood before but this was years before I started shaving and in all honesty, the place was a bit light on amusement back then. It had a rollercoaster, a pirate ship and a crazy waterslide thing. Porthcawl was more fun, and had the added excitement of possible death, so I never really understood the appeal.

So skip forward to last week, and Gabe's all excited about the place, and as we head over there it transpires that the management at Oakwood had at some point read my mind and implemented an upgrade plan that included not only a lot more rides, but also, a lot more death. Good for them!

So there you go, we got there and it was a drizzly grey day. Which meant that the park was as deserted as the set to 28 days later. So we had a day of no queuing, and lots of rollercoasting.

Happy birthday Gabe.

The scheme is a most magnificent one

Seeing as it's been a while since I've recommended a website to this blog, I think that's how I'll start today. The Darwin Correspondance Project is an attempt to publish in book form all the letters that Charles Darwin wrote during his life.

Darwin is noted as a enthusiastic letter writer, and over 2000 letters are known about. Whilst a good proportion were to other notable characters of the time this wasn't exclusively the case, and a great many of those he corresponded with left no mark on history apart from their conversations with Darwin.

Anyway, they've recently stuck a load of these letters on their website and you can have a look at them there.

Here's what he said about the Beagle trip to an old friend from Cambridge - "The scheme is a most magnificent one. We spend about 2 years in S America, the rest of time larking round the world" So there you go - proof that Darwin was the original gap year traveller.

Red Smarties are made from beetles.

I know that it sounds like something that you're told in a school playground, but this one is actually true!

For those who can't be bothered to click the link, what you basically find out is that the red colouring used by Smarties is processed from the dried body of the female cochineal insect. Now, I've been eating Smarties for years, and no-one ever told me this! Admittedly, in what's probably described (now I know about this beetle shit) as too little too late, I stopped eating Smarties when they stopped making them in tubes.

Elsewhere in the article, they say that Guiness is made of fish bladders. Fuck it, I don't drink Guiness so I don't care. I'm more worried about the news that I've been eating fucking beetles!

The weather hates me a lot

You can usually tell when I have a week off work, as the posts on this blog stop. Which means that last week, I was indeed off. No work, no plans, no worries.

I was thinking about getting some skating done, spending some time in the sunshine and maybe even going mountainboarding. So what did the weather do? Fuck with me, that's what. The week I was working nights? It was sunny weather. It was summer. What happened as soon as I was free from the shackles of nocturnal work? IT RAINED. I'm sure Moses didn't see this much damn rain.

Today, I am back behind the desk in my office. What's the weather doing? The sunshine's back again. See - clear and concise proof that the weather hates me.

Electionfest, part That's all folks!

So it's all done. Seven hours of political commentary, and we're finished. So, what have we learnt?

That the Welsh Assembly is a giant cocktease. After all the discussion about Plaid Cymru and Conservative gains, it's all been a bit disapointing in truth. It's often like this for me, I get all excited about the mechanics, but once it's all done I'm drained and want a bit of a snooze. Rather like sex then.

I have learnt something else. Jeremy Vine is a tosser, and isn't one tenth of the man that Peter Snow is. I hope to god that he returns when the next general election rolls around.

Lastly, an update on Swindon's E-vote nightmare - it's still not working properly. Try not to laugh too much at anyone you know from Swindon.

Electionfest, part almost finished

Well the beeb have their projection out for what the assembly's going to look like. Well I hate to say it, but this hasn't been quite the huge swing that some people had been predicting. Labour are going to be the largest party in the assembly, but don't have an overall majority.

For Labour, I think it can all be summed up as "Bad, but not a disaster". Rhodri's bones are probably going to tell him that he doesn't need to quit, and it'll be another case of powersharing in the assembly.

For those Nazis out there reading this - well it looks like you're not going to get any seats in the assembly. Well, isn't that a terrible shame. Don't forget to blame it on the "quasi-Marxist multi-racial experiment".

Electionfest, part bollocks

So the results are in for the place where I live. After an 8.2% swing from Labour to Conservative, I now am in the gloriously happy position of living in a tory constituency.

Arse.

Between this and the local council removing the skatepark after complaints, then I'm starting to think that the people of Cardiff North are a bunch of fuckwits.