The Clan of the Cave Bague

I’m taking a leaf out of RedSmartie’s book here and doing a quick run down. 2008, all in all, his been pretty grim. So many things that were fine before seem to be irrepairably broken and as the months went by I just seem to have lost the energy or will to try and fix them. 

There’s also the matter of the economy, which is – frankly – completely buggered. Her Majesty’s government gave us a nice little cut in VAT which does no good whatsoever as VAT is not charged on food and no one can afford luxury items. To add insult to injury, they increased National Insurance contributions and increased duty on fuel. As it stands, after the ‘economic help’ they’ve provided, we were 5% WORSE off in November than we were in October. Gee, thanks.

I had a job and relocation offer from a company in Oz back in the Autumn. We did give it serious consideration, but then decided we’d already traversed that particular minefield. Despite Britain heading rapidly to hell in a handcart, Scotland is still the best place to be. It’ll get better, understand? Repeat after me – It’ll get better.

So, a year of broken promises, deceit, and all kinds of other crap too personal to list here. Bad year?

Nah, not really. I started writing again, thanks to the encouragement of people from the West Lothian Writers Group, my job has settled down into something I’m really happy with thanks to a change of management, the kids are all happy and healthy, I’m playing a Tuba, and deKay is now the proud father of  a little baby girl after what must be the longest pregnancy in history.

And I finally finished Half-Life 2 – result!

Well, it’s been out a good couple of years now, but I’ve finally finished Half-Life 2 – and it was completely awesome, if incomprehensible. I still have no idea what any of it was about, but I had a lot of fun not knowing.

High Points:

1. Pitched battles with Striders in the streets – I hadn’t found the infinite rocket launcher ammo supply crate, so had to do it with what I could scavange. Very intense.
2. Rampaging through Nova Prospekt with an army of Antlions helping out.
3. The gravity gun becoming an uber-powerful singularity gun in the last chapter.

All in all, an awesome game.

Clearly, I lose at blog updating. It’s the whole Christmas thing that causes it. Rushing about, worrying, not getting any sleep, worrying some more, and then – finally – the long soulless purgatory that is January.

Still, the new build of Wordpress is very nice – the dash is just ACE. So it’s not all bad.

Brr! It’s a bit chilly out! -4 last night, apparently. So, an icy foggy drive into work followed by hanging over the radiator gossiping and drinking giant mugs of coffee was required. Wandered down to the harbour at lunchtime – the yachts which have been left in the water have iced riggings and look very eerie in a ‘flying dutchman’ kind of way.

And with Winteryness upon us, it was our band’s Christmas Concert last Sunday evening. We were all full of the cold, as it happens, but we managed to rally enough to belt out our christmassy tunes! Child #1 did particularly well with his trombone solo of ‘All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth.’

It’s turning out to be a winter like those I had as a lad – we had a light dusting of snow at the end of November and have had heavy frost pretty much every morning. Looks like it’s going to a cold one – just how I like em! Last year was a bit too warm and wet to be a proper winter.

“Let me flow into the Ocean,

Let me flow back to the sea,

Let me be stormy, let me be calm,

Let the tide in and set me free.”

The Who – Drowned.

How many syllables, Dear Reader, are there in “car”?

Yup, that’s right. One.

So how many syllables are there in “C”?

No, you’re quite right – it’s also one.

So you would think there would be little point in replacing the word “Car” with “C”, would you? It’s not an improvement in terms of efficiency of language – if anything the opposite is true.

So, you can image my confusion this morning when someone on Radio 4 was referring to a “car bomb” as a “C-bomb”. Why would they want to do that, I wonder?

Because, Dear Reader, “C Bomb” sounds a bit like “A bomb” or “H bomb”, and as a result sounds scarier. And as we all know, it’s the job of the British media to frighten their audiences. Responsible journalism be damned – all they want is sensationalism, frightening content, and hyperbole. And if the news doesn’t exist, make it up.

It’s interesting that Messers Ross and Brand got themselves all over the news in the same week their new books were released.