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Friday, February 23, 2001 12:06 I had a really nasty dream about Rollright last night. I dreamt that I got a phone call from K telling me to get up to the stones pronto. When I got up there I discovered that M&L were there, L was in tears, the circle was a complete state. There were candles, scented ones, that had been left to burn over stones at the four "quarters" including the flat altar stone in the portal and the north stone. There was paint and graffitti over many of the stones, some of which had been scraped down to a smooth, sandy surface like building blocks inside the pictures. The pictures were crude and meaningless. Some of them had been painted, using white, green and blue gloss paint. The stone next to the burnt stone had a banana stuffed into one of the holes. There was rubbish everywhere, and small pieces of sea-pebble quartz. The damage was horrendous. We started clearing up as best we could, having informed the police, obviously not doing anything about the paint. We had to close the site, and we were all so upset that every time someone demanded to be let in we dragged them in, forced them to look at the damage and shouted at them. I stayed on duty overnight and into the next day, possibly still with M&L (and one of my non-consensus friends). The next day this man came striding up through the field to the South. There was grass in the field, that had grown long around where the fence currently is (but wasn't in the dream), looking a bit like dune grass. This man strode purposefully up right to the stones, picked up one of the little ones in the SW corner and threw it on the ground. It split in half. The others told me not to (because they were scared I'd get hurt, him being bigger than me) but I went for him in a rage and took him down. Then the other people with me came over and held onto him (his mates had run away) while I called Chippy police. I told them we had the vandal. They seemed quite surprised and the guy I spoke to sounded like he was in the middle of eating a sandwich. I asked him if he was going to come and get this vandal and he hummed and haaed so I told him we could bring the guy to them. They seemed much happier with this. Then either JC or P (as in J&P) said that he could take the guy down to Chippy. L was going to tie him up but I pointed out that strictly speaking, even though we had seen him do it, he wasn't guilty in the eyes of the law and he might get off on a technicality if we could be shown to have wrongfully imprisoned him or treated him incorrectly or something. So one of the other blokes said that he would go with to make sure that he didn't get away. Then, a couple of days later, I heard that PB had written a letter *in support* of what this madman had done, saying that the circle was obviously so upset at the way the Trust was treating it that it had called someone to help it express its pain. I did finally get a copy of the letter, and it was very short and pretty inarticulate. I can't remember the exact wording but it talked about the"Old Gods" and he'd obviously thought of it as a sort of poetry. The vandal's name turned out to be Paul as well, but not PB. Nasty. (0) comments | links to this post
Wednesday, February 21, 2001 12:27 Another weird dream last night. I'm trying to remember what on Earth was going on. Frood and I were on holiday (I wish!) in America, I think. We were on a package tour, or one of these trips where the holiday company arranges things for you to do. I don't remember there being a bus, though, I think we were given cars or something. Or maybe there were only a few of us and we were in one of those people movers like the Espace. We stopped at this wildlife centre. It was a birds of prey centre, and they were flying eagles. Frood kept trying to point them out, but there was a lot of land and the eagles were flying at long distances and I kept missing them. They had this big display, of birds from around the world. I was talking to one of the staff and she was saying that they had never worked out why penguin chicks in adjacent nests attack each other and try to peck each other down. They had had this competition up for ages, asking if anyone could come up with an answer. I wandered around the displays for a bit and looked at the birds. They had a red kite. Then I wandered back to the office part, where the female keeper who had explained about the penguin chick problem to me was standing, and her male boss was behind her, doing some work on something. I asked first of all whether they were King penguins or Rock hoppers. Not sure if this is important. Then I pointed out that they build their nests on rocky outcrops, and that the nest builds upwards with the faeces they excrete. Now if they had evolved to take advantage of fish dropped by seagulls, height would be important, and by attacking adjacent chicks to keep them lower, a growth advantage would be conferred because the aggressive chick would be more likely to get any fish dropped in that area by virtue of being higher. It sounded perfectly logical and reasonable at the time, but that has to be a load of bollocks. Anyway, the boss man, or head keeper, or whatever, just started clapping his hands, slowly, in an "it's about time someone came up with an answer" sort of way. I got the idea that he already sort of knew what the answer might be. No one had ever given them an answer for the competition though, I was the first. Now my answer might well have been bollocks, but it seems terribly strange that it was the first. I was surprised that no one else had shown any evidence of imagination. Strange. Oh, then I met up with some of the denizens of Weird and complained to them about how crap everyone was if they couldn't come up with some sort of explanation for penguin chicks attacking one another. They all looked at me rather strangely. The usual Weird people I dream about were there - CRywalt, JoFo, Flagg, Kurt, Jefe. The usual. Maybe that will scare them. I seem to be doing a lot of scaring people these days. (0) comments | links to this post
Tuesday, February 20, 2001 20:53 Right then, bloglets. Here is my CV. Would you employ me? (0) comments | links to this post
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Sunday, February 18, 2001 12:11 Damn. From the weather forecast yesterday I was expecting today to be beautiful. I even went out and did half the shopping [1] so that we could get out today, but the mist has rolled in, it's cold and damp and visibility has dropped right down. We did consider going to the Birds of Prey Centre, but we really need to get some laundry done. Ghods. I can't wait until we actually have a washing machine so that our spare time isn't eaten into by the necessity of getting clean clothes. Having said that, according to the Opinion interview in New Scientist (I think that's the right address, from my emailed newsletter, but the server's down so I can't check), washing clothes and wearing them again frequently encourages clothing lice, which increases your risk of typhus, so maybe the weekly wash (or fortnightly, sometimes) is a good thing. Even so, it would be good to be able to do the weekly wash at home rather than having to cart everything off to the laundrette. Apparently it used to be that clothes were boiled, and the weekly wash meant that the lice had time to starve to death in between wearings. Modern, low-temperature washes encouraged by delicate clothing, washing powder manufacturers and energy efficiency mean that you just end up with clean lice, and if you put the clothes back on immediately (as people do) then they get to feed again rather than starving. There are some pretty stomach-churning facts in there. You probably don't want to find what percentage of the weight of a 6 year old pillow is made up by dead skin. Certainly not if you're squeamish. Getting stiff again, despite the supplements and the gym. Still, I've been good. Been in the gym three times a week for three weeks now. I'm on a progressive schedule, so last month I was going twice a week, this month I'm going three times a week (interspersed with occasional swimming and pilates) and next month I'll bring that up to four times a week. I'm not sure whether to go as far as five times a week, that might be excessive and difficult to manage, particularly as I seem to be getting slower. My cardiovascular stuff is proving very difficult as well. The HRM on the elliptical seems to be showing very high output. At the age of 28, theoretically my maximum effective exercise rate should be at a heart rate of 144. 144 feels like nothing, and I'm still not breathing heavily at getting on for 170, which is just as well because that's what I average over the 20 minutes (which is no longer a problem now that I have the technique sorted). It rises very slowly, though, which Frood tells me means I'm built for stamina rather than sprinting. I'm trying not to get stressed about the exceedingly slow progress (or lack of it) as far as the CV work is going. I can't even run any more, it's too painful. I get a massive cramp in the lower right abdomen, to the point of doubling up after about 5 minutes. Been having very odd dreams and waking up sore and bruised recently. Life is quite stressful, on both the weird front and the consensus front. Oddbins did a very bad, bastard thing and so we're having some real financial problems at the moment. I'm also trying to work out what to do about my medical consultants, who don't really seem to understand how it feels to be on the other end of their conversations. Still, Frannie is coming to stay at the end of next week, and I can't wait. Haven't seen him since the wedding, which is far too long, and he tells me he's lost a lot of weight. Frannie is still the only friend I have whom I have known longer than Frood (although only just). Will probably drag him off to the NBPC as we're not getting up there today. After all, the car passed it's MOT, which is just as well given the crap that Oddbins have dealt out. I'm going to have to see if I can get the impetus together to start yoga this week, although part of my brain is saying wait until the next step of the progression curve when I move up to four times a week, and add it in then. I may go down to the Peers Sports Centre, in Littlemore, and see if they have any classes I could take which are different from the ones at Temple Cowley. Dad has been terribly quiet, although he's sending quite a few people my way these days. I do feel like a scout, out on point sometimes. "Go talk to your big sister, she can explain things." Or maybe it would more accurately be compared to the eldest child being left in charge while the parents have better things to do. No one has ever been around to advise me or help me through stuff like that. There hasn't ever been an experienced shoulder for me to cry on. Am I allowed to indulge in self-pity? Probably not. [1] I only did half the shopping because I find it difficult to do all of the shopping by myself, and this means I can do the other half on Monday, thus saving us having to do two major chores today. Isn't that clever? (0) comments | links to this post
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