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April
30 - Didn't sleep - actually, I didn't go to bed!!! Walked Sally around 7:30am. Had a good look at all the cars up and down the street before I headed off. Heard a noise from one of the neighbours houses who I'd failed to raise last night, so knocked on his door and told him the news. He was lucky - more or less just footprints on his car, without any 'serious' denting. . God I'm in a filthy, hate the world mood! :o( . I took quite some considerable childish delight in scouring the entire field for as much litter as I could be bothered to pick up (at 'least' five carrier bags FULL - mostly plastic beer mugs) and then launched them all high into the air and over the fence into the rugby club (Litter Louts RFC) compound, delighted when they all impacted on the gravel and spewed forth their contents in a huge mess all over their car park. Funny thing is, I know from experience, none of the scum that go there will batt an eyelid - it'll just be kicked around/trodden on/driven over until it blows back out under their fence into heaps all around. . found £1.28 in small change during my rubbish 're-location' excercise. . weird - in the middle of my rubbish collecting aerobics, the neighbour I'd just knocked on the door of and spoken with, appeared in the field and came over for a further chat and let me know he was gonna drive to the police station and report HIS part of last nights 'victims of crime'. . . stopped off at home and dropped off my coat and hoodie (litter aerobics makes ya' hot!) and then walked up round the corner, following the route the yobs took last night, looking at all the parked cars as I did so, trying to see if any others had been damaged. Couldn't see that any others definitely had . . walked all the way up to have another look at the house which'd had its window smashed. Still no signs of life from that house! Oh dear - can it be the owner is away? Unhappy thing to be presented with upon your return. If that IS the case, they'll be lucky if someone doesn't put two and two together and 'pop' the inner layer of the glazing and gain entry for some proper theiving! Plenty of interesting 'stuff' visible in that room. :o( . hang on! I hadn't spotted THAT last night! Sat on the adjacent garden wall was a Fosters beer glass. Aha - so THAT explains why I couldn't see what missile had caused the damage. It must have been another beer glass, now in pieces mixed with the remains of the glazing unit. . grabbed my photos and returned home to PC. Suddenly occurred to me that it seemed pertinant to call the police and inform them about the beerglass - for fingerprints and such (if it was worth it - although I suspected they simply wouldn't bother for such a 'minor' (!!!) incident!) . .the person on the phone said that there wouldn't be any fingerprints after it had been out in the dew all night, so they wouldn't be bothering. :o( . . . PCd and couldn't help myself knocking up an 'evidence' style DVD of events, just in case someone ever cares. . uh oh! Is THAT why I didn't see any police during my pursuit last night? I had the wrong road name!!!!!! What a completely useless pratt I am. :o( Ended up calling the police yet again, in an attempt to explain and get them to record the mix up on their log. . went a bit crazy and walked back round to that house with Sally and collected up the 'beerglass, forensic-evidence - NOT' in a freezer bag and kept it - but I don't know why. Just frustration I guess. A souvenir - to ceremonially throw through the window of a police station some time maybe? . .It fills me with utter despair that our society absolutely accepts such events, without in any way attempting to pursue and bring to justice the offenders. On that CCTV tape, the audio clearly uses the name of Luke, and another (the main perpetrator) which could be Chaz, Chav, or Chad. They all almost certainly came out of the local pub around 11pm. There were clearly identifiable/matchable foot impressions on all the cars. I bet there WERE still fingerprints on that beerglass, and definitely plenty of drunken sloberring DNA. They had a full description of at least the clothing of two of the individuals and the direction they went. I mean - if 'society' was prepared to put in the effort(££££) - it's enough isn't it. :o(

PCd the DVD until around 1:30pm before finally heading for bed! Actually - the more I watch that footage and think things through - it really does seem quite likely to me now, the two individuals who smashed the house window were quite possibly nothing to do with the group who stomped the cars. Who knows. Who cares! No-one it seems. . . back up just before 6pm. . .walked. Blimey - someone has cleared up 'all'(ish) the rubbish from the rugby club compound! lol Guess someone may have gotten the message. . . ate a corned beef, cheese, onion, tomato and lettuce sandwich with two bags of crisps . . touched base with BB . . .PS popped round for chats etc. . . touched base with BB briefly before bed around 1am. . I haven't learned have I! You know - I really still actually rather expected the police would call round today, if for nothing else, just to confirm I wasn't some sort of nutcase ringing them all the time about made up events. I'm even getting paranoid about the number of phone calls that 'Terry Jones' has been making to the police!! If it wasn't for my 'surveillance' 'proof', I really could SO easily be labelled a nutter just ringing the police for 'attention'! :o( Maybe they HAVE labelled me that, and that's why they 'ignore' my calls? :o(
29 - Woke at 7:30am . . . walked. Found 20p and an almost full can of lighter fluid. . Currently through the recent vandalism, only two of the childrens swings remain. One of those was 'dangling' from one side, useless this morning. Someone has somehow removed (must have taken a LOT of sawing!) a good couple of feet of the heavy-duty chain that suspends them (for use as a weapon maybe?). :o( . . .PCd this . . . sat around - miserable and pointless . . . TVd . . . ate corned beef, onion, tomato, cheese and lettuce sandwiches followed by huge amounts of chocolate. . napped until around 6pm. . . walked, popped round the shop and then sat on the grass at the top of the field, drinking my tin of RedBull for a while. . yep - they'd had a rugby match over there today - leaving the sidelines completely strewn with plastic beer mugs and much other debris. :o( . . . touched base with BB. . . TVd . . .

around 11 o'clock. CCTV >> Utter F****** Insanity <<

ran round the block to intercept - called 999 as they disappeared round the corner onto the main road - smashing from round the corner - only two left in view, crossing back over to my side of the road away from whatever it was they'd just smashed - they crossed BACK over and I followed up towards Kingswood giving descriptions - 'sorry. No police we can send at the moment' - kid on a parked moped shouting out to someone/LARGE (6+)group of 'youths' emerging from a side street and crossing the road towards me - gave up- turned around and let them get away with it - walked back down the road looking for what had been smashed - large, wide, main double glazed living room window on someones house. Absolutely NOBODY came out of ANY of the surrounding houses. Called the police again - attempted to flag down a passing police car, TWICE but they didn't see me??/drove on - returned home to examine the trail of footmarks across the tops of the cars my roof has been creased around the skylight, and I've got a bit of a bend on the part of the bonnet that holds the screenwasher outlet; - next door's bonnet is badly dented - just footmarks on others, I 'think'. Nevertheless, in terms of £s, the damage to the house window, together with the damage to the cars (and resultant depreciation in re-sale value etc) - well, it MUST easily be four figures. . . Stopped the VCR and ejected the tape to keep, and sure enough, the damned machine had eaten the tape again!! Arrrgggghhhhh!!!!!!!!! Luckily, I'd been out of the house wandering the streets in my slippers for so long, it WAS worth dismantling the remains and carefully splicing the two good ends back together with some cellotape. The piece of interest was still watchable - so I quickly recorded it onto the PC, fully aware it was of no real evidential value whatsoever, except for 'interest'! :o(

VCR ate the tape again!!!!! :o( No sight of any police all night. . . I really don't think I can handle too much more of all this you know. I'm going a little bit crazy with it all. Nothing seems to matter any more. Absolutely nothing. Nothing at all. So - what's the point? I can't see one right now - really - I honestly can't.
28 - Woken by Sally around 8am . . phone call from BB with upsetting news about her daughter! A drink induced suicide attempt!!!! Oh jeeze :o( . . .walked . . . did laundry and started attempting to fill out my passport renewal application form at long last. Actually turned out to be very little to it, and it took no time at all. Briefly surfed and confirmed it was possible (for an unknown fee) to actually hand it in and have it checked over at Kingswood post office, rather than just post it and hope for the best . . .walked with Sally up to Kingswood to draw out some savings and then on to the Post Office to do the passport thing. Yikes - a £7 Post Office fee, on top of the £51 renewal for the passport!!! Oh well. . Oh NO!! I don't believe it. They said the photos I'd done in the photo booth were no good - too close to the camera. That made me immediately all short tempered and argumentative with the innocent woman behind the counter! I don't like the person I seem to have turned in to of late. :o( I WAS extremely annoyed though - having walked all the way up there. Not sure why/how, but the woman behind the counter DID say that if I brought all the photo-booth photos back in, together with some acceptable ones and the application form, she'd give me a refund on the rejected photos since I'd done them there (and the machine was currently out of order). That was too good an offer to pass up, so it meant having to get some more photos done, go all the way home and retrieve the rejects, and then go all the way back up there! Grrrr. :o( . briefly shopped for a few groceries - AND a cheap smoke alarm! Never had a smoke alarm before, but it would appear after last night's close call that I have reached an age/level of senility, that having one is now a necessity!!!! . .stopped in at the little camera shop on the way home and had them do me a 'proper' set of passport photos. . . walked all the way home, briefly stopped for a coffee and then headed all the way back up to the post office again. . . All ok this time AND got my money back on the rejects. :o) Bought a few more groceries and then walked home - again. . . mixed the left over curry with half a tin of baked beans and then ate with five pieces of bread and butter . . . napped for a couple of hours until woken by PS calling . . .TVd. There was YET another news item on the local news about the dry winter, water shortages, and how outrageous it was that some leak in a field had been leaking for months unattended etc. Walking Sally immediately after the news, on entering the field I was presented with the sight of a fire engine parked next to the rugby pitch, hooked up to a standpipe in a nearby road, with the crew apparantly watering the pitch!!!!! WHAT? I don't BELIEVE it!!! How on earth can THAT be justified? ( I BET they claim it was a training excercise.) Whatever next? Dial 999 if you need a car wash? Outrageous waste of funds/water! . . . continuing my recent, unpleasant, uncontrollable 'railing' against the world behaviour, in total 'got-no-life/busybody/sad-old-man/Victor Meldrew' style, I e-mailed a couple of the video-capture photos to the local BBC and Evening Post newspaper - just in case they may be interested in following it up. They often DO seem to like that sort of silliness. . . BB called . . . PS popped round for chats until early. Ate a bunch of liver sausage sandwiches with a couple of bags of crisps and then biscuits . . . TVd until bed after 1am. ass
27 - Woken by Sally around 8:30am . . . LB called and asked me to go up and put some defrosting fish which she'd forgotten she'd left out, into her fridge away from her cats. Obliged. Eww. . . walked and had a good look at the debris and rubbish 'ASBO-kid' and his mates had left behind last night. A whole bunch of hair care products!!!? Big boxes of Garnier colouring stuff, and squeezed out bottles of goo and such all over the place. MUST have been stolen from someone - that just isn't what your average hooded yob is gonna be carrying around in a nice new bright red and black rucsac now is it! That ASBO kid is a one 'man' crime wave!! Just exactly what IS the point of an ASBO if the kid is still at liberty to run around doing whatever he likes? :o( Found a penny. . . attempted to call the local schools police officer to let him know what I'd seen last night, only to eventually get through to someone else answering his phone because they were currently in the Brecon Beacons with a van load of kids!! Weird job for a copper - getting paid to go out on a jolly like that! Asked him to call me back. . As soon as I'd put the phone down I noticed on my CCTV camera, a police car stopped on the corner opposite, with a policeman stood around nearby. Shortly after, the police helicopter was circling right overhead. Popped up in the attic to have a look around, and spotted more police down the road, manning every junction. They'd set up a proper 'containment area'!! Eventually wandered over to the policeman on the corner and asked if I could be nosey. He confirmed someone had 'made off' from an officer and they suspected the individual was holed up in one of the gardens. It all went on for quite a while (weird car one of the coppers had - an unmarked ropey looking range-rover, with an orange light on top!?), but I saw no evidence of anyone apprehended. Seems quite likely to me, whoever had made off, probably lives in one of those houses, so of course there wouldn't be any trace of them in any of the gardens!!! . . . did some housework/chores and peeled and oven roasted the majority of the potatoes I've had laying around for ages, which had all grown inch long roots in the bag! Froze them once done . . . found some 'ancient' rice in the back of the cupboard so boiled that up with some peas and then threw in a tin of curry Cook-In-Sauce I've also had in the back of the cupboard for years. The best before date on the bottom of the can was April - 2001 !!!!! Ate most of the huge bowl of curry with four pieces of bread and butter and a bag of crisps for lunch, followed by a small bar of chocolate . . . TVd and then napped for a few hours until around 6:30pm . . . walked, saw a rabbit and found a penny. It hadn't occurred to me until tonight, but all that hair products debris left by 'ASBO-kid' and his mates, included various bottles of hair colour and such, broken open and covering the big boulder I always sit on when the seat by the swings is occupied by kids. So - I won't be able to sit there for the forseeable future. Yet another of the few small 'pleasures' I have, denied me. :o( Managed to find another boulder that was flat enough to sit on, but it's just not the same and isn't 'as safe' kinda - harder to know what/who is coming up behind you! . Spotted an unusually large aircraft in the sky in the distance, presumably landing at Filton. Very unusual - and even more so at that time of the day.? . . .PCd a bit of this. . .had a quick look on the police website and looked at the transcript of last nights 'web chat'. (I was 'Watcher'). Now THAT transcript has been 'modified'!!!! My 'don't spare the batton' comment, and subsequent apology for my 'joke' after the moderators comments, have been removed!! They've just left in my 'sucking up' bits and pared it down to "I gotta go - walk the dog. Thanks for your time guys. Keep up the good work.:o)" Intriguing. Propaganda! . . .touched base with BB . . . TVd . . .cooked up two double cheeseburgers. Uh oh!!!!! Left the frying pan on and ended up with a house full of acrid smoke (and could SO nearly have been a fire)! NEVER done that before - what the hell is wrong with me these days??!!! Opened up all the windows and doors and a skylight in the attic to try and remove the smoke and horrible lingering smell. Chilly. . . TVd/PCd (property) until early before bed. as
26 - Woken by Sally around 6:30am . . . walked . . . PCd this a bit . .yayy - my new fingerless gloves arrived in the mail. Ain't the internet marvellous. SO easy to point and click and spend money. Bet there are loads of people getting up big credit card debts like that. Haven't seen a TV show about THAT yet. There will be - probably be another 'groundbreaking' 'Dispatches' investigation. Ha! . . surfed lots and then finally ended up ordering another miniature WIRED camera (with a 'button' front!!!) from http://www.flyonthewall.uk.com/ for £44.99. In my current mood, there also seems little point in having any savings in the bank! :o/ . . . ate half a chicken with four pieces of bread and butter . .TVd . . napped for an hour or two. . . got an e-mail notification from the police website, which I signed up on once to enable me to join in a 'web chat', informing me of a web chat tonight. Weird - haven't received a thing from them for months and then suddenly that. Ended up 'tuning in' for the chat from 6pm for an hour or so. Asked a 'question' or two but eventually ended up making a sarcastic comment or two in response to their predictably politically correct 'propaganda' - which of course never alligns with my actual experience! Like - they confirmed '420' reports were NOT included in the crime statistics, so I retorted back 'so much for the statistics' 'hidden crime stats' and stuff like that! Eventually it was walk time so I said I was going to go walk, in a neighbourhood that had been blighted where my life had been made a misery, etc. etc and "keep up the good work, and don't spare the batton when you get the chance! :o) " That resulted in the moderator getting all funny and putting out a message that I was nothing to do with them and did not reflect their views and such!!! Good grief - lighten up dudes! It was a joke for christs sake!!! Funny how a silly little thing like that can involuntarily change your attitude. Walking soon after, I saw a police car cruise by (again - excellent! Thank you, thank you) and yet my mind said 'Yahhh get lost you humour-less ***!'. Oh dear. :o( . . .just down the road, little 'ASBO-kid' was with a ten strong group at the edge of the field, 'sorting through' the bulging contents of two matching, new looking, black and red ruc-sacs. So - who's had THOSE stolen then? In the morning I may have to have a closer look at some of the resulting litter their 'sorting through' produced - just to see if my suspicions were right. :o( . . .TVd . . . touched base with BB . . . PCd until early . . . ended up eating a cheap tin of ravioli with four pieces of bread and butter after 2am before bed! as
25 - Woke around 10:30am!!!!!!!! Good grief - Sally let me lie in. How on earth can she 'hold it' that long! Brilliant. . .walked real late . . . felt a bit 'iffy' - pretty much a full-on depressive episode and that same weird 'heady' feeling - and somehow ended up back in bed and slept for a few hours. . . woke for long enough to eat a few bowls of muesli and then ended up back asleep again!!!!? . . . walked and found 5p. The 'ASBO kid' was over the field with a group of his mates and started shouting out stuff about me and my camera and such as I neared the exit to the field. I attempted a 'conversation' with him, but of course it was utterly pointless. He said it was great to have an ASBO - 'means you can ride around on motorbikes' and such. I mentioned the burned out moped nearby and he mocked me asking if I'd 'done my stuff' and fingerprinted it!! Blah blah blah. :o( . . .still not feeling 'right'/well . . . TVd and watched Crimewatch. They featured ANOTHER case of someone wrongly thought to be a paedophile, who'd been stabbed to death in the street!! :o( Maybe I shouldn't have watched it. I'm having a tough time - um - 'mentally' at the moment. It seems to have crept up on me. All this anti social stuff has - um - well- completely taken over my mind. Spend most of my time just sat in front of my CCTV camera, inside looking out, and yet, I am the outsider looking in. Nothing I've worked for - nothing I have seems like its mine any more - not my house, my possesions, nor my life - it's just 'on loan' until someone else casualy decides on a whim, they'll take it from me. Hard to explain. Pointless trying to type it here. Indeed, 'pointless' pretty much seems to sum it all up doesn't it. :o( . . eventually felt well enough to try eating and cooked up a couple of ham rings, three fried eggs and half a tin of baked beans and ate with four pieces of bread and butter . . . touched base with BB . . . TVd until bed shortly after midnight.
24 - Woken by Sally just before 8am . . . walked . . .surfed cameras and such, because I just couldn't muster the energy or see the point in doing anything else - again!! :o( . . .received a letter in the post from Mum with a cutting from her Daily Mail newspaper - "A Nation That Walks On By. Communities living in terror of feral gangs. Town centres turned into no-go zones. But the real problem, says this reporter who spent months investigating Yob Britain, is that too many of us turn a blind eye." and it said there was a TV show on tonight 'Dispatches -Britains Yobs - on Channel 4 at 8pm'. Touched base with Mum after I'd read it and said I'd definitely be watching the program too. . .resoldered one of the leads on the wireless cam setup, slightly shorter and less cumbersome. . .some kid on a moped with a really loud exhaust drew my attention to the CCTV as I crawled around on the living room floor with the soldering iron. He was riding down the road, revving his engine inches from the back of a car, with no helmet on! Stolen bike - no question - inevitably heading in the direction of the field, I bet! Involuntarily tempted to have a walk over the field to see what there was to see, but I managed to resist. . . ate a meat pie and two bags of crisps and then a tray of jaffa cakes . . . napped for an hour or so. . .walked with the camcorder and the wireless camera setup. It was inevitable I was gonna have a go at it (because I can) - I did a proper test of walking around with the wireless camera just poking out of the top of my jacket lapel pocket - 'spycam' style (although actually 'quite' noticeable close up)!!! . . predictably, there was a burned out moped in the field. Whoever had torched it (it HAD to be that kid who rode past my house earlier) had done so behind the cover of (presumably because it was in broad daylight) and up against, the large shipping type container used by the rugby club for storing their equipment . The fire had apparantly 'cooked' the contents of the container, and destroyed some (much?) of it! Several of the large rectangular rubberised protective pads that are placed around the rugby posts during matches, were outside the rugby club, all melted and ruined. . .Reviewing the 'spycam' type footage later on the TV, it really WAS actually REMARKABLY effective! Example clip (732k). Oh dear - that's whetted my appetite for buying yet another miniature camera (wired) to sew into my jacket as a permanent feature! Really awkward and unnecessarily cumbersome having all that wireless receiver business going on for that (requiring a total of three different button presses (power, power, channel!) just to be ready to record - never mind setting the camcorder going!!) - it would be much easier having it wired into the lining and straight down to the camcorder (and a battery) in its usual pocket. SO tempting! . . back home in time to watch the 'Britains Yobs' TV show. Actually a rather disappointing program I thought, VERY short on anything new. In fact, it just seemed to delight in telling the horror stories of people who HAD stood up to the yobs and had then been attacked and permanently disabled or killed as a result! If anything, I suspect the program actually encouraged watching yobs, and further discouraged decent people from ever objecting or getting involved!!! Actually - the more I think about it, the poorer that program seems to be, and may well have actually 'aggravated' the very problem they were discussing!! A couple of things about it were particularly interesting to me. 1 - The minimal amount of actual new video footage of yobbish behaviour they produced, despite presumably having all the resources of a national television channel at their disposal!! Of COURSE a reporter wandering into a bad neighbourhood with a film crew isn't going to get 'footage'. They should have enlisted the help of 'locals' (dog walkers in particular of course) and wired them up with hidden cameras/recorders for a few weeks (particularly during the long winter nights) - AND set up wireless surveillance cameras on lamp posts and such! (I've experimented and surfed enough now, to know how easy it is to do such a thing, even on an amateur scale, and it really isn't THAT expensive to acheive! Hell - the 'undercover' video footage I acheived during my experiment tonight, was better than some on that program - and some of the things I've seen would have been 'better/worse' than what was on that show!!!!) . . 2 - During these long months of hell I've endured, in the abscence of appropriate police resources, it HAS occured to me that there is a 'job opportunity' (actually I rather favour the idea of a charitable organisation) for someone to set themselves up as an 'evidence gathering' company. Someone with all the electronic surveillance CCTV/'spy' equipment that is so readily available these days, who can 'assist' people trapped in such areas/situations, by loaning them the equipment and the knowhow to enable them to gather 'evidence'. Well - on that program I think they showed a group of ex-military guys who seemed to have set themselves up in business doing covert surveillance (of yobs) for local councils and such! See - there IS a market for such things! . . .Touched base briefly with Mum about the program and then with BB . . . TVd . . .ate the remaining bit of the half a chicken with four pieces of bread and butter . . . TVd/PCd until gone 2am. sa
23 - Woken by Sally well after 9:30am! . . .walked late. Walked carrying a roadworks 'bollard' all down the street, and returned it to the roadworks by the field from whence it came. Cleared up some of the debris around the swings and found 2p. I can't see those swings surviving much longer - the rubberised protective layer put on the ground beneath them is increasingly being torn up in huge clumps and strewn around the field every day. No parent in their right mind would allow a child of theirs to play anywhere near those swings now. . . PCd a bit of this, but even doing this journal of late, seems increasingly pointless and more than I can managed. . .TVd while eating four sausage rolls with some onion and two bags of crisps, followed by rather a lot of chocolate. . felt 'heady' and tired - which seems to have been pretty much a constant of late. It feels almost as though being constantly 'on guard' against all this anti social nonsense that's going on, is simply draining the life out of me. Don't seem to have enough energy for anything else! Soon back to bed. . . . slept through until around 7pm. Walked in a fine drizzle . . . forced myself to PC a bit more of this with the CCTV on next to me. . . BB called . . . finished (as much as I can stand) PCing this and then TVd and ate multiple bowls of co-co pops followed by chicken sandwiches . . . touched base with BB before bed around 2am. s
22 - Woken by Sally around 8:20am . . . walked . . . surfed Maplins some more and plotted the bits and pieces I think I need to pursue my 'project'. . . Mum called to touch base . . surfed more Maplins, getting ideas and checking on 'in-stock'. . . played with the soldering iron and rigged up two AA batteries in an old torch housing, connected to a 9volt PP3 and succeeded in getting a 'maybe' useable 12v(ish) power source which appeared to enable me to power the wireless receiver. I think that is why that kit was on special offer like it was. Because of the stupidity of having a mix of power supply requirements for the setup - 9volt for the camera - 12volt for the receiver. Silly/awkward. . . figured some more stuff out and then drove with Sally to Maplins to buy rechargeable NiMh batteries, connectors, boxes etc, etc. Another £27.88 down the drain!! . .VERY warm out. 'Almost' too warm to take Sally and have her left in the car for any time. . stopped off for two ready cooked Morrisons chickens for £4 on the way home . . . ate half a chicken with four pieces of bread and butter, followed by three toasted and buttered hot cross buns . . .soldered up connectors and leads and stuff for hours, until a test of the setup worked-ish . . .walked with all the equipment and leads and wires and camcorder all stuffed into various pockets. Once again there was an enormous crowd of kids all rowdily milling around outside the chip shop. I crossed the road early to avoid them. As I did so, some guy in a van started blowing his horn. One of the kids had jumped from off the top of either the refuse bin or the pillar box, onto the bonnet of an adjacent parked car!! Damn - typical - a 'covert camera' would have been pretty useful tonight! . . entering the field, down the bottom 'just' visible above the top of the slope, parked on the grass not far from the swings was the top of a large white van!? Walking my usual route around the field and down that way, it eventually became apparant it was a police van - parked up 'guarding' what was obviously a stolen/dumped/recovered motorcycle. More of that expensive insanity where the police have to sit guard over it until a recovery vehicle comes to take it away. With all the crime and nonsense that is going on everywhere, it just seems SUCH a waste of police resources to have a van and two officers all tied up like that for at least an hour or more - and there must be similar situations all over the country every minute of every day!!!!! . . funny thing was, while the police were sat mostly out of sight down there, two different fathers arrived in the upper part of the field with their kids, encouraging them to ride around on their mini motorbikes (although they DID soon hastily disappear when they spotted the blue light on the top of the police van)!!!!!!! Sheesh! (? "Come on son. Let's go to the field with your motorbike and I'll teach you how to be a selfish anti social yob." ?!!). . . sat on a boulder at the edge of the field for my cigarette (because there was SO much litter, cans, and general debris around the bench by the swings - I just couldn't bear to sit amongst it!) and tried to have a dabble with my wireless camera/camcorder experiment. It wouldn't work!!!!??? Bugger! Out of battery power already?! Uh oh. I wish I knew what I was doing! Is it maybe NOT possible to mix battery types like I am trying? :o( . . . touched base with BB . . .couldn't resist and had another go with the wireless camera experiment setup. Swapped in a set of my new (only partially charged) high power rechargable batteries (all 200mAh rated) and did a proper prolonged/non-stop, completely portable test. Even sat out on the patio in the garden with it all for a while. Yayyyyy - the results were MUCH more useable. Just under an hour of constant 'on' before the receiver batteries finally gave up the ghost. Now THAT is more like it! :o) With the battery I have on the camcorder, I can only get about an hour of non stop use out of that anyway. Depending on what I'm experimenting with filming (Sallycam / squirrels / ducks / pigeons / w.h.y. ???) , it shouldn't be necessary to actually have the receiver turned on until there is something come near to film. The picture here is hardly a stunning image (low 380 TV lines resolution camera - at night - facing into my garden light), but it IS clever. The picture is actually being produced by the wireless microcam running on its 9volt battery, placed on the garden wall. The image is being received wirelessly by the receiver on the patio table next to me, running on a 12volt mix of PP3 and 2xAA batteries. The receiver is plugged into my camcorder which is recording the footage. All completely portable - no mains connection. Clever. :o) . . Felt just a 'little' bit happier at having thrown away so much money, and ended up touching base with BB to share my success . . . sat in front of the TV but as usual these days, couldn't relax enough to actually watch any of the programs, and ended up just sat watching the CCTV picture of the street!!! There is always SO much in the way of loud swearing and shouting from people walking by, it's difficult to know when something 'more serious' is actually going on. Around midnight, there was some little noise from a handful of distant shadows, 'just' visible on my picture on the corner up the street. Someone shouted out "What are you doing out there?!", and off they ran - down the street opposite, 'as usual' when there is trouble - which is why I always have my motorised CCTV camera 'parked' in that direction. As I continued to watch, someone from one of the houses ended up walking around up the street inspecting the parked cars with a torch. More people joined in and I couldn't resist wandering up to see what had happened - and to let them know I'd seen people on my CCTV, running off up such and such street. Turned out they'd disturbed someone trying to break into a couple of the cars - by way of bending back the tops of the doors!!! One of the cars' passenger door was WELL damaged and 'folded' out!! :o( The way one of the women (the owner of that car?) wrapped in her dressing gown, expressed her distress and despair at how it wasn't even safe to park your car on the street anymore, kinda 'got to me', and infected me with her despair. :o( I told them what I'd seen and eventually slowly despairingly ambled home, to stop the recorder and have a look at the video footage. The footage was pretty useless - too dark and too far away. Just running shadows. Two main perpetrators - 'associated' with a few others. Useless - but I guess I'd better 'save' it. Ejected the tape from the recorder and - oh no - oh NO!!! The tape had become trapped in the mechanism and had been eaten by the machine! Ain't that just bloody typical! The minute you actually want to keep something which 'could' have been important, the machine eats the tape and destroys the 'evidence'. Bloody typical! :o( . . suprisingly it wasn't 'too' long before the police arrived up the street. Clearly nothing they could do so they were soon back in their car and driving back down the road. Uh oh - they pulled up near my house and then reversed back up to sit outside! Popped out and they expressed an interest in any video footage I may have. I explained it was useless and how on top of that, the tape had just broken! Off they went. . .had a go at dismantling and disecting the broken VHS tape and cutting off the screwed up parts and using some parcel tape to splice the good ends back together. It worked well enough to get it back in the machine to view, but of course the bit that would have been mostly interesting, was precisely the bit that was laying in the bin. Grrrr. . . very awake and despairing. Sleep was out of the question. Ended up surfing (property on the Isle of Skye and proper CCTV hard disc recorders!) while watching CCTV until getting on for 5am. ss
21 - Woken by Sally around 8:45am . . . left the PC downloading updates and walked. . .It's no good. I just can't get that damned wireless camera thing out of my head! I've tried and tried, but every time I sit at the PC, I end up going back on line and surfing around looking at the damn things, inevitably ending up back on the Maplins website!! I am absolutely fascinated with the idea that I could buy a wireless camera, and armed with suitable power supplies and my camcorder, I could 'go out into the field' and have a go at capturing (admittedly low quality) close ups of wildlife or some such. Like - put the camera down somewhere surrounded by bird/squirrel food, and then 'stand off' and be able to capture the footage. I'm just fascinated by the possibilities. I'm gonna just bite the bullet and get one, money be damned - and undoubtedly regret it fully at my leisure. . checked my bank balance and then left the PC running updates and drove with Sally to Maplins at Brislington. Bought myself a PP3 battery charger complete with a nimh battery for £9.99 and a Swann Microcam II Wireless Security Camera (with Audio) on special for £74.99. . . straight back home to play. Well - it isn't 'brilliant' - but it isn't bad. The hard part is gonna be modifying stuff so I can carry the receiver with me. It needs a 12volt power supply! :o/ . . .workmen turned up to change my gas meter (I'd forgotten all about that) as the letters I've received had said they would. Those letters really annoyed me. "The appointment is :- 21.04.2006 between 8AM and 8PM. Please note our Engineer will be unable to exchange your meter if someone is not present." So they expect someone to arrange to be at home for them for an entire day?!!!? Bloody cheek . . .ate four defrosted sausage rolls with two bags of crisps . . .napped for an hour . . . walked . . .stopped for sausage and chips takeaway on the way home. . .touched base briefly with BB . . . PS popped round for chats etc. till early. Showed him my new camera toy and wandered out into the back yard while he stayed watching the TV and seeing the frogs I was pointing the camera at. lol. . .briefly touched base with BB again before to bed around 1am.s
20 - Woke at 6:20am with a bad headache again. . .walked and found a penny. The 'rubbish tip' in the road by the field has been cleared - well - almost. Inexplicably whoever came to collect it, decided to leave behind the remains of a two seater chair and the metal remnants of some car seats! What the hell was the point of that? . . .tried awfully hard to get on with doing something - anything! - but pretty much failed again and just sat around, TVd, surfed, etc etc. Ended up dabbling with the old PC again, and eventually somehow succeeded in getting the old modem card in it working ok (with a disc I had all the time anyway!). Not sure why I bothered. What exactly IS an old 500mhz machine running Windows 98 good for these days? . . made the mistake of going on line and looking for Windows XP updates for my main machine, only to find that they've brought out another HUGE service pack to download (for XP Office I think)!! Totally impractical on a dial up (estimates several hours!!) - so what am I supposed to do about that?! :o( . . .ate three large toasted, buttered hot cross buns. . . napped for a couple of hours. . .walked leaving the PC downloading updates. Some idiot had emptied the entire contents of the refuse bin liner by the swings all over the ground. Despite the humiliation with lots of kids all around, I stopped to try and clear up some of the dreadful mess, much of which was poop scoop bags!!! Ewwwwwww!!!!. . .back home to wash my hands! . popped up LBs and returned her 'left overs bowl - and took a tape measure with me to measure the tread and rise on HER stairs and see how they'd been built! . .drank a glass of wine . . . touched base with BB . . . TVd . . ate corned beef etc sandwiches with crisps. . . TVd through until gone 4am!! saad
19 - Woke around 7am . . .walked later after the schoolkids had cleared. . . sat around. . .surfed and finally got round to ordering some new Damart fingerless gloves. The shop I usually get them in, appears to have been knocked down as part of the big rebuild of town. They aren't cheap but I pretty much live in them, so HAD to get some more. The ones I'm wearing are now little more than embarassing rags!! . . .had a go with measuring-up where I need to try and build the steep staircase up into the attic. I just can't seem to figure out how I'm gonna do it, and no matter what I do, it IS gonna end up being nastily steep with narrow treacherous treads, little better than a ladder. :o( . . ended up feeling pretty down. I mean - what IS the point? What IS the f****** point in any of it? I've seen enough of life to have learned it is NOT a good place to be - although it must be said - purely because of people! :o( <optional insertion point for depressive rant!> I guess maybe the fluoxetine is finally completely out of my system. . . PCd/TVd the day away. . .walked and found a penny . . .TVd . . . touched base briefly with BB . . .ate a microwaved tin of stewed steak with a cheese covered stick of garlic bread, followed by some chocolate . . . to bed before 11pm. s
18 - Woke around 7:45am . . . .walked. Something was thrown out of the school yard in my direction, but whatever it was (plastic bottle top?) missed. Collected up some of the rubbish pile from the street that had predictably been thrown around all over the place by the kids. Walked round the field and then collected up the bits of rubbish pile that had also been thrown over the hedge into the field. The petrol container the kid last night on the mini moto had left laying by the rugby club fence, was still there. Carried that along and threw it over the hedge onto the refuse heap as well. . . phoned the council and informed them of their new landfill! . . . PCd this (all morning!!) and couldn't help making a compilation video (2MB) of some of the more recent mini moto mayhem - which may well yet find its way into the hands of a local bobby-on-a-bike some time, whether he likes it or not (mostly because he really got my back up by saying how they'd pretty much got on top of the mini moto problem around here! I don't think so!)! . . .finished uploading this and then started to surf a little when all of a sudden the connection dropped out and I had to reconnect. Found someone had left an ansaphone message on the cable system only minutes before somewhere around 1pm. It was the local school Police officer asking me to get in touch regarding my possible video footage of the sports hall window smashing! Called him right back and warned him the footage was useless, but he said he'd pop right round and have a look anyway! Raced to quickly burn a full TV quality DVD of that footage AND my new mini moto compilation video. .sure enough, he was at my door before I'd even finished the burn. He was good enough to stop long enough for a coffee and a bit of a chat and then watched all the recent footage. YAYYYYYYYY! :o) He recognised the mini moto rider - called him by name (with some amusement!) and announced that kid already had an ASBO - and that sure was useful evidence of him breaking the terms of his ASBO. How cool is THAT! :o) Filled in a bit of the detail behind some of the video and even managed to persuade him to go up on my computer and watch some of the 'my nightmare' video/audio evidence from the last few months. By the time he left (complete with the DVD and the little folding tool from last night) I felt - um - well - almost elated! At last! At LAST someone is listening (although it WAS his asessment of my situation, that it would be best if I could move out of the area!!) :o) . . . touched base with Mum to share my upbeat mood (until next walk time at least!). . . ate corned beef, onion, lettuce and tomato sandwichs with two bags of crisps and then some chocolate while watching Hill Street Blues on TV . . .napped for an hour or so . . walked and found a penny. The smashed sports hall windows have been replaced - the big pile of rubbish in the road was all still there. . . touched base with BB . . .TVd . . ate bowls of co-co pops and then cooked up two double cheeseburgers . . to bed around midnight. s
17 - Woken by Sally at 8am . . .walked and found 5p. Put in a bit of time wandering around the field collecting up the smashed electric moped, old umbrella, childrens toys, sacks of refuse, moped seat, childs pram, etc, etc, and added it all to the growing heap of refuse that's been left laying in the emergency-vehicles-only access road. . . pottered around and spent a few hours on the PC starting the long haul of sorting out all my data. I've multiple hard discs full of data, just 'some' of which needs to be transferred over to my main data-store and kept, before formatting the discs and coming up with a proper system of backups etc. It's gonna take ages, to make sure I don't delete something I want to keep. .ate corned beef, onion, lettuce and tomato sandwichs with two bags of crisps and then some chocolate . . did a few more chores . . . walked and found 17p. Approaching the field, yet again that same kid was riding the streets on his mini moto. He was in a group of around a dozen kids, and called out as I walked into the field, that I hadn't managed to 'get him' (on video) last night. (Aha - so that was HIM again was it! I wasn't even aware he was one of them - the bike was very different. If it is even the same bike, then it has had all the fairing and the exhaust silencer removed!! Actually - that explains quite a bit. I rather suspect then, based on the mindless way I've seen him ride - all the footage I've recently saved from my CCTV camera is more than likely mostly HIM!!) I bluffed and said I HAD got him 'enough' and added he was going to lose his bike if he wasn't careful. Some abuse called out from others in the group as I carried on to walk Sally. A worried lady dog walker just entering the field to walk a couple of dogs asked me if they were going to be riding around the field and was it safe to let her dogs off. I replied that they probably would be - it wasn't unusual around here - there is no rule of law around here! . .down by the swings, litter was laying all around, together with a small folding tool of some description, and a large red-painted, metal petrol container just dumped on the grass. Picked up all the litter and put it in the bin and then sat on the seat for my cigarette (with the tool and empty petrol container on the seat next to me - which with hindsight was probably a bit iffy!! lolol) I didn't even have time to roll a cigarette before I could hear the kid on the moto (with that oh SO loud straight through exhaust!) ranting back and forth, just out of my sight, across the top of the field. It was the worried looks on a couple of dog walkers faces in the distance that finally encouraged me to make a call to the police non emergency number. As I'm making the call and attempting to describe what and where to the police communications person, the whole bunch of around a dozen kids, complete with the idiot on the moto, appeared at the top of the slope behind me, coming in my direction. Uh oh! The big bunch of kids thankfully stayed at the top of the slope, but the mini moto rider rode straight down towards me (with his hoodie tied tight around his face again). Abruptly stopped talking down the phone and called Sally to me and got her safely on her lead. The kid actually rode straight up and grabbed the petrol container on the end of the seat next to me! He hesitated when he saw the folding tool still on the seat next to me, but eventually left it behind and just rode off with the petrol container! Absoluetly DEAFENING noise from that exhaust!!! By the time I could hear again, the women on the end of the phone had obviously gotten the idea! I gave her a description of the kid on the moto as best I could. Typing this now and looking at the photos I took the other day, he was wearing exactly the same, except for the trousers. Tonight he was wearing a sort of blue track suit bottom with a white stripe down the leg. Eventually finished the call - she said they'd be sending a car out. Predictably, as I made my way back towards the exit of the field (with the folding tool noticeable in my hand), past the large group of kids (climbing on the rugby goal posts), the mini moto rider could be heard somewhere off in the distance making good his disappearance (he'd left the petrol container dumped by the rugby club fence). That bike was SO loud and was echoing off all the school buildings, it was impossible to accurately determine where the bike was being stashed - and then it went all quiet. . . returned home and fed Sally - but I just couldn't help myself. Ended up back out in the car and quickly driving round the block and past the field. No sight or sound of the mini moto. Pulled in on the main road debating whether or not to sit around in the car for a bit - and just then a police car cruised past, after having obviously found no sign of my report of a mini moto! What a waste of their time - again! Arrrrgggggghhh. All this is driving me nuts! Came to my senses (well - almost!) and returned home - only to end up in the attic for a bit. Nice sunset - but actually listening out for the sound of that mini moto starting up again - which I did NOT hear. . . LB called to touch base . . . touched base with BB . . . ate five scones with jam and butter . . . TVd until bed before midnight. ss
16 - Woke around 9:15am!! . . .walked and found a penny. Some sort of smashed up, apparantly electric 'go ped' was dumped near the field!?. . Mum called to touch base . . . PCd a bit of this and then did a bit of 'housekeeping' on the PC . . ate defrosted chicken sandwiches . . . slept the rest of the afternoon away until around 6:30pm. . woke to the incessent deafening sound of mini motos being driven around the area. Death defying mini moto madness!!!! And there was me thinking that CCTV footage I got the other day was astoundingly dangerous! Well - it would appear, for whoever is riding that machine, that sort of death defying, I own the roads 'stunt', is just par for the course! How on earth is he still alive?. . walked. Attempted to video a bit of the moto madness as they prepared to cross the main road and zoom towards me - but they'd seen me with my camera in hand, and had stopped to do up their hoodies to hide their faces! Grrrrr. . . PCd and viewed the footage I'd just taken. Shakey and useless. . . . touched base with BB . . . TVd . . . did the mountain of dish washing chores . . .ate corned beef, tomato, onion, lettuce sandwiches with three bags of crisps . . . soon to bed around 1am. ss
15 - Woke at 6:45am with a bad headache. Annadin, coffeee and cigarettes for breakfast. . touched base with BB . . .walked and found 20p . . .sorted through lots of the junk in the drawers in my computer room for ages. I'd intended to have a good clear out - but I just couldn't bring myself to throw hardly any of it away, so it ended up being just a time consuming reorganisation of it all . . played with my old, OLD 500mhz PC, mostly attempting to get it to connect on line with an old modem card I found in one of the drawers. Failed miserably, without the instalation disc/correct drivers . . ate five scones with butter and jam . . .walked with Sally around 4:15pm. Passed the 'copper on a bike' who'd visited me. He was speaking with someone on a pushbike near the old post office (asking if it was HIS bike). I 'saluted' and walked on by. . did the long walk down to Eastville park. Sat by the lake for ages. Pleasant chats with one or two passers by before heading along the river towards Snuff Mills etc. . . much stopping to sit round all along the way . One of my favourite sitting places down by the river is no more - the seat is gone! :o( . . . headed back home - basically in the direction of the circling police helicopter!! :o( . . Saw PS wife and daughter on the way, but didn't know what to say and rather abruptly carried on my way! . .walked the extra and popped in Morrisons hoping to buy a couple of ready cooked chickens, but they had none! :o( . . .stopped for a cod and chips takeaway with a can of coke on the way home. . ate . . touched base with BB . . . drank my last can of Redbull because I was in danger of falling straight asleep . . .PS popped round for chats and biscuits . . . TVd/PCd until birdsong! as
14 - Up at 8am . . .walked. Not far down the road (that nasty 'fast' road), laying between some parked cars was a dead badger, obviously been hit by a passing car!!!!! That caught me a little 'off guard' and almost saw me in tears. What a tragedy. To have survived amidst all this nauseating man made madness - only to end up like that. Yeah - tearful. :o( . . back home and called the council to go and remove/deal with the badger (before the local yobs get hold of it and do something unspeakable?). . .moved all the furniture and old scrap of carpet in the front bedroom, tore up a bunch of floorboards, and spent ages threading through and routing in a bunch of new low loss aerial cables from the distribution amp in the living room to each of the TV outlets in all the other rooms. Actually put in two for the back bedroom, to give the PC a dedicated 'best-quality-I-can-manage' feed. Soldered on all the new plugs and labeled up which line was which, and eventually had the floorboards and furniture back in place, and it all nicely up and running. :o) . . with my soldering iron already out, I was determined to somehow get one of my wireless phone charger bases, neatly plugged in by my bed-head. Ideally the power lead would be threaded through the hole I've already made in the wooden shelf I have there, next to my 'projecting onto the ceiling' LED clock. Trouble with that idea - the power lead is an 'integral' part of the base unit, and the neat little hole isn't big enough to take the whole plug! So - I dismantled the base unit, unsoldered the power lead connections from the PCB, threaded the wire through the hole, successfully soldered it back up and yayyyyy - still works, and now right behind the bed. Nice one. .lots of clearing up and vacuuming etc. . .walked. Outside the chip shop was 'that kid' who I'd videod riding the mini moto the other night, together with a large bunch of other kids. Suprisingly I didn't get 'too' much hassle (the kid who keeps saying 'E' took our Bettie!' was amongst them, and yet again wanted me to recount to them how a policeman had ridden off on 'his' motorcycle that time), and he even kinda made a joke of the fact that I'd been 'trying' to video him. I tried to be as non confrontational as I could be, and even expressed concern that he'd hurt his arm and was all bleeding!! Crazy!. . .sat on the grass at the top of the field for quite a while watching the sun sinking, pretending it was warmer than it was, and trying oh SO hard to feel 'relaxed'. .as I carried on with my walk down the far side of the field, I became aware (from the sickening thudding, smashing noise it was making) that a group of kids were smashing the sports hall windows - again! I tried to take on board the lessons of the last few months, and sat on the grass at the FAR side of the field, out of sight, while calling the police. As soon as the call was made, I attempted to get some video, but I was SO far away from the action, it was GOING to be hopeless. On maximum optical zoom (and at times with even a bit of digital zoom), the footage was SO shakey, and the perpetrators were SUCH little figures in the distance - it was hopeless. I'm kicking myself now that I didn't get closer. :o( As soon as the damage was done, the large group of kids all nontialantly wandered off up the street and away. . I had a 'bit' of a go at low profile pursuing them, but as soon as they'd temporarily rounded a corner, I could no longer be sure of who may have been who, so I'd be useless as a witness. (That kid in the white coat was a main player!) I ended up sat on a rock with a cigarette for a while. Incredibly, within ten minutes a police car drove down the street and I attracted their attention and told them what I'd seen. They seemed particularly interested in my shaky video footage (despite my making sure they knew I could NOT confirm if it WAS that group all hanging around near the chip shop) and took my details. They looked at the sports hall windows (at least four smashed) and suggested it looked as though that was a dome surveillance camera on the lampost-like upright nearby, so that should have captured something. I can't be certain, but from this and that which they said, I kinda got the impression they were there actually dealing with something else, and had NOT appeared as a result of MY call. They wanted to know where such and such a road was (where a woman lived who could give them names and addresses!?) - I gave them directions, and as I walked home, they were knocking on one of the doors there! . . viewed my video footage and confirmed it really was quite useless - although DID give a distant impression of little figures throwing bricks at windows . . . touched base with BB . . .drank a glass of red wine while heating up a pizza with extra cheese in the oven. Ate pizza and chocolate . . LB called . . much noise from large passing groups of kids and lots of other people. Spent most of the evening watching my CCTV image rather than anything on TV!!! . . TVd until bed around midnight. sd
13 - Woken by Sally around 7am again . . . walked. . . balanced my accounts and counted the cost of my recent spending spree! Still 'afloat' - helped by the end of year couple of months without a few household bill direct debits, and £200 in PSB wins in the mail this morning. :o) . . .walked with Sally up to bank the cheques and to draw out some money. Carried on up to the post office and had a go on the photo booth, trying to get myself some passport photos, in an attempt to encourage me to finally get round to filling out the application form for renewing my expired ten year passport. I guess it must be ten years since I last used a photo booth - they've changed! All fancy touch screen and soothing female voice now. I screwed up the first one. The machine asked if I wanted the photo it'd just taken (no blinding flash any more) and I said yes because it didn't look 'too' bad, but then all of a sudden that was it! I was expecting another three shots - but no - it just printed that one out four times for my £3.50! Ended up having another go and getting a slightly better version, that hopefully will do - another £3.50 down the drain!! . popped in the supermarket for milk and bread and bought a packet of reduced price, snack size sausage rolls and sat outside and shared them with Sally. . Stopped in at a small photographic shop to ask if they had any such thing as a quick release camera mount for my existing tripods. They didn't have any in stock and suggested if they did, they'd be so expensive, I'd probably be better off buying a whole new tripod with one included! Hmmmph. :o( On top of that, I had to wait for ages to be served because the guy was busy doing lots of peoples passport photos!! Would have been better and cheaper if I'd done mine there! Hmmmph some more. :o( . . . left Sally at home and drove to a cheap store in Fishponds to see if they still had those awful cushion type footstools I saw there last time. I could really use something like that under my computer desk (to replace the cushion-on-an-upturned-bucket I'm currently using! The damn cushion keeps slipping off under the desk). They didn't have them anymore. . left the car in the car park and had a quick look in the other couple of stores in the same block. One of them was Currys. I spenty a LOT of time in that one looking at absolutely EVERYTHING and especially drooling over the wide screen TVs. They had a couple of HUGE ones actually demonstrating High Definition TV. Impressive! Big bucks. :o( I DID end up impulse buying a new PC keyboard though. They had a basic 'Microsoft 500' one in black for £9.99, so I figured I'd better get it to match the rest of my main PC kit. My current keyboard can go on the living room PC to replace the iffy old one I bagged from the PC disposal charity. drove on to Rajanis and looked at everything and came out with another couple of coax sockets, another pack of headphone converter leads and sockets, and two nice simple glass ashtrays to replace a couple of the silly little ones I've been struggling along with - all for £4.65 . . .back home to switch keyboards, add the doubler socket, and generally poke around on the PC a bit . . . walked. Heading down towards the bottom of the field, that kid I'd videod on the mini moto on the 11th was riding a push bike (weird design - almost like a custom motorcycle/chop) along the adjacent road. He called out some abuse about me having videod him, and said he was gonna 'smash me up'! :o( I confirmed I HAD videoed him and just carried on walking . . . stopped for jumbo sausage and chips on the way home. Ate with four pieces of bread and butter . . PCd . . touched base briefly with BB . . . PS popped round for chats and biscuits . . .ate multiple bowls of co-co pops before bed after 1am. ass
12 - Woken by Sally around 7am . . .walked and picked up the lightweight nylon shower coat I'd seen laying in the middle of the field yesterday morning. Can't understand why one of those people doing rugby training last night didn't have it - nothing wrong with it a run through the wash won't put right. :o). . played with my toys for hours, grabbing video/CCTV footage, capturing stills and such and then PCd this! lololololol . . .read the Maplins catalogue/PCd/TVd the day away . . . walked and found 2p. A rather nice comfy looking push bike quick release saddle had been tossed over the school fence and was laying in the mud. Over the field, a recycle-box containing broken parts of a mini moto fairing and some other debris has strangely appeared next to the hedge!? . . . ate a couple of steak and kidney pies, two bags of crisps and then several bowls of co-co pops . . . touched base with BB . . . TVd/listened to music until bed around 11:30pm. s
11 - Woken around 5:20am by someone blowing their car horn! Damn that guy! Grrrrr. . woken by Sally around 7:30am . . .walked in the biting cold wind . . . PCd this. Today I MUST attempt to get my journal up to date - particularly to document the 'important', 'police visit' bits! Trouble is - the last week has become pretty much just a blurr of motherboards, sockets, cards, wires, software and such! . .touched base with Mum . . .PCd this for hours, way into the afternoon, until it was as much done as I can accurately remember. Damn (main)PC - still loads more setting up to do. Keep trying to do stuff I always do, only to find it isn't there or set up right yet!. . .watched Hill Street Blues while eating the last three scones with butter and jam . . .got a bowl of soapy water and washed a couple of annoying marks off the living room carpet. Something to do with throwing bits of my food down for Sally I suspect. .couldn't help myself and ended up back on the PC dabbling with this and that. Attempted to update a bit of the detail for the main machine on my unfinished/neglected 'Computers' page, just in case anyone gives a damn. .moved the removable hard drive caddy into the next bay up, because I found I couldn't get my fingers into the handle where it was, because of the case design. . Turns out I can't put the machine into 'hibernate' because it says the file is in use every time I try to activate the ability. Also - the AMD motherboard appears to act differently with the power supply in this case!?? When I go for a normal 'standby', like I've been getting used to using of late, the machine closes down but continues to power the processor, caddy and case fans! Changing the BIOS (and NO - I really don't understand what I'm changing!!) rectifies that, but then turns off the power light (instead of my usual flashing option) making it real easy to forget it's still on! Can't figure it out. Pretty much tried ALL the available options (VERY time consuming multiple re-boots!) to no avail. :o(. . had the portable on showing the CCTV picture as I worked. My attention was drawn to it when I heard the dreaded sound of one of those mini motos approaching the junctionn up the road. I could hardly believe what I saw! He hardly hesitated - certainly didn't brake! If there was EVER a piece of video footage to show how insanely dangerous those bikes are in the hands of brainless little kids, that HAS to be it! . . . walked. Looks like there's a 'special offer' on the fence posts over the field - only 99p!! Those damn stickers are EVERYWHERE! . .I'd JUST sat down on the seat by the swings and was about to roll a cigarette, when my peace was destroyed by yet another idiot on a mini moto, ranting around the field amongst the rest of the (admiring?) kids! You'd have thought I'd have learned my lesson wouldn't you - but no! Ended up pulling out the camcorder in full view of him and all his mates, and grabbed a little footage as he went back and forth. WHAT a din! Predictably (as I've learned, although it STILL amazes me) the presence of the camera did NOT encourage him to make a hasty getaway, and instead he pulled up across the field and took some time to tie his hoodie up around his face before carrying on!!! Little GIT! So much for my cigarette - left my seat to him and the rest of the kids. And that policeman who came round was trying to convince me that they've had a purge on mini motos and there shouldn't be many left! Yeah - right! :o( . . . cracked open a bottle of red wine I've had stashed in the cupboard under the kitchen sink for years. I think it was a Christmas present one year from Sis1 - and NOT a cheap one. Drank one glass and got nicely tipsy on an empty stomach. Wow - much easier to drink than that box of awful cheap rubbish I usually buy from Sainsburys. . . touched base with BB . . . ate a huge plate of the rest of LBs roast dinner left overs with a pint of instant gravy, and then some chocolate. . . TVd until bed before midnight. sad
10 - Up around 7:15am . . .walked . . . carried on with the (endless!) work of re-building all my software and settings and such on my main machine . . .surfed here and there looking at distribution amplifiers for the TV. Left Sally at home and drove to Rajanis to see if they had any cheap two-into-one miniature stereo sockets (my idea being, so I can run PC speakers AND an audio feed to the TV/stereo at the same time from the soundcard-out, on the PC in the living room). They didn't have any, but then I spotted one included in a pack of various leads and sockets, so I bought that and half a dozen TV aerial lead sockets for a VERY reasonable £4.35 . . drove on to Emersons Green and had a quick look in Lidl before going in to the Argos store to buy myself the distribution amp I'd decided on. 'SLX 6-Way Signal Booster with Integrated By-Pass' for £21.99. . . back home to experiment some more. The PC speakers/audio out thing worked a treat, no problem (assuming it isn't 'overtaxing' the soundcard in some bizarre way. Time will tell). Think I may need another one of those on the main PC to double up a 'line-in' arrangement, to save me having to drag the machine in and out all the time when attaching my camcorder and such. . pulled a few of the bits of equipment out of my living room TV stand, and had a dabble with the distribution amp. Ooooh - that looks as though it's gonna do the business VERY nicely! . Ooooh, Ooooh, Ooooh - couldn't help myself and ended up doing a few temporary modifications to all the existing mass of cable connections in the living room, soldered up a couple of new patch leads, and somehow managed to eventually end up with a VERY useable system, with a minimum amount of work. (Really need to reconfigure all the aerial runs to all the rooms in the house, to suit now - but that can wait.) Even got away with putting a splitter on the amp input, to feed in the signal from my cable TV box (with the very useful, rooftop-aerial 'pass through') AND the output from the video recorder!! That means I can now watch all the terrestrial TV channels, one cable channel, AND my CCTV picture (effectively using the video recorder as a modulator) on every TV/PC in the house!!!!! (My main PC TV card connection is currently 'jumped off' the aerial feed to the portable TV, and is actually pretty poor and fairly useless at the moment, until I do a new dedicated aerial lead from the distribution amp - at which time I would then be able to record everything from it). . Yayyyyyy. VERY nice. :o) . . finished up around 5:30pm by having a bit of a prod here and there to try and finally get to the bottom of why the TV emits a mains hum whenever it is directly connected to the PC. It's been doing this ever since I first attached a PC, but it's been pretty low volume, didn't seem to cause any damage, and I've just been putting up with it. Oh wow! Turns out it was because I hadn't replaced the cable company's isolator in the data line to the cable box! (Yikes - was that dangerous? This sort of 'I've modified the cable company's instalation' is ONE of the reasons I'm loath to make the move to broadband. I'll have to have a cable company engineer in to instal it all, and I don't think they will like the alterations I've made to their cables/connections etc!!) Excellent - Yippee - sorted - no hum. :o) . . ate a banana to keep hunger pangs at bay and then PCd this in the back bedroom, while keeping an eye on the world going by out the front, by way of the CCTV camera image displayed on the portable TV next to the PC - because I can. Very cool! :o) . . . walked. Why is it still SO cold out, despite the sun?! . . .microwaved up half of LBs roast dinner left overs and ate with a pint of gravy in front of the kitchen TV (watching 'Girl Cops' documentary) - occasionaly changing channel and having a look outside - because I can. :o) . . . touched base with BB . . . ate chocolate and TVd until bed around 11:30pm. Well - it's cost me a bit (actually not 'that' much) to make these changes to things PC/electrical around the house, but it sure makes me feel more - um - 'homely' kinda. Like at long, LONG last, I'm 'starting' to gradualy pull it all together into a 'connected' system that fits my desires. After all the hassle I've had these long winter months, it was worth spending the amount I have, just to have that rare feeling of being - um - 'comfortable' and happy around my own home for a bit!!!! :o/ ss
9 - Woken by Sally around 7am . . . BB called . . .uh oh! A 'disc usage warning' from my dot-com webspace. I'm fast running out of space with all these damned bulky videos! :o(. . walked . . . PCd determined to find a way of getting fast forward video out of my new 'main' PC. Took hours, but got there in the end and celebrated by doing a video, as much as anything else, to test the new 'main' machines ability to handle everything I want to do. . well - the machine's not perfect, but sure is SO much better than I have been struggling along with. It really was 'almost' a pleasure to use for a change, rather than the constant battle against the failure of the low specs. that I've become accustomed to. :o) That pretty much took care of the whole day - but I reckon the end bit on that video is SUCH a laugh! I keep watching it myself!!!!! (just in case anyone wonders, if it isn't obvious :- I used the living room PC to clone-display my desktop on the 28" TV screen. Sat right in front of the TV screen and filmed myself to get the effect of being 'in' the desktop. The 'knocking on the screen' bit was actually me just pretending to knock in mid air - had to dub appropriate sound on later. Compiled that into a movie and then played it full screen on the main bedroom PC whilst filming the PC! And then meshed it all together with appropriate fades and such. SO much work - but such fun!!!! lololololololololololol :o) ) Ate a banana or two along the way, just to fend off the need to eat. . . walked. Actually passed Little Xxxxxx and a bunch of his mates for the first time in a while. I WAS tempted to smile, but managed to resist and just scowled my usual blank face. Briefest of eye contact - he still has that irritating stupid smirking smile on his face! There 'may' have been a few taunting calls as they walked off down the road - although I'm not entirely sure, so I guess that MUST be regarded as an enormous, welcome improvement. . . ate a microwaved tin of stewed steak with six pieces of bread and butter just to get some food in me as quick as possible . . .in the middle of eating and LB popped down with a big bowl of roast dinner left overs for me :o) . . . touched base with BB . . . ate a bunch of biscuits and a little chocolate . . . TVd until early to bed around 11:30pm. . Again! I saw a police car driving past the house! I've seen one patrolling the area, pretty much every night now for the last week! Amazing. NICE! sa
8 - Woken by Sally around 8am . . . yayyy - my new 'main' machine successfully made contact with the update server (must have been their server off line, and all the time I was thinking it was my bad instal!). Left the PC connected, downloading updates and walked . . . I'm not finished with my spending spree yet! Walked with Sally up the PC store intending to buy a cheap PCI modem card for the living room PC - but somehow ended up buying that (£10) AND another of their VStream analogue-TV PCI cards (£32)!! Yes - I DO really want a terrestrial digital one, but I've yet to find one I'll be happy with (in terms of multiple in/out S-video/RCA etc. connections at a reasonable price). Figured I can make a lot of use of the old analogue one I'm familiar with, in another machine. At the end of the day, I have it in my mind that I 'could' maybe even end up using one of them in an old, OLD, low-spec machine as a CCTV recorder!! So, straight back home to fit them into my 'secondary' (living room) PC. . . nothing is EVER easy is it! The damn modem card was a poor fit and (after lots of hassle before I realised why) had to be left loose in the slot, without it being screwed in place!! Grrrr. . On the upside, the drivers installation disc for the TV card, was a slightly newer version than I already have, and pretty much flew in without a hitch. Good grief! I didn't even realise the thing had Teletext! Never got that working before! . . at long, LONG last (a good five hours?) , the main PC finished downloading all the antivirus updates - and then promptly crashed, with the AV software no longer working!!!!! Arrrrrgggghhh!!!! . . Wow - while the line had been engaged for hours, the cable ansaphone service had taken a call from Police Constable Cxxxxx at 12:03pm!! (I'd REALLY come to the conclusion he wouldn't bother being back in touch!) . . "I've spoken to the Xxxxxxs and hopefully they've taken the advice on board and obviously I've asked mother and father to speak to Little Xxxxxx and his friends and see if we can stop this abuse towards you. I'll try and pop in today . . ". Blimey!!!!!! . . networked both PCs, started the main one in safe mode and dumped a copy of appropriate directories in on top and eventually had it up and running ok. Carried on and deleted the drivers/software for the TV card and reinstalled with the new version. Works fine except for the poor aerial connection into the back bedroom. Now THAT is a whole different project I have in the back of my mind - a 'proper' antenna/TV/CCTV distribution amplifier set up to every room in the house!!!!!!! . . .somewhere around 4:30pm PC C***** was back at the door. He brought his bike into the living room for safety again (lololol) and then briefly filled me in on developments. (damn - can't remember all he said! If it wasn't so weird and unhealthily paranoid looking, it would have made sense to have recorded the conversation!) In no particular order, here are some of the things I CAN remember from that brief conversation. He'd spoken with the Xxxxxxs and explained what I'd been going through with regard to his son. They allegedly were unaware and he said they genuinely 'took it on board' and then sat down with their children and told them to stay away from me - and to tell his friends to do the same. Not sure, but I think they DO have a daughter - which could explain the 26th March 'taunt' incident. Little Xxxxxx has already gotten rid of his mini moto. The police officer had explained that I was NOT a paedophile and if their behaviour continues, they WILL be liable to get an ASBO. He explained to them that I have been retired from the Post Office with depression and such, and all I want to do is walk my dog twice a day. Essentially - things 'should' quieten down now for me, but if they don't, we'll have to take a different approach. He confirmed he'd done 'checks' on me, but had turned up nothing. I said I DID have a long ago conviction in a magistrates (for that illegal use of a radio transmitter in my CB days) and expressed suprise he wasn't aware of that if he'd been checking up on me. He has no problem with my CCTV camera. The officer suggested that if things do settle down, it would be appropriate for me NOT to continue walking around with a camera. I suggested that was unlikely, because I'd now 'gotten a taste for it'! He said he'd pop in again some time to check up on how things were going. .THIS was the partial 'closure' I'd been wanting, which the court case hadn't given me! Hell - if someone had listened and he'd done something like this months ago, then maybe I'd have been spared 'my attack' and these hellish months of torture, which HAVE left an absolutely indellible mark on my mind. As he left, I tried to thank him and make sure he knew HOW much I meant it! I don't often shake people by the hand, but I sought that from him as he struggled to get his bike through my front door! lol . I'm under no illusions about all this. I'm still 'at great risk' because of their false allegations, but at least now it feels as though at least someone in the police service has a better idea of the REAL story, and will maybe listen if I shout for help - again!! . . . My comments of being at 'great risk', may seem melodramatic to some. Finding myself IN such a position, I know better! I missed Crimewatch UK on TV the other night because I was playing with my computers and on guard, watching my CCTV picture. Mum seemed intent on telling me all about it the next time we spoke!!?!! Perhaps it's a good job I DID miss it!! Nevertheless, I felt obliged to go on line to the Crimewatch website, and had a look at the details of the case she mentioned. Horrific. THIS is reality - 'tis NO melodrama!!!!!!!!! :o(
Resolven male rape
On Tuesday 18 October 2005, at about 10.45pm, Geoff Cole, a 58-year-old from Glyn Castle, near Resolven, was out walking his three dogs when he was attacked and sexually assaulted, just 183m (200 yards) from his home.
This is an appeal specifically targeted at the community of Resolven, a small village in the Neath Valley, South Wales. Police believe that the victim of this attack was the subject of a malicious and totally unfounded rumour, claiming that he was a paedophile, which led to local vigilantes taking violent retributive action against him.
South Wales Police want to make it clear to the community of Resolven that the rumour is false and therefore there is no reason to continue to protect these offenders.
Appeal points
This is a specific appeal to Resolven. It's a small community, someone knows who these people are. Now that they know the rumour is false and unfounded, there is NO reason to protect these individuals, who the police are treating as sex offenders.
The offenders are most certainly local.
Police believe that there were at least two, but possibly three people involved in the attack. One of them may have been female.
It was raining heavily - the offenders will have come home soaking wet and muddy.
This was a planned attack. The offenders may have done recces - did you see anyone loitering around the route to Glyn Castle on and around 18 October?
Who was the man on the mobile phone at Maes Y Tyra who followed the victim up the road?
An appeal to the attackers: did the attack go too far? Now that they know the rumour is untrue, can they live with this on their consciences?
Anyone afraid of repercussions can come forward in confidence.
Police are keen to trace the driver of a dark car that drove down the Glyn Castle Road just before the attack.
Police are urging any further witnesses to come forward, especially anyone with information about Corey Street.
South Wales Police Incident room tel no: 01639 640292 . . . I can't help but wonder if the Xxxxxxs simply went along with what he was saying, just to appease him and get him out of their house. Did they REALLY take it on board as he thinks? I mean - this is the type of person who beats someone up in his own home, and then pleads NOT guilty and lies under oath to try and get away with it!!! Time will tell. . .PCd through until walk time. Amazing sky with a HUGE storm cloud drifting in with sheets of rain visibly falling from it in the distance. That'll put a damper on the Brunel/Suspension bridge celebrations that are going on down town tonight. If it wasn't for the horrendous crowds that will inevitably be down there, I'd like to have seen/filmed the fireworks display they were gonna be putting on. :o/ . .the area was happily like a ghost town. Stopped for cod and chips takeaway on the way home. . Nice timing - just missed the downpour. Ate with four pieces of bread and butter . . . PCd . . . touched base with BB . . . PCd until exhausted and relatively early to bed before midnight. Weird - didn't hear any of the fireworks from town? s
7 - Woken by Sally . . .walked . . . finally received an 'official' notification in the mail from the Magistrates court, with the results of the court case.
Date of Hearing: 30/03/06 The defendant named below has been ordered to pay compensation to you through the Court. As the defendant complies with the order for compensation, payments will be made to you by cheque. A note of the payments you receive should be retained for reference purposes. Please note payments may be made in instalments. Amount of compensation awarded: £100
If the defendant fails to pay as ordered action will be taken automatically to enforce the order.
Defendant: XXXXXX
Offence: ON 09/11/05 AT XXXXXX IN THE CITY OF BRISTOL ASSAULTED TERRY JONES
. . . PCd yet more, attempting to persuade my new 'main' machine to accept a fresh instal of my antivirus software. Usual hassle with the old outdated instal disc and attempts to copy over old installed files from other machines etc, etc. Eventually managed to get it looking as though it was going to work, only for it to continually fail to connect with the updates server!???? Grrrr. :o( . . . PCd the day away . . . walked. Stopped for sausage and chips takeaway on the way home . . .touched base with BB until PS arrived for chats, coffee and biscuits. . ate bowls of corn flakes . . briefly touched base with BB before bed around 1am. s
6 - Woken by Sally around 8:30am . . .BB called . .. walked. PCd the day away . . .walked . . . <can't remember>!
5 - Woke around 7:45am with a crippling headache! Annadin for breakfast . . . walked . . .walked with Sally up to the local PC store and bought myself a 300 gigabyte Maxtor Serial ATA hard drive (£85) (because I've only just discovered the AMD motherboard I've got can support two SATAs!!) and bit the bullet and finally got all legal by buying another (OEM) edition of Windows XP (£75) for my second machine.

WOW! Did that hard drive format in no time at all!! No wonder Serial ATA is the new way to go!

PCd . . . ate half a chicken and four pieces of bread and butter . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . <can't remember>!
4 - Woken by Sally around 9am . . .walked. Aha - that may explain why it's been so 'quiet' (relatively!) of late - maybe. The kids appear to be off from school. Is it Easter or something soon? I never did learn when 'Easter' was. Put in a bit of work at collecting up lots of the price ticket streamers together with a little other rubbish. Filled three carrier bags full in the end. Some old guy exchanged a word and confirmed it was him who'd cleared them all up from the top of the field. (I HAD wondered.) . . surfed looking at PC parts and components and such. Left the PC uploading the latest video, left Sally at home and walked up the local PC store to ask stupid questions. That guy up there sure is accomodating, and gave me quite a bit of time going through what I described as my 'fantasy footbal league' - what components could I get away with to improve my PC (with an emphasis on working with video), bring it 'partially' up to date, and give it a chance of maybe being at least a 'little' bit upgradeable in the future as things move on. Predictably, he was all for investing in a brand new up to date motherboard and fast dual core processor!! That's more than I want to spend at the moment! Ended up making do for the time being with a (another!) new 200GB ATA hard drive (£70) and one of those removable ATA hard drive racks with a built in cooling fan (£13.10), intending to try and gen up on things a bit before committing to spending so much. . Had a damn good look at both of my PCs and read through the motherboard books trying to get a grip on what I actually already have, and what 'may' be possible with my existing parts (rather than immediately throw huge amounts of money at a complete new system. Everything has moved on, and if I buy a nice new motherboard and fast processor, I'll end up having to replace most everything else!!!!! No, no! :o( ). .gleaned enough from the manuals and a web site here and there to formulate a possible plan of action. Buy 'some' new bits and pieces (which 'should' be compatible with a new system in the future) and swap around all the parts I have in both machines to come up with one 'strong' one (a 'main' machine, based on the AMD board and processor) and one weaker one (Intel) to live in the living room. . walked back up the PC store and invested £70 in a 1GB PC3200 memory stick for the AMD motherboard, to push the memory up to a full 2GB as a good start. . . . PCd lots. The memory upgrade made an immediate and noticeable improvement. . ate half a chicken with four pieces of bread and butter . . .PCd for hours more . . . Sis1 popped in for coffee and chats and to hear all about the court case thing. To be honest, I simply really did NOT want to have to talk about it, so she ended up mostly sitting at my PC and watching my evidence videos and such. . in the middle of this, someone called at the door. It was a policeman 'bobby on a bike'! I anticipated he was here to give me an 'official' notification of the outcome of the court case so invited him in (complete with his push bike - because it would probably have been stolen if he'd left it outside in the garden! lololololololol Outrageous! lol). That was NOT why he was at my door!!! He was here because Mr Xxxxxx had made a complaint that I'd been taking pictures of his son!!! WHAT? The number of times I've called the police, only for them to ignore my calls - yet that nasty Xxxxxxx can make an allegation and immediately get the police calling at my door!! I pretty much immediately exploded into an angry rage and ended up swearing at the poor police officer quite a bit, as I attempted to explain what I've had to endure these last few months (year actually!). My Sister joined in 'having a go' before I dragged the poor guy up into the back bedroom, to enable me to show him my half finished 'Evidence' video of everything that has occured (complete with the evidence quality video of Little Xxxxxx on his mini moto AND the conversation I had with him on the 25th.) Glad that Sis1 was here - she argued my corner nicely, which I wasn't able to do so well because of my boiling-over anger. By the time the poor policeman had gone, he appeared to have a diffferent more realistic view of what had been going on, and said he would be speaking with the Xxxxxxs and WOULD be back in touch with me (Sis1 was forcefully adamant that he should get back to me! lol) . . . both touched base with Mum and to let her know what had just happened, but I ended up not wanting to speak and left Mum and Sis1 to it. Felt VERY miserable. Persecuted actually - although Sis1 seemed to want to put a positive spin on things and thought it was good that PC had just visited and it had opened his eyes to my reality, and things had gone in my favour and backfired on Xxxxxx. I didn't feel that way! :o( . . . walked as soon as Sis1 had gone. Right outside the house, on the pavement next to my wall was a quarter house brick! Who/how the hell did THAT get there?!!!! Scary! Couldn't see any damage to the car or discerne any impact marks on the wall so - ?? Popped the brick over my wall into the garden to - um - remove 'the temptation'! . . . a HUGE crowd of kids (20+?) were all hanging around by the school, but suprisingly I received no hassle (I think) from any of them. . some idiot on a four wheel road-legal, off-road quad bike type of affair (I'd seen it parked up outside the pub on the way out) went storming up the field and then straight out onto the road! . .as I carried on walking around the field the sound of a revving screeching car echoed around the neighborhood. Turned out to be a bunch of 'youths' in some little hatchback, doing smokey wheel spins and high speeds and such, mostly up and down the road next to the field, right next to the big bunch of kids!! Jeeze - that could SO easily have ended up a big, bloody mess! Sat on a boulder for a cigarette with my video camera all ready to go, but sods law - they didn't come back down that way. . Looks as though a whole nother bunch of price stickers have been 'taken' from the Morrisons store. Blue 99p stickers were blowing around and stuck to everything everywhere. The school railings alongside where all the kids were congregated have been absolutely COVERED in them! Every single individual rail is covered along a whole stretch. They'll be stuck there for years before the weather makes any impression on them!! . . . carried on PCing while keeping an eye on the CCTV picture. Saw a police car cruise by and do a U-turn just up the road before cruising away. Blimey - are they actually patrolling the area at last?. . . touched base with BB but still distracted building up the PC software and settings etc. until eventually exhaustion saw me to bed.
3 - Woken by Sally around 7:30am . . . touched base with BB . . .drove with Sally and the camcorder and tripod down to the river Avon at Hanham for walks and attempts at filming some of the nesting heron high up in the trees on the opposite bank. . . back home and quickly made use of the sunny spells out on the patio to do the 'funny/ahhhhh' bit for the end of my partial solar eclipse video, courtesy of Sally. Time consuming doing these 'funny' bits - and takes quite a bit of chocolate! lolol Done and uploaded the modified replacement version around 1pm . . .drove with Sally in the car to Maplins over Brislington, fully intentending to spend some money on a new big (on special offer) hard drive or a bullet camera or, or - something! Dunno why, but I seem in a mood determined to spend some of my savings. I think it's because of the hassle I'm having with my 'main' PC struggling oh SO much to deal with the videos I've been doing of late. I've become absolutely convinced that my 'secondary' PC in the living room (with the naughty duplicated installation of my single legitimate windows XP) which is broadly the same spec as the other machine, is actually far better and faster and more able to cope. The main difference? It's got an AMD processor rather than an Intel. Hmmm? Wonder why I find that SO hard to understand. MUST be the brainwashing effect of all those expensive Intel TV adverts! . . Left Sally in the car and wandered around in the store looking at everything again. Turned out the drive I'd been intending to get was 'maybe' not comapitble with my PC innards (damned if I know-I've totally lost touch with what's what inside a PC these days!) so I managed to resist. Determined to spend some money on something, I ended up getting a phonebook like Maplins catalogue (£3.99) and a cheap new switchable multiple SCART connector box complete with phono-out sockets for behind the TV (£9.99). When I finally get round to re-doing all the spaghetti connections behind there, I 'think' it 'may' make things easier for me - particularly with regard to capturing some of the outputs to the PC when I want to. .stopped off on the way home and (spend, spend spend!?) treated myself to two Miss Millies chicken meal deals with cans of coke . . back home and ate one of the meals . . .napped until woken by Mum calling around 7:30pm! Briefly touched base and explained I was running late and I'd catch her later . . .walked. The field and all the surrounding roads were absolutely COVERED in price tickets!!? Someone had apparantly stolen several huge rolls of special offer sticky price tickets on waxed paper, from a Morrisons store, and the 'streamers' were blowing in the breeze everywhere - on the grass, in the hedges, in the trees, in the road - everywhere! Didn't notice until I got home - poor Sally had them all stuck to her fur! . . . touched base with BB . . . touched base with Mum . . . microwaved and ate my second Mis Millies meal deal of the day . . . PCd until around 5am. May have managed to use the rest of that night time drive I did a few weeks ago, to cobble together another (really rather featureless - but nice music) video! :o) s
2 - Woken by BB calling before 7am!! In my sleep I somehow thought it was one of my alarms going off, and somehow got up and just hung up the phone as though I was turning the alarm off!! lol . . . walked Sally and then inevitably back to sleep . . .woken around 11am by BW calling the ansaphone, but managed to just turn over and go back to sleep. . woken within the hour by BW calling at the door! Welcomed him, his girlfriend and their dog in, and then carefully brought Sally back in on her leash at first. Wasn't long before she was back off her leash and 'putting up with' the invasion of her space. She is SUCH a cool dog - to accept such an invasion - complete with another dog, without too much complaint. God I'm SO lucky to have her. :o) . inflicted some of my videos on them before watching the couple of their holiday snaps DVDs . . . ate a microwaved tin of stewed steak with four pieces of bread and butter as soon as they'd all gone, and then pretty soon after, late afternoon went back to bed . . . woken by Sally around 7pm . . walked. Still quiet out. Nice - but weird! . . . TVd. Ended up watching 'The Sky At Night' which did a feature on the eclipse. Felt kindof a 'part of it all' after having done my little amateur version - and in fact, based on some of the footage they showed, my little effort wasn't half bad! :o) . . ate five toasted and buttered hot cross buns before eventually to bed at getting on for 2am. s
1 - Woken by Sally around 7:30am . . . BB called . . . walked in some early sun. Sure is starting to feel like spring at last. Ended up walking home with a daffodil poking out of my lapel (camera/mobile phone) pocket. Some kid had been in the field last night with an armfull, pulled out of who knows whos garden! Found 3p . . . wrote out a signed 'statement' of when and where I'd found the nail gun, left Sally at home and drove to Staple Hill police station to hand it in. (Even engaged my MP3 player before I went in, expecting to get the usual 'disapproval' of me having handed stuff in at the 'wrong' station - but this time they didn't 'complain'.) No - I have no intention of attempting to claim it back if it isn't claimed by its rightful owner, but YES, I DO want a receipt please! I just feel SO paranoid about everything now (after that defence attorney 'grilling' the other day) that I figure I need to be really careful about absolutely EVERYTHING. Wanted a receipt just in case there was some future accusation from some quarter, that I hadn't handed it in!!! :o( . . . couldn't seem to 'get going' at anything and simply ended up on the PC surfing around and around looking at motherboards and processors and memory and CCTV systems and associated 'components' and basically just wasting away the day! . . . lay down for more sleep, but my mind is STILL going over all this recent nonsense, and I ended up getting back up and eating half a chicken with four pieces of bread and butter with half a tub of coleslaw . . . TVd a bit before eventually back to sleep . . . woken by Sally around 7pm . . .walked. Blimey - all quiet out again!? What on earth has come over the area all of a sudden? Don't get me wrong - I'm NOT complaining!!!! :o/. . .I don't feel very well. If I'd ever had any real experience of 'fainting', I imagine this is how it feels before you do! :o( . . . touched base with BB . . . TVd/PCd. . . I think - um - well - I think I must come to the conclusion that I have been (further) 'damaged' by 'recents events'. I just CANNOT clear it from my thoughts - ALL the time!!! I think my analysis of it is - the court case with its restrictions and 'pin point' focus on that one specific event , the 'mawling' I received at the hands of the defence, the abscence of any opportunity to give an impact statement of the ongoing stuff, etc etc etc. - did NOT give me the partial closure I'd anticipated. Not one little bit. :o( "well meaning but not necessarily well " - yeah. For sure NOW!!! :o( . . . somehow ended up PCing until the early hours, messing around with the eclipse video footage from the other day. . .called a halt and uploaded to the site around 5am . . cancelled the halt, and finally uploaded the 'paedo' taunt video from the 26th March. Jeezuz christ - can you even imagine how much that f****** hurts! ::o( s
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