Forget the woman or the black guy for US Prez, I’m voting for (newly engaged) Faustus, aka Joel Derfner.

Derfner has the sort of back-catalog that almost assures a person of great office in the States:

He is, significantly, the only presidential hopeful to have commented on my blog.

Seriously – I watched, open-mouthed, some of the coverage of the Iowa caucus, and some of the reactions of candidates afterwards. Barack don’t impress me much. I just know that Clinton will get strong anti-reactions from anyone who isn’t already a Democrat, and opens an easy line of attack campaign – who ever thought that a Clinton would be back in the Whitehouse? There are enough people in the States for whom Clinton is still a bad word, balanced budget or no. Actually, the best performer on the night struck me as Edwards, so I’m plumping arbitrarily for him. (Even though he didn’t cross my radar at all as vice-presidential candidate in ’04, and I couldn’t name him last month when someone asked who was Kerry’s running mate… And it just took me two goes to remember his first name…)

Hmm, I have tried to add a banner to this post, and something keeps eating it. Specifically, a rogue line of code

style="display: none"

is stopping it displaying. Mysterious. Clearly WordPress hates John Edwards.

The court case for the Noise Abatement Order is finally having its days in court.  We were listed for a three day hearing in front of a (the?) District Judge back in May.  Courts are busy places, and the days allotted to us have finally ticked round.  Yesterday was the first day, and the case made very slow progress.  I arrived an hour after the listed time, and the lawyers weren’t yet in court – they’d been sent away by the judge to see if they could reach a compromise.  After a fair bit of toing and froing and repeatedly viewing the Council’s video evidence, it became clear that a compromise could not be reached, so we eventually wound up trooping into court at around 1130.

At which point, there was just about time for the bus company’s barristers to start his opening statement before we had to break for lunch.

I watch a lot of court room drama on TV.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Law and Order, and can watch it for hours on end.

The bus company’s barrister is no Jack McCoy. The opening statement was slow and technical, and described in painful detail his take on the laws the Council think the bus company have breached.  I struggled to stay awake.  I think someone has sneakily been decaffeinating my coffee again.

At 2.15, we came back to the court and the appellant barrister continued.  Then we saw half an hours worth of video evidence.  This consisted of lots of shots of buses reversing noisily into garages in the middle of the night.

Eventually the videos finished and there was more talking.  Finally the barrister prepared to call his first witness, the bus company MD… but then offered the judge the chance to wrap up early!  “This witness will take some time, which will take us beyond four – maybe we could reconvene tomorrow?”

So in a day in court, we spent much of the time sitting in the reception waiting for lawyers to talk privately.  Although the Council’s lawyer did have the occasional chance to respond to some points, she barely got a chance to speak.

The case continues (as they say in newspapers.)

The case continued all today, with the judge adamant the case would begin bang on the dot of 10am.  However, unfortunately, today I have not been able to be in Nottingham, so I am left not knowing how it went.  Local residents were due to testify today, but given how slowly yesterday went, I may yet get to see them tomorrow.

All very different to how court cases seem on TV!

One of the most interesting things about running a blog is seeing how people who had no intention of reading what you have to say and know nothing about you ended up landing on your web page.

At the start of the year, I was briefly the top of list on Google when you searched for “Facebook,” which was bizarre.

I’ve had several hundred people land on my when trying to figure out how to make pear crumble. (Pipped to the post by a website called sofeminine.co.uk, a slightly odd website that includes a section on how your star sign should influence your interior design tastes.)

I’m still high up on the list if you google “gay rubber”
But I’ve not had anything quite so strange as Jeremy Hargreaves for a while.

I’m presently writing this as a way of avoiding making phone calls on behalf of an excellent candidate who wants to stand for the Lib Dems for the European Parliament at the next lot of elections.

Although I’m certain the candidate will be great, I’m not keen on speaking to people on the phone at the best of times, and phoning strangers, even strange Lib Dems, gives me the heebie jeebies.

Putting that to one side, and doing my duty, I’m phoning around, but fidgeting while I do it.

During the most recent call, to a keen sounding chap in the Derby area, I was standing up with my hand in my back trouser pocket, when my fingers squished something squidgy that really shouldn’t have been there.

Seamlessly continuing my spiel (“… yes, born and bred in the region…”) I bring my finger into the light to see what it was.

I’m mildly arachnophobic at the best of times, so I wasn’t best pleased to see it was the still wriggling remains of a small brown spider that I’d accidentally crushed. Urgh. This is the reward I get for being green and line-drying my washing.

Shaking the damp legs off my finger, I still managed to close the call without letting on to the guy there was anything amiss.

The things we find ourselves doing for the party.

Tonight, whilst veh, veh drunk, I was introduced to some poor unfortunate whose surname, according to his conference badge, was Cory, and dredging up my Simon and Garfunkel memory, I asked him if he knew Richard Cory.

He had a vague recollection but the fine gentleman I was with, who claimed to own a “Best of” Simon and Garfunkel CD, had no idea idea who Richard Cory was either.

This led to me quizzing the next 20 or so people who came to the bar I was standing near – “Do you know who Richard Cory was?  He owned one half of this whole town?”

No-one knew, but several people had convincing goes at trying to persuade us that they knew everyone who owned one half of any old town.

Finally, one sharp young man whose badge proclaimed him to be Julian Tisi, looked at me askance and hummed a tune and said, “Isn’t it a song?”

Full marks to young Tisi.

It is a song, by Simon and Garfunkel, which I misremembered as being on Wednesday Morning, 3am, when in fact it’s actually the 7th song on Sounds of Silence, and one of two songs about suicide on the one record.

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