Former UK MP Jane Griffiths got to vote for the first time in France in the elections last weekend.
It’s apparently not a case of taking a stubby bit of pencil into a polling booth there.
Mind you, it’s not that I’ve done that myself in the UK for years, since I’ve almost always had a postal vote, as a person who’s normally a little on the busy side on polling day.
I’m at Lib Dem conference all week in the lovely shiny new Liverpool Arena. I’m blogging like crazy over on LibDemVoice.org, and plucking up the courage to use my new podcasting thingy.
I always forget just how lovely Liverpool is. I’ve been here two or three times before, on a ringing tour in the 90s, visiting friends in Crosby, and probably one other time. P’s sister used to work here as a junior writer on Brookside (apparently one of the few streets in Liverpool not to get FOCUS leaflets).
And yet I never remember it’s a great place. I really must come back as a tourist some time and spend some proper time in the city – hopefully at a time when the city is NOT ram-packed with a conference and a home match, and the hotels are rubbing their hands in glee and charging top whack.
It’s not just me – even my alma mater is getting into lighter-than-air flight:
Sorry if this is old hat for you, but a link from that nice Joel Derfner points me at Garfield Minus Garfield, which is hilarious and disturbing all at the same time.
Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolor disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
Friends, meet Jon Arbuckle. Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against lonliness and methamphetamine addiction in a quiet American suburb.
Just felt a terrible earthquake shuddering through the house and setting the whole heating system in motion, with the hot water cylinder behind me shaking alarmingly.
Then nothing. All went quiet. No-one out in the street. A few car alarms going off. P waking up violently and asking what the hell it was.
Then phone goes off, and for a good twenty minutes, Twitter scooped the 24-hour news channels. It’s clear that it’s big – I expected to hear from Troubled Diva the other side of town, but to hear from Alan as well – in Manchester – means it’s pretty damn big. For a while, all the news from Twitter keeps us pretty informed, but before long, it’s on the telly and internet as well.
Here’s my twitter record – not including all the extra ones that come up because I’m tracking whenever anyone anywhere mentions “Nottingham” – and in reverse chronological order.
Two new art galleries are currently under construction in Nottingham – one nearly finished and one still a while off. They are CCAN, the Centre for Contemporary Arts Nottingham, and the New Art Exchange in Hyson Green, which bills itself as the only centre for black art outside London.
Thing is, both have slightly silly names.
A twitter message just arrived which says CCAN is going to be called just “Nottingham Contemporary” which sounds like it has something missing. And also brings up loads of false positives when you google it.
And info about the New Art Exchange comes from an email address on the domain thenewartexchange.org.uk which took a while to parse. I first read it as Thane Wart Exchange, which seemed to be a good way of getting herpes from MacBeth rather than a centre for art excellence.
Trolleygarchy. Ho ho.
Other felicitous phrases spotted by umrats recently have included “nine-year tenure” and… another I can’t remember.
There was a peculiar orange tint reflecting on the buildings in the city centre, but driving mostly eastwards on my way home I didn’t see the actual sunset, a really striking blood red, until I turned into my street
The photo is OK, but it barely does the natural colours justice.
A link on the City Council’s intranet site reminds me that it is LGBT History Month, and points out some useful information about what’s happening in Nottingham.
The Rainbow Flag will be flying from the Council House from tomorrow until the 18th Feb (must remember to bring camera in with me to committee).
There are exhibitions – one in Waterstones from 12 – 17 Feb and one in the Angel Row library from 18 – 29 Feb.
But much more interestingly, there was a link to a website I previously hadn’t found, which says that a Nottingham LGBT history group has been awarded over £40,000 to do some research and create an archive about gay history here in the city. To that end, there are some fascinating pages on their site for every decade since 1967. Lots of interesting information about historical venues in the city, the wider campaign for gay rights, and some nasty spats with the City and County Councils. The link to the pages is from the “themes” page.
Today I had my two-year optician check-up, and my eyes are still getting a little worse every year. Today’s optician was chattier than many and explained a bit more what was going on. After a lifetime of “better one or two” I do have some clue what the various bits of the test are for, but much is still a mystery. I also did an eye project back when I still did science, and my kindly local ophthalmologist took me through eye anatomy.
Today’s interesting info is that short-sightedness is caused by a stretched eyeball. There are ramifications for those of us who are very short-sighted – because the eyeball is already a little deformed, it’s less distance to travel for a detached retina. I was warned that if I ever have bright flashing lights before my eyes, or a curtain effect screening off portions of vision, I should make a visit to eye-casualty or an optician a priority. And apparently short-sighted people shouldn’t bunjee-jump.
Two weeks and many hundreds of pounds later, I will have two nice new pairs of glasses. The lovely new pair I got two years ago were not as long-lived as they need to be. The combination of thin wire frames and thick lenses meant the frames broke three times in two years and had to be posted off to a warehouse for resoldering.
And my prescription? Deteriorating very slowly – half a dioptre change in two years in both eyes taking me now to -8.5 and -8.75. Last time was the first time I had been over 8, a change I noticed because it took much longer to have frames made, and many internet specs shops no longer cater for that strength prescription. This time I noticed the difference because the optician added up the score and told me I only just failed to qualify for a free eye test next time. And apparently if my sight worsens further, the NHS will start to contribute towards the costs of specs. A whole £12 towards a £300 pair of specs. Mustn’t grumble.
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