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The Hitchhiker’s Guide

Tuesday, May 3rd, 2005

Yesterday we went to see the long-awaited movie of ‘The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’, a film that took so long to get made that Douglas Adams once said it was like trying to cook a steak by having people file past and breathe onto it. It was good. The Guide itself had amazingly few bells & whistles but Slatibartfast’s part was breathtaking.

I read the HGG for the first time just before coming to England in 1987 and watching the film left me with a warm and fuzzy feeling about what a wonderful country this is (in summer at least). That was until we passed the first Tory placard on the way home. Lately, all the green fields around Tadley have sprouted blue signs. The election is the day after tomorrow and I am shitting it. The war will cost Labour dearly. Everyone realises that of course a Tory government would have gone to war—a great deal more eagerly at that. But the consensus on the left is that at least the Tories are honest bastards. I hope they do not forget, not for one moment, that their campaign is fought on intolerance.

While we’re on the subject of zoology: Don’t miss ‘Dr Tatiana’s Sex Guide to all Creation’ on Channel 4 tonight—highly recommended!

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Sitting on the Fence

Wednesday, March 30th, 2005

So here I am, sitting on the fence. I mean not literally, although some of the seventy-odd peace activists have scrambled up the mesh fence that marks the outermost ring of AWEs formidable defenses (the police don’t take notice, they are standing by the entrance around the corner. The atmosphere is very laid back and laissez-faire).easterbunny.jpg
[read on]

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Easter Protest

Saturday, March 26th, 2005

“It is as if the politicians are still operating in a parallel universe where natural laws do not apply. They would never dare to deal with fiscal meltdown in the same cavalier manner.” (Editorial, New Scientist 26th March)

The Editorial in New Scientist refers to last month’s ‘Stabilisation 2005’ meeting on climate change in Exeter. Although the government convened the meeting as part of its initiative during the G8 presidency, it does not appear that politicians listen to the scientists’ conclusion that “the risks are more serious than previously thought”. Some of the ‘tipping points’—events which result in irreversible change—may only be a decade away. Yet, none of these findings were discussed during a meeting of senior ministers on climate change in the UK last week. Too little, too late.

When I was young, the biggest threat came from a nuclear holocaust. Perhaps this threat has now been replaced by pending environmental disaster, but that does not mean that we should be complacent about the danger of nuclear weapons. Apparently, the government is commissioning a new generation of warheads to be build at AWE—the complex is not mainly engaged in decomissioning these days, as I had naïvely assumed. This Easter Monday, there will be a demonstration outside the fence:

EASTER RESISTANCE ON 28th MARCH AT AWE

I’ll be there and will report more about the event and what is going on at our friendly neighbourhood facility during next week.

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The Calcutta Cup Match

Monday, March 21st, 2005

THE CALCUTTA CUP
PRESENTED TO THE RUGBY FOOTBALL UNION
BY THE CALCUTTA FOOTBALL CLUB
AS AN INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGE CUP
TO BE PLAYED FOR ANNUALLY BY ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND
1878
(Inscription at the base)
[read on]

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Tadley Tidbits

Monday, February 21st, 2005

Conservation in the pub on Friday night:

Man at Bar: “From listening to you I’d reckon you are European.”

“Wow…” I pondered this for a while, looked around, shrugged and added: “Aren’t we all?”

Shocked silence. The man looked at me aghast. So did the other people lining the bar three-deep.

“I mean—last time I looked, Britain was part of Europe.”

In the resulting silence I grabbed my pints and headed back to the table. For a moment I had forgotten that I live in the Tadley Universe.

Nothing but green fields…

A knock on the door on Sunday afternoon: T, a former Goldsmith’s postgrad and now maths lecturer in Reading, had dropped by for a visit reckoning the cool, clear day was ideal for cycling (he’s Dutch). He was a little addled and worn-out. Shaking his head he spread the Ordnance Survey map on the living room floor and pointed at the shortcut he had planned to take—when he had ran into a perimeter fence that looked like a scaled-down version of the former East German border.

“Ah…that is AWE—our Friendly Neighbourhood Atomic Weapons Establishment!”

“But”, he continued to shake his head: “There’s nothing there but green fields!”

We showed him the map in our information leaflet where the facility and its smaller neighbour where marked with fat yellow splotches, surrounded by a fall-out radius centred on the nuclear reactors they don’t have.

But it is true—neither facility is marked on the ordnance maps of the area. Their existence is hardly a secret, AWE even has its own website and regularly advertises job offers in New Scientist. Perhaps they reckon by not marking it on the map they make it impossible for terrorists to find and crash an airliner into it.

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Tadley Twilight Zone

Monday, February 14th, 2005

I have had my suspicions that we have moved to an alternative universe for some time now, but it gets weirder by the day.
[read on]

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Sunny Skies

Sunday, January 23rd, 2005

I have noticed a strange phenomenon. Occasionally, when I wake up in the morning, golden light streams through the windows and the sky is a strange eggshell blue. It is sunny—in January! Apparently here in the South of England only 52% of days are overcast. No wonder that caterpillars feed in winter!

It doesn’t make me give up on my plans to move to Brisbane, though.

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Invasion of the Green Caterpillars

Friday, January 21st, 2005

At first, the only signs of past life in the house were the papery, dried-out carcasses of flies on the windowsills, but now the place is gradually being recolonized by local wildlife. Yesterday I spotted a woodlouse crawl slowly across the foorboards and the first tiny spiders have started to appear in the bathroom and kitchen—no doubt they will grow much bigger. But an oddity that puzzles me is The Invasion of the Green Caterpillars.
[read on]

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The Enforcers

Friday, January 21st, 2005

The TV licensing people in this country are nasty and vicious people who should have been out of a job by the time ITV was introduced—although I have little doubt that they will go on to find gainful employment as debt collectors or enforcers.
[read on]

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2004: a local review

Tuesday, January 4th, 2005

The final edition of the Basingstoke Observer, picked up at Sainsbury’s, carried a review of local events in 2004—”the year of living dangerously”.

Among accounts of vandalism, post office closures, rottweiler attacks, anti-nuclear protests and the (mis-)fortunes of Basingstoke’s seemingly only strip-club, the account reads:

“JULY
ARMS-dealing Chineham Granddad David Tomkins pleaded guilty in a Florida courtroom for attempting to assassinate notorious Columbian drug lord Pablo Escobar with a Vietnam War-era ground assault aircraft.
Hart celebrated the launch of the nationwide bat-protection programme ‘Operation Bat’ by accidentally chainsawing through an Odiham bat roost, killing at least one bat in the process.
Oakley residents were grinning from ear to ear when a government survey named the village as the happiest place to live in Britain.”
(Basingstoke Observer, Thursday, December 30, 2004, p. 4)

—Quite a lively neighbourhood then, seeing that aircraft assaults merit no more attention than assaults on bat roosts.

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