When 150 characters just isn't enough...

Annoying, isn't it, when something you've spent time, love and energy on is rejected. When old friends meet you in the street with the warm greeting "oh, it's... well, anyway, how are you?" When your other half welcomes you back home from an arduous day at work with the words "the washing machine's broken." And when, after extensive training with catnip and the Rolled Up Newspaper of Retribution, your feline friend still belives that soft leather sofas make just the best scratching posts.

Imagine my frustration, therefore, to find that the extensive answer to the question posed when updating my profile for this blog was too long, and had to be cut to a mere 150 characters. I was really rather pleased with it. So I've decided to post it here.

The question was: Your aunt has just sent you a maple syrup dispenser shaped like a rooster as a birthday gift. Write a thankyou note to her.

So here goes...


Dear Auntie Mabel

Thank you so much for the kind gift you sent me for my birthday. It really reminded me of how much you mean to me, and ensures that, although birthdays may come and go, this present will always remain in my memory.

So, thank you again for the kind thought. And that reminds me, how is your eyesight? You were having trouble the last time I saw you - would I be right in thinking that you're no better? Do let me know how you're doing.

You'll be pleased to hear that the rooster can join the other menagerie of animal-shaped kitchen novelties you've sent me over the years. As you are aware, my flat is really rather minimalist, and the new chrome and marble kitchen I had installed last week was crying out for something to lift the monochrome.

Your loving nephew,

The Major

PS I completely forgot - it must be your birthday in just a few weeks now. I wonder what I should get for you? I must keep my eyes open - I'm sure I can find something even more individual than you did!

It's simply H2O...

"Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink..."

So cries the Ancient Mariner (possibly... I never was any good at English: science is more my thing). And it's a cry that's being echoed across the wild, and currently parched, plains of Oxford after a building contractor accidently drove a crane through the mains water pipe into my building. Or something. Given this is Britain, and it's currently summertime, it could be that we have the wrong sort of water. Whatever.

For the point is, dear readers, that we have no water. None to drink, none to use in the bathrooms, and none for our experiments. Which is how I come to be writing this, as I wait for my water circulator (a device that, well, circulates water) to slowly warm up from 2 to 25 degrees centigrade. I would normally simply empty out a few litres of cold water and replace them with a similar volume of hot. Unable to do this, I could be here a while.

Which got me thinking just how much water we must use. Apparently the daily volume consumed by every single person in the UK is, on average, 160 litres: that's really rather a lot.

So I propose a solution to this problem, and the current climate-change-influenced shortages we're either currently experiencing, or which in the near future are guaranteed to turn England's green and pleasant land into something resembling the Sahara desert (although possibly without the camals). To paraphrase from that attributed to Marie Antoinette*, "Let them drink wine."

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* As mentioned, I'm not an English student and, unsurprisingly, one would be correct in assuming that, despite a decent grade at GCSE, I'm not much of a historian either. Consequently, I had to Google to discover who made this infamous comment. Imagine my surprise, therefore, to find out (from the font of all knowledge that is Yahoo!) that in all likelihood, Ms. Antoinette was in fact completely innocent of this heinous crime, a far more likely culprit being French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, writing in early 1766! The things you learn when you start wasting time...

Hmmm...

Now I have a blog, I feel that really I should be publishing in it.

There's a part of me that suggests that this is maybe simply an excuse to do anything that avoids work. There's another part of me that feels that writing may be cathartic, or at least more amusing than endlessly browsing through BBC News online, the latest Yahoo! office attachments (they really are rather good, actually, and always worth a glance when one has a spare half hour or so over a tea break), and eBay.

So... what shall I talk about? I could go like my other half has done, and write stories to publish here. Only thing is, I don't have the imagination. I'm a scientist - I do numbers, and equations, and I sit in an office or a lab and spend most of my day prodding computers into something resembling submission. I've found that threats work well - proof positive, should it be required, that computers are more animate than many of the people using them.

Alternatively, I could use this space to try to be amusing, and to offer a brief word of clarity and humour into the humdrum existence of the everyday. Sort of "Thought for the Day" but without the "wouldn't the world be nice if we were all nice" aspect. Only thing is, there're people far better qualified than me to do this, and also I think that I, not to mention you, dear reader, would become bored with impressive speed. In the world 100 metres "lost all sense of interest in this topic", I think I'd be a stong contender.

So, I think I'll opt for the rant. No surprise really - I've been listening to Jeremy Clarkson, Marcus Brigstock and [reading] Bill Bryson for the last... well, many - years now, and it's beginning to rub off on me. Rather like wet paint - you don't notice it until someone else points it out and then it's impossible to remove.

Hello

So... a blog...

There must be a reason as to why I, like so many other people, feel compelled to get one.

I'm just not sure what it is.

However...

This is my blog. Will you enjoy it? Possibly. Will you be enlightened? Probably not. Will it drive you to abandon that crossword, head over to your PC and create your own? Could well be - however this seems to be true of all blogs so nothing unusual there...