Goodbye Ben

BBC NEWS | England | Oxfordshire | British boy killed skiing in US

Ben Trichler was at Uffington School, the one my son goes to, till the summer, and then moved on to King Alfred's in Wantage (I think), in the same year as my step-daughter. His mum is also the teaching assistant in Dan's class. Ben was very bright, clever, very sporty - a striking-looking boy who everyone knew.

This is really sad. I don't know him or his mum more than being at Dan's school but feel so upset now. 11 years old ... what a bloody waste :(

Goodbye Ben - we'll never forget you.

NYE vandals strike close to home

I drove through our local town, Wantage, at about teatime on New Year's Eve, and later Ulen asked me I whether I'd noticed if the statue of King Alfred had been boarded up - apparently in previous years it's been a target for drunken vandals and was normally boarded up, but it ended up more dangerous as the idiots just threw bits of broken noarding all over the square so for the last few years there had been police keeping watch instead.

Presumably it wasn't boarded again this year, otherwise this wouldn't have happened: BBC NEWS | England | Oxfordshire | King Alfred's arm left in pieces.

Disgraceful, and very sad to read. Yet strangely, I was in Wantage this morning and didn't notice the damage. I guess when you see something every day you don't really take it in.

Happy New Year ..... let's hope it gets better than this.

Books I read in 2007

I set myself a challenge at the beginning of 2007 to read a book a week ... didn't manage to do it but I got to 45, which isn't bad considering I've spent a big chunk of this year setting up my own business and dealing with Dan's increasingly difficult behaviour. maybe I'll manage it this year - though I think the challenge for this year is a book by an author for every letter of the alphabet, not necessarily in order ... just to get me reading a wide variety.

Anyway, here's my top ten books that I read in 2007 (in no particular order):

The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Book Thief - Marcus Zusak
The Crimson Petal and the White - Michael Faber
Daniel Isn't Talking - Marti Leimbach
Emotional Geology - Linda Gillard
George and Sam - Charlotte Moore
The Boy in Striped Pajamas - John Boyne
A Lifetime Burning - Linda Gillard
Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince - JK Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - JK Rowling

my hubbie's running the London marathon!!

My lovely husband Ulen is going to be running the 2008 London Marathon to raise funds for Volunteer Reading Help. This charity trains and supports volunteers to go into schools to support disadvantaged children who are having reading difficulties. If you can, please sponsor him, however little - it all helps!

Ulen's never done anything like this before so preparing and training for the marathon is going to be a huge challenge for him - you can follow his progress and leave him a supportive note in his blog at madasaboxoffrogs

You can also sponsor him at JustGiving.com/madasaboxoffrogs

Gig review - The Winchell Riots, Zodiac, Oxford

The Winchell Riots are fast becoming my new favourite band. Rising from the ashes of the magnificent Oxford band Fell City Girl, The Winchell Riots have a harder rockier edge but vocalist Phil's voice still has its softer sweeter moments that make this a band full of passion and variety.

Their second gig was at truck Festival and was marred by some dodgy acoustics in The Barn, but their third gig - at the newly refurbished Zodiac, supporting iLiKETRAiNS, was far better and really demonstrated the talent this band has. One to watch out for!

Incidentally, I didn't take to iLiKETRAiNS at all - too little variety in what they did, which was, on the whole, deeply depressing and dull, if professionally performed. Not one for me, I'm afraid, and neither was the other support band, A Girl Called Calla, who were too experimental in that some of what they did worked but most didn't. What's with the screaming because you've dropped your harmonica, FFS?!

And while we're talking music, check out The Race's new stuff ..... I'm really looking forward to their second album!

Keep on Trucking!

The weekend was fab, we went to the rescheduled Truck Festival and it was ace! Saw lots of really good bands, some I already knew (like Goldrush and Electric Soft Parade, who were both amazing) and some new ones (including Low Fi Culture Scene, a group of 13 and 14 year olds who ROCKED!). The weather was good, sunny all Saturday and a bit drizzly Sunday evening but not enough to get us wet. The kids were well behaved, Katie loved the bands, Dan spent all his time in the playbus or learning Diablo and Loz made crafty things in the kids tent. A bit weird being at a festival so late in the year but well done to the Truck boys for getting it on!!

Truck Festival, woohoo!!

This should have been a free weekend, but because of the video above, we're off to the Truck Festival, for what looks like being a really good weekend - so long as it doesn't rain!!!

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Real Story | Recyclers' rubbish dumped abroad

BBC NEWS | Programmes | Real Story | Recyclers' rubbish dumped abroad

I found this story, about recycled waste from the UK heading to a false address in Indonesia, very shocking. We meticulously sort through our rubbish each week to make sure that everything that can be recycled, is. What's the point, if unscrupulous councils are just shipping it off to be dumped across the sea somewhere?

Aargh what a cock up

Aaaargh I am so angry with myself.

It just occurred to me this afternoon that the company that prints my magazine hadn't let me know when the proofs were online for me to check - I only thought about it now because I had an email from them on a vaguely related matter. So I decided to have a quick look anyway, even though the magazine has already been printed, waited ages for the file to download (I send individual page PDFs which are put together into one big file) and then discovered that for some reason the logo on one of the ads (full page, new client) has disappeared.

My fault entirely - it's happened somehow when I re-did all the pages to add my new phone number and I've not looked at the top of the page, only the bottom - where the number was - so it means Blakes Wine Bar now have this lovely ad that doesn't actually mention their name.

Oddly no one at the printers picked it up and I've just asked them why I didn't get asked to check the proofs as usual and apparently because I sent the pages through a bit later because of changing the number there wasn't time for the proofing process - although they said it was fine me sending things a day late.

AAAAARGH!!!!!

So now I'm going to have to go in to see the client and grovel and offer them a full refund (well, not to pay as they haven't yet) and promise faithfully to get it right next issue.

Gutted ....... can't believe I've screwed up so badly. :(

NobodyHere

I did post about the amazing site NobodyHere ages ago, but it deserves another mention. I don't really know what the point is - maybe there isn't a point, that's the point - but it's a great place to have a play around in if you don't want to actually do anything meaningful!