amongst the broken glass

this is great, straight from the soul.

Paul's Peccadillo

Discovered my friend Paul Northup's blog Peccadillo today. Wow! He has written loads of good stuff already, and he's only been going since the beginning of January. And pretty much every day too - puts me to shame. I shall definitely be visiting often. Lots to think about in there already...

first ride of the year

Stroud to Hereford yesterday - approx 40 miles

Well, actually I only managed 28. I was going great guns till Newent, then the hills up to Gorsley and into Herefordshire to Upton Bishop really started to take their toll. My thighs were killing but I was just going to keep plodding on. But when I crossed the A449 my right thigh just seized up and so I called Jen to come and pick me up. Talk about sense of failure! Anyway I suppose I should have expected it with no warm up and no riding since last summer. I'll make it next time...

I hadn't noticed before that Herefordshire was so undulating.

Crazy stuff

At Christmas the kids at the holiday club I run made up a new version of the Twelve Days of Christmas song. Here are the gruesome details - yes I know they don't make any sense at all. (Like the original makes a lot of sense!)

12 toilets flushing
11 annoying kids
10 teachers tutting
9 monkeys swinging
8 frozen keys
7 sausages praying
6 children playing
5 chocolate fingers
4 catalogues
3 french tourists
2 ninja turtles...

...

and a robin in a Christmas tree!

If you actually try singing the song with a group of mates (preferably, but not necessarily, kids) it is totally hilarious.

I'm in a dilemma about tactical voting... but I just *can't* vote Labour

Martin Kettle's piece Are you thinking what I'm thinking about the election? is well written and well researched.

I think he's right (although obviously he's trying to galvanise Labour voters rather than supporting the Conservatives) ... but I'll be voting for the party I believe in (Lib Dem) in Stroud instead of voting tactical Labour. The Labour party seem to be deaf to the electorate's cry that they will get hammered because they didn't get rid of Blair over Iraq. If Gordon Brown were PM their re-election would be virtually guaranteed.

I think at the moment I would rather the Tories came back rather than another term of Blair and co. We might get Boris Johnson as Foreign Secretary or something in a couple of years time - how cool would that be?!

Yay! Drivel (ver. 1.3) now supports the Blogger API. Just testing it...