According to an email I’ve just received, the broadband at home is now running on Tiscali rather than BT.

Of course, I’m working in Essex today, so won’t know if it’s actually worked until I get home tonight and get it all set up. All the same, fingers crossed that it’s all worked smoothly, so I don’t have to spend time tonight swearing at connections etc.

I’m vaguely optimistic - but at the same time, I’m fully expecting to get home and have no broadband at all. I’m cynical like that.

So we’ll just have to see what works, and whether everything’s set up or not. You may (or, of course, may not) hear more about this tonight, depending on ye olde connectivity.

Over the last month, I’ve had a really irritating cough - not a chesty cough at all, but more of a persistent tickle at the back of my throat. It’s mainly kicked in when I’ve been talking, and has made me cough each time I spoke.

So last Friday I finally got round to making an appointment to see the doctor. They couldn’t see me until today, which was fine as I was working away from home for Monday and Tuesday.

And of course the cough, after a month of hanging around, completely cleared up between Monday and Tuesday. Typi-fucking-cal.

I still went to the docs, as there were a couple of other bits I needed to ask about, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Just pretty much a waste of time. Hey Ho.

On the plus side, at least I now know who my doctor is…

What’s wrong with this picture?

Yep, a barrier to stop people cycling - right next to a wide-open space, with nothing to stop people just cycling onto that instead.

Genius.

Over the last few weeks, while driving on the A127 I’ve kept seeing a sign with this mysterious message…

Gallows Corner F/O closed [date]

The date’s irrelevant, but that “F/O” has had me befuddled each time. What the fuck is an F/O ?

I found out today (they’d finally put in the full text on one warning sign) so I know what it is.

But can you work it out? I’d be interested to know whether it’s just me being a twat, or whether it really relied on local knowledge…

[Updated : OK, it looks like it was just me being a twat, as the first two commenters both got it right. F/O somehow equates to ‘Flyover’.]

Ways to make me feel old:

I’ve just seen an advert for Now That’s What I Call Music 70. Yes, fucking seventy.
I actually had NTWICM 1 and 2. So seeing it come to #70, yeah, that’s pretty certain to make me feel old.

A quiet weekend online here, due to the fact that we had my parents here for the weekend. As a result, yes, no updates to D4D™. Them’s the breaks.

It’s actually been a really nice weekend, actually. The village had a flower festival in its two churches, which we visited as Mother is an avid flower-arranger - and which was really enjoyable. We also visited one of the other nearby villages, which has had it’s annual “Teddy Bear festival”, the insanity of which my parents loved.

Along with a couple of very good meals out, it’s been a very pleasant weekend all told. And yes, sometimes it’s just nice to be offline for a bit as well.

Today, the BBC is making some kind of big story out of the fact that the new visitor centre at the top of Mount Snowdon is going to be delayed until next year. The reason? There’s been a lot of bad weather while they’re building the thing.

The authority said progress on the scheme had been “remarkable” considering the conditions, including snow, heavy rain and winds regularly gusting over 80 mph.

Now my problem with this is simple - surely all the bad weather detailed above is exactly what you’d expect when you’re on the top of a mountain that’s some 3,560ft (nearly 1,100m) above sea level. What the fuck did they expect on a mountain top in Wales? Perfect sunny weather for two years?

So I just don’t see why it’s such a big thing - it would be far more newsworthy if the thing had been opened on time. In fact, it would be far more newsworthy if Carillion, the contractors, had actually planned the project and timescales correctly in the first place. Common sense, competence and professionalism breaks out? That’s a story that would be front page news at the moment.

I’ve just started off the (hopefully fairly painless) process of switching broadband providers. As we’ve been in the house a year now, I knew that the contract with BT was up, so the time was right for changing.

With BT, the broadband was costing me £25 per month for unlimited downloads etc.
With Tiscali, the same deal will be costing me £15 per month.

I know people have said that Tiscali’s customer services aren’t great, but I don’t expect to be using that side of the service much. So we’ll see how things go.

The changeover should happen in about ten days time - so if I fall off the face of the world at the end of the month, you can be sure that the first post on my return will be one cursing Tiscali and the twelve month contract I’ve just entered into…

Way back in May, Gert left a comment on a post I’d written about local elections.

And why on earth should national and international factors matter in local elections? Or are you saying people are too thick to understand democracy…which is a rather patronising view?

Now, at the time I wasn’t saying that at all. But when I look at certain politics stories, it’s certainly true that both the media and the various political parties do connect national and local politics in local elections.

You only have to look at yesterday’s stories about Gordon Brown postponing the 2p fuel duty rise - “The planned 2p fuel duty rise is postponed - but Gordon Brown denies the move is linked to next week’s by-election.” (the BBC’s summary paragraph)

And in last week’s by-election win by David Davis, the story carried a quote of “Mr Davis said: ‘We have fired a shot across the bows of Gordon Brown’s arrogant, arbitrary and authoritarian government.’”

So yes, it certainly seems like there’s plenty of people who do connect up national and local elections and politics.

I swear, Psycho Cat has the cushiest life sometimes. This morning, after a hard night out going in and out all the time, we found him sleeping like this…

It’s a hard life, isn’t it?

Oh, and yes, that is my manky foot at the top of the first photo. Shows the poxy creature’s brave, as well as a lazy little git.

Out of interest, how is this supposed to make anyone decide to not download films?

The logic behind some adverts just leaves me utterly bemused…

There’s something about this story that’s just bizarre.

A man - the last resident of a block destined for redevelopment - is found in his house beheaded by a chainsaw. And the police say it’s “non-suspicious”.

Now it’s obvious that I read far too many crime/thriller type novels, but the entire thing just sounds dodgy as shit to me. If nothing else, it’s an impressive way to kill yourself - using a chainsaw to behead yourself.

Still, as I’ve said before, I’ve just got a cynical mind.

I know, I’m writing a lot about driving standards at the moment - it’s mainly because I seem to be doing one hell of a lot of driving at the moment on some of the poxier roads in the region, namely the A14, A127, M11 and M25.

The great majority of those roads are dual-carriageway. Obviously the M25 isn’t, and a small section of the M11 isn’t - but the great majority is dual-carriageway.

And the more I drive on them, the more I’m convinced that if there were one new law/rule that would improve traffic flow and reduce road congestion (and, not coincidentally, driver frustration) it would be to insist that truck drivers can’t overtake on dual carriageways.

I’ve lost count of the number of times over the last few weeks where the entire road has been held up because two or three fuckwit bastard truck drivers have been playing leapfrog down the M11. All it does is lead to jammed up traffic - not stationary, but jammed up and queueing behind the trucks for miles, which just then leads to people being stupid and making stupid manoeuvres any time they see a gap. God knows, it’s tempted me on occasion to drive past the shit-for-brains twats on the hard shoulder. I never have - but dear Lord, it’s been a temptation.

So yes, to sort out a lot of driver frustration and traffic hassle, that’s the law that should be made. No overtaking for truck drivers. And if they don’t like it, well, they shouldn’t have driven like arseholes in the first place.

One of the jobs that’s been hanging around for a while at home (OK, since we bought the house) is that there was a little dividing wall between patio and garden - and that wall was shot. There were various cracks and wobbles in the wall, and it wasn’t really all that safe to sit on, for example.

This weekend, we’ve hired (yet another) skip, with the aim of getting rid of the wall, and various other large bits of garden stuff (masses of willow branches, for example, and a couple of unruly bushes that just need killing) that we just can’t be arsed to also take to the local tip etc. So a skip it is.

The wall came down in two hours flat, and in that time it was only the bottom two rows of bricks that required any real input from the 4lb lump hammer. The rest came apart by hand - which, when you think about it, is pretty scary in itself. It’s all gone, and the patio area’s appearance has changed massively without it.

The garden stuff took a bit longer, but we’ll still be able to get rid of the skip on Monday morning, which helps minimise the costs of having it.

All told, a pretty productive Saturday.

Hound woke us both up this morning by repeatedly jumping on the bed.

Now, an hour later, I’m still awake (and writing rubbish like this) and Hound is fast asleep in her basket.

And it’s still only 8am. It must be a weekend.