Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Arwel Parry's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, May 1st, 2008
12:41 am	A radiation bath... I was just mucking about with the network settings on my laptop, and was amazed to see that my computer can see no fewer than eight different secured wifi networks, including my own. It makes you wonder just how many low level radio emissions there are in the world today. Current Mood: surprised (Comment on this)
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
10:11 pm	The Youth of Today... Travelling to Manchester this afternoon, I couldn't help overhearing one young lad of about 20 describing the Four Yorkshiremen sketch to his friends on the train. The thing that saddened me was that his mates had never heard of it - it used to be a classic that everyone knew, we must be getting old that gems of classic humour are being lost to the youth of today! The only thing the lad had wrong was saying it's a Monty Python sketch, when we true afficionados know it was first performed on At Last the 1948 Show :) And in an attempt to keep the classics alive, I present The Beast at the Vet's ("it's a Thing"), a masterpiece by the great Marty Feldman from 1968. Current Mood: amused (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Friday, April 18th, 2008
12:18 am	Gwyneth Dunwoody I was shocked to turn to Sky News just after midnight to see them reporting the death of my MP, Gwyneth Dunwoody. I knew from the Crewe blog that she'd recently had heart surgery, but apparently took a turn for the worse last evening. I first got to know her about 18 years ago, when I first got active in Labour politics, and though I've not been very active in recent years I still got Christmas cards, and the occasional bottle of House of Commons whisky, from her. Among other things, I used to help out with her constituency office computers, and thus knew which prominent politicians were on her Christmas card list and which weren't! Gwyneth will be much missed in Crewe - she's been MP here since 1974, and had previously been MP for Exeter between 1966-70. She held the records for longest unbroken service for a woman MP, at 34 years 1 month, and longest total service for a woman MP, at 38 years 3 months. It's very difficult to think of anyone else being the MP, but I suppose we shall shortly have to choose a new candidate and run a by-election :( Current Mood: sad (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Saturday, March 29th, 2008
10:06 pm	Movie economics While I was browsing in Zavvi.co.uk in Birmingham today, it occurred to me that the economics of pricing movie DVD's is completely incomprehensible... Brand new movies seem to cost £15 usually. On the other hand many movies that are only a few years old seem to be so cheap I can't really see how they cover their production and distribution costs - Serenity for £4, Shaun of the Dead for only £3! On the third hand I notice they're still asking £13 for Tora! Tora! Tora! which, if memory serves, is nearly 40 years old. And there're a lot of DVD's in "3 for £20, 5 for £30" offers. I'm a bit put out that a lot of my DVD collection appears to have a brand-new value of £4 each, despite my having paid good money for them when they were new. I also notice that there's now so many different editions of the various Lord of the Rings movies at so many prices, if I didn't already have both the theatrical and extended editions of all three movies I wouldn't dare try buying them now for fear of not being sure exactly what I was buying. (Comment on this)
9:30 pm	Interesting train journey I went down to Birmingham to do a little shopping this afternoon. I was sat in first class at the front of the train, and had already had my pass checked, so the conductor knew I was ex-staff (though I'm not sure if he'd twigged the red square on my pass which means I'm "retired" rather than the green square for active staff). Sometime after Wolverhampton, while I was listening to my iPod and having a read of this week's Economist, I was rather surprised when three youths walked past followed by the conductor - he stopped and asked me to help keep an eye on them, together with a Virgin Trains driver who was also heading to Brum - we were shown a couple of distinctly dodgy tickets, one with a rather obvious piece missing where it had previously been stamped the first time it was used, and a second ticket which was actually laminated so it wouldn't take a stamp! There was also a question as to whether the third lad was actually young enough to have a child ticket... The conductor phoned ahead for the Transport Police to meet the train at New Street station, but typically there was no sign of them when we arrived, so we blockaded the lads in the train managers' office at the front of the train while we waited for the fuzz. After about five minutes we saw a mob of about 8 officers, but they all got onto the Manchester train on the opposite platform - obviously there was a football match somewhere. I went over to try to get one of them to come over to our train, they were a bit reluctant in case they missed their train but they eventually came over all mob-handed, and at least called their control to send a couple more officers down to our train while they disappeared to their match. I can't help thinking that the lads weren't very bright in trying to pull their scam on a Virgin train, as they're quite likely to have a ticket check between Wolverhampton and Birmingham - if they'd got on a London Midland local train it's likely they wouldn't have been checked at all, and would probably have been able to get past the barrier check at New Street without much difficulty with a thumb covering the incriminating part of the ticket... In some 30 years as (ex-)rail staff, this is only the second time I've had to help a conductor in his duties - back in the 80s I was on a train to London when the conductor made an announcement asking any rail staff on the train to come to the guards' van at the front of the train. When I got there I found that the van's door had slid shut and locked him in, since there was no handle on his side of the door! (Comment on this)
Saturday, February 9th, 2008
1:14 pm	Well, I've never done THAT before! I must be getting senile. I woke up this morning, curtains drawn so my bedroom was fairly dark, grabbed todays' pair of disposable contact lenses and put them in my eyes, and promptly effectively went blind, just able to see extremely blurred shapes. I'd badly scared myself until I realised what had happened - I'd fallen asleep last night before taking yesterdays' contact lenses out, and today's lenses had gone on top of them. At -6.5 power each, that's a lot of vision correction, but it was so dark and my eyes were so gritty I hadn't realised I could see better than usual when I woke up! I'm more annoyed at wasting two disposable lenses than anything else. (Comment on this)
Thursday, February 7th, 2008
8:58 pm	Another day out Went down to London for the first time since last summer today - paid a visit to the British Museum money gallery to see if they had any interesting "hands-on" items; today we could examine a 2nd century hoard of Roman denarii that were dug up in Lincolnshire about 9 years ago - I presume they were somewhat tarnished when they were found, but they're in remarkably fresh condition considering that some probably circulated for about 80 years before the hoard was buried (the latest coins date from AD 163, I'm told). I discovered that I seem to have somehow managed to break my Oyster card - at least it was extremely difficult to get it to register on the gate readers, but the staff finally managed to get it to touch-out, so no penalty fare there, then. I've been given a form to fill in to reclaim the value (I'm not letting £15-20 go that easily!), but I'm perplexed by the proof of identity they want - either both part of the driving licence (but wouldn't public transport users be less likely to have one?) or a tenancy agreement or rent book (no good if you own your house outright), a utility bill from within the last month (as it happens, I actually do have an electricity bill from 4 weeks ago) or a bank statement - but all my bank statements and utility bills other than electricity come by email, so I wouldn't think they would prove anything - and they're not seeing my bank account details anyway! (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 6th, 2008
7:28 pm	Presidential candidates Not being American, I don't have much idea of what most of the candidates stand for (do Americans, come to that?), but this interesting little quiz threw up the ones my political views should support: 79% Dennis Kucinich 78% Mike Gravel 76% Chris Dodd 76% Barack Obama 73% John Edwards 71% Hillary Clinton 71% Joe Biden 71% Bill Richardson 38% Rudy Giuliani 35% Ron Paul 31% Mitt Romney 28% John McCain 26% Tom Tancredo 22% Mike Huckabee 22% Fred Thompson 2008 Presidential Candidate Matching Quiz (Comment on this)
Friday, December 28th, 2007
7:48 pm	Holiday travel... Well, here we are half way through the end of year idleness period, so I thought I'd like to get out of the house for a change. This is easier said than done if you don't have your own car. I thought I'd quite like to go down to London for the day - you know, end of year sales, not intending to actually buy anything much, just see what's happening. So last night I took a look at the online rail timetable to see what was running today and was absolutely astonished - yesterday and today there is no attempt to run a train service between Coventry and London, and this weekend and next Monday there's a gap between Northampton and Birmingham International which is being covered by buses; instead of less than two hours on a normal Friday to travel between Crewe and Euston, it'd take between 4 and 5 hours each way to get to Paddington or St Pancras! That idea went out of the window, then, so I decided to go to Manchester instead. Even then, the line between Piccadilly and Stockport is closed, so my train to Manchester got diverted via Warrington to Oxford Road station, but that's not too much of an imposition. Once there I decided to avoid spending money by going to see a film - Will Smith's "I Am Legend", not bad, but it's a long time since I last saw Charlton Heston in "Omega Man", based on the same 1954 Richard Matheson story, and am I misremembering or did the mutants win out in the end in the old movie? After emerging from the cinema into the heavy Mancunian rain which had arrived while I was otherwise engaged, I found myself in Marks & Spencer and persuaded myself to buy some of the underwear and handkerchiefs which they hadn't managed to sell for Christmas! And then to Piccadilly station to catch a bus to the airport, from whence I could get a train home... Current Mood: exhausted (Comment on this)
Tuesday, December 4th, 2007
10:58 pm	A day out I took the day off work today - thanks to taking hardly any time off in the first half of the year when Mam was ill, I've still got three and a half days to take off before the big Christmas break (I've already booked 24th - 31st December off for the usual week and a half's idleness). So I decided to go to Birmingham to have a look round (as it's literally a few years since I've been there other than to raid shops in the enormous new Bull Ring shopping centre, and bookshops near New Street station). For a change, I got off the train at Wolverhampton and took the Metro tram to Snow Hill in Birmingham (fare £2.40 one way), since that's one tram route I've not travelled on before. I was quite surprised how few seats there are on the tram - about 50 I suppose, but then its design seems to be optimised for having standing passengers in the rush hour. Once in Birmingham I was rather impressed by their display of Christmas lights (no "Winterval" nonsense like they had some years ago!) and discovered they've got a rather nice "Frankfurt Christmas Market" in New Street, Victoria Square, and Chamberlain Square - reportedly the worlds' largest German Christmas Market outside Germany and Austria, nearly 100 stalls. I must admit I allowed myself to be tempted by one of the chocolate stalls, though had to control my urges as seven pieces of very nice chocolate set me back nearly a fiver, at £3.99 per 100 grammes! I think I am tempted to go back on Saturday when I may well sample some of the beer emporia on the site... If you're tempted to visit, the Christmas market is open every day until December 23rd, 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, October 16th, 2007
8:15 pm	Well I never... I was browsing my watchlist on Wikipedia yesterday, when I noticed that someone had edited an article called "Dave (channel)". I couldn't remember ever editing an article of that name before, but a little investigation shows that, as of this week, in the UK we do indeed have a TV channel called "Dave" (formerly UKTV G2), and what's more, it's free-to-air on Freeview, marketing itself as "the home of witty banter". A quick glance at the schedules seems to reveal that it's aimed at younger adult males, with a nightly repeat of an old edition of "Top Gear". Apparently the name comes from the discovery during a branding brainstorm that "everybody knows someone called Dave", so I guess it's supposed to be friendly and cuddly. Frankly, I think it sounds daft, but the imagination starts to wonder what other channels might rename themselves as. ITV1 and 2 as "Kevin" and "Tracey" perhaps... Current Mood: amused (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 11th, 2007
11:36 pm	The ongoing War on Drugs Some of the more unusual blogs I like to keep track of are those of the chief officers of the North Wales Police, so I can keep track of what's going on in the area I originally came from. Chief Constable Richard Brunstrom's blog is always interesting reading even if you don't agree with his point of view (and many don't, as he's been dubbed the "Traffic Taliban" in some of the more, err, populist papers for his hardline views on speeding drivers). He's just published a paper "Drugs Policy: a radical look ahead?", which he will be presenting to the North Wales Police Authority next week, for the Authority to consider as a response to the UK Government's current consultation on drugs policy, and the Welsh government's consultation on substance misuse strategy. It's an interesting paper as he makes it clear that he views the current "War on Drugs" policy as having totally failed, and he advocates totally scrapping the current Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and coming up with a completely new drugs policy fundamentally based on legalisation of all drugs, including alcohol and tobacco, and controlling (and taxing) them on the basis of objective harm caused by the drugs, both to individuals and society. One statistic he produces is that in Scotland in 2004, tobacco killed around 13,000 people, alcohol 2052, and all illegal drugs combined, 356. He gives an interesting overview of the history of drugs regulation and policing, and comes up with what I thought was an amazingly forthright condemnation of policy for a senior policeman: discussing the three UN drug control conventions of the 1960s he says "The UN Conventions are borne from postwar thinking (the 1961 Convention includes sections written in the late 1940s). A continuous thread of Prohibitionist thought can be traced back to the early years of the twentieth century in the USA where it is found to be rooted in social and religious attitudes that are abhorrent in modern Britain.". The only thing that worries me is that in this section his reference on Harry J. Anslinger, the chief of the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics from 1930 to 1962 who more or less single-handedly arranged for the criminalisation of marijuana, is Anslinger's Wikipedia article! However there are over 120 other references cited in the paper, so any weakness can be overlooked, and it's not a bad article anyway even if not exactly meeting Wikipedia's NPOV standard! Current Mood: thoughtful (Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 25th, 2007
8:56 pm	Hello World! After all the deaths in my family this year it makes a pleasant change to welcome my first grand-nephew into the world! So hello to Jac Joshua Stanley Parry, who arrived weighing 8 lbs 1 oz (for us old-fashioned folk) at 28 minutes past midnight which coincidentally gives him the same birthday as his grandad! Joshua and Stanley were two of his great-grandfathers, but I see that the Welsh spelling of "Jac" is becoming more popular. Current Mood: happy (Comment on this)
Sunday, September 16th, 2007
12:05 pm	Many a true word... I was browsing in the Birmingham branch of Waterstones bookshop yesterday (the rather impressive one in the old Midland Bank building, not the other one along the street), and I was amused to notice that the CSI tie-in novelisations are shelved in "Science Fiction and Fantasy" along with all the Doctor Who, Torchwood, and Star Trek tie-ins. It's nice to see that someone else shares my opinions of what's scientifically realistic! Current Mood: amused (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, August 27th, 2007
11:40 am	9304 !! I've just scanned my mailbox for the first time in a week, and it's showing 9,304 emails in there... any guesses how many of those are spam? I'm just going to hit "process mail" in Mailwasher to get a first approximation of a clearout, and if Mailwasher mis-classified any important stuff it'll just have to be too bad - life's too short to manually scan all the titles and senders. Nowadays I only collect email on my new laptop, because the spam filter rules for Mailwasher simply got too big for my old 350 MHz Pentium II desktop to handle in a reasonable time. I just hope I don't accidentally delete my phone bill! Email is rapidly becoming useless as a means of communication. Current Mood: exasperated (Comment on this)
Thursday, August 9th, 2007
11:07 pm	Recharging ones' spiritual batteries Today I took a day off work (OK, I'm being lazy and taking tomorrow off too), and because it's conveniently close to me, only about 90 minutes by train and bus, I decided to visit the National Eisteddfod of Wales to recharge my spiritual batteries. I'm slightly astonished, looking at the entry on Wikipedia, to realise that it must be 22 years since I last visited the Eisteddfod Genedlaethol. The Eisteddfod's been lucky to have been blessed with fine weather this week - in the past the site's been a quagmire, and the International Eisteddfod in Llangollen last month got a soaking this year. Non-Welsh people sometimes have an odd idea of what goes on at the "National", thinking it must all be male-voice choirs and brass bands, poetry, and folk dancing, or something, when in truth most of the attenders never set foot inside the main pavillion (I never have, for one) - if you're particularly keen on a particular competition you can always watch it outside on the big screen! In fact, the Eisteddfod Maes (the field) is a major site for just wandering about, meeting friends, buying things, examining the hundreds (if not thousands) of stalls and booths from just about every society and major organisation in Wales you can think of - I recall every university in Wales has a substantial presence, various church, chapel, evangelical and missionary organisations, the Welsh Books Council, the Owain Glyndwr Society (who had his complete family tree, so you could trace his descent from the princely houses), the Princess Gwenllian memorial society, the Vegetarian Society, and numberless others. The BBC's area, apart from containing fully functioning radio and tv studios, also contained the interior of the Tardis - full of kids planning to be the next Rose or Martha! I was strongly reminded of some SF conventions by the technology and science tent, where kids were being exposed to the good old liquid nitrogen method of ice cream production when I passed by! This is "Gwawr" (Dawn), the Welsh entry in next Octobers' Darwin to Adelaide solar powered vehicle competition. It's still incomplete at the moment, and will be painted white before it crosses the Australian desert. One thing that did surprise, and slightly shock me, was that it's now possible to actually buy beer on the Maes! Back in the day, the Maes was resolutely prohibitionist, and the hordes had to go into the host town in order to slake their thirsts, but apparently things have got much more civilised since 2004. I noticed that both the National Assembly and the Welsh Assembly Government had spiffy little pavillions on site - we must be getting more relaxed as a nation, as in the past it was traditional for the Welsh Language Society to stage an occupation of the Welsh Office stand to protest about government policy about the language, but I haven't heard of such antics since devolution came in. Current Mood: footsore (Comment on this)
Friday, July 13th, 2007
11:31 pm	Seeing a life pass in front of your eyes Went to the solicitor for the reading of the will, and to set things in motion today. Got yet another wildly overestimated electricity bill from British Gas (see blog entries from last year), despite them having been provided with accurate meter readings which they promptly ignored - still, they've been given the final readings now, they'll take up to a month to produce the final bills on her account, and then we've got 3 months to pay them while we get probate. We spent the afternoon going through cupboards deciding what to junk (apart from all the out-of-date food supplies, which had been here since she went into hospital in March). Mam always was a packrat - she never threw away anything much; before she moved from the farm to her bungalow, 22 years ago, we went through - and threw away - about 30 years worth of weekly grocery bills (groceries were delivered by van every Tuesday morning in those days!) which were filed on wires from a store-room ceiling! Today we found a huge stock of old biscuit tins retained for no readily apparent reason, and a considerable supply of paper bags... the recycling bins are going to be full this week. I had a sense of seeing my childhood disappear, as some of my childhood games and books are still here and will be going into the skip - there's one box of Ludo "to Arwel from (three of my cousins)", the youngest girl in the family hadn't even been born when I was given that present, and she's 40 now! I must admit to a tear when I junked the very battered and much loved atlas I was given "to Arwel from Nain (grandmother) on his 9th birthday, 1967", price 10/9 (that's 53.5p to you modern folks, but it was a lot of money back then), but the world's a very different place from what it was in 1967. The will didn't have any surprises - in specific legacies £1000 for each of the grandchildren, £3000 for my brother (nothing for me, but that was no surprise - he lives a few minutes away while I'm 40 miles away, so he had the task of handling most of the looking-after of her, so that's a fair reflection of who looked after her mostly), my sister-in-law gets all her jewellery (such as it was), a few items of coloured glassware and "my best tea service" - the only problem there is deciding which one that is, as there are 3 or 4 tea services in various display cupboards in the front room and the lounge! Going through the other possessions, there are a couple of sets of "collectible" plates on the walls from about 15 years ago - "Country Life" and "Crinkley Bottom"! I think she paid about £15 each for them back then, but all the current examples being offered on eBay seem to have no bids on them, which more or less confirms our opinion of their resale value; still she had 15 years of pleasure out of them so £120 only works out at about 20p a week, so I won't complain, and will probably take the Country Life ones for myself, and leave Crinkley Bottom to my brother! I've also liberated a large plastic box of biscuits which has a best before date of 20th August, and I might munch my way through them in time... I rather fancy keeping a few of Mams' framed embroideries to go on the wall to remember her by, but I'll have to come back in a few weeks for them, as I don't think my brother wants them. Current Mood: contemplative (Comment on this)
Thursday, July 12th, 2007
6:14 pm	I don't want many more days like that... I'm glad today's over. Mam's funeral was this morning - it might seem like we went about things in a strange order, but what with crematorium availability it's becoming more common around here to go to the crem first, and then have a service of thanksgiving back home - we had the 10.30 slot at Pentrebychan crematorium, Wrexham, followed by the service at Tabernacl, Ruthin at noon - with tea, sandwiches, and cakes afterwards in the vestry. Even though Mam died last Monday, the only slots that were available at the crematorium were 9.00 Friday, or 10.00 or 10.30 on Thursday - you have to plan ahead these days! I've been hearing that - whatever your views might be on an afterlife - she seemed to have some sort of premonition. On Sunday night apparently she told the nurse who came to gave her a cup of tea and something to eat "I won't be here tomorrow". Very spooky. She was OK at 3.00 a.m. and gone at 5.30 a.m.. I last saw her on Saturday, when she had a cough which probably didn't help, but in all honesty she'd been wanting to go for several months as she could see that she wouldn't get better. I went to view her yesterday afternoon, which might have been a mistake - better to remember her as she was than in the coffin, but I didn't view Dad back in 1985 as I'd been present when he died, so I felt a need to say goodbye to her. So we had a gathering of the clan at the funeral and service - though we are getting fewer as time marches on - Mam was the last of her generation in her original family, and since Wednesday morning there's only two left of the nine children in Dad's family since Uncle Emlyn passed away from liver cancer after less than a week in hospital. His funeral's on Monday, so we'll all meet again if I can get another day off work when I phone up tomorrow, but thankfully what with our own bereavement my brother and me haven't been asked to be bearers this time... And so tomorrow, my brother and I are off to see the solicitors to see what needs to be done about getting Probate and sorting out the Inheritance Tax - even though her estate won't reach the tax threshold it looks like we'll have to fill in the more complex IHT200 form rather than IHT205 - and I've downloaded the form and guidance notes for completing that form, and the notes alone are 154 pages long! Sigh. Current Mood: sad Current Music: old hymns (Comment on this)
Monday, July 9th, 2007
6:58 am	Eurwen Jones Parry, 25th December 1921 - 9th July 2007 I've been dreading writing this for the last three months or so, but it's finally happened. I was woken at 6.15 this morning by my brother phoning me to say that Mam died around 5.30. I am both devastated and relieved, saddened to have lost her, but on the other hand the last nearly five years have been no fun for her at all, and seeing her condition these last few weeks has been heartbreaking. I've just sent my manager an email of "things to do this week" while I'm away. 2007 looks like being a lousy year for my family. The auction of my Uncle Tegid's (one of Dad's brothers in law, who died in April) effects is this evening - I hadn't intended going, even though I'm getting 2% of his estate, but now I'll be in the area after all, and I heard last Friday that Uncle Emlyn (one of Dad's younger brothers) has been admitted to hospital with inoperable liver cancer :( Current Mood: depressed (Comment on this)
Friday, July 6th, 2007
10:00 pm	Economics of the last 20 years Two economic curiosities came to my attention today... I took the day off work, since I've not had much free time to myself these last 4 months, and went shopping in Birmingham where I treated myself to a 320 GB external disk drive so that I can backup my computers a bit more easily. I'm amazed that this cost me £64.99, or just over 20p a gigabyte. About 15 years ago I bought my first hard drive - a 40 MB drive for an Atari 1040 ST which, if I remember correctly, cost me rather more than £100; that much storage on the drive I bought today cost me 0.81 of a penny! On the other hand, property prices are just breath-taking. Despite what I said in this blog a couple of months ago, Mam did leave hospital three weeks ago and is now in a nursing home, though not at all happy there and she just gets moved between her bed and the bedside chair, so it's not much of a life that she has at the moment, she's still hanging on. It is however plain that she'll never go home, so she broached the subject of selling the house a few weeks ago (though formally she gave it to me and my brother back in 1994); apparently the parents of the wife of the family next door had been looking for somewhere in the vicinity and she suggested getting in touch with them; I later found out they'd actually already approached my brother (as had someone else) to ask what we were doing with the house. This strikes me as being rather in poor taste, but we agreed to give them first refusal, and of course doing a private sale does mean we save a few thousand pounds in estate agents' fees! Anyway, today my brother Emyr had two valuers round to determine how much the house is worth, and he phoned me while I was on the train back from Birmingham. I must admit I was flabbergasted to hear that the two valuers agreed that the little 2 bedroom bungalow which my parents bought for £27,500 back in 1985 (though Dad only lived there for a week before he went into hospital for the last time) is now worth £200,000, or maybe £205,000, and if we built a third bedroom it could easily go for £275,000 (though we're not particularly bothered about getting every penny - we'll offer it as-is). At least my share will keep the credit card companies, to whom I currently owe far too much, happy... Current Mood: Stunned (Comment on this)