Bignjuicy

1. You only live once. [ I think ]
2. Therefore better make the most of it – as circumstances permit.
3. 43 South are flower growers in Tasmania.
4. 43 percent of all mobile phone text messages in the United States are now spam.
5. The number of languages available on the BBC World Service web audio news service is 43.
6. The number of folders in a manilla tickler file.
7. Which inspired the name of a geeky website.
8. The number of Stabucks located within a five mile radius of this blogger is 43.
9. 43 of the world’s best poems.
10. Britain’s most northerly fighter squadron.
11. Section 43 of the Canadian Criminal code allows adults to bop naughty children.
12. A lovely four star B&B in Edinburgh – only £25 a night. 43 Esslemont Road.
13. National Route 43 connects Swansea with Builth Wells.
14. 43 South Molton – a new institution on the London social circuit.
15. I decided what I wanted to do for a career.
16. 43 stars on the US flag between 1890 and 1891.
17. Forty martyrs.
18. The age I was when I was able to realise an ambition and change my life.
19. Forty percent of IT workers have been sick at their Christmas party.
20. Fertility at forty.
21. Received several silver plastic keys.
22. Wonderful sticky notes from Forty Software
23. The enigma.
24. Forty boy scout knots.
25. Laments for Iraq.
26. Forty flowers.
27. The age I was when I first started to feel I was ageing.
28. The Association of Forty – the association for the recognition of the Arab Unrecognized Villages in Israel.
29. Be holy – pray for forty hours.
30. The Three Hares Project.
31. The international dialling code for The Netherlands.
32. Forty plus cycling club,
33. There are 43 police forces in the UK.
34. His thoughts on life after forty have convinced him to accept uncertainity and nobody believes he is more than forty years old. I do.
35. Brown, smelly and a serious health hazard.
36. Sergey Brin and Larry Page are 43rd richest men in the US.
37. Bloggers over forty webring. [gawd]
38. I crossed the planet for the millennium.
39. Steps – first published in 1915.
40. Really bad 1970s sitcom – Life begins at forty.
41. Forty off: Inviting & Disinviting Comments, Behaviours, Environments and Signs.
42. I changed my life again.
43. The number of years I have been alive. [gawd]

Did I menshun it wush my birthday tomorrow?
Not that it’s important or anything or I expect anyone to remember or buy me presents or snog me or owt. Not that I’m at all seeking attention by publishing my innermost thoughts on the interweb.
Hic.

Guess who.
postCount(‘1100′);
Rather glad
That it’s my birthday on Sunday. Cakes and gushing comments gratefully received. [There will be reminders].
Rather mad
Mr Verdonck the Belgian artist, another Birdman. This one is going to live in a nest halfway up the Rotunda in Brum [see Wednesday's post] for 7 days. Thankfully, ‘he won’t actually be crapping on car windscreens from up there’.
Rather sad
Gingerism hits eurovision as Ireland are knocked out – Ireland being natural eurovisionaries by birth.
Rather interesting
Weapons of mass destruction are all around.
Rather lovely
The cygnets I saw peeping out from a nearby swan earlier.
Rather silly
“Best when peeled” – printed on my bananas bought today.

Keeps getting better and better.
The Ikon has a great show, 3 rooms with ceilings of coloured clothes line stretched across just above head height. Cool. Plus there were monitors all over the building playing looping footage of cute cats licking bowls of milk! Plus I love the Ikon building itself – Victorian terracotta gothic meets hi-tech steel and glass.

On the skyline I spy a large sexy looking tower being constructed. I must investigate. Close up it is even sexier. A sheer smooth curving glass wall with rounded corners. The glass is printed with patterns giving it an animalesque quality. I notice that it will be apartments and a hotel – the apartments are £500k+. I like the fact that across the road are two council tower blocks. Nobody is ever allowed to get too far above their station in Brum. The building reminds me a lot of Urbis and, sure enough, it turns out to be the same designers. This tower is going to be landmark. Not as good as Urbis architecturally tho.
The city is full of confidence – there’s a new Tesco Metro in New Street and an Adidas superstore – never seen one of them before. The Bull Ring still looking good – tho I don’t like the glass ballustrades around the 3 level atrium – I fear of falling. Excitingly, the Rotunda is being turned into flats by our old friends Urban Splash. Imagine, living in the Rotunda – I want one.

More Brummy buildings here.

Escape from Bignjuicyville
It’s the perfect day to make a new years resolution allegedly.
Me? I’m off to Birmingham to escape the prison of my mind.
Behave yourselves.

David Baddiel and Anthony Worrall Thompson contaminated with toxic chemicals.
Stop clapping at the back there – this is serious.
Several of our beloved celebrities have been found to have imbibed dangerous amounts of injurious agents into their precious bodily precincts. It’s part of a new Chemicals and Health campaign from the WWF.
Worthy of a special issue Guardian, “We’re all going to die” supplement n reader tablemat offer – the news is not good. Most disturbing is the revelation that Pouting Property Goddess, Sarah Beeney is contaminated with 30 chemicals in worryingly high concentrations. Regular viewers may have puzzled over Sarah’s ever changing hair colours and fluctuating breastage. Well now it’s all clear – she’s been having it large with the vinyl matt a bit too much. It would be cheap of me to comment about my surprise over celebrities having sniffed dodgy substances or being full of toxic crap wouldn’t it?

Stay in your homes, don’t panic.
If 20 tonnes of highly radioactive liquefied uranium and plutonium fuel had leaked out of a reprocessing system you’d think there might be a bit of a fuss wouldn’t you?
Screaming news broadcasts with hourly updates on BBC news 24? Hysterical headlines in the Daily Mail [what's new?] Maybe a few questions to the PM? A bit of unfavourable international attention? Nah. None of the above.
Never mind that a huge campaign to prevent the opening of the THORP plant in 1994 was ignored – eventually going to the High Court. I remember the reassurances given at the time, ‘It’s safe – we know what we’re doing’, was the general tone. Now its all gone rather pear shaped [or should that be mushroom shaped?].
And it’s all been terribly underplayed all round.
Cover up? News blackout? Shurely not?

Update
Thanks to Alda, who left a comment on the Sellafield post above.
She has a fascinating three part account of recently touring the plant. Interesting to read how much trouble, and expense, is dedicated to creating a favourable impression with high profile visitors.
Most chilling phrase: “The smell of radiation”.
Go read it.

I’ve decided that I’m a pathologic hoarder. Last year I spent about a week de crapping cluttering my house. Tons of stuff was extracted, sorted, recycled / shredded / fed to next doors cat / sold to passing children.
I felt purged, cleansed and at-one with the neighbourhood watch coordinator. Less than a year later, although I’ve not gone forth during the intervening period for Crap Replacement Therapy (CRT), I still seem to have about 20 tons of stuff I’ll probably never use again. Yet I cannot bring myself to dispose of it. I’m reminded of a line from a play wot I once appeared in where a dung beetle proclaims it’s joy in possession, “My pile, my treasure!” Why am I keeping that tourist map of Milan from the 1980’s? Why does that broken CDROM drive remain in a prime spot on my bookshelf? Why can I not bring myself to dispose of three low energy lightbulbs that flicker on and off epileptically when plugged into the mains? Three of many items that are overdue for retirement. This week I have been quite good. I’ve been clearing space rather efficiently. I now have a more controlled environment in which to work. A lot of stuff has been removed. I’ve invited several cats round to swing. The only problem is that the loft now looks like the inside of Aunty Wainwright’s – [no relation to Rupert] – drawers.

Recommended – especially episode 5 when Stevie gets a look in.

Horror of war
“How can you decide to have a war if you are not fully informed? You need to know what the end result will be, what the middle result will be.”
Photographer, Ken Jarecke on the shocking image of a burned Iraqi soldier he took in the 1991 gulf war. Link

Bloody weirdos. With their hoods covering their faces. Never done a decent day’s work in their lives. Hanging around doing bugger all. Half of them act like they’re on drugs. As for the language, you can’t understand half of it – talking like they’re foreign. Some of them barely look out of nappies. How their parents must feel with what they get up to? And the jewellery. Big gold chains and crosses round their necks. Shaved heads – frightening. Where do they get the money from? People cross the road when they see em coming. And the girls – where are they? Very suspicious if you ask me – all them blokes hanging around together all the time – it’s not normal. They don’t fit in, that’s for sure. Up at all hours of the day and night. All that weird music and god knows what they get up to.

Q: When is nuclear power good for the environment?
A: When it helps to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

This is the argument beginning to emerge as UK energy policy is reviewed. Expect increasingly to hear the view that we should begin building a new batch of nuclear stations in preference to the oil and gas fired equivalents. Mr Alan Johnson has been appointed as the new Minister for Productivity, Energy and Industry. [ Sounds very bee like ] The change in title from ‘Minister of Trade and Industry’ has to be significant – energy is going to figure strongly in politics and soon. Greenpeace are opposed to the nuclear option whilst James Lovelock, he of the Gaia Principle is, surprisingly in favour. Lovelock argues that ‘eco friendly’ power sources cannot address the emissions problem in either scale or timing.
The choices thus appear to be:

1. Build more conventional power stations – and increase CO2 emissions and thus accelerate climate change.
or
2. Build more nuclear stations – stabilise / reduce emissions and arrest climate change [unless it's already too late]. Create increasing quanitities of highly toxic waste that nobody quite knows what to do with.
or
3. Massively reduce the need for electricity – seemingly unlikely, especially as developing nations industrialise.

I can see this one increasing the popularity of TB eh?
Better go and switch some lights out…

OK OK, I’ve slapped myself around a bit with a large haddock and made a comeback. We all need a break now n agin don’t we? Take it as it comes etc etc. I’m grateful for all those fine messages of support – important to know there are hooman beens out there reading my ramblings – so taverymuch for taking a moment to say what you said. Feedback is v.important to me right now. Call it a crisis of confidence – I’m feeling in need of making some changes. My recovery from employed status continues apace. It’s a bit like dry rot; just as you get one bit under control there’s an outbreak somewhere else. Anyway we’ll see how it goes eh?

Neatly, my absence spanned the election. All those missed opportunities…frankly I don’t mind. Post election, Bignjuicyville has been assimilated into the evil empire and is now represented by a non-stereoptypical [ yeah right ], overweight, middle aged freemason with a bad hairstyle and golf club membership. And all for the want of about 50 votes – bugger and thrice bugger. Could be worse (see above) but also could be much better. I’m staggered by the rampant national animosity to our Tone. Thinking back to 1997 and the years that preceded it my view is that the country is immeasurably better governed now. It aint perfect, there are things that have happened that shouldn’t have happened and there are things that should have happened that haven’t [ integrated transport system anyone?] – how is that different from any period in history? The thing is, thinking back to 1997 Tone promised us it would be different and now people reckon he conned them. The love affair is gone sour. It reminds me a lot of when relationships break down irretrievably. No matter what is said or done to try and repair things, it only makes it worse – there’s no way back. I think we’ve entered downhill mode now. We Brits love to topple the mighty when they get too big for their boots. The better metaphor is one of swollen head which is far more conducive to toppling. The thing about Tone is that he cares. He likes to let people in, he likes to give the appearance that he listens and is in touch. This is a problem for him because, almost above everything else, he wants to be liked – approval is key. In this he’s different from his rival in the record books. She didn’t care, shut people out and liked to give the appearance she wasn’t even aware of others. ‘There is no such thing as society’. And yet she got away with it for eleven years, war n all – how things have changed. I think Bush would have invaded Iraq with or without the UK – Tone was opportunistic, seduced by the prospect of US indebtedness and delusional over dodgy intelligence – [now there's a misomer ]. He’s done well in the US – they love him over there. Now he’s paying the price – which is far less than those who’ve died. I’m not sure what I’d have done in his situation – probably not have stuck around for more of the same.

I’m off for while – may be some time…