The Journal of the Browncoat Cat

The public access PCs in work are slowly being upgraded.  HPCompaq dc7600 machines are replacing the old Compaq Deskpro EN machines.  The Deskpro EN was big sturdy desktop PC that weighed a ton and was butt-ugly.  The new dc7600 machines are half the size, twice the speed and very sexy to look at.  The biggest difference is that the new machines do not have floppy disc drives, that particular technology has finally been consigned to the Ark.   Instead they have a pair of shiny USB2 ports at the front, where the people using the machines will be able to plug in their USB pen drives. The plan is that these pen drives will be on sale at the counter.  On the other hand, the new machines do have DVD-ROM/CD-RW drives aboard.  The only downside is that the monitors have not been upgraded, the new CPU’s are attached to the old 17″ CRT screens.  I suppose that eventually these will be upgraded to a similar sized LCD monitor, it would be too much to hope that the Library Service could afford to upgrade the CPUs and the monitors.

George is not a happy cat. Fred(a) the little pumpkin cat is getting very cheeky. Sitting in all of George’s favourite places, hovering outside my Mother’s front door and generally acting as if he owns the place. Fred was hovering again tonight. The two cats had had a bit of a face-off in the middle of the street tonight, no claws, just nasty looks. It was hard to tell which cat won, if any. Fred(a) disappeared into the darkness at the other side of the road, whilst George sulked into my house, where I fed him.

I can just about afford to keep one cat in pouches and biscuits, so no matter how cute he/she looks, and he/she is very cute, Fred(a) can bugger off, this is a one cat household. Not that he/she is ever going to get any food out of my mother either, as she dislikes cats and only tolerates George in her house because he belongs to me, so Fred(a) would never be made welcome in that house, no matter how long he/she hovers outside.

It really does not take a genius to see that bombing the living crap out a country that hates Syria as much as you do is not a clever thing to do. And yet the Israeli army continues to flatten the Lebanon with gay abandon. Yes, Hizbollah are operating out of Southern Lebanon, but they are financed and equiped by the Ba’athist regime in Damascus.

Memo to the Israeli Cabinet when it meets on Sunday: “Your enemy is Syria, your enemy always has been Syria, and unless you do something about it your enemy always will be Syria.”

Not a lot to be said about the rest of Friday, the real fun starts on Saturday morning. I was given a temporary pass so that I could use all the facilities of the Leisure Park, a magic bit of yellow card, although I only used it to get into the swimming pool this weekend. The pool is magnificent. It is mostly designed for messing around in, but there is an area cordoned off for people who want a serious swim. It also has a waterslide which is great fun. The first few trips I closed my eyes as I hit the water, despite the fact that I had goggles on, and was missing the full experience. Pulled myself together on the third trip down, and it was banzai all weekend.

Fontygary is on the same stretch of coastline as Southerdown, where the Norwegian Beach section of the Doctor Who episode Doomsday was filmed, so on Saturday afternoon, I spent a few pleasant hours on a suspiciously “Norwegian” looking beach.

Saturday night was Denise Cross-Edwards’ birthday celebrations. I was dropped off at Barry Station, and caught a train into Cardiff Bay, where a dozen TIMELESS members met at the Oriental Gardens restaurant. This is one of the many great restaurants down in the bay, it is an all you can eat buffet type restaurant, which had some of the best Chinese food I have tasted. It also had a Sushi bar, which pleased me as I am very partial to raw fish on pickled rice. A couple of bottles of imported Chinese lager helped wash down far too many plates of good food.

I think that I was going to hyperventilate in the Eli Jenkins, the pub we all went to after our meal was over. So many people at the bar wanting to be served. The beer garden was also packed, but given how gorgeous the weather was, I was not at all surprised.

At the end of the evening, I had a lift back to the caravan site from Dave Perkins. I had originally to catch a train back to Barry and get picked up by Janet. I had been dreading this as I knew that I would have gone onto autopilot and got a train to Treherbert from Cardiff Queen Street. I actually used the TomTom navigation system for an useful purpose, because after Dave had dropped Denise off at her house in Barry, I used it to give him directions to the Camp Site. Although it was enerate the fastest route, so we ended up going down some very narrow country lanes.

Sunday was a quiet day, relaxing in the sun. All too soon it was time to come home again.

In the lobby of Treherbert Library, there is a poster advertising Sing-a-long Sound of Music at the Parc and Dare Theatre which shows a group of women putting the finishing touches to their Nun outfits. Why is it that it is perfectly accceptlable for people to dress up in lederhosen or wimples and go and sing karaoke style along with an Oscars and Hammerstein musical. They are seen as doing something fun and unusual. Yet if you were to admit to attending a Science Fiction Convention, or even being a fan of Doctor Who you are automatically labled as a Grade-A Sad Act who desperately needs to get a life.

20six Comments

Martin / Website (19.7.06 11:57)
do you like doctor who?? havnt got a problem with it… just wondering.. if so i would understand your rant.

Vorcampbel / Website (19.7.06 13:06)

Wyvernchick / Website (19.7.06 21:26) On the other hand, when my husband went to see “Sing-a-long Sound of Music” people thought it was a most peculiar thing to do. Of course, the fact that he was also dressed as a nun may have had something to do with it…

Why is it, that as soon as the Sun shines brightly for more than two consecetive days, the yobs decide that we all want to see the flabby beer bellies and pasty white legs, and go around wearing only a pair of knee length shorts. For God’s sake, but a top on, it is not big and it is not clever.

If I ruled the World, I would ban chewing gum. It is a filthy habit, chewing on a piece of PVA gum that rapidly loses any semblance of flavour that it has been given. What is worse, the slobs who chew the gum just drop their digusting pieces of masticated glob on the floor, where it either dries into a rock hard grey blob, or gets stuck to the bottom of passer-by’s footwear.

Ban it and ban it now!

Its funny, Brambles are weeds and I have been doing my best to eradicate it from my garden. On the other hand, Raspberries are wonder plants, and I am pampering and caring for the half dozen canes, currently in pots in my mother’s garden, that I had for my birthday. This thought struck me as I was walking back to work this afternoon. I noticed that the leaves on the brambles growing by the side of the lane were almost identical to the leaves on my raspberries. The fruit that the two plants produce are almost identical, the only practical difference being the colour of the berries. I am really pleased with my raspberry canes, as I thought that as they came through the post from QVC, at least one of them would die in transit. However, they all seem to have survived, and are thriving.

The twelve strawberry plants and two blueberry plants that came with the raspberries are also thriving. I will not get any fruit from the blueberries this year, but I will from the strawberry. They are a variety that fruit throughout the summer, from May to October. In fact the strawberries are already covered with flowers and the first stages of fruit. The biggest problem will be that there fruit will start coming this year whilst both my mother and I are on holiday, and we will both miss the first reward from our efforts in looking after these plants.

The lilacs have been given another prune, now they have finished flowering. They are now really are down to eight foot tall, last time I wrote about them, I underestimated how tall they were. Now I will have to keep them at that height.

Of course, the biggest news of the past week in the World of Doctor Who has to be the casting of Freema Agyeman as the Doctor’s new companion Martha Jones. The Sun newspaper leaked the news the day after Billie’s departure became public. No one believed word of it because Ms Agyeman was due to play a character in the upcoming series finale, who according to the spoilers, got killed by the Cybermen in the early stages of the series. And then last Tuesday, the BBC sent an email to various journalists containing a link to a hidden website that contained a Press Release about the casting of the new Companion, with the stern warning that the information was embargoed until a minute past midnight the following day. Yeah, right! As if that information wasn’t going to leak out. Within ours, the Internet was alive with the fact that Freema had been cast and from the start of Series Three (not the Christmas Special) would be playing Martha Jones.

Russell T. Davies certainly likes old fashioned names for his characters.  After a Rose Tyler, we are getting Martha