Urban Scrawl’s new Website

Urban Scrawl now has a super new website (http://www.urbanscrawl.org.uk/) where you can listen to all the plays. Urban Scrawl was the biggest online drama project of 2009, and its legacy is this dedicated website, from which other online developments will spring. Initiated by Dominic Cavendish, founding editor of theatrevoice.com, it brought that  theatre-dedicated website, Rose Bruford College and new writing powerhouse Theatre 503 into a strategic partnership, with the aim of producing 53 high quality pod-cast dramas, each based on a station-stop on the Piccadilly Line. The project was co-ordinated by Gene David Kirk then programming director of Theatre 503 and now Artistic Director of the Jermyn Street Theatre.

My play, South Harrow, can be found here http://www.urbanscrawl.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=62&Itemid=137

Weston – nearly there!

Here’s the 2010 sand sculpture area getting underway – this year it will be fenced properly with wooden posts rather than the previous ad hoc ugliness. In the background, the new Grand Pier looks so good. meanwhile the seafront is looking better all the time, pier square is starting to come together, most of the new street lighting is out of wraps, the water park is well underway, the wheel is turning and the sea wall looks lovely – personally I particularly love the new stone seating – so beautiful … now, if we could just take all the vandals and lock them way for a while we’d have a beautiful seafront for the whole summer!

Replacing the Boots on my Dry Suit

I had the next and wrist seals replaced on my Aedura drysuit recently (have just realised its 9 years old!) but when I tried it I still got wet … the reason became very apparent when I took the suit off – holes in the boots where they’d finally worn through …. big holes!

So it was replace the boots time and, for reasons I can’t remember, I decided to do it myself. Boots, glue, tape and solvent were all purchased from hillcrest2003 (eBay) and they turned up quickly and well packed with instructions (on seals though not boots).

So I sat in the garden, it being a lovely day, and set about it …

1) took off the old boots by simply cutting them off the suit – as it happens I bought this suit second hand and it was built for a MUCH taller man so I didn;t mind losing a bit in the leg so to speak

2) I put a rolled up mat in each boot to keep it stiff, fitted each boot into the correct leg facing the correct way (!) and turned back the suit a little

3) Cleaned the suit and boot top with solvent and applied a layer of glue

4) waited for the glue to go off a bit then put on another layer, when that went off I added more and turned down the suit thus gluing it to the boot .. squeezed tight!

5) once dry I turned each leg inside out, cut a little v into the boot top so it laid flat and glued the top of the boot to the leg all around .. held it with pegs and once done ran some liqued rubber around the top

6) turned the boot back, cleaned around the join and applied tape (after letting a layer of glue dry on the tape and leg first)

7) Gosh, it’s done!

Needs a dive to confirm but its looking good at the moment – I believe the glue will continue to strengthen for another two days ….

Not sure if I’d do it again, didn’t save a huge amount of money, but it was quicker than sending it off or waiting for a shop and it was certainly satisfying!

UPDATE: One boot leaked where I’d had to fold the top and the otehr didn’t … not too bad, will just BlackWitch the leak and that’s it done.

Whitecross Tesco

Well, it has opened … and yes, so far I have managed to find lots of reasons to (a) shop in Whitecross and (b) go anywhere but Tesco. This is a rant, I admit it, but we already have a Co-op, a butcher, newsagent, baker (real one, actually bakes), florist and several other shops – we even had a greengrocer but it shut when it heard Tesco was moving in. That’s my point. Why did they move in? Not to provide a service to locals that’s for sure and I don’t remember being asked if I wanted it, though we did send a petition saying we didn’t! So all I can do is support the local shops and treat the Tesco like it is cursed – I shall still shop at Tesco, a lot, just not this one, any one of the others in the area actually, but not, under any circumstances, this one!

And how did they manage to get hours of 7-11 and an outside cashpoint when the Co-op was told it couldn’t have them despite being in the same place! I guess I’m just cross, there are plenty of places around here with no shops, or very few shops, who would have begged to have a Tesco Local … Whitecross neither needed one nor wanted one and I fear it will make the local area a worse, rather than a better, place.

If Whitecross Bakery closes I shall be really, really, really annoyed!

Oh and those welcoming vouchers Tesco sent me … I tore them up!

Killing of Sister George at The Blakehay

With a set built by the fabulous Christopher Bartle and a strong cast, our production of  The Killing of Sister George got off to a flying start last night at The Blakehay – very proud of my cast who have worked really hard to get this show running … but it has certainly been worth it!

Walking Underwater

Just asked Google maps the route from BS23 4DG to PO16 8NE … not bad, got a fast route, then spotted the “Walking” option and tried that .. crazy! It takes me via Guernsey although it does offer an alternate via Cherbourg! Curiously the third option is via the A36, a perfectly straight walk … hee hee

Tried to do our first dive of the season yesterday but were hit by the need to get regulators serviced (uncontrollable free flow on two), the need to get the tanks back into test and the need to hire a weezle. Still, we were around to watch 5000 new fish flee into the depths of Vobster. Fun!

FourSquare

Have just joined foursquare.com … I have no friends there and as a Windows Mobile user it is less than convenient (until the WinMob client is launched) but it seems like fun – already I am not a newbie and have added a local venue (The Blakehay) and checked in at the Pier …

Is this just another social interface to remember or will its location-based info be useful? Could SeatChoice make use of it to provide information to users? I wonder …

It’s your job ….

I must be having a grumpy old day … perhaps its being away from home that does it …

It has seemed to me, as an internal rant, for some time that I am tired of MPs playing politics rather than doing government …

If I, or any employee of a company, spent the time that they were paid to do their job in doing another self-serving job of their own then they would, I’m sure, soon find themselves unemployed. Yet MPs, paid to take part in the governance of this country and the care of their constituencies, seem to spend an inrodinate amount of time on being political rather than being good at the jobs for which we pay them!

Can it really be the case that everything one party says is really as wrong as the otehr parties make out? Surely, even if only under the rules of chance, it must happen sometimes that when one party says something the others go “actually that’s not a half bad idea, we could go with that” – but do we ever hear them say that? No, its either “too little too late” (what the hell does that mean!), a “u turn” of some sort, a stolen idea of someone elses or “pure madness” … that simply doesn’t make sense …

So I am tired of this behaviour and of the media’s insistence that all political reporting is conflict driven … Get on and do your jobs or get out!

Oh and I may end up voting for the least worst this time – as will a lot of others I suspect .. but those slippery politicians will claim that we support them, indeed they’ll claim that we fully back everything in their (unread) manifestos, even that crazy idea in small print at the bottom of page 146.

Why don’t I believe in politicians? Because they don’t believe in me … I am an adult who pays plenty of tax to support them and votes even when I think it may be futile … yet they treat me like an idiot. I have never stretched my expense claims, in fact I underclaim to avoid any risk of over claiming – not bright but honest.

Perhaps we need a “Fantasy Cabinet” game … mine would contain people of drive, intelligence, practicality and conviction regardless of whether I fully agreed with their ideas. No-one would be excluded because they’d had an affair, were gay or had problems (some of our finest have had alcohol or mental health issues!) …

Ho hum ….

Feedback to some suppliers

Dear Dell … I see you’re number eight in the Top 15 Hated US Companies … perhaps a little harsh Anyway, you did finally send TNT to collect the modem you delivered after I cancelled it. I got a call the  day afterwards telling me TNT were coming, back in December you told me they were coming and they didn’t. Not quite on the ball.

Lloyds/TSB … I said I’d leave and now I am. I’m leaving because you honoured a cheque I cancelled nearly a year ago and then tried to charge me for being overdrawn. Good joke. The main reason though is that after all the years I have yet to be able to login to your on-line banking … and after three phone calls the ever-promised password reset form has never ever been sent to me.

The Original Gift Company … I wanted a watch, personalised, for a Christmas present. I ordered it on-line on 31st Oct but the website wouldn’t let me enter the personalisation so I emailed them same day – even though it was a Sunday it was apparently too late to stop the unpersonalised watch being delivered – but they said I should just return it as they’d ordered me the right one. Far be it from me to doubt them but the un-personalised one took another three 233ks to get to me so I think they could have stopped it if they’d tried … a tortoise could have overtaken it on the road. Anyway, Christmas approached and still no watch. I was told it had been despatched on 10th Dec and then I was told it was being prepared for despatch on 17th … both can not be true now can they? In the end it didn’t arrive so we had to buy another watch as a present on Christmas Eve. So last week I told them not to bother delivering it, too late they said, already done … just return it when it arrives. Ok. Today they tell me it has been delayed and wont be despatched till 11th Jan! “Allow 21 days for delivery” should perhaps read “Allow 3 months for delivery”! I have lost count how many times this watch has “been despatched” without actually “being despatched”. I am now off their mailing list, I hope.

Customer Care? There isn’t much …

Safari Photography

My Sister and Nephew (Vanessa and Thamon Wilkinson) have been taking photos on safari for many years and have now created a small website for themselves … I have to say, I’m mightily impressed by the quality and breadth of their work. If you’re interested go see them on www.vawtjwphotographic.net (no, not the most memorable url!) – plenty of tigers, hyenas, lions, water buffalo and more – just enjoy the images or buy prints for your wall!