Miscellaneous mumblings

'Cloudless blue sky in gemmakville'

If the weather holds for today, and it looks promising, that will be three entire days of unbroken sunshine we have enjoyed. For a British summer that's pretty impressive and all complaints will cease from this point on!

I did a modicum of spring cleaning, or should that be autumn cleaning?, just doesn't have the same ring does it,here last night and removed some dead blogroll links. They were swiftly replaced with a few new one's. Gone it seems are the early days of living in the blogosphere, when my blogroll was short and sweet, there are so many good blogs out there. I'm gonna have to use a smaller font before long or risk litigation from those suffering RSI whilst attempting to navigate through it!

My original and enduring list of favorite blogroll residents still remains and joining them now are Justitia, Road to pregnancy, Number Wann and Beyond Northern Iraq. The latter is the blog of BBC world affairs journalist Stuart Hughes, who in April 2003 unfortunately made the headlines himself. The guy is an inspiration and his posts are always interesting stuff.

Should you have a spare moment in your blogosphere travels take a second to visit 'getblogs', a new (ish) blogring set up and run by a guy in Canada, he is working hard to 'make it happen' and deserves the attentions of the multitudes! :o)

Off now on a completely different tangent.

Yesterday in my small corner of Scotland, where people are few and crimes even fewer I was victim of an amusing if aggravating theft! Don't rush of and alert Reuters please, this was the unlikely theft of my dustbin. Here, where council tax is high and services few the 'bin men', or as they are now prefer to be titled the 'refuse technicians', do little more than put your 'already deposited at the correct point 500 yards up the road', bags onto the truck.

It is the 'depositing in the correct place' bit that miffs me. We have to drag copious amounts of refuse a considerable distance to comply with this rule and yesterday by the time I had arrived at the designated spot I was knackered (no reference to age please). In my near state of collapse I abandoned the bin temporarily for rescue on my returning visit. In those few minutes someone helped themselves to it! Strange in the first place because there are few people here and even fewer at 7.30 in the morning.

Suffice to say, memories of residing in Manchester and London where real crime is part of daily life left me temporarily and myself and two neighbours, in a state of over reaction at this minor misdemeanor, set about hunting the bin....to no avail.

I duly and rapidly typed and laminated a terse notice and stuck it on the wall requesting the return of said item and then forgot about it. At 7 am this morning I was woken by a phone call from an excited neighbour announcing the return, overnight, of the item in question. My faith in human nature is restored but on a more serious note I was reminded just how lucky I am to be living in a place where 'bin theft' is noteworthy. It never dawned on me just how much stress living in a city with it's attendant crime levels subjected me to until I escaped!