Islingword Street

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I've started putting my posts to interesting links on Tumblr (here), but anything longer will remain here.

Summer is here

And we've gone from the in-your-face noise of Pride to the quieter pleasures of the West Sussex downs on a sunny afternoon.

New house, new blog name

We are back (almost) online after our house move, and are now based in sunny Brighton. So the blog has a new name, not least because I was getting a bit tired of the old one. It also has a new URL (islingwordstreet.com), though lewes.typepad.com will still work.

This post is backed by NUCLEAR WEAPONS!

Oh. My. God.

Civ IV is out. I didn't even know it was close. Civ I and Civ II took SO much of my university and post-grad life.

I have a short window until the Mac release comes out, but then...

Thanks to MeFi for the post title.

Collected Essays, by George Orwell (part48)

Orwell on Tolstoy's hostility to Shakespeare:

"[As a puritan, Tolstoy] could have no patience with a chaotic, detailed, discursive writer like Shakespeare. His reaction is that of an irritable old man who is being pestered by a noisy child. "Why do you keep jumping up and down like that? Why can't you sit still like I do?" In a way the old man is in the right, but the trouble is that the child, has a feeling in its limbs which the old man has lost. And if the old man knows of the existence of this feeling, the effect is merely to increase his irritation: he would make children senile, if he could."

and

"One docs not necessarily get rid of [a violent] temperament by undergoing religious conversion, and indeed it is obvious that the illusion of having been reborn may allow one's native vices to flourish more freely than ever, though perhaps in subtler forms."

Masson #4

Ooh, Doug Masson's wife is in labour - good luck!

Rage-inducing PR spin of the nanosecond

On a cash machine outside Tunbridge Wells station:

Alliance & Leicester customers will not be charged to use this cash machine. Other users will be charged a convenience fee.

CONVENIENCE FEE! ARGH!

Alliance and Leicester - taking your hard-earned money, for your convenience.

What happened to Metro-Land

This blog was briefly called Metro-Land, but has now reverted to its former name, the Lewes Chronicle. (www.metro-land.org still works, as well as lewes.typepad.org)

It was renamed Metro-Land when my wife got a job in that part of the world, and we planned to move to Amersham, on the end of the Metropolitan line. However, due to a mismatch between the hours her employer needed her to work, and the hours during which reasonably-priced childcare was available, she had to withdraw from the job, and our move was cancelled (16 hours before the removal men turned up).

So, it's been a weird couple of weeks, and our eyes are now open to the extraordinary cost of childcare. Our current plan - now our house is on the market anyway - is to move closer to the coast, probably to Lewes or Brighton, and for Jane to try and find some work in the media industry there.

New town, new name

This blog has changed its name because my (marvellous and talented) wife has secured herself a new job, and we now have to move pronto to Amersham, in the Chiltern Hills, way out on the end of the Metropolitan Line.

Exciting Beaconsfield

There is a small chance that this mighty organ will need to go into voluntary exile in Buckinghamshire, specifically Beaconsfield, for a year or two.

Were that the case, I'd at least be sure that my adrenalin levels would be kept high. The current news headlines on the site (which have been there since February, so there's a fair chance they'll still be there when you come to read this) are:

DOG FOUND IN GERRARDS CROSS - FEBRUARY 13TH
DOG LOST IN OLD TOWN - FEBRUARY 12TH

You can just see the development of the story right there, can't you?