Thursday, March 26, 2009

A Little Harmless Faith

Another slight setback in the War On Bollocks;

Couple Given £4500 of Taxpayers' Money for Psychic Academy [Wales Online]

but more than made up for by this;

Crash Pilot Who Paused To Pray Is Convicted [Reuters]

Let's hope he prays for a shorter sentence, eh? If only we could find and prosecute all the people responsible for his religious instruction, too. That'd make those sixteen deaths really mean something.

Thursday, March 19, 2009

Coming Back

There’s a warm mist lying over the bay. It diffuses the floodlights of St Helen’s into a soft, ambient glow, turning the whole sky silver. In the half-light of dusk, people are lighting fires on the beach, so that the crisp sea-salt air is warmed with woodsmoke. In the dunes, a couple kiss. At the shoreline, an old man walks a young dog. If you find the right spot on the coast road, all that can be heard is the tumble of surf, the yapping of the pup, and a distant, lonely foghorn.

And I remember why I loved this place, and why I may yet do so once again.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Settling; Like Snow Doesn't.

We are, of course, exhausted beyond all reason, but Hev & I are now installed at the new Swansea mansionette. We're 10 days into the biggest game of TETRIS of our lives, we're on level 129, and it's become a full-contact bloodsport. We're just starting to see carpet, so we're still motivated. Building a kitchen out of spare parts is proving challenging, but at least space is no longer an issue... for now.

We're already feeling the benefit of being in the middle of things, and having friends "just pop in", which hasn't happened to either of us for a decade. There's a couple of restaurants around the corner, three parks and three or four pubs within five minutes' walk, and our favourite late-night bar just in the next street. After Splott and Waun Wen, this feels like Beverley Hills.

If we've left you out of our update texts/e-mails, drop us a line for our new address, landline no. etc. Then perhaps you too can "just pop in"? That'd be grand.