Get well Tony.

Above is a photo of Tony, son of Ray, the landlord of the Robin Hood & Little John pub in Bexleyheath. Since this shot was taken by me last year, he's lost a lot of weight and really got himself into good shape. I found out only last night that he went on holiday to Manila in the Philippines a couple of weeks ago. He was out one night with a group of friends in an eight seater mini bus; they were driving along a dark and unlit road when they came across a cyclist without lights, the mini bus swerved to avoid him - hit the curb, and then spun down a bank, rolling four or five times. Tony broke his skull, jaw, shoulder and arm, along with several other serious injuries. He is currently in intensive care in a very high class private hospital in Manila; his Mum and Sister have flown over to be with him, and he has received a couple of blood transfusions. I spoke to his dad last night, and apparently he is getting better by the day. I want to take this opportunity to wish Tony all of the best, and I do hope for a speedy recovery for him.

I had another unpleasant encounter on public transport on Monday of last week; I was on the 99 bus, travelling home from visiting Dad in his nursing home - as I got on the bus outside Plumstead bus station I noticed there was an altercation going on towards the back of the bus. An inspector was trying to get a family of around eight seriously under educated and over fed chavs to either pay for tickets or to get off the bus. They flat out refused - "What the F**ck are you going to do about it then?" was their communal response. The inspector gave up and got off the bus, leaving the victorious chavs on board. They then proceeded to reign over the lower deck, jabbering loudly at each other and completely indifferent to the other bus passengers. The ring leader was a woman of about 22 years old, and 22 stone in weight; she had a small toddler in arms, which she continually referred to one and all as her "baybee" - and when an alighting passenger moved to walk past her and the "baybee" she screeched at them to mind what they were doing, as they might hurt the "baybee". She then, in full view of the passengers, proceeded to change the pooey and stinking nappy of the screaming whelp. Completely demeaning and disgusting - the stench was overpowering. I was strongly minded to intervene in the usual Captain Tweed mode, but since the chav brood had several child members, I felt it was not my place to cause them distress - after all, it was not their fault they were born into a family of utter scum. I can only hope that I don't encounter their like again.

I have upgraded my Asus EeePC 901 netbook to Ubuntu 9.04 Linux, and all is fine, though the webcam is playing up now - maybe I need to do some software surgery on it, in a similar way to the Pewty Acres server farm below - ahem:



As you may be aware, a new Star Trek film is shortly to be released. It is a re-boot of the now somewhat moribund franchise, and tells the story of how the original crew came together through Starfleet Academy. There is only one contentious matter that I am aware of - the publicity material mentions "the Enterprises' first captain, Christopher Pike" when any dedicated Trekker knows that Pike was in fact the second captain of the ship - Robert April was the first. Anorak off for now.

Here is an interesting link - Leonard Plugge - the first pirate radio broadcaster in the U.K - you can read all about him and Radio Normandy in the 1930's here.

WNKR are doing a mammoth Bank Holiday long broadcast; you can pick them up on 1476 KHz medium wave, or in 128Kb / sec stereo online here.

Now for this weeks' video clip. A classic from Genesis, and the opening track from their 1976 album "A Trick of the Tail" - here is "Squonk".