My Mid-life Crisis
20100727, 110946 - 5 commentsI have decided that being better late than never I have decided to have myself a little mid-life crisis. Given that I can not afford a sports car just yet I have been advised that writing a novel is once of the cheaper options available to me.
So I have decided that this November I will be taking part in NaNoWriMo, and will attempt to write a 50,000 word plus novel in just 30 days. I don’t have any experience of writing fiction, so this will be a new adventure for me, although I have heard that it will be character building.
The novel I have in mind is called Plebiscite and I’m planning to tax my writing skills to the limit by straddling the fine lines between Humour, Horror and Psychological Thriller. How it will all turn out is anybodies guess.
My ongoing CrossCountry adventure
20100708, 233927 - 1 commentOn Tuesday I had a shocking experience upon a CrossCountry trains service, I was travelling on the 1030 departure from Birmingham New Street to Cardiff Central, as part of a journey from Walsall to Abercynon.
During the journey, the conductor Dean came to check my tickets, I shown him my train ticket, my seat reservation and my 16-25 railcard. As my railcard was faded he took it out of the wallet to take a better look at it. At this point, he acknowledged that it was valid until the 1st of September, but told me that I should get it replaced once I got in to Cardiff. He then started asking me if I had bought cheaper advance tickets, or if I had bought them at the station on the day, to which I replied that I had brought them online, to which he said he was unhappy with that. He said he would not have a problem if I had bought my tickets on the day, but because I had brought them in advance he was unhappy. At this point he started damaging my railcard, running it through his ticket machine, ripping, scratching and bending the card. He returned the card to me and continued down towards the front of the train.
Later he returned and asked to see my railcard again, and when I handed it to him he said that it was not valid as it was now according to him blank. He again said he was unhappy that I was travelling on an advance ticket and said he would sort it out. He then left walking towards the back of the train.
He returned, informed me that he was withdrawing my railcard and produced an Unpaid Fare Notice that he filled out from Walsall to Abercynon. He incorrectly assumed that I was married, a point I asked him to change. While he was filling in the address he questioned several times the street name and county, refusing to belive the Rhondda-Cynon-Taff is a county, whilst simultaneously asserting that the West Midlands is a county but that it also contains Cheltnam, requesting the spelling from me repeatedly. Once he completed the form, after going away to check the correct fare from Walsall to Abercynon, I signed it, only after asking him to make the above correction. It was only once I had returned home that I realised he had not included an Authorisation Number so I was unable to file an appeal on the IRCAS website.
I asked him if he could provide a written explanation of why he had withdrawn my railcard, this he did after a fashion in a statement that contained several inaccuracies. The main reason given in this statement was the fact the railcard was blank, ignoring the fact that he had read the details of it earlier on the journey, and that it had been damaged by himself.
As he was leaving he informed me that the ticket he had given me was only valid on Crosscountry trains and that I would have to buy another ticket at Cardiff in order to continue my journey to Abercynon.
Once off the train I had to purchase a new railcard in order to make my return journey that night, and purchased another ticket from Cardiff to my destination meaning that ultimately I ended-up paying for this journey three times in addition to being forced to renew my railcard almost two months before my last one would have expired.
I have written to Crosscountry trains, as I believe they have some serious issues to address, regarding the actions, and attitude of their staff but as yet I have not received any reply from them. I have advised the train company that I may need to take this issue to my MP is the issues are not addressed as it is simply unacceptable to me for a train company to penalise customers for taking advantage of the cheaper advance tickets rather than paying for the walk-on fare. I’m also wanting an assurance that their staff members xenophobic anti-welsh attitude was an isolated incident as this deeply troubled me.
On the Virtue of Books
20100611, 213336 - 2 commentsSince March I have been writing very short reviews, each of less than thirty words, for every book I have finished reading.
In January I started two year long projects, one was photography related, the other was to read 52 books in one year. By now I should have finished around 24 of these books when in fact I have only finished 15 so far, although I do have quite a few in progress stacked up next to my bed.
I enjoy reading real books, although I don’t have as much time to devote to this as I would like. There is something special about the written word committed to paper, especially compared to the fleeting pixeler nature of computer screens (and despite being youngish I still find it a lot easier to absorb information printed in front of me than on a computer screen). I also like the fact that with real books the book itself has an history and tells its own story, and that once they have been read they can be passed on to others, archived on bookshelves for further reference, or even registered with bookcrossing and released into the wild. Real books like churches also force you to disconnect from the always connected world of the 21st century, allowing time to relax and to think.
Blog Exchanges
20100607, 172714 - 3 commentsSince 2005 I have been using BlogExplosion to scour the blogospheroid, but it is obvious to all that the new owners don’t care, there is a massive backlog for blog approvals and now most of the time the numbers do not display, making surfing impossible, and now half a decade later the only part of BlogExplosion I still regularly use is the Battle of the Blogs where I am most proud of my 100% lose record.
Fortunately there was a fresh new replacement launched next week, ExposeYourBlog! which is already proving to be a great place to both expose your blog to others, and to expose yourself to some new blogs.
EYB! has almost all the features BE was famous for, the blog surfing, the games and a friendly community, but it goes one better that BE by ensuring that their is a dedicated and active team of admins constantly working to improve the experience.
Newport’s £28,000,000 eyesore
20100531, 165913 - No commentPassing through Newport station recently I was surprised to see how far the uglyfication processes was going.
I have not left a train at Newport for almost five years, so I can not comment on the why the uglyfication was needed or if it solves their problems, but as a rail passenger passing through I’m left to conclude that if they have chosen to make their station look that ugly I don’t think I want to see the rest of the city.
Am I alone in thinking that if we are spending millions of pounds to upgrade our stations we should be making them more attractive, realise that they are all some-people will see of our towns and cities and make them inviting adverts, and not as in Newport to scare people away.
Teaching the world to count,
20100528, 150541 - 2 commentsI have written before on the issues effecting UK-EU relation caused by the mainlanders in ability to tell the difference between a comma and a decimal point.
Last month, I was having to order some leaflets from another members state and had great difficulty in working out the quantities and costs involved in ordering 40.000 leaflets for £303,00 so was inspired to write to my MEPs regarding the situation.
Today Nathan L Gill, PA to John Bufton UKIP MEP for Wales, replied to my letter:
Dear Mr Beech
Thank you for contacting John Bufton MEP regarding the standardisation of the decimal point throughout the EU.
There is no doubt a lot of sense in what you say, and benefits to traders and consumers alike. However, at UKIP we do not believe that it is the duty of the EU to legislate on every single aspect of our lives. They interfere far too much as it is.
You may be assuming that France would need to comply to us, but it may turn out that we would all have to comply with the French way of doing things.
Diversity is a wonderful thing.
Sincerely
Nathan L Gill
PA to John Bufton MEP
Of course diversity is a wonderful thing, but main aim of the EU (as affirmed by article 114 (ex 95) is to crush diversity wherever it is found. So for as long as we are forced to remain within the EU why should we not use it to crush the incompetencies of our fellow Europeans.
Dead Blogs Tell Lies
20100527, 213435 - No commentIf a blog goes longer than six months without an update it is generally thought to be dead, and ceses to be a blog typicaly at this stage it will take on the form of a website.
In my many years within the blogospheroid I have come across literally tens of thousands of dead blogs, and the most common factor they have in common is an overly optimistic final post that promises more frequent updates in future.
Inspired by the death and destruction I have observed I will promise here and now, with Google and Bing as my witness, that I will in future try and update this blog less often.
Nationalisation v. Privatisation
20100521, 131418 - No commentReading the news can at times make for quite a depressing pastime, and it seems to highlight that even in this new Con-Dem nation we are ruled over by as many unofficial loonies as ever.
The Con-Dems like their predecessors seem intent on privatising Royal Mail and the Royal Mint, they claim that this will enable those companies to attract more investment and so enable them to expand quicker.
It seems like they may have failed to notice that private companies have no money to invest and that it is remarkably easy for the government to print new money when it feels the need to invest as it did with the banks.
In the case of Cadbury we saw that the government had to give money to the Royal Bank of Scotland to lend to Kraft before Kraft were able to take over the chocolate manufacture. Are we now going to see the government giving more money away just so it can be used to buy the governments assets?
My solution would be for the government to provide the investment that is needed into government owned companies, for the benefit of everyone.
Roll With It!
20100519, 185732 - No commentLast June I competed in the Cardiff Photomarathon, armed with my trusty Pentax ME Super and a roll of Fuji Superia 400. In 12 hours I had to take 12 images based on the 12 topics that were given out at set intervals. This day of running around Cardiff resulted in 1 photo of which I was quite proud.
Roll With It, by Mark Beech - Photomarathon 2009
Unfortunately a rule change means that this years Photomarathon will be an entirely digital affair, but that won’t stop me from taking part and trying to squirrel the twelve topics as best I can.