Further thoughts on the HP book... for the first time J K Rowling assumed a level of prior knowledge which was a blessed relief... so this time the first chapter doesn't consist of a potted history of the previous books, which is good, the converse of this is that I really think I should have re-read the Order of the Pheonix before reading this one as its a couple of years since I looked at a Harry Potter book and my memory just isn't as good as it used to be. Another improvement is that Harry seems to have regained his.... ummmm his happier side... he was a little angry and dark throughout the last book... this time he seemed much more philosophical about his 'fate'.... but the one really really inexplicable thing about this book and something that did start to irritate somewhat is that H continued on a course of actions that even he should have known from previous experience was totally totally stupid.....and would obviously have dire repercussions.... and yet JK Rowling continued down a very very similar path to one previously explored....???? Odd indeed

just finished reading a book I picked up in Tesco's yesterday..... bought the child's version as it is after all a children's book... though it is quite a meaty read for all that. Yes I have spent the last 24 hours reading Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and yes I did enjoy it.... shall I mention who gets killed... well Richard (from Richard and Judy) was right in his suggestion... and his reason for the death was absolutely spot on... by the end of the book Harry experiences love, loss and true friendship.... it was all there and I nearly shed a little tear... for a day's read it wasn't too bad at all.....

now the sun is shining I must get outdoors... a bit of cricket on Jesus Green with J & J might be the answer!

Am getting a little closer to my aim of swimming daily as it has been beautifully hot so I have dived into the lake at every opportunity... getting used to swimming with the fishes and they are remarkably brave and happy to swim around my toes which is slightly unsettling. Have also had a couple of attempts at windsurfing but... there has never quite been the right sort of wind (my excuse anyway) Mostly it has been too little wind which leaves me with another swimming option. I have perfected the technique of placing the sail on the board, lying flat and as far forward as possible and simply swimming arms only.... you really glide along, bouyancy isn't a problem and it gets rid of any possibility of growing bingo wings!!! Excellent!

Need to get back to regular posting on this blog. All the stuff I want to say piles up in my head and then I don't make the time to write it down and it sort of dissipates, gets lost somewhere, floats into some sort of interweb ether...

sooooo firstly I need to have a little rant about car adverts... why is it that manufacturers think they can fuse the use of cars with nature in such a integral way...cars and car-use destroy the natural environment!!!! roads kill off biodiversity, the fuel that we use casually floats off into the atmosphere and destroys the natural balance of things and they are, old or new, ugly unsightly mechanical heaps!! and yet a car advert has a single glistening vehicle in some distant rural setting zipping around as if it was the only 'creature' on the planet... there's a new one that amazed me.. it leaves a vapour trail behind it and people are looking at this polluting smog in wonder as if it was something special??? now what is that all about?????????

ok rant over... that one has been wafting through my brain cells in need of release for some time now and well yes that is what blogs are for is it not????

and so the search for the london bombers continues, the return to a sort of normality takes place, we had a two minutes silence across Europe on Thursday... and my head swims with thoughts.... we have not had any minutes silence for any civilian deaths in Iraq.... perhaps we should??? I was in a little woodland with 10 eleven year olds on thursday and we stopped what we were doing and I found it quite a special moment... just being silent, thinking of the connection of all of those others also standing silent... and it really makes me ponder human connectivity and the power it gives... maybe it brings out the old hippy in me but I am sure there is something beyond individuals and there is 'something' that connects us in ways beyond present day understanding????

Anyway stepping aside from weird new agey ponderings... to the people that planted the bombs... I thought it was very good that good old Ken (Livingstone)did not speak of revenge, eye for an eye type rhetoric but was calm and spoke of the need for understanding and peace... this is not a time, in fact there is never a time, when violence can be answered by violence... it just escalates the whole situation....I truely feel for the bombers families as much as for the victims families... it must be terrible to discover that one's child could be involved in something so awful, to be so committed to a violent ideology that they actually killed for it.... ??? another thing beyond comprehension.... but but but....

listening to R4 the other morning when they announced that it had indeed been British citizens that carried out the bombings, the next news item concerned American officers in Guantanamo Bay being accused of abusive and degrading activites to their 'prisoners', the final main story was about British soldiers possibly being charged with war crimes for their activities in Iraq... and the injustice of it all reminded me of some angry young Irish men that I knew in the 70's who felt so strongly about other acts of injustice that they considered violence as an option...and although I could never condone any act of violence I could understand their anger, (thankfully the IRA have (sort of) come to understand that violence does not help any cause).... it is possible to have some level of empathy with angry young muslims today..... hopefully they too will come to realise that violence just isn't an answer????????

came across this blog and thought you might like to read some of the quotes from Fox News!!

I feel this blog is being sadly neglected of late as I am now spending more and more time at Mepal staying in my caravan and living in a world that appears far from my previous existence of sitting at a computer screen day in day out. But this week events unfolded that brought the two worlds aligned for a while.... we had a group of school children in from a central London school on Thursday and as we were preparing for a day of high ropes, climbing and kayaking news started filtering in of an explosion in London. At first it was simply one text message from a girl's mother but soon there was enough to warrant putting on the TV to discover just what was happening.... it became an unsettled day of listening to news unfold, carrying on as 'normal' and talking and listening to the teenagers as they in turn needed to talk through their fears and worries.... It all felt strange as the world I inhabited last year joined the world I now inhabit as I spoke to friends still living in London and working in the very areas that were targetted..... it felt personal too in an unexpected way... it felt as if it was my London that had been violated and actually Ken Livingstone put it extremely eloquently when he spoke of London as a place were you are free to be who you want to be... this is just how I feel about London and why each time I return I feel as if I am returning home... it is truely a place where you can just be... where you can be yourself without fear or recrimination... and that is what was attacked...There has been a lot of talk of the indomitable spirit of the place which is certainly true but what is also very very special about London is the sense of freedom and home that makes people from all over the world call themselves Londoners and pride themselves in the sense of belonging to the place... this to me is what was attacked... those bombs were aimed at all Londoners with absolutely no regard for religion, race, belief, status... and that's what is so senseless about it all....

so now today I sit at the computer trying to write and I feel as if I have forgotten how.... it has all become a bit meaningless