You can’t hide Uranium on the Isle of Man

Posted on

Remember that Uranium that was stolen from the nuclear power plant on the Isle of Man*?

Of course you do.

It’s been a mystery as to where it disappeared to, ever since it got taken**.

But inadvertently, a local photographer seems to have found the hiding place, simply by taking a local photograph.

Because surely there can be no reason for this eerie red/orange glow, and fuzzy focusing around this traditional Manx cottage, other than radiation seeping through the thick stone walls.

If you look carefully at the branches in the top right hand corner, you can see that they too have been affected by the alpha particles leaching out from the stolen isotope.
It’s also melted half of one of the chimney pots. Nasty.

And the patch of earth in the foreground with no grass growing? That’s probably where they put it down when they got it out of the Uranium theft vehicle.

I know the location of this particular cottage, and I’ll be passing on that information to the Isle of Man police force, so that they can get the International Atomic Energy Agency involved, sharpish.

After all, the only alternative to this being the actual spot that the pilfered element has been hidden, is the local photographer in question applying a ridiculous number of filters to this image to make it “look better” than it did when it was taken.

And I think we’re all aware which one of these things is more likely to be true.

I think it’s very obvious that a serious crime has been committed here.

* I’ll take Things That Didn’t Happen for 200 please, Alex.
** It hasn’t, because I made the incident up just now.

Still parenting

Posted on

Parenting continues. It just changes with time. With our daughter, we’re now at that age where almost everything is ok to do on her own, but sometimes there’s still a need (often mutual) to be present for backup and reassurance.

And so there are limits and negotiations and compromises. To be fair, the discussions are all very civil and understanding.

I’ve really matured.

More seriously, Obs on a sunny Saturday lunchtime is a good case in point. Probably completely cool and safe, but just that bit of lingering doubt. And so it was decided that we are hands off, but nearby.

And you think you’re overreacting until you wander down Lower Main Road and get approached by two dodgy types in as many minutes. And then you return to your car to find someone looking through the rear window for stuff to steal.

Lovely.

So while I’ve definitely had better Saturdays, I’m also very willing to be here. Just in case.

High hopes of being home for at least some of the football later, though.

Curry Club

Posted on

In what was only a mildly and temporarily amusing coincidence, our Curry Club dinner last night was at the Curry Club restaurant in town.

Now, before we even get there, it’s up against the wall when it comes to comparisons, with Bihari (see 6000 miles… passim) all over the top curry awards for this corner of SA. But even with that in mind, we gave it a go anyway, and actually, it was pretty good.

Set in a quaint old house on New Church Street, just along from the Fire & Ice Hotel (which was much more ice than fire last night), it looks like it would be better set in Observatory. There are higgledy-piggledy chairs and tables, cloths and scarves hung from the ceilings, and the ubiquitous bookcase of randomness (weird dolls, an astroturf rabbit, model aliens, 1960s vases, a child’s mokorotlo etc etc) on the wall.

A genial Southern English host, clearly passionate about his curries, and who was lucky enough to discover an amazing chef from Delhi, and is now chucking out Punjabi deliciousness six days a week. They’re very much set up for deliveries, with two guys manning the iPads at Reception the whole night, and a stream of drivers coming and going.

And the food was good. Starters were a selection of Bhajees, and their signature chicken livers. Mains were everything from Lamb Rogan Josh, through the Chicken Tikka, and on to the “Chicken and Prawn Curry, you say?”, described thus:

Try this one for size, Curry Club’s mad blend of reef and henhouse all wrapped up in a creamy weave of coriander, red chillies and fresh tomato.

Which was mine, and which was really good. Only down side for me was the spiciness – or rather the lack of it. Default from the kitchen is 5/10, and that seemed reasonable to try in a place where we’d never been before. But sadly, there was no spice at all, and I’ll probably try a 7 or an 8 next time around.

Fully licensed, so beers were happily accompanying all the food.

And then the music. Really good! 90s indie all the way through the evening. Bran Van 3000, Soup Dragons, New Radicals, The Smiths, and some really long extended stuff from The Charlatans. Then, as the host lit up the blowtorch (with a Bush Baby cannister, nogal) some Crèmes Brûlées at the table – Firestarter by The Prodigy. We all laughed at the coincidence, and then realised that it was a rather theatrical set-up. Clever.

They don’t do coffee. At all. And that’s odd.

But yep. It was a good night out, and I would recommend the place. A lot more laid back than Bihari, albeit that the food could never, and would never match up, right?

Right. But it came pretty close. And that’s fairly amazing.

Safe for a dip

Posted on

Spotted online. This:

This is really good news: it’s been a hot, sunny day, and I desperately need a dip. I had legitimate concerns about the safety of swimming here, given the local wildlife, but if they don’t swim here, well then I surely (and safely) can. Fantastic. What a result.

Punctuation is important, hey?

But while we joke, as mentioned here, these things can be a real danger. Not where I came from, and (mostly) not where I live right now, but definitely in this country.

I took this while I was up in Hoedspruit earlier in the year. And while I feel that this one (next to the water feature outside the packhouse office), was perhaps a little tongue in cheek, there were plenty of real life places with these real life dangers from which I chose to stay away.

And no. Just for outright clarity, that first paragraph below the top image was merely for artistic impression and comedic value. It’s finally sunny here, which is great, but it’s also absolutely bloody freezing.

It’s no wonder the wildlife all heads up north.

Worst lines

Posted on

The winners of the 2024 Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Awards have just been announced, and many of them (and the (dis)honourable mentions and runners-up) are pretty good.

Founded in 1982 at San Jose State University in California, the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest challenges entrants to compose opening sentences to the worst of all possible novels. 

As someone once said: “Deliberately bad writing requires a special talent.”

It’s true. But interestingly, I have no special talent at all.
All the stuff on this blog is entirely accidental. Just variable fortune and the occasional evening filled with Castle Milk Stout with which to distractedly guide my typing fingers.

Anyway, back to the BLFA, and, as you might expect for the highest (only?) awards for this particular genre, they’re bad.

You’ll need to have your brain fired up and be in the right mood (receptive and ready to work through some mental calculations) to enjoy the lot of them before you click that link, so I recommend taking it a bit at a time.

They’re not going anywhere.

And I could list them all here, but I’m not going to. Still, here are a couple of favourites to get you in the mood.

Cthulhu awoke from loathsome dreams of gangrenous decay and the foul stench of congealing viscera, lifting his pulpy, misshapen head to find what foolish supplicant had roused him to yet another age of fear and creeping dread, but found his bloodthirst unslaked, having been brought to consciousness not by horror-filled screams of human sacrifice but by his little sister’s overly dramatic wail of “Cthulhu’s touching me!” from her side of the family station wagon’s back seat.

If broken hearts were made of simple syrup, and shattered dreams were made from white rum, and agony and despair came from ¾ ounce of lime juice, freshly squeezed, and three mint leaves respectively, then Mary Lou just served up a mojito cocktail straight from the ninth circle of hell when she told Ricky the baby wasn’t his.

And these weren’t even their best in class. So click through and enjoy.