I am suitably freaked by http://whywomenhatemen.blogspot.com/ which posts the worst of the personal adds.

Very sad to see John Mortimer (writer of Rumpole etc) has died http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7833156.stm

Unbelievably amazed by the pilot in this story, especially after reading about the skill it takes to ditch a plane. Terrifying and miraculous all at once. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7832191.stm

My copies of Serenity: Better Days and The Players and the Rebels have arrived!

I am in the middle of The Point of Departure by Robin Cook. The book is made of of his diaries plus annotations from 2001 to his resignation in 2003. I am finding it particularly fascinating because I worked for an MP for those years, and it is bringing back lots of memories.

Sad but true, I was extraordinarily fond of Woolworths. I always imagined that when I got a place of my own I'd pop in there for random cheap kitchen/household equipment and the occasional lightbulb.


When I woke up this morning I heard fragments of news from Mumbai. Horrific and tragic and terrible.

Oh Humph...

I hope you and Willie Rushton are having a laugh right now, and then you and Louis Armstrong will swing your asses off.

You brightened many a day, and will be sorely missed.

Several years ago I saw a film about the closure of the railways, made in the 1950s or early 60s. It was black and white, and showed (archive?) film of trains traveling through stations while the narrator lamented the lost stations. The part I remember best ran something like "Gone are the stations with the pretty names [list of station names], gone or the stations with the funny names [list of station names like Upper Piddle (yes I made that up)]..."

I have been trying to track this down ever since. I don't think it was a Betjeman.

Linking neatly into this, did you hear that the woman who inspired John Betjeman to write 'A Subaltern's Love Song' has died?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7352230.stm

Also very sad, Gwyneth Dunwoody has died. She was the longest serving female MP, narrowly passing Barbara Castle.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7353743.stm

Anthony Minghella has died
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7302841.stm

Quite a shock - he was only 54.

as has Captain Birdseye
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/7302554.stm

The weather forcast for Easter, our first big event of the season is dreadful. Actual temp 5 degrees C, feels like -2 degrees C. Oh dear...

Oh my goodness. Heath Ledger has just been found dead. How very sad.

ETA http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7203797.stm

Very sad - John Spencer, who played Leo on TWW, has died of a heart attack. He was only 58 - scary. So many people seem to have died young this year, including two of my political heroes Robin Cook and Mo Mowlam.

Mo Mowlam died today. She was an inspirational politician, (and a good Trevs [1] woman), and unfailingly good humoured. A group of us formed a 'Mo Mowlam for President' splinter group at University!

There were some lovely tributes on the Today programme this morning - and more were flooding in as I drove to work this morning. To lose her and Robin Cook in such a short space of time is especially sad.

[1] Trevelyan College, U of Durham. Gloriously hexagonal.

So, Tony Blair didn't go to Robin Cook's funeral and got roundly abused for this.

Robin Cook was a former Cabinet colleague and senior, long serving member of the Labour Party. Would the PM have come home for Gordon Brown or John Prescott, or even Michael Howard or Maggie?

I can understand (but don't necessarily agree with) the argument that if he came home for this it would set a precident and he's have to come home for other matters, and he needs his holiday and family time etc, but it does give an impression of snubbing.

In other news it is currently p***ing it down, which is a shame because it is the last night of the open air 'Midsummer Night's [1] Dream' tonight, and there were a couple of storms during last night's show. On the other hand, if it is cancelled, it will mean that I will get in before 11pm for the first time this week, and wont have to do another 13 1/2 hr day. But people will be disappointed and money lost.

[1] Never sure about the punctuation in that one