Deja vu all over again

As you might imagine, I’m a little busy here this morning. The bombs on the Metro have caused 30+ reported deaths and another 40 injured so far but reports are still coming in. Responsibility has been claimed by a muslim separatist group from Chechnya – though they are most active currently in Dagestan where there have been 19 terrorist attacks so far this year. It is the same group which claimed responsibility for the attack on the Moscow – St Petersburg express in November.

The attacks were made on the busiest line on the Moscow Metro, one on an interchange in the suburbs, Park Kulturyi, and one on a very busy interchange in the centre right underneath the HQ of the Federal Security Bureau, successor to the Soviet KGB. The attacks were timed for maximum effect at the peak of the rush hour. I was fortunate that I left for work before the explosions occurred – the one in the centre being about half a mile from where I live and the second one being next to the road i travel every morning to get to the office and about a half-mile away, again.

The metro is still running, but getting into the centre is a nightmare and traffic is almost grid-locked.

Al Jazeera is carrying the best reports – you may find these links interesting.

http://english.aljazeera.net/

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/08/2009817141410883512.html

PS. The blog title refers to personal experience. N. Ireland, Germany, London, Serbia and now Moscow. One moment people are going about their everyday business, the next they are lying in the rubble and chaos shocked, stunned and bleeding – or worse, in little red, wet gobbets spread around the scene. And you wonder why I go on about terrorists. Ask yourself this, where does the money come from to finance these groups – but better yet, don’t ask me, ask TTM and Levent.

Summertime

And about time too!

Is it today that most on here have to run around resetting clocks on walls and appliances?

Would you believe that I have never had to reset a timepiece in my life? Except of course on overseas travel, (I remember traveling what appeared to be due south on the Eurostar and having to adjust my watch by an hour, seemed silly at the time.)

I for one am pleased that you are all an hour closer, I do enjoy watching the midweek sports matches but invariably fall asleep during the latter stages.

There is no doubt in my mind that changing clocks is something that we should consider down here, besides the fact that we are heading for a capacity problem with our power stations so many of our rural homes have no electricity at all, children having to study by candlelight would find an extra hour of daylight a blessing.

Just a sideshow

This morning I had a bit of a twirl about WordPress. And found some wonderful photos on a photoblog and wowed over them to the photographer. A real treat to start the day.

I read about a cat that had died at the vet’s and I sent the owner my commiserations. I  found some pages that I did not understand at all, some because they used languages I don’t speak, and some  which seemed to be in a type of code.

Some pages were obviously for families and friends and I was surprised they were in the public domain. I found details of a hen party tonight quite near to where I live. Some pages I looked at were brightly coloured and dull in content. One was very dark and had some very dark fiction. Well, I hope it was fiction.

I may never find any of those pages again. It was like having brief collisions in time and screen. Random, chance meetings.

I found all of these by clicking on the latest posts at the bottom of the dashboard page. The ones that scroll by so fast that even if you check back after a few seconds have gone by they have disappeared into the ether.

It was amazing. This site is SO BIG. and MyT is SO SMALL.

Which made me think about what Araminta had said, that someone over on MyT had called this a side show. That’s like the flea thinking it’s bigger than the dog. No, not even that, because if WordPress were the dog, it wouldn’t even know the flea existed, much less feel any irritation from it. So, help me someone, please find me an analogy that gives some idea of the scale.

Thanks.

And now I might just go for a little wander again. Take in some of the sights.

See you.

The Quick and The Dead. Part two.

The ship was fitted with a 50 ton SWL crane on the starboard side aft that reached out over the stern and was used for recovery of diving kit, sea bed rubbish and the like. On that charter we picked up tons of maritime detritus off the sea bed that was in the way of the planned route.

Our job was to survey the route the pipeline would take. The Straits of Messina are a busy place and to minimise down time, we worked long hours with every other weekend off in port. This was the second part of the charter for us and work had increased tremendously as we neared the charter end. Whilst we were at liberty to go ashore, a lot of us tended to stay aboard to catch up on sleep, do our washing and generally chill out.

The hours we worked were 12 on and 12 off and it was all go as it was a full dive operation with surface and Remote Operated Vehicle (ROV) work.  For the crew this meant constantly shifting bottom beacons (which marked the route and whose signals were picked up by the ship’s hydrophones) which meant lots of small boat work to recover the beacons and then move them to the next location. On top of this we still had the myriad of ship’s tasks to do such as basic maintenance aboard – so when the weekends came they were a welcome and well deserved chance to catch up. Continue reading “The Quick and The Dead. Part two.”

Lairy ladies

Violence among women is something I’ve never actually witnessed.  I’m blissfully innocent of situations where alcohol-fuelled tempers flare and it’s handbags at dawn.

Only these days, the trend seems to be less handbags and more knives or glasses or even, not so long ago, a stilletto heel in the eye. To be frank, it’s all got a bit nasty.

There was a case in our local paper recently about a young law student out on the lash in some bar who took exception to another woman and head-butted her in the face.

A head-butt. It made me think what sort of woman would resort to a head butt? How could that possibly be an instinctive thing for a woman to do? What kind of background does she have, this law student who uses her own head to injure another person? Does she really have more testosterone than oestrogen? Continue reading “Lairy ladies”