Mat Bowles

So, today, we had a few problems. We ran out of petrol on the way from school to Tesco's (not the best start), but while in Tesco, I made a cardinal error. Perhaps not as daft as going up against a Sicilian when death is on the line, but nearly.

Y'see, I need to buy some more toys for the school playground, so I thought I'd get some prices. So me, miss_s_b and amazing_holly, having finished our shop, took a quick detour into the toy aisle. Their rangeof die-cast toys is both varied and cheap, which is what I needed to know. Unfortunately, on the way out, my eye was taken by some Transformers toys on offer. Now, when I was a kid, Transformers were my favourite toys EVER (I even had a complete run of the UK print of the comic).

So, naturally, I had a quick glance. And Miss Holly saw a Bumblebee, and fell in love. Jennie saw one she wanted, and despite me pointing out we're a bit skint, she decided we should buy some "for Holly". I got an Optimus Prime (never had one as a kid, too expensive).

"I want my Megatron"

So, in the checkout queue, I had two problems. One was that the girl was rather pretty, so someone couldn't resist flirting with her and telling her how nice her hair was. The bigger problem, of course, was someone else complaining and saying I want my Megatron in a bit of a strop.

So, out of the 6 year old and the 31 year old (who's been seriously proposed for a peerage), which one do you think was flirting outrageously, and which was having a strop over being able to play with the toy we hadn't paid for yet.

What do you think?

Apparently, if I stop posting here, people will start ringing me to check I'm ok, or wondering what I'm up to, or other similar things. This is especially true if I just, y'know, stop writing stuff and stop commenting elsewhere.

Well, I did. It started as a weekend break from t'internet in which I didn't even look at my email, then it turned into a few months where I simply scanned my email for important stuff, occasionally checked into Twitter, but otherwise didn't read any of my reading, friends or feed pages and simply turned off. Honestly? It's been good.

So, what have I been doing instead? Well, making money definitely wasn't one of them. Ah well, that'll have to start changing. What I have been doing is enjoying life in many respects.

Learnt how to bake and cook

I've learnt, not just how to bake (which is quite easy), but also how to actually, y'know, properly cook. I am no longer scared by a recipe that requires I chop an onion. I know what a vichyssoise is (but not how to spell it), and have even made one. My carrot, cream and orange soup, adapted from Mary Berry's recipe, is quite simply gorgeous, and I successfully made baguettes yesterday.

I've been helping miss_s_b in the garden, in which we have potatoes, beetroot, oregano and even scented geraniums growing well. The newly planted garlic is already sprouting, so that'll be nice for next year.

Biggest bestest cake in the world

I've been spending time with amazing_holly, reading, playing games, cooking and having fun. I managed to get her to teach herself the basics of multiplication and division while baking a cake. I even, as a reward for her for sticking with learning to be good enough at Speed Racer to actually beat Mummy in a championship cooked, with her, the biggest bestest cake that Mister Mat has ever made! which has, somehow, now become the biggest bestest cake in the world. Well, she is 6. It was fun making it though, even if it was so big it had gone dry before we finished it.

But also? I've been playing games. A lot of games. For this you can mostly blame liadnan. Y'see, awhileback I had a catastrophic OS failure involving a critical Fx vulnerability and a dodgy porn site, and we gave up on fixing Windows and switched to Ubuntu for the main desktop. I had some problems getting a few things to work, and he pointed me at the wonder that is the world of Linux repositories. So I installed some, to see what I could find.

Open source, extendable games

Mostly, I found games. Open Source, extendable, games. Based on some wonderful classics like Elite, Civilisation, Sin City and similar. I will, I hope, write up the ones I enjoyed, just so I can have a record of them. I may even write up the ones I hated, to remind me not to install them again. In the meantime, I'm back. I've been reading, and even commenting on, most of my reading pages, and plan to completely reorganise them to keep my sanity in place.

In the meantime, enough about me, what've you guys been up to, have I missed much?

Spent the last weekend at the spring Liberal Democrat conference just up the road in Harrogate. It's one of those events that holds a soft spot for me—my first one was 2 years ago, just 2 weeks after I'd met theyorkshergob, so I spent both evenings with her in Leeds—we both think we'd have ended up together regardless, but the ability to meet up in Yorkshire really did speed things up. Anyway, it was a damn good weekend.
( Met Howard Dean )
( Official Voting Member—the POWER )
( Faith Schools—they're WRONG, damnit! )
If, like me, you want to see the end of faith schools, take heart from this policy, it's a damn fine step in the right direction, and much better than what any party had before. If you think they're a good idea? I refer you to the words of the Accord chair, Rabbi Jonathan Romain:

I want my children to go to a school when they can sit next to a Christian, play football in the break with a Muslim, do homework with a Hindu and walk back with an atheist - interacting with them and them getting to know what a Jewish child is like. Schools should build bridges, not erect barriers

Amen to that.

G'night all. Gotta take the Shrub to school in the morning, and Jennie's getting an 8am train back.

Last year, Yorkshire was hit by major flooding, and several decent pubs were forced to close. The pub just down the canal from Jennie's was shut for 9 months afterwards.

This year, the town closest to where my parents come from has been flooded. But the people of Kingsbridge didn't let that bother them:
BBC NEWS | UK | Pub regulars drink through floods

Now, there's a reason my parents left that area. There's a reason I left Devon. You're right, they probably had nothing better to do at all. But even so. Devon pubs stay open even when flooded.

Oh yeah, the accents in that video? Sound so very like the bits of my family that still live around there. I may have a Devonshire accent, but it's not that broad.

Today, I went to Sheffield to attend a conference, knowing that I'd get to interview Nick Clegg while there. Unfortunately, despite arriving at the outskirts of Sheffield approximately an hour before I needed to, I was half an hour late for the actual meeting. Why?

Because Sheffield doesn't know what signposts are for

Here's an example. The conference is at Sheffield Cathedral. Lovely venue BTW, just about the right size, theoretically easy to find, etc. So while driving the outskirts of the city, I get to the ring road and there's a sign that says "for the Cathedral and [other stuff], follow Cathedral District". Simple enough. So I do, and the Cathedral District is well signposted along the ring road. Except for one small omission. No exit sign. At least not one that I saw. Guys, if you're putting up signs aimed at visitors, pointing out important attractions and destinations, it's useful if you make sure they actually tell visitors where they need to turn off.

Another example. One of the exits from the ring road is closed, so I can't follow the route in. There are nice diversion signs up. So I follow them. Unfortunately, at the next exit to the roundabout, the diversion sign is almost impossible to see from the lane you end up in. So this poor, and now late, stressed and frustrated visitor is in the wrong lane (again) and has no clue where to go. Good job I have a reasonable sense of direction and Google Maps installed on the phone.

Sheffield Lib Dems? I know you only took control of the council in May, and I'm told you're aware it's a disgrace, but still, please, for the benefits of your great city, the supposed hub of South Yorkshire, please sort out the directions signs so they actually help visitors. Thanks.

If you need some help, send some fact finders down to Devon. I grew up there, it's only when you leave you realise the lack of the damn things everywhere else. There's no point hoping for an increase in tourism if the tourists just get lost and frustrated...

This rant brought to you by the 'too exhausted to even proofread' section of Mat's Brain. The interview itself will, hopefully, get a write up tomorrow. Because, y'know, dude! I interviewed Nick Clegg. And prompted him to have a dig, on the record, at both Polly Toynbee and Jackie Ashley. Yay!

So, the purchase of the Ka has provoked much discussion here and elsewhere^[1] (bunch of petrolheads and weirdoes), and Jennie has decided that she wants to name it^[2]. She has a preferred option^[3]. I'm not too keen^[4]. So I thought I'd enlist some help from you lot^[5]. There now follows a poll^[6]:
[Poll #1231865]
I mean, seriously, why would you want to give your car a name, let alone a silly pun? Oh, wait, I'm in Yorkshire, it's Jennie. Combine the two and I'm doomed, aren't I?

Oh, the other scary thing? She went to the post office today to pay her wage in, and I met her at Sainsbury's to do some shopping. She'd bought a copy of the Highway Code and some L plates. Be afraid...

---

[1] A friends locked post at her personal journal.
[2] It's a really stupid idea of a name.
[3] I mean it, really really stupid.
[4] I hate it.
[5] Help me oh friends list, you're my only hope.
[6] As always, non-LJers will need to login with an OpenID or create an LJ account to vote.

Sobriety is overrated. Especially if you've spent the evening in the company of a beautiful girl serving beer in the best real ale pub in Yorkshire. During their bi-annual beer festival.

Oh, she's also (finally) started work on building the pub website. So it needs some links in so that Google starts to pay attention. Hint.

I've mentioned the Fantastic Films Weekend a few times recently, but today the National Media Museum put the new website live so we have some details:

This year the line-up includes the Tarantino/Rodriguez Grindhouse double-bill, the ultimate Cushing/Lee pairing in Dracula, Daughters of Darkness, Eyes without a Face, Blood on Satan’s Claw and John Carpenter’s The Thing in 70mm with an exclusive video introduction from Carpenter himself. Our guests will be cult filmmakers Harry Kümel, Peter Duffell, Piers Haggard and Robert Fuest.

Now, I'm not a massive horror film fan (because most horror films don't involve space ships), but I can appreciate a good flick, and the normal selection they've had has been brilliant, last year included Soylent Green, 300 on the IMAX, a showing of Ghostwatch and Forbidden Planet. So that's some proper SF, some decent horror, some weird FX driven stuff and SPARTA!

It's a really cool venue in Bradford, just a few minutes walk from Bradford Interchange bus and rail station, incredibly easy to get to. Especially from our house, the 363 takes 20 minutes from the end of our street. So that's:

7th Fantastic Films Weekend runs from Friday 13 to Sunday 15 June

Admit it, you're interested. And you want to come. You can even throw in a visit to sunny Brighouse and see where I live and everything.

And, honestly? Bradford's actually quite a nice place as well. Honest. Or you could do what some of the British Horror Forum regulars are doing (including pmoodie?), and stay in the hotel down the road from us because it's dead cheap and really nice. And they probably won't bite. Unless you're into that sort of thing. And I know you lot, some of you are...