Wednesday, November 30, 2005

From today's Macclesfield Express

Lesbian Lovers first to Marry - eugh on the title but I'm not working that day.....

In our little corner of Macclesfield it has been a very stable community as it has been the same people living here since we moved in.

We have never regretted living here as the people of Macclesfield have always very supportive and generous.

Tuesday, November 29, 2005

BATS - the full list

Well it is intending to be the full list of books we have read as part of the BATS book group to date.

Working backwards - because that's easiest! And with some blanks towards the beginning, linking either to what I wrote or the best webpage on that book!

2004


And to be filled out later and others added as I remember them:

  • Music and Silence - Rose Tremain
  • Alias Grace - Margaret Atwood, good pages here - natural born quilter - hmmmmm.
  • Love and War in the Apennines - Eric Newby
  • Quarantine - Jim Crace
  • The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
  • The Red Tent - Anita Diamant
  • Northern Lights - Philip Pullman
  • White Cargo - Felicity Kendall
  • Cod - Mark Kurlansky
  • The Surgeon of Crowthorne A Tale of Murder,Madness and the Oxford English Dictionary - Simon Winchester
  • Last Orders - Graham Swift
  • Wait till I tell you - Candida McWIlliam
  • The Soldier's Return - Melvyn Bragg
  • Sea Change - Robert Goddard
  • The Falls - Ian Rankin
  • Park and Ride (Adventures in Surburbia) - Amanda Sawyer

2002
In case you're wondering, BATS stands for Books And ThingS - not a lot of things so far!

Tales from the checkout - 1

The first -I hope - of an ongoing series!

Last week sometime, I was asked 'are you a student' - unfortunately we don't sell glasses. Then at the end of the week, 'is this your retirement job'. I think the truth lies with Mister Inbetween!

On Sunday a colleague passed on to me a customer question - 'Where is Bali?', I said Indonesia, got the response 'But where is Bali in the store' which puzzled me no end! It was about 10 minutes later that I re-parsed the statement as 'Where is the barley' and things started dropping into place.

Then there was serving Neville Holder who quietly went through spending his royalties - not much if I remember his letter to the Guardian Notes and Queries a few weeks back!

Get a reasonable number of items per minute scanned in my first week and thought it should be much better next week and yesterday I saw it increased by 0.1 item/min. Ah well slowly and steadily!

Monday, November 21, 2005

Checking in (or out)

I seem to have survived two weeks at Sainsbury's - from a customer POV it seems a mind numbing job but I've found it fairly enjoyable, you have to keep pretty alert and it keeps my mind busy. Staff are friendly and it seems to match what I need at the moment. Was there dressed in a sombrero and a chunky jumper on Friday for Children in Need!

Sunday, November 20, 2005

.. and another

Entish
Entish


To which race of Middle Earth do you belong?
brought to you by Quizilla
.. looking at the results you can't be Orcish, or indeen anything really bad.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

YAQ

Julian
You are Julian of Norwich! It's all about God, to
you. You're convinced that the world has a
happy ending. Everyone else is convinced that
you're a closet hippie, but you love them
anyway.


Which Saint Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla

Sunday, November 13, 2005

Hunt the (grey) squirrel

According to today's Independent (link will only work for a few days)
Well, it is our fault. Reds frolicked happily in the forests of England undisturbed (more or less) until one dread day in 1876 when a Victorian landowner thought it would be a jolly wheeze to import a couple of those unusual greys from North America. The guilty man can now be named as Thomas Emmet Brocklehurst of Henbury Park in Cheshire. A time traveller with a shotgun could save a lot of trouble.

We have a lot of grey squirrels around here on ground that used to belong to the Brocklehurst family - now we know the reason for all the local squirrels. We hope the cat will get around to reducing the numbers!

Also I see that a lot of web pages claim that it was TV Brocklehust (rather than the above Emmet), but apparently there are mentions of a Thomas Unnet Brocklehurst in the local Silk Heritage Centre which suggests that the Independent has it wrong and that the rest have confused their V's with their U's. Google gives me one relevant hit for Unnet Brocklehurst (apart from suggesting Uunet :-))

Brocklehurst, Thomas Unnet, Mexico To-Day: A Country with a Great Future, and a Glance at the Prehistoric Remains and Antiquities of the Montezumans, 1883
which appears to confirm the Americas connection.

Monday, November 07, 2005

Cowers...

You Aren't Scary, You're Scared

Probably even scared to see how this quiz came out!

Definitely another rank

From news:436ef000@clear.net.nz quoting 'Brian' in alt.folklore.computers:

a British Army Major, who retired in '62, told me that in their computer section, the programers were corporals, because they were really just clerks, but the operators were officers, because they were in charge of very expensive equipment. Of course, the operators were required to wear dress uniform, including swords, after 8pm on the night shift.

says it all really!

Sunday, November 06, 2005

.. a new chapter..

Well this past week I've been training for working on the tills at Sainsbury's, I hit them for the first time (general training so far) tomorrow - watch this space! It might be a useful culture shock for me! At least it will be a continuous - though small - source of income, and get me out of the house and meeting people again.