Okay,  picture this, walking home from the Duke of York, in the Sainsbury’s covered carpark, walking slowly, the cold air hitting your face, when….. There is a blackout and the carpark goes pitch black. 2 seconds later, the Emergency Lights kick in and you continue walking. Is it a power cut, or was it just the lights?

Walking out of Sainsbury’s carpark, you can hear the sound of alarms, and you can see the passage at the side of the Library is pitch black. You walk through, keeping your hand in your pocket, incase anyone tries anything funny and walk onto Blue Boar Street to see the full extent of the chaos.

When I did walk onto Blue Boar St, all the traffic lights were out and Winchester Street was pitch black. I heard someone say that it was scary to use the 24 hour toilet, as it was so dark, you couldn’t even see the door. The roads were chaos, there was no order and police everywhere. Everyone had been booted from the pubs and clubs, due to there being no power and everywhere you looked, burgular alarms were sounding.

I called home to ask if the power was out, and guess what…. It was! I made it home, to have the torch shined in my face. I rang Southern Electricity and listened to the emergency bullitin message, which said that the entire city centre had suffered a major electrical fault and the city would be back online in 2 hours. So we lit candles, got torches and used the camper stove to make hot drinks. I jumped on MSN via my phone (which has now been sorted, but the Internet still doesn’t work very well) and finally the power was restored, after 45 minutes. I put the PC back on and bought it out of Hibernate, got back online and then we had a 2nd power outage, which lasted 30 seconds or so. (However, we blew all the candles out when the power was restored, so we had a rather big flap when we couldn’t see a thing) So once again, I put the PC back on and the power was fine ever since.

The area affected by the City Centre Blackout

In other news, Tuesday is my operation and I thank you for all your good luck messages and those of you that say you will be thinking of me when I am on the table. I don’t like  Anaesthetic, (Always gives me a fould taste in my mouth and the needles scare me) but I am sure I will be fine. I will take Ted for good luck, as he always brings me good luck! (He is sitting next to me, giving me the “Evils” at the moment! Bad Teddy!!!)

Finally, remember that it is Karaoke down the Duke tommrow night. If you misserd the live band tonight, you missed a really good night, as I am sure the girls will be there tommrow night singing some really great tracks. I shall be singing as always, so it aint to be missed! Karaoke is at 8.30 sharp, so come down and join Flaming Mary QUEEN of Scotts and of course the loverly Paul and Damian behind the bar!

 Anyway, I am off to bed, I can’t be sitting here typing all night, so I will say goodnight for now

Okay, I found this story in the local paper, and thought it would be a good one to rant about.

POLICE have warned parents not to leave teenage parties unsupervised after a house in Bulford was trashed by gatecrashers. Two Samurai swords were taken, a pet turtle’s tank was filled with shampoo, and every ornament in the house was broken after hordes of uninvited youngsters turned up.The mother of the 16-year-old who was celebrating his birthday was so upset by the destruction she was unable to eat or sleep for three days. “I felt sick and couldn’t stop crying,” she said. “I am going to have to sell the house. Two hundred people have been through it. There’s blood on the walls. It’s unliveable.”

The woman, who does not want to be identified, claimed pupils from the town’s two grammar schools and a handful from private schools were responsible for the trouble. She has contacted the heads of both schools and urged them to let parents know what happened. “Some of them must have driven their children to the party that night,” she added. “Some must know about what went on. “But every parent needs to know this could happen to anyone. It’s not just something you see on TV. These are not inner-city kids. You don’t expect this mentality and this kind of behaviour from well-educated youngsters from good schools. “My whole life has been destroyed. I am a single parent and everything I have worked for has been broken.”

The woman, who accepts she was naïve in leaving the house, said: “It’s not even as if I was away. “I told my son he could have 30 friends and I would go out for a couple of hours. I told them they couldn’t have any spirits to drink, and I was only half an hour away. “At 11pm, I got a call from the police to say there were 200 people at my house.

“I’d locked everything of any value, including my rare and precious snake-necked turtle, safely away upstairs in my bedroom but they had picked the lock off the door. “When I came back, the tank was foaming. There was make-up all over my carpet and the bedsheets were ripped. “They’d cooked and eaten all the food in the house. I have seven fish tanks, and they had thrown garlic bread and noodles into them. “One girl who had drunk too much got taken away in an ambulance.

“Two Samurai swords were missing. All the doors and windows had their hinges taken off and a garden wall was kicked down. These were such malicious acts. My son is devastated.” The mother said she believed some staff at the grammar schools had heard rumours trouble was likely – and they should have alerted her.

Okay, I am going to rant about this! Firstly, what kind of idiot of a parant leaves the house in the hands of a 16 year old child, while they throw a party? I mean that is just stupid, let alone irrisponsible. To annoy me more, the mother said and I quote:

The woman, who accepts she was naïve in leaving the house, said: “It’s not even as if I was away. “I told my son he could have 30 friends and I would go out for a couple of hours. I told them they couldn’t have any spirits to drink, and I was only half an hour away. “At 11pm, I got a call from the police to say there were 200 people at my house.

Firstly, she should of never left the house, 2nd, she said:

told them they couldn’t have any spirits to drink,

She should of said no booze at all, as all that lot were underage more than likely. She claims she locked valuables away, when if she knew there could be trouble, why did she not take them with her, lock them in her car, even though she should not of left. Talk about Negligence. Even more annoying, how come this woman is not facing charges for this, I mean she was responsible for all these kids, who were p***** out of their heads, and as you read; one had to be taken to A+E.

To be honest, I have no sympathy for the mother of this teenager. She should of known better and should of taken some responibility for this. It is as my headmaster at George Abbott once said:

“Everything you do has a coniquence and you must face up to these coniquences.”
Mr. D.C. Maloney Headteacher at George Abbott School

So she has to take some responibility for this happening. I am sure that her insurance will go sky rocketing, (if she is insured) andf likely if she has insurance, they will say that this was intentional damage and they will not be willing to help.

She also went on to say:

“I am going to have to sell the house”

Meh, she will be lucky! I hope she knows how hard it is to sell a house normally, but when one looks like it has had a double decker bus smack into it, she will find selling it more or less impossible.

Also what annoys me is:

“The mother said she believed some staff at the grammar schools had heard rumours trouble was likely – and they should have alerted her”

If she had had a tip off about the party, why didn’t she either tell her son that the party is off, or stay at home with him? I mean it’s common sense, something this woman does not seem to have! Is she missing a screw or something or does she need to go back to the lab and have her bolts tightend? She does not seem to be a very responsible person and she is now having to leatn the hard way, after 200 people basiclly wrecked her house and her life, but remember that it is 50% her fault and she is accountable as much as the gatecrashers, because she left her son without proper adult supervision. Now you should be able to see what I am getting at, that these school kids are minors and so they required a responsible adult with them, which this mother certainly in my case is not.

Well, in my final thoughts on this, I will end by saying that Parents have a role in life and a certain level of responsibility. They are responsible for their child’s behaviour, their health and welbeing, their education and their parties. Remember that behaviour like this is unaccetable and helps you to make more enermies that friends. I certainly would not of been allowed to behaive like this when I was younger, let alone my teens. It is about making the right choices in life, (yet another of Mr Maloney’s famous sayings) it’s about moulding your child into a decent member of society. Most problems with teenagers are not because they are difficault or stroppy, but because they come from homes with bad parenting, parents that proberbly gamble, fight and swear, that hit and attack each other or use vulgar or explicit sexual remarks or acts. This is not something that should be done in front of your child under any circumstances. Remember that talking is the key to success and will allow you to bond with your child. “A problem solved is a problem halved” so have some quality bonding with your child, even if it is watching the TV or making a cake, mowing the lawn or doing the dishes. It all helps and that is what will help prevent problems like the ones above. It is sad to see problems like this, but if all parents took their responsibility for their actions and acted like parents did in my era, (1980’s and beyond) then the world would be that little bit more of a betterr place for us all. Parents in my era and before had better respect for their children and others and that is what I see is the problem in today’s society.

Okay, firstly, Happy Easter everyone!

I was rudely awoken this morning by a huge crash outside the house. I jumped out of bed and put my trakkie pants back on and ran downstairs. Outside, there had been a 3 car pile up, which was caused by some drunken man. He had legged it from the crashed car, (which had crashed into 2 parked cars; one that had wolloped into a wall of a nearby house.) Another man, (who witnessed the whole thing went in hot persuit of the drunken man, on the phone to the police. (we didn’t know this)

So Mark and I decided it is best if we call the police and report the RTI. (Road Traffic Incident) Soon, we had the Police, Fire Service and 3 paramedics on site, with the 1st smashed car leaking petrol all over the road. Mark and I had been using the Kitchen Fire Extinguisher to try to smother the non ignited petrol until the Fire Service arrived. We gave statements and the Police towed the car that had smashed into the other 2 cars, once it was safe to do so.

However, they caught the driver, thanks to the fast acting witness, who followed the man all the way home on the phone to the police at the same time! Thankfully no-one was injured, but it scared the hell out of everyone in the house!

In other news, things are going well at Yurx. The new web layout is online and the forums are almost operational. We have 3 new members needing hosting, but they have been queued until after this bank holiday weekend, so Thor, Sam, George and I can have a good long rest. however, I’m on call all weekend, so that’s something!

Finally, tonight I get to let my hair down and go to the local Gay Pub called the Duke of York. They do my favorite past time there, karaoke, hosted by Flaming Mary Queen of Scots, who is a Drag queen,

Once again, I wish you all a safe and pleasent rest of your Easter Bank Holiday Weekend.

News feed taken from ITN – Wednesday, February 27 06:38 am

An earthquake measuring 5.2 on the Richter scale has hit England. It was the UK’s largest quake since 1984 when an earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale shook the Lleyn Peninsula of north Wales.

A man was injured in South Yorkshire when a chimney fell though his bedroom ceiling while many homes and business have also been damaged. The epicentre of the earthquake was near Market Rasen in Lincolnshire, but many people across England reported feeling the shaking shortly before 1am.

One man from Hartlepool said he was woken when the tremor made his sofa shake against his bedroom wall. He said: “I thought someone was banging on the wall behind me but there was no-one there.”
East Midlands Ambulance Service – which serves the Lincolnshire area – said they had received many emergency calls although nobody was injured.

A spokesman said: “Most of them were from elderly people who were quite frightened.”

The British Geological Survey said the centre was 8km east of Market Rasen, Lincolnshire, and 22km south west of Grimsby. Seismologist Dr Brian Baptie of the BGS said: “This is a significant earthquake for the UK and will have been widely felt across England and Wales.”