Skin of Stars

Which means I’ve come round to my promised post time. I don’t really have a lot to say for myself though. Perhaps I’ll chat about what I’ve been up to.

I was back in Thanet over the weekend, just thought it was about time I visited me Ma. For my efforts I got roped into helping set-up the Manston Parish Plan open-day. Some of the local residents wanted to get together some form of formalised plan in order to give some direction to the parish council as to what they people in the area wanted. I think this is a really good idea, a sentiment initially shared by a hundred or so other residents of Manston, it helps guide the councilors in their decisions on funding allocations rather than just pampering to their own whims. During previous village events a team of volunteers handed out questionnaires covering topics such as transport links and traffic, public services (like doctors, etc), clubs and the local environment with a reasonable response rate. I’ve also been ‘lucky’ enough on previous visits to help input this information into spreadsheets so the information can be easily analysed. What I found on reading through was that many people wanted to see all sorts of events being run, such as computing courses or art classes, but no-one was willing to help out run them.

This attitude is very familiar to me as it is something I have encountered with any and every event I have organised in the past. The attitudes of apathy from others are morally draining when you are trying to do something for the better in your community. If what I saw in typing up the figures from the survey wasn’t enough the fact that the open day in the village hall on Saturday, asking for further discussion, had around ten people come visit. I wasn’t all that surprised to be honest, I was in the Jolly Farmer the night before and you could see people visibly squirm when asked if they were coming, various weak excuses rolling off their tongues. It still doesn’t make it any less disappointing to find that residents care so little about their village that they won’t spare ten minutes to come and tell someone who’ll listen what they think.

So Saturday night I went out with Danny. After what happened during the day I was looking forward to a good ale session. We started in the Dickens in Boardstairs, which was just snoozeville. I even question whether it was actually a Saturday night and I’d not just got my days mixed up. To resolve we decided to leave Sleepy Hollow and head to the bright lights of Canterbury city. This was certainly more bustling and it was good to go to the Hobgoblin again after such long time. The place was as punk-rock as ever and good fun to be in. Funny really, we have a Hobgoblin pub here in Oxford but it’s just not the same. I expected it to be just as cool as the Canterbury one but it just doesn’t have the same character. Anyway, after that we headed to the Orange Street Music Club and I’m pleased to say that was as delightful as ever, with a fantastic trad-folk band playing some soaring music. The down side? Last train out of Canterbury to Thanet is ten past eleven so we only got to hear a couple of songs and had to do a runner. Still, a good night out.

And now, well, it is Monday and I have work to do. See you next week.

My recent general lack of internet has severely severed what I am able to do on my Christmas projects. Our house in Manston sits outside the Thanet wired broadband catchment area. Of course there is always a workaround. For us the answer is wireless broadband beamed in through a toaster styled receiver attached to the side of the house from up near the Uni campus. We were with a company called SoBroadband from Rainham but alas they went into some kind of liquidifidation and was subsequently taken over by VFast from Ashford. They all seem very nice so we don’t really mind that their temporary transmitter (put up for Christmas) keeps being blown down by the high winds we’ve been having of late.
projects, broadband, sobroadband, vfast, manston

Christmas was turned out well considering. It was my first without my father and his brother, both having died earlier in 2006, assuming I’ve not mentioned it before. We went down to that side of the family in Dorset and frankly it was generally pretty good fun. My cousins are all come of drinking age and so it was a good fun starting from almost as soon as I arrived. Just got to get them to move off the lager onto some good ales.
christmas, family, dorset

Friday the 29th of December was showtime at the Lido, Margate. Evil Elvis were playing with support from Black Static Transmission rinsing out a Christmas set in the last Plan9 show of the year. ‘This is almost like Christmas with the family’ I explained to my friend Danny as I talked him into coming. ‘Your not sure that you really want to go but you know your going to have awesome fun when you get there’. He succumb, but frankly I think he was lured by the Elvis, a now almost annual event of \m/Rock\m/ and Roll. I played in the 2000/2001 NYE show and I’m pretty sure it wasn’t the first. Anyway, loads of others made the same pilgrimage and a very cool night was had by all with lots of drinking and dancing. Even Danny had came out grinning, if not a little worse for wear which meant we had to get out the taxi a little early (if thats not the mark of a good night, I don’t know what is?!)
evilelvis, blackstatictransmission, plan9, lido, margate