Avaragado's blog

As I write there are just moments until the beginning of Chris’s stag do.

He has virtually no idea what we’re doing. All he knows is that he’s being picked up by a private car at his house at noon today, that he is away for one night, and that he does not require a passport.

Yesterday I told him he needed to bring some walking boots and a jacket. Then a few hours later I withdrew that and said he needed to bring a swimming costume. I think he no longer trusts anything I say.

A few weeks ago I was chatting online to my friend Dan; we were talking about China, which you may be surprised to learn is hosting a minor sporting event at the moment.

I said that China were going to put on an amazing show, but I hated the fact that Beijing had the Olympics in the first place. The Chinese government is not interested in sport, or in “legacy” usage: they just want the world to know how marvellous Beijing is, how “normal” China is.

Dan is 23. He’s too young to remember what happened in Tiananmen Square in June 1989, and I guess it’s one of those things that doesn’t get taught at school: too recent to be history, too ancient to be current affairs. I explained what happened: the peaceful student protests for democracy, the jittery junta, the defacing of mao’s portrait, the tanks. The massacre. He didn’t know about the massacre.

I was 20 at the time, the age of many of the students gunned down in the square. It could have been me.

I found this BBC News report by Kate Adie from that day; I remember it vividly and it still upsets me to watch it. Don’t read the comments, they’ll depress you as they did me.

Thousands died that night, many others rounded up and carted off to prison then or later: nobody knows for sure how many, and the Chinese sure aren’t saying. People aren’t allowed to talk about it. An episode of Panorama last week showed that, despite assurances about lack of censorship due to the Olympics, a word from the government-imposed minder is enough to shut up anyone straying from approved topics.

Do people really believe, are they really that naive, that the relative freedoms granted for the games – access to a few more web sites (but not, of course, on forbidden topics) and a bit more journalistic leeway – won’t be reversed once the Olympic and Paralympic bandwagons have rolled on?

China spent millions trying to win the Olympics and billions to stage it. No expense has been spared, any prospective talent “nurtured” in the hunt for gold. The winning divers in today’s men’s 10m synchro, now both 17 I think, started diving aged four. I wonder how much choice they had in the matter; and how much they have now. And I wonder what will happen after the games. Will the Chinese continue throwing money at sport? Or has the goal been achieved?

It’s all about prestige, about China’s place in the world. Invest in us! Work with us! Forget all about that nasty business a few years ago. And people are.

… I took my dressings off.

I have a rather unsightly belly button that I suspect will be even more likely to gather fluff for the short term at least. The other scars are only about 5mm in length and will mostly disappear once the hair has grown back. I can still feel the stitches beneath the skin; great big lumps in the case of the belly button.

I think the yellow colouration is either iodine staining or some light bruising – it looks worse than it feels.

See also Other Dave.

I am speaking to you from my hospital bed, with two bouncing baby gallstones sleeping in a pot beside me. Feel free to suggest names!

The delivery went smoothly; I’m a little sore but the morphine helps. I didn’t want an epidural.

I shall not be breast-feeding.

Now I suppose I’ll have to tell the father.

Camber Sands in June can be a little early in the season for excitement. The schools are still in so the beaches are pretty empty, and the various entertainments, if they can be so called, are still rousing themselves from their winter slumber.

The weather, however, can be relied upon to be its usual all-or-nothing self. Last year we had the great Camber Storm, as nobody else called it. This year god let rip with mighty gusts of wind, enough to whip sand into all available crevices, but not enough to stop our usual game of boules on Sunday.

After last year’s encouraging fourth place, my boulez skillz deserted me this time; I was rubbish.

Camber appeared to be hosting a Fifties Throwback day, with the fish’n’chip shop full of gentlemen just too large for their jeans and checked shirts and ladies just too small for their hair. Sadly my attempts at papping them failed miserably, you’ll have to take my word.

All my successful and otherwise identikit photos are in the usual place.

In OMG It’s All Different news: The garage next to Gilchrist’s is gone, fenced off and presumably to be reborn as something other than scrubland. The old Royal William pub is now pseudo-Art Deco eco-housing, but Passing Man With Dog said the eco bits were eco-broken. And Arnold Palmer’s Putting Course is now a poppy field, resting gently before the builders sprinkle Arnold Palmer’s Affordable Housing all over it.

Better quality on Vimeo, but it’s OK embedded:

Very Kraftwerk:

Bletchley Park arguably shortened World War II by two years. Or was it World War 2 by II years? No matter. Its existence was secret, its cryptanalysis, code-breaking and pioneering computer development classified for thirty years. The work of Alan Turing and others was as important to the war effort as anything achieved by men in khaki with pointy sticks and the other primitive weaponry of you puny humans. (Of course, Britain repaid Turing by making his life hell and eventually causing him to kill himself, but that’s another rant.)

Bletchley Park is a museum today, run by a charity, the Bletchley Park Trust. It receives no money from the government or the Heritage Lottery Fund at present. It’s started a Save Bletchley Park petition webchez Gordon Brown, which will I’m sure result in platitudes but no actual, hard cash.

So I’ve donated directly. It’s a manky system and you need to make an account with them to actually part with electrocash, but hey.

Clocky!

Roger will remember the original clocky – it was in the configuration file for the “Launchpad” that shipped in IXI Panorama 2.0. Not so exciting.