Good grief!  I simply cannot believe how long I have been away!  Seems like only yesterday I was here last.  I have visited several times but have always seemed to say to myself...I'll write one tomorrow.  Of course, tomorrow being such a transient thing never comes and today is always too full of the mundane to seemingly take time out.

I have not made it a new year resolution per se but do intend to keep up better with my blog community and friends.  I suppose that in the grand scheme I have nothing worthy of note to report - life has simply gone on around me and I have ridden the wave so to speak.  Things have happened and not happened in equal measure.  Nothing of a life-changing event has occurred apart from being unemployed for the longest ever period in my life - two whole months without income has certainly had a profound effect on my credit worthiness but fortunately I have risen above it and not succumbed to the corporate bullies' tactics.  You cannot get blood out of a stone, I intoned sepulcherally at them all!!  Let us discuss realistic repayments in real-time shall we?  It is now all finally back on track - yey!

I have decided that my future lies in the Celta/Tefl course and teaching English as a foreign language.  Now all I have to do is save the £1000 course fee!  I might, just might, have enough money by 2010!  The hippy you see is also unemployed (well, working only part-time at any rate) so we exist only on my paltry pin-money.  Also, we now only have one car and living in the woolly wilds of nowhere does not help when the only bus service is twice a week to anywhere vaguely er...civilised.  Still, we shall overcome if the need arises.  The hippy has a few irons in the fire and his new year resolution is to be a bit more decisive in business planning.  He is one of these who needs to work for himself - which is fine - but he needs to get on with it and decide which proposition/project he wants to run with first and foremost.  He is on the committee for the Small Nations Music Festival held every year just outside Llandovery and whereas I think it's great and a good cause, it is voluntary and so does not bring in any financial aid.  On the other hand, he has a large project on the go which potentially could pull in a lot of funding and grant aid - guess which one I think he should follow through?  Financial security would enable him to concentrate on the festival without worrying where his next meal is coming from or whether he can pay the rent etc...for an old hippy I can be quite capitalist about everyday things like food and warmth!!

We had a quiet and most pleasant festive season and I hope you all had a wonderful time.  We had no guests this year which made for a nice change and so we had a great leisurely time of it all.  Duty visits etc over and we settled down to some entertaining TV - imagine therefore my disappointment at the content - still, can't please everyone I suppose.  I could, however, have seriously done with another mini-movie of one of Terry Pratchett's books instead of that most depressing classical writer Charles Dickens.  I realise people don't seem to think it's festive without a dose of pathos and sadness but I'm sure not everyone feels that way.  They say it's the saddest time of year for some - which does not surprise me if they are subjected to the misery that was Victorian England - as entertainment?!  Not me, sirrah, give me something that will invoke belly laughs and helpless hysterics if you don't mind.  Not that I found much jocularity in the media I have to say.  I found myself watching innane programmes like The 100 most annoying people of 2007 and The 100 greatest TV adverts et al.  My downloaded torrent files have suddenly got a 'codec' glitch and the audio streams beautifully but the video is black - grrr!  This means that I was 'good movie-less' over the festive period - shocking!!!  Needless to say the only saving grace in my personal opinion was of course the good Doctor Who.

Has anyone else being watching the webisode Sanctuary?  It was designed by the Stargate Team and it's kind of like Buffy, Blade Runner and Resident Evil all rolled into one but with a great plotline.  Amanda Tapping (Sam Carter) is in it and 8 webisodes have been released to date.  The first four you can find free on YouTube but the others you will have to pay for unless you torrent them - great 15-20 minute webisodes with no commercial interference - is this the heavenly ideal of future programming?  <Sigh> probably not or the extorionists at the Beeb will have us plumping up even more money - although how they get away with demanding money with menaces i.e. the threat of jail for non payment (criminal so Magistrates court) - when they have more repeats that I have clearly therefore paid for once already and produce seemingly nothing but rubbish in their new programming.  Who the hell else could get away with supplying increasingly sub-standard goods that you keep paying for in ever increasing amounts!!  Go figure!

Most of the people who don't pay their licence simply can't afford to...so, in the eyes of the law, you will be criminalised for the innocent pursuit of pleasure, fined even more money that you patently can't afford and threatened with jail if you don't go without food to pay this fine.  When exactly was it that poverty became such a crime?  Full jails, surely not?  So that you do not think I lie, The Crime of Poverty is actually a dissertation I found on the Internet written by a lawyer commissioned to find facts and figures.  It makes quite scary reading.  The revenue raised is in the billions and that's without all the Mag Courts fine incomes and the Beeb never successfully explain where it all goes (at least not according to their website) yet the TV licence is THE biggest contributor to the Crime of Poverty.   It's Government controlled thanks to the Wireless Act 1949 (I think!!) which has got us all stiched up like kippers.  Hmmmm!  Anyone up for a Downing Street petition to get it abolished?  Any chance the Government will give up the wealthy income of (yet) another pie in which they have their sticky fingers firmly entrenched?????  Quickly, find something else to criminalise before the masses realise what we are doing!  Go Labour, keep the poor who you are supposedly there to represent even more downtrodden and ground under your sleazy corporate, cash for questions and honours, boots, for you have now become those you once hated.  Okay, rant over :) 

Apologies for the rant, I didn't mean it to go on as long as it did but having written it, I don't have the energy left to edit it :)

May I take this opportunity to wish you and yours a very happy, peaceful and generous new year.  Once again if you have read this far - bless you.

Take care and blessed be xxx