Sad news about Ian Banks.. one of the few authors I've read and genuinely enjoyed, who assisted my love of writing.

Love the "would you do me the honour of becoming my widow?" proposition.

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Had some professional photos of the car taken..
..by the council. Cost me £35. They're very poor quality and one of them doesn't even have the car in. I shall have to complain.

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I think I feel a little better now.. trying to spread the love rather than... other things.

Car passed its MoT with no advisories.. another year for the mad little beast.

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It's been four weeks since Heather died. She hung herself a few doors down from me. A neighbour and good friend Simian found her.

She was like a big sister, then a little sister, over the thirteen years we knew eachother. Honestly, I feel fine. I thought it was at least partially down to the quetiapine I'm dosed up on, making emotion disjointed and vacant. Then I realised there's no mystery swimming around my head, no sadness, no questions.

All around me people ask: "oh why did she do that" or "stupid bitch" or "she didn't mean to do it" or "it was a moment of stupidity", as if all the years they knew her they never even got to know her. These people cannot fathom death, or someone who has decided life is not for them. And all at once more parts fall into place. They're all full of ego and self-importance, they can't accept someone would look at their universe and decide they don't want to be in it anymore. To these people, death on those terms is unacceptable, it HAS to be a stupid moment, it MUST be a mistake, because SURELY nobody would want to leave the world these great people are in right? Surely, because I'm so fucking great and special, nobody I am friends with could choose to leave life forever, right? Who would feel like they wanted to die with all these brilliant vivacious people all telling them how great life is around them?

I used to feel cold, like an android, until I realised I understand precisely why she killed herself, and, with the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I can see a million indications of it. The Heather in my head feels sure of it and I feel absolutely no error or denial or confusion in my mind. The woman who killed herself was empowered and in control, she made a huge decision, something which takes more balls than most people I know. You can't kill youself a bit. You can't die and then decide "actually, I don't like this". She took a leap of faith requiring all the susbtance her character displayed. Our friend died strong, saying a big "fuck you and goodbye" to all of those idiots in her life who never really knew who she was.

And they still haven't learned, to them, Heather was weak, stupid, lost, doing things by mistake. They conveniently ignore obvious signs, it's easier to pretend she just made a silly mistake, like putting a white shirt in with the coloureds, like dropping a mobile phone in a cup of tea, like a passing error. It's easier to accept Heather had no substance of character than it is to accept who she was, even in death.

Do you think this? Well let me tell you, in as closer style to our mutual friend as possible, fuck you, you waste of life, you shit, you fucking dumb cunt, get out of my life, I don't remember inviting you into my life, this is my film, get fucked.

I hate the idea she could still be alive, scraping along, hanging on on the will of her friends, unable to find happiness or peace on earth, alive only because we didn't want her to go. I miss her, but I find it selfish to want someone to be alive because I miss them. As soon as I realise that, I no longer miss her.

The truth as I see it is she died young and defiant, leaving the pointlessness of life, kicking fate in the cunt and preempting what was around the corner. We're all going to die, get over it. It's Western bullshit. Death is fine, as necessary and normal as birth. If you can't accept this, you'd best get over it, being a living creature the only thing you can be utterly assured of is that one day you will not be alive anymore.

Some peope ignore it, some people accept it, some people run from it, some people fear it and some people walk up to death and kick it in the face and the nuts and say "fuck you" like they really mean it.

And let's face it, you're not really all that, are you? You don't have the Answer, you don't really understand, you're just the same, but younger, or stupider, or you're on exactly the same plain of understanding. Wherever you are, you can't stop death.

Mourn and grieve for our dead friend, but try not to sully your memory. Heather died, and she died as she lived, not as this regretful, confused, imaginary idiot I hear of. I never met that person.

RIP our absent friends.

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Last I heard the Japanese government was dropping water from helicopters onto reactor buildings. I can't see how this would help matters, no usable amount of water can be dropped from the air into a reactor building, even if it was in bits, so I think they're actually referring to the spent fuel pond at Reactor 4, which seems to be running dry and igniting spontaneously.

More worrying is these releases of radioactivity at the other reactors, from the reactors proper. I don't know what's been detected in the air, but a criticality accident resulting from a fuel mass undergoing an unregulated chain reaction would certainly produce enough radiation in a short time to cause staff to evacuate. If there's many very short lived radioisotopes detected in the area in the next few hours, this is possibly what's going on.

Actually the level has fallen again, so either it's some other source, or it's ceased producing a chain reaction from loss of a suitable configuration of the mass. Either is entirely possible.

Reactor 4 from what I understand was shut down for maintainance before the quake struck, so it should not be behaving in the same way as the other installations, but there's also the fear of a criticality accident there from the spent fuel in the cooling ponds beside it. As some guy on the BBC observes, a criticality accident shouldn't happen if they're stored in the correct configuration, but if there's been fires close by or actually on the assemblies or if they've become dislodged by water being dropped from several hundred feet, who can say if that's the case.

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Well, I dunno about you, but these continuing LOCAs at the Fukushima plant seems to be getting more serious and intruiging by the minute. Unfortunately the media keeps using meaninglessly subjective atomic jargon like "meltdown" and "criticality" and "Chernobyl" which basically amounts to filler to paper over the bits nobody has much of a chance of understanding and the true gaps in what we know.

"There's little chance of another Chernobyl," said someone. Really? There's little chance of a soviet-era atomic reactor materialising in Japan and undergoing an unregulated experiment on its auxilliary systems resulting in a positive void co-effecient of reactivity and a steam overpressure which destroyed the reactor vessel? I think we all know that. Good pointless scaremongering filler news though.

This is what I think's going on, what to worry about, and what will probably happen.

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There's not much information about it anywhere at the moment, but a Japanese nuclear plant sounds like it's seriously close to experiencing a LOCA (Loss Of Coolant Accident).

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/42025882/ns/world_news-asia-pacific/

Power plants use their own generated electricity to power their ancillary systems, but this would all have tripped during the earthquake. For some reason it sounds like they're now having trouble with backup power, which will mean trouble keeping circulation or feedwater pumps supplied with electricity. Whilst it will no doubt be shut down, decay heat from waste fission products produces enough heat to cause serious core damage.

http://www.businessinsider.com/fukushima-nuclear-plant-2011-3

http://uk.gizmodo.com/5780925/japan-declares-nuclear-emergency-as-nuclear-plants-cooling-function-fails

In a mildly related point, the Chernobyl catastrophe was caused during an experiment to see if the steam turbine, as it wound down to a halt after being tripped, would continue to supply the circulation pumps with enough power to keep coolant flow adequate as diesel generators were started. That didn't go so well. There isn't a comparison to be drawn here, by any stretch, but it's interesting to mention. THis plant is highly modern apart from anything else. I'd be very surprised if there will be any off site impact.

If they can't sort it it'll be one hell of an expensive repair though.

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Who can tell me, without looking any details up, why this is one of the most horrifyingly tense and profound photos of the 20th century?



Omagh, County Tyrone, August 1998. The Cavalier behind the man and child contains 500lb of explosives and is only moments away from going off, killing 29 people. The camera was recovered from the debris. The man and child survived, but the photographer was never identified and was presumed killed.

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I had a dream the other night where I had to rescue Emma from an 80s nightclub.

The clientelle seemed to be a selection of utter bastards, they were forcing her to stay and they didn't like the idea of a man-friend coming to pick her up at all. They surrounded us and looked most violent and threatening.

It was then I unleashed my special power: the power of dance! Yes, that's right. I can't remember if it was early Simple Minds or Joy Division or whatever, but I realised the only way out was to dazzle our way out, and performed "The Robot" so breathtakingly effectively that the angry crowds parted in amazement, stunned by the tight steccato movements, and were compelled to hold their ground as jagged shapes took me up the stairs and out the door. Such was the mechanistic perfection that they didn't realise until too late that Emma had slipped out during the performance.

But by then they'd forgotten all about imprisonment and violence, and could only sit back and regail each other with stories and sometimes slip into an impression of "the guy who did The Robot that time".

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ITV4 are replaying The Saint, The Professionals, Minder and The Sweeney, pretty much back to back, pretty much every day.

Amusingly, because so many of those actors and extras had "evil" faces and were typecast playing bad guys, they are invariably only an episode or two away from each other in the different programs.. so you have one geezer getting a gun kicked out of his hands by Simon Templar on Monday, then he turns up leading a bunch of thugs in the Professionals on Tuesday, but then he gets beaten up by Terry on Wednesday, only to see him reappear as a dodgy informant helping Reagan out on Thursday.

Dennis Waterman does it all the time, when he's not looking after Arther Daley in Minder, he has a shower, puts on some new clothes and ensconces himself as John Thaw's detective sergeant in The Sweeney. Nobody seems to notice.

If the different forces and government departments were more open when it came to sharing records, they could solve these crimes in half the time.

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I had a dream the other night that I was feeding a horse apples in a field. Then I hugged it for ages.

I miss horses.

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As I was charging my car battery last week, I dropped a box of ignition components, which fell in precisely the right order and location to open a door through time. I fell into it and I've only just broken free. Funny story actually, I managed to reverse the polarity of an ignition coil and linked that to a busted amplifier I had, which I jury-rigged to a ballasted Hall-effect ignitor to create a phased pulse of anti-protons. This destabilised the chrono-vortex and allowed me to puncture it and break free. Who'd have thought you could manipulate the fourth dimension with only a mixture of old and modern ignition components and a lead-acid battery.

I was in there for no longer than ten minutes. Unfortunately, when I emerged, I found that my timewarp was chronologically inept. Whilst ten minutes had passed for me, almost seven days had passed in the real world. Practically, this means I still haven't got those pictures I mentioned online.

My camera is dead now and I'm looking for a decent replacement, something good value without being cheap, good quality without being expensive and versatile without being overly complicated and weighed down with features designed to photograph a smiling child chasing a ball under a speeding Land Rover. Looking to spend £100-150. Any suggestions welcome.

On Sunday I went to Graylingwell, an asylum in Chichester built in the late 19th century. Amazingly intact and unvandalised, and fairly well cleared, there was no security on site, but demolition has begun on the service core and the boiler house and laundry looked to have gone. Usually this means it wont be here much longer. Demolition teams are undoubtedly at work as I type this. It was a windy and noisy explore, doors banging hundreds of feet away, branches knocking against windows, wind whistling through holes and gaps. It smelt lovely too, rotting and decayed, but not unpleasant, like autumn on a fresh day. Absolutely everything was slightly moist, every surface covered in a layer of condensation. I couldn't work out why this was, as loads of windows were open and ventilation was rather good.

It's got a beautiful main hall, sixty feet high, with 20ft long dark red velvet curtains hung by the eight massive leaden windows. All the drapes and screens were present and lowered on the stage, and the massive and heavy curtains, again in rich, dark velvet and piped with art-deco boardering, were present and in excellent condition. A projection booth still housing its three film projectors sat in the opposite wall. It was the most complete main hall I'd seen. I was particularly taken with the large motorised glitter ball. High on the roof, after negotiating the ricketiest, wobbliest ladder I'd ever trusted to hold my weight, there was a WW2 air-raid siren. And some lovely views.

As is common there were huge tunnels and cellars under our feet, but it was all nailed up tight and we could not get into them. Except for when I almost fell through the floor. And I saw something I'd never seen before: we were creeping through a first-floor ward in the female side, and I was exploring a toilet block (usually utterly boring) and found a laundry chute. When I say chute, imagine a four foot by three foot pit, sixteen feet deep, which looked to me like it lead straight into the service tunnels. A bit unsafe for the patients to say the least. If we'd had enough time, I'd have got a ladder or some rope and got down there, but we discovered it late in the day and didn't have time. Hopefully I can make it back before it is "converted" (mostly demolished).

Pissed about the camera.. it'd turn on but frustratingly turn itself off again when you operated the shutter. What a pisser. I'll speak to the others I was with and try and get some pictures off them.

Car progressing well.. got the carburettors on and connected up the fuel, filled up the coolant so that's all DONE. Next I install the electronic distributor and ignition module.. which looks so simple I'm actually rather suspicious. If all goes to plan it should be running by the middle of the month and road legal a week or two after that. Yayness.

Got a load of holiday coming up too, 25 days in all spread over four weeks, so prepare to be pestered by something black, scarred, beat up and loud that stinks of petrol. And if the car's working you can see that tooo HAHHAAHHAHA. PHUNNIE.

Love.

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Apologies to anyone hoping to see those photos I mentioned this week, I've had other concerns. I'll get it done over the weekend.

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I finally found a PC with an SD card slot. This means about four urbex trips are to go up this week and next: two trips to the mental hospitals Runwell and Severalls, a huge GEC-Marconi plant in Chelmsford and a few shots of Stanton Ironworks. I'll try and get them all up this week.

Been off work for twenty days with a bollocksed up neck. Not been able to do much of anything, driving, cooking.. washing was nigh impossible, no car maintainance, hardly any sleep.. but got some tramadol from the doctors. Great stuff. Still in pain, but I didn't care. Yay. Slowly getting better now.

Stuff and things.

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Silliness X-TREME.



And my resolutions:

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I started a fight last night and got punched in the eye. Right on the eyeball. Now it's annoying and painful. I shall have to get an eye dressing, or ointment.

Who was my aggressor? His name is Clive.

He is a cat.

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Old Public Information films!

I saw most of these at primary school. Bet a bunch of you guys remember them too. Check it out, as much for the nostalgic scenes and old cars as anything else.

"The Finishing Line".. Don't play on Railway Lines:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXGqwCbeFD8

Stereotypically 80s boys get football from substation (with vicious consequences):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjgeUiNwtEU

Similar, but with pylon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kixDC1aEvjU

"Building Sites Bite".. Don't Play on Building Sites:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSg7ulOfEd0

Say NO to Strangers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8ZOiDyINk

..reviewing these, I can't help but remember all the playing on railway lines and climbing around in old buildings I used to do. As shocking deterents go, I think it probably just fueled my yearning for destruction. How cool is watching a state-sponsored disaster film instead of doing classwork when you're 5?

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Man, this stuff reeks. It's at home, I'm at work, and I keep getting wafts of it all the time. Perhaps its leeching out of my pores.

Ahhhh Christmas intoxication. Yuletide inebriation.

Great night last night with Luke and Emma. Polished off some of that Jamaican Dragon Stout.. "dat keep you goin' all day like a Duracell battery" as a Jamaican said to me the other day. Then staggered to the Sicks Bells for Open Mike Night (poor Mike), which entailed lots of hilarious slipping and staggering and half carrying of Em on the Ice of Sliding. I did not totally believe she was as rubbish on the ice as she said... until that time last weekend when she went down like a sack of candelabras on the concrete outside the back door, with a most unhealthy sort of slap and cracking noise. After the pub, it was curry time... but I can't remember much of anything betwixt there and bed.

On Radio 4 this morning the Today people were basically slagging off Christmas, it was hilarious. "But surely some good must come out of it... the togetherness, the family..."

"Urrgh, the pulling out your hair, the stress, the spending time and being friendly with people you don't even like... very unhealthy atmosphere. A forest of wrapping paper, people getting under your feet, the obligation, the bitterness..."

It was great. If you fancy a laugh, check it out, it was on about 0820 this morn. This mourn.

Anyway, happy cunting arseholes to the lot of you, may shit things not happen and pleasentries occur, oh, who cares.

Love x

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"Don't trust a man who's too neat, says No-Bark. Aint nothin' neat about it. He's got somethin' to hide, says No-Bark. If someone argues with his dinner or sometimes wears his pants on his head, you know what you're getting, you know there aint nothin' strange going on. But if a man keeps his house spick and span, always says 'hi' to strangers and smiles at you... likely he's done something his own mother couldn't forgive."

- No-Bark Noonan, Fallout: New Vegas

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