14 year old soldiers

[Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com] and [Bad username or site: @ livejournal.com]
both have details of this.

"Levelling the playing field," indeed. This is the kind of thing I expect from Sri Lanka, not the USA.

Funeral snapshot

Two magnificent dappled horses with black harness and black plumes have just trotted past this window, driven by a top-hatted undertaker and pulling a glass casket covered with spring flowers.

There's an early 19th century Catholic church over the road from me, and they sometimes have these spectacular funerals (there are also a pair of midnight black horses, which I've earmarked for the day when I shuffle off this mortal coil, assuming I'm in B'ton still, which is looking increasingly unlikely). What a way to go.

BSFA

A bunch of us are planning on going to the BSFA thing tomorrow - does anyone have an actual plan of events for the day, because we can't find this on the site and don't necessarily want to be there for the whole day...

Work and life

Worked until lunchtime, then hit a natural break and so I went to yoga, then to the gym. I am soon going to be on the home stretch with this book: another 5K or so to wrap, and then probably about 5K in additional scenes, possibly more.

The laptop did not come today (BTW, it is an iBook, not a Powerbook - I bought the right one, I just get confused about the names. You may now feel free to laugh and point.

A research opportunity has appeared: a friend of a friend is moving in with a woman named Blossom. That isn't quite her real unreal name, but believe me, it's in the same ballpark of old hippie tweeness. Boy, did we scoff and make cracks about tie dyes and henna. However, the laugh is on us bigtime, because Blossom turns out to be not some elf-glimpsing Wiccan, but a flint-eyed former police sergeant who got seriously injured in the line of duty and is now retired on sick leave. So much shuffling of feet, and once the blushes had worn off it occurred to me that there are a number of missing persons scenes in this new novel and who better to interrogate about actual police procedure than a former copper? So, all in good time.

BTW, LJ does not seem to have a mood icon for 'ashamed' and believe me, it should.

PS to laptop thread

A slightly disturbing thing - when I rang CanCom this morning to check on delivery times, the woman said "Thank God you rang - I've been meaning to ring you to see if you really wanted it. We've had so many fraudulent orders..."

Hmmm.

So much for an early night

Well, I was just drifting off...and then there was the world-filling, stomach-churning sound of a car crashing at speed.

A taxi seems to have hit the scaffolding opposite and bounced off. No one is hurt, luckily, but the collision has inflated the airbag and taken the front bumper off the car, which is sitting in the middle of the crossroad, smouldering gently.

Now the street is filled with about 30 onlookers, 2 paramedic units and a fire engine. Everyone seems to be roaring with laughter. Typical of the British -splendid in adversity, tedious when not.

No chance of sleep for a bit, but at least no one's been badly hurt, which is the main thing.