Oliver's Blog

Remember placing a vote to name the new Derby Inner Ring Road? Well Lara Croft Way is official:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/derbyshire/8538106.stm

Thanks to the sudden onset of SteveFlu (which is like ManFlu, only the source is known), those weird vivid dreams are back. Last night was bizarre so hold on, here goes: The first thing I remember is that I was staying in a posh hotel walking towards the lift. I was carrying a towel and my nose was bunged up and snotty (which reflects the real world… apart from the towel). I had been working at some event (TechEd???) and was wearing a crew T-shirt. I got in the lift and took it to my floor and got out, turning left. My room was at the end of the corridor on the right in the corner before a left hand turn. The walls are all marble black and shiny. I go in my room and as I shut the door, a maid turns up. She’s slim with dirty blonde hair, a bit minging, and has very very hairy arms. She starts talking to me all foreign (!?) until another maid turns up (large, old, like Nanny out of Duckula only human) and translates. She is suggesting I go to a bar down the road and gives me directions. Then I’m walking down a road with Rimmer and Kryton from Red Dwarf in front of me on our way to the bar. Apparently I’m staying with them at the hotel. We walk past a shop on our right which has a window display full of TVs. The TVs are all showing a stop-animation children’s program similar to Camberwick Green, only this show was set in a mining scenario with big mountains in the background. I chatted with someone about whether they could do that in 3D nowadays, if they’d be able to just re-master the old footage, or if they’d have to reanimate the whole program. Next thing I know I’m in my lounge (not my lounge, but I seemed to think it was my lounge) with an entire set for the show built up, mountains running up the walls. We (there were a whole crew with me) were setting up for a shot where an explosion happens in the mountains, so I was rigging an explosive charge up behind some rocks, running the fuse around the wall and in to the hallway where I would set it off. Once I lit the fuse, it burnt out quickly without running the whole length to the charge, so I had to go back in the set room to light it again. I lit it and stood back, the charge exploded and a rock went flying. Just at that moment Edward, the vampire from Twilight jumped out and grabbed the rock before it hit some girl in the head….

I decided to take Tinkerbell to the vet this afternoon after discovering a bald patch on her stomach, and the exposed skin looking quite red and sore. Thinking  it was a tick or fleas, I presumed it was going to be a fairly straight-forward  trip. Sadly not… turns out it is probably all behavioural and she’s been prescribed some kitty prozac to chill her out. Really…. and just to rule out any possibility of medical issues I have to somehow collect a urine sample. Actually that might not be too difficult given a pipet and 10 minutes following her around in the garage. Anyway, since the visit to the vet she is now refusing to go in her nice heated bed and has firmly planted herself on the concrete floor under my fake’n'decker work bench. B loomin’ stupid cats.

An old school friend of mine has written a novel, due to be published in March. From the synopsis it appears to be random enough to hold my attention so I’ve pre-ordered a copy. By pre-ordering you are helping to support the publication, and as an interesting by-product of the pre-order process you force Ruth to sign the book before it’s delivered - imaginative comedy dedications only please . If you’d like to pre-order your copy too, visit: http://hirstbooks.com/ruth.htm and in the meantime, here’s a quick summary:

“Young, polite and intelligent Tom Bowler has barely ever ventured out of the small English town where he grew up. So when he applies for a job in a fast food restaurant at a “local” service station during his gap year he is rather surprised to discover that the vacancy is in fact based on Truxxe, a planetoid stationed between local galaxies Triangulum and Andromeda. He’s surprised further to find himself becoming friends with a purple alien and that he has strange feelings for his android supervisor, Miss Lola. Tom soon discovers that Truxxe has many hidden secrets – just what makes it so special and why is its terrain so rich and varied that it can be used for fuelling such a diverse variety of intergalactic spacecraft? What are the Glorbian space pirate brothers Schlomm and Hannond plotting? The one thing that Tom is certain of, however, is that all aliens like burgers.”

 At 00:08 this morning, the following images of suspect T were captured:

In the first image, we see suspect T approaching the camera. Nothing illegal happening here.

In the second image, suspect T gets even closer to the camera, probably just looking to see what all the humming noise has been down this end of the garage for the last couple of days.

Finally, suspect T walks past the camera, and the subsequent images are all dark as he / she attempts to mask his / her activities by rubbing around the lamp underneath the camera.

I follow up the incident by checking out the crime scene, but this time around it seems like suspect T was just casing the joint. Forensics have turned a blank and we have no evidence on which we can build a case. For now.