living without water must be a nightmare! sorry, that's blindingly obvious.. i am one of the thousands of people in the anglian water area affected by a bug - cryptospirriliamsomethingorother - it means we have to boil water to drink, prepare food, clean teeth, feed pets etc. i've got bottles of water filling up in strategic places, its a real hassle but at least i don't have to walk several miles to fill a bucket from a well or polluted river.
i'm watching a depressing programme in the 'disarming britain' series on C4. not sure what i find more disturbing; the proliferation of weapons and the reality that 'everything's a weapon' (knife, gun, hammer, fence post, brick) or the fact that all the 'youth' they interview speaks american street wherever they are in the uk. they all talk about fear; fear of being shanked (stabbed). everyone's carrying so i gotta carry. and loyalty and respect.. 'that's where you want to be' 'you need respect'. 'when we are outnumbered that's when we get stabbed'. they wear colours. 'this means more to us than anything else in the world'.
machetes, axes, kitchen knives, automatic guns
when it comes to 'outsiders' they go for the ones that look weak - this mindset means they need to look like its not worth picking a fight with them. this seems to make it different from football gangs in the past: they wanted to fight, it was about violence of itself. some of these dont like the violence - stabbing seemed to disgust them; it was too visceral, too bloody, too much mess - guns are better: bang bang job done no mess all over you. frightening.
the reason i'm watching (apart from it being useful for work) is because i don't want to spoil andy murray's chances of winning wimbledon. in his last match he was cruising until i started taking an interest then it all went wrong. i went out and he recovered. same thing happened today so i went out. he recovered to 2 sets each, i switched on and he lost a point - i switched over -
good luck andy
