Pig Sty Avenue

Pig Sty Avenue is three today! That's rather whiskery for a blog, eh? Back in November 2004 , we were getting ready for our wedding, I was having a break from Libya, and The Bairn was a twinkle in my eye. I notice that I was wowed by the concept of In Our Time as a podcast, and that I couldn't do an embedded link. Now, there are masses of podcasts from the BBC . And I can embed my links like nobody's business.

I quite like this blog , but can't tell its author 'cos she's disabled comments. So if you read this, Cate, and didn't intend to prevent comments on your blog, then fiddle with the settings, eh?

He's got it all wrong, here . We should be getting Mourinho at Newcastle. Allardyce should go away and manage England. Or, if the fuck-heads at the FA don't want him, he should go away in any case. And where will Shearer fit into the fandango , eh? There are plenty of candidates, and there's obviously going to be a big reshuffle in British football overall in the next few weeks and months. My favourites are Shearer for The Town and Mourinho for England. At least they don't do that indecorous gum chewing .

Looks as if it might be fun.

English teachers abroad might often lead dull lives, but there's always the prospect of the unexpected happening . It's a salutary lesson to keep your wits about you. "Ted" would have been safer, though you can't fault her pedagogy, objectively. At least, being from Liverpool , imprisonment shouldn't be too much of a shock to the system.

South Tyneside Council, arboricides that they are, now want to sell off the Sports Stadium in Shields at Gypsies Green , and change the site into a hotel for people in suits. This is part of the process that results in fatsos sitting by the telly watching England lose at football. Some people have got together to try to stop them, and they have started a blog. There'll be petition-signing outside Morrisons in Jarrow next Saturday . Please give them your support.

You know who they are: think that a couple of hours in Asda is a good day out for the kids, and fill several trolleys with trans fats and processed sugar. Today I tried to get the lift to the platform at South Shields Metro: with The Bairn in her pushchair the stairs are out of the question. An old man with a stick got to the lift just before me and pressed the button. After a few seconds the door opened and four immensely fat and immensely stupid faces peered out. An adolescent girl, I think it was, amongst them spoke for the rest of the family when she said "Oh fucking hell we're still on the ground!" With no word to me or the old timer, she pressed a button and the door closed again. After a few minutes, the lift still hadn't moved. Then we heard a distant voice inside asking for help, the door was stuck... I gave up and went to get the bus instead, leaving 120 stones of blubber in the lift to ponder why it hadn't used the stairs, instead of breaking th...

2008 is on the horizon, and I'm going to keep an eye on ITT during the American Presidential election. (Thanks to Michael for linking to the Guiliani-has-spent-too-much-time-with-his-Sopranos-boxed-sets story). Also I've dusted off a copy of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail , in behopes it will cast some light by means of historical parallel, and because HST is sorely missed.

It's not very often I find myself agreeing with a fella who is not only ex-Man U., but Sunderland Manager as well. However, Roy Keane sums it up well, here . "Too many big heads" was just one of the thoughts that occurred during the match last night. Another one was: a fucking crap pub team . And: s choolboys all chasing the ball . Oh yeah, and: millionaires who should stick to flash cars and whores, that's all they're good for . Wankers. And don't even get me started on the fucking manager ... As for Croatia: they defended efficiently, kept possession, and took their opportunities to score. That's what we call football . Remember that? FFS! Actually, a few weeks ago I asked my Croatian mate Ognjen why the team were so good, and he said that it was because of the sport and leisure provision: every village or small suburb has its leisure or sports centre, everyone's doing sport. Unlike the English, a bunch of fat twats sitting on our fat arse...

...Or something. Now, I've had a chance to read this Libya In From The Cold article . It's quite interesting but misses a number of points. For example, in dealing with Libya v Al Qaeda, it completely ignores the recent al Zawahiri tape on the matter. But the general picture is correct. So far as exploitation by foreign capital is concerned, Europe is miles ahead of the USA: the best example I can think of being the provision of English teaching, which is an exclusively British/Irish affair, on the ground at least. The quotation given as the title of this post is food for thought, (given what I've blogged elsewhere about the battling bureaucratic leviathans); it'd be interesting to see Lisa Anderson 's rationale for that view, though.

Padraig at the Crossroads , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . Great minds think alike.

This bears out a rumour: that a new coast-road is to be built in Tripoli. It'll involve a hell of a lot of bulldozing. It's to be hoped that the Medinah will be skirted. I'm linking also to this article , which might be interesting, as a note to myself to come back to it. Do you like the picture? I like the picture. A little lad, fucking about with his toy, and no idea of the wide world. Maybe he'll grow up one day.

Vanity gets coupled with stupidity.

Umm-al-Maa, Oasis, Libyan Sahara. , originally uploaded by Libyan Soup . Beautiful. I love the way the sand dunes in the background look. I saw this when I was revisiting the libya.alt group on Flickr. Another reminder that I didn't do enough exploring on my last trip, and, inshallah, must remedy that next time.

Of course, one can speculate about what labour opportunities Sri Lankans will have in Libya . What skills do they have that Libya needs? And does it mean one'll be able to get a decent curry?

The national side beat Saudi 2-1 on Sunday. With ten men .

Through the google Jarrow blog alert, I came across another local blog . It made me think about taking up fishing again... After a gap of thirty years, it's true, but wtf? My Abu Ambassador reel is somewhere at the Aged Parents' house, and that was once a state of the art, pricey bit of kit. Hmm. Masses of whiting. 15 minutes walk away... That would be another handy string to the self sufficiency bow. Lovely.

I have the technology. I've downloaded some free audio software , now I need to read through this how-to site . And I've opened a Box.net free account to store it - though the free account limits me to a 10mb file - which means a couple of short bits of music and some chat. I've been impressed with the quality of the recording on my mobile , which means I can do interviews when I'm out and about. This is going to be fun, but there's a professional angle too: I want to use the podcast format as part of the repertoire of teaching.

Reuters carried this report . AFP managed to get a couple of quotes from one those exotic creatures beneath the waves . I'm guessing, but I suspect that there is a pro- and anti-tourist battle going on in the hidden depths, and it's a battle in a war between "progressive" and "conservative" factions.

...the BBC have used one of my photos !

In the same inbox, I get a link to a story about the marvellous future for Libya's tourist industry, and another link to a tale of arsey immigration authorities, which "reflects confusion in government policies" . Being a European involved with Libya is a bit like sailing over an ocean: what you see is peacable, beautiful or dangerous by turns; but the point is, you have only the dimmest idea, can barely imagine, what is going on beneath the surface. There, huge beasts are eating vast quantities of little fish and knocking seven shades of shite out of one another. Perhaps it's something to do with a significant route for advancement being through a centralised bureaucracy. Talented people will gravitate to it, and commence careers of hidden but bloody and bitter office warfare. Only a theory, but one based on the fact that at least twice, I've had my classroom eyed up greedily by apparatchik warriors. In one case, we were shunted out of a perfectly adequate tr...

hedgely road off licence , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . So who used to own it?

I was burning a joss stick, and the smoke caught in the back of my throat. And I wondered, if you did that a lot, inhale incense that is, would you get some kind of medical condition? And that got me to thinking, is there such a medical condition as priests' lung, contracted through not only incense inhalation, but also spending an inordinate time in old, dusty and perhaps damp buildings?

This is a link to something they do called Atlas . I can't stop playing it. Brilliant. And (ahem) Little Gwion tells me that the peeling away, multilayered nature of the vocal is reminiscent of some aspects of the affects of salvia divinorum usage. Or something.

Were brilliant on Jools Holland last night . Here's their myspace site . Something else I need time to check out. Also, Soil & "Pimp" Sessions , who were on last week.

infant literacy , originally uploaded by /pɪgstaɪævnjuː/ . This photo is The Bairn's concept. Also, I'm very enamoured of having bluetooth on the laptop and on the phone - easy to snap away and upload the results, however shite, without the intervention of a large quantity of spaghetti. We have a wireless router now, also. The more wireless we get, the better I'll like it.

It's amazing how quickly we move on with technology. This was only a couple of years ago, yet it looks really digitised because camera-phones hadn't even heard of a whole megapixel. Or something.

Apparently. Though at time of blogging I'm without audio, so I'm really just making a note-to-self to check this out with ears on.

Being the Pig Sty Avenue Podcasting Corporation. This is a project I fully intend to resurrect as soon as I get a bit of free time. Today, in connexion with that placement test, to record the sound files for the listening, I downloaded Audacity , which at first blush looks as if it'll be just the job for building a podcast. And, also time permitting, I'll spend some time surfing for new podsafe music. It'll be a hoot.

Great stuff. And now back to the boxed set(s).

... when all about you/Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." During my last stint in Libya, over a shisha pipe and crown (alcohol free) beer, my colleagues and I would ponder when Al Qaeda would turn its jaundiced, long-sighted eye onto the dear old Jamahiriya . Years passed, and nothing happened. But now, when I'm going back, we get what looks nastily like a threat to open up a new front . Oh, bugger. There's a bit more detail from CBS . But Rotterstint seems to get to the bottom of it.