Hump Day

Mum had a consultation this morning. She's returned home with four tattooed target marks on her back! She starts her new course of radiotherapy this Friday afternoon. Not sure at this stage how many or how frequently.

I got to help out at Little Lad's Preschool this morning. What fun! Making Teas and Coffees for the staff and cold drinks for around 20 kids. Oh yeah and model making with Play Dough, building Train tracks, painting and helping with dressing up. Afterwards the two of us went swimming and then lunch. The afternoon was a little quieter with some quality sitting still and a visit to look at the animals at a local Garden Centre.

Masts

I don't possess a mobile phone and I don't plan to have one in the future. When I see other drivers babbling away into their mobiles (cell phones to Americans), my blood boils with rage because to me it is like junping into a car when your veins are coursing with alcohol after a session in the pub. It is just as irresponsible and there have been many cases of fatal or near-fatal road accidents caused directly by thoughtless mobile phone use.

But this isn't what I really wished to gripe about in this post. What I want to rant about is mobile phone masts. They seem to be mushrooming all over the place - great big ugly poles that are an ugly blight on our cityscapes and countryside. And because we live in a competitive, enterprising society it seems that different mobile phone companies have to throw up their own masts - thereby massively increasing the number of masts that assault our vision and uglify our surroundings.

I hate them and I wonder, just in aesthetic terms, why they can't start incorporating phone masts into new buildings or running them up the side of existing tall buildings like lightning conductors.

This is to ignore another latent and worrying issue with mobile phone masts - namely,what are they doing to our long term health? I sometimes walk by masts and hear electronic humming emerging from the associated and equally ugly control boxes. Why? What is that humming doing to passers by? Do profit making companies like T-Mobile, Orange and O2 give a damn about the nation's long term health? Ithink not. All they are after is filthy lucre and they'll twist and turn like the operators of the Sellafield Visitors' Centre to deny that there are any health issues with mobile phone masts. Profit is everything to these people.

I am thinking of visiting Osam bin Laden's mates in northern Pakistan to get some lessons in terrorism so that I can form an underground rebel group whose mission will be to fell as many mobile phone masts as we can. We'll be called The PML (Phone Mast Lumberjacks), bringing back a more peaceful, private world to provide sanctuary from the endless cell phone babble and prevent brain cancers.

Come On The Royals!

No, nothing what so ever to do with a certain Prince doing his duty for his Grandma and Country...

Today marked the end of a run of eight straight defeats for Reading Football Club, The Royals. They beat Middlesborough away 0-1 with an injury time goal from James Harper. Nice.

Reading are still in the danger zone and could still face the drop at the end of the season but this might just be the turning point. Finger's crossed this is the start of a change of fortune. Well done boys!