My girlfriend is out tonight with her teaching buddies for end of term drinks, rather than whacking off to something depraved as I might have done five years ago I've used this 'me' time to cook a nice little dinner of sea bass roasted with olive oil, lemon and rosemary, new potatoes, green salad and home-made mayonnaise.

I'm going to eat it on the back step with a glass of wine watching the baby stray cats play in the yard, listening to an Afrobeat record as the evening swelters.

I think this is a change for the better.

cjh wrote:rather than whacking off

There's no need to feel shame, every man begins his lonely evening with good intentions...



[Sorry Chris, I tried hard to resist face]

cjh wrote:home-made mayonnaise.

Ah, so that's what people are calling it these days - making a little home-made mayonnaise....

I considered making some mayonnaise whilst reading The Mayor Of Casterbridge earlier. No idea why. But I ended up falling asleep instead.

Rodabod wrote:I considered making some mayonnaise whilst reading The Mayor Of Casterbridge earlier. No idea why.

Feeling a little Thomas Hardy?

!!!

[you absolute fuckers face]

Cranius wrote:Feeling a little Thomas Hardy?

Teehee!

Rodabod wrote:
Ah, so that's what people are calling it these days - making a little home-made mayonnaise....

clocker bob wrote:Hey, MVS- are most evacuees just making brief stops in Cyprus before heading back to Europe, or is there hope among many that they can stay in Cyprus for a week or two and then return if a cease fire is brokered?

CB,
I'm not totally clear about it but it looks to me like most are only stopping briefly here. It seems dependent on the nationalities of the evacuees. For instance, Belgium just had all of it's people sent to Larnaca airport and flown back immediately. All the British and Americans are being taken care of on the various military bases.

My Greek is not so good so I have trouble following the cypriot news but from various evacuees interviewed, the gist seems to be that Lebanon is in such a state of chaos and destruction that everybody was terrified and thanful to just get the hell out. The embassys are all in total chaos overun with people rushing to escape. A french /German kid whose parents were both killed arrived here today with serious spinal injuries.

Many had difficulties making it to the ships on time because so many roads and bridges have been destroyed. It sound like there won't be much to go back to, that it doesn't look as though Israel is going to stop it's bombardments anytime soon and that Lebanon has been set back maybe 70 years or so. One evacuee claimed that Beiruit is totally in ruins.

One ship was told by the Lebanese to evacuate for it's own safety ahead of schedule leaving 400 people stranded.

Canadian government has chartered I think 10 Cypriot boats to rescue the up to 50,000 canadians living in Lebanon.

Greeks, French and the Swedish (predictably) seems to have been pretty quick and efficient in getting their people out.

I just heard that Israel are trying to pin the blame on Iran. Saying that Iran is behind the kidnappings to inflame the situation to distract attention from it's nuclear program! Ha, not funny.

Not sure what else to add. It doesn't look good.

I have to crash.

clocker bob wrote:Hey, MVS- are most evacuees just making brief stops in Cyprus before heading back to Europe, or is there hope among many that they can stay in Cyprus for a week or two and then return if a cease fire is brokered?

Mose Varty-Seppanen wrote:CB,
I'm not totally clear about it but it looks to me like most are only stopping briefly here. It seems dependent on the nationalities of the evacuees. For instance, Belgium just had all of it's people sent to Larnaca airport and flown back immediately. All the British and Americans are being taken care of on the various military bases.

It looks like five US warships are in route with helicopters to the Lebanon coast, escorting a cruise liner, so maybe the US evacuees will bypass the stop in Cyprus and remain on ships. With the Beirut airport destroyed, this whole evacuation is going to take ten times longer.

Mose Varty-Seppanen wrote:My Greek is not so good so I have trouble following the cypriot news but from various evacuees interviewed, the gist seems to be that Lebanon is in such a state of chaos and destruction that everybody was terrified and thanful to just get the hell out. The embassys are all in total chaos overun with people rushing to escape. A french /German kid whose parents were both killed arrived here today with serious spinal injuries.

Jesus, that's nice. I've been sticking with BBC world and the web, obviously, everything on the US networks is hopelessly slanted, and stories of injured evacuees are numerous.

Mose Varty-Seppanen wrote:Many had difficulties making it to the ships on time because so many roads and bridges have been destroyed. It sound like there won't be much to go back to, that it doesn't look as though Israel is going to stop it's bombardments anytime soon and that Lebanon has been set back maybe 70 years or so. One evacuee claimed that Beiruit is totally in ruins.

It looks bad in the photos and videos I've seen, like an earthquake hit the bridges, lots of burn victims, more reports of cluster bombs, terrible shrapnel injuries, I saw what I think was an arm and some intestines being carried in a blanket. Also depleted uranium has been reported and possible chemical weapons.

Mose Varty-Seppanen wrote:One ship was told by the Lebanese to evacuate for it's own safety ahead of schedule leaving 400 people stranded.

Canadian government has chartered I think 10 Cypriot boats to rescue the up to 50,000 canadians living in Lebanon.

Greeks, French and the Swedish (predictably) seems to have been pretty quick and efficient in getting their people out.

I just heard that Israel are trying to pin the blame on Iran. Saying that Iran is behind the kidnappings to inflame the situation to distract attention from it's nuclear program! Ha, not funny.

Even if hezbollah did capture the IDF troops to distract from the G8, the response is grossly excessive. And perfect for the Likud and PNAC plans for the region.

Mose Varty-Seppanen wrote:Not sure what else to add. It doesn't look good.

I have to crash.

Thanks for the report and for the blood donation.

Last night was incredibly hot here, so leaving every possible window open was a necessity. I was knackered from work, and have got a stinking cold at the moment, so I was pretty flaked out early on, but from around 1030pm onwards, me and my girlfriend became aware of this anguished barking coming from somewhere – sometimes sounding really close, other times further away. I alternate between hoping the dog’s OK and wishing it would just shut the fuck up.

It was so hot that I drifted in and out of sleep, all the time this dog getting more and more desperate-sounding, its yelps piercing through earplugs, until at 3am, my girlfriend decides that we have to do something about it, as she’s worried that it might be lost or a stray, trapped in this big school round the corner.

We get dressed and go out, taking our own dog with us. It turns out that the barking is actually coming from a house that backs on to ours, and the owner is obviously still out. Relieved that its distress is (hopefully) only temporary, we go home, and my girlfriend writes a note for the owner, trying to carefully word it so that it’s more about his dog being OK in future rather than him being a dick who’s kept up everyone in earshot on the hottest night of the year, which would have been more my approach.

After both of us have re-read it and checked it’s OK, we go round and post it through the letter box. As we walk away, we hear the dog come tearing through the house, barking all the way, only stopping to noisily eat the carefully-scripted note. He then keeps barking until at least 4am, when the Night Nurse, whisky and earplugs finally send me off. Woke up at 6am feeling like crap, to the sound of another much bigger dog barking somewhere else. Joy. Spend today feeling like a zombie moving through treacle.