News from the UK

Busy trying to sort out work permit so's I can take my new job. Last time round was a bit of a cock up, but we have since been to see immigration, who have helped us with my application. By tomorrow I should have had the problems ironed out, and might just be able to go and actually do some work.

Not that I'm keen to go back to the UK any time soon. The news is uniformly dire with nary a glimpse of a silver lining. Bills are rising all the time; Phone, Gas, Electricity, Council tax, food, petrol and transport costs. Bankruptcies are at record levels. The Government has nationalised it's first Bank. A 'credit crunch' is in progress. Taxes are up. Services are down. You pay a grand a year, and if you're lucky the Local Authority doesn't bug you, and might, just might, if you ask them really, really nicely, empty your bins once a month. Not only that but people are being murdered on the street and their killers given comparatively light sentences if caught by a Police 'Service' that is so busy collecting statistics, that the Constables don't get out on the streets doing their job half the time. The only people who seem to be making any money are the Politicians and their hangers on, who are trousering more than I used to make in a year after tax in expenses alone. Well, them and a few city traders. Although I never begrudged the money men their massive wedges. At least they don't go round telling the rest of us what to do.

Oh yes, and that doesn't even mention the demands for Sharia law from a minority of the population, and the selling of old Englands soul and sovereignty to the ever more bloated European Union. Hells Bells and ecky thump! I am glad I got offered the job I was.

Over on Vancouver Island, life is comparatively peaceful, with only odd bits of body found washed up on the shores of sparsely inhabited islands like the three right feet washed up on Valdez in the past year. I found the carcase of a Deer on the shoreline, and something that looked like a human tibia, but after careful examination, and careful perusal of some textbooks, saw that it was a bone from one of the local Deer that had tried to swim the narrows and drowned. The two articular grooves at the bottom were the big clue. So it was that I didn't waste the RCMP's time with a false alarm. From those I've met, they seem a decent bunch. Although I wouldn't like to get the wrong side of the law anyway.

Have been pounding the keyboard on a new project inspired by my own blog musings about going to the stars. I'm enjoying it, and don't really care about submitting it to any publisher. It's too niche, too rough cut. Too small a market sector.

Weather has been nice this weekend. Glorious light reflected from Mudge and Link in the late afternoon. This is a tiny tranche of Canadian Paradise. I am so very lucky to be here.