Thursday 28 January 2010

Crawling in my skin these wounds they will not heal

Pardon the Linkin Park lyric in the title but it seems fairly apt in the circumstance.

In my more reflective moments I wonder if perhaps Luke Skywalker was talking about Worcester Park and not Tatooine when he said:
"If there's a bright center to the universe, you're on the planet that it's farthest from"
as Worcester Park can seem unloved by it's assorted Councils and like Radiator Springs from the Pixar movie "Cars" the traffic passes by but doesn't seem to stop any more, as the empty shops silently attest.

On the other hand the nastiness of the outside world generally seems to pass us by.... I don't recall any shootings or big gang fights with their associated knifings and since the Huntsmans changed things have calmed down a bit but then there are unpleasant things lurking in suburbia, as the Surrey Comet reports:

A sex shop owner faces prison after police found thousands of vile child porn images stashed in his safety deposit box.

Officers found around 21,000 images and 48 films in a deposit box belonging to Michael Geraghty, of Oaks Avenue, Worcester Park.

The 50-year-old admitted four counts of possessing indecent images and seven of making indecent images, Southwark Crown Court heard.


I've always assumed there must be a sex-shop owner living in Worcester Park as it's statistically quite probable, but this story does make my skin crawl for a variety of reasons, not least this statement about the images found:

They included images of babies less than a year old and others depicting sexual activity with children, the most serious category.

Oaks Avenue is only a few hundred yards from a couple of schools, depending which end he lives, but I think it's likely that he'll be going into hiding until he's sentenced rather than roaming the streets enjoying his last few days of freedom. I can't even begin to imagine what these children went through and as a parent the thought of this possibly happening to any of our children fills me with an unspeakable dread. It does happen, but it shouldn't..... ever.

Comments anybody?

Wednesday 20 January 2010

Cat fight!

As I strolled down Brinkley Road towards Central Road this morning I noticed a black and white cat stalking down the pavement in front of me and it took a moment to notice the large, furry ginger object sat on a the short brick pillar at the end of a wall (there's probably a name for that but I'm not au fait with brickwork) which wholly occupied its attention.

"Cat fight" I thought to myself with the imagery of impending flailing of claws and paws floating across my mind and the ringing of approaching caterwauling in my ears. It was only as I drew level with the ginger shape that was calmly surveying both myself and the approaching cat that a thought struck me.

"That's a bloody big nose for a cat"

It was, of course, a fox and one that was entirely happy with me stopping next to it and staring at it. It was giving me the distinct impression that I was invading its personal space, despite being sat right next to the pavement on Brinkley Road. Cheeky thing.

For those that do like cats you might have noticed the "kittenify" link at the top of the right-hand column. If you don't like the pictures on screen just click on "kittenify" and it will sort them out for you.


In other (dare I say "real") Worcester Park news the Cazbar's cleaned their pool table:
W/PK BREAKING NEWS! CAZBAR have ‘cleaned’ their pool table & its currently out of use. Punters are up in arms, some have been seen to just looking in total disbelief at the table. Others have been struck down by poolitus, where they are unable to talk about anything else apart from the CAZBAR pool table. We are currently trying to contact the owner but rumour has it he is now in an underground bunker in South Wales.

Saturday 16 January 2010

A pair of spectacles.....

....in that this video shows a train actually running while it was snowing but the more impressive spectacle is the shower of sparks being thrown up by the train's "shoe" and the live rail because of the snow!

I'd seen the sky light up eerily with the flashes from the train when I left Brinkster Central and it was fortunate for me that my train happened to be on time that day, a couple of minutes after taking this video!