Well, there you go. I've uploaded an entry that I wrote on Monday, finally. It's just below this one.
It's taken so long to get in because, after I uploaded Sunday's entry, Simon upgraded perl on the server. Suddenly DB_File wasn't linked against libdb2 any more, it was linked against the binary incompatible libdb4. So my update script could no longer do anything with the database file...
This shouldn't be a problem - there are programs to upgrade your database files - but the PHP installation on the server is linked against libdb2 and only libdb2. I tried upgrading the database and my site broke, it couldn't read any entries any more and the archive index generator went crazy...
Various solutions were considered. The most interesting was the idea to screw about with the mysql server, but, as I suspected, I found that I didn't have an account on it. Unable to create any databases and unwilling to wait for Simon to get enough spare time to administrate (never mind the fact that all the database stuff in my site code that would need rewriting) I gave up on that one.
I tried to use the old DB_File from perl 5.6.1 at home. I copied it over, and put a line in the script to add the path to @INC so perl could find it. But it didn't work. It was incompatible with the perl 5.8 binary and wouldn't link with it.
I nearly gave up at this point, but instead I fetched the source for DB_File off CPAN. For some reason, the server has the libdb2 development package, with the various header files, installed, so I could just build it against libdb2 and perl 5.8. This worked fine, so I can update my site again! I bet you're so bloody glad of that.
I would like to take this opportunity to say that for the most part I'm not angry at anyone except myself. It's merely so bad at the moment that I seem to be unable to avoid taking it out on everyone; in particular, those closest to the source of the problem, as it were. Sorry if you thought otherwise, and sorry if you feel victimised.
I realise I'm not making it any better for myself by being this way, but I am under seige from more negative emotions than my tortured mind can handle. It's more than enough ammunition for the large part of my brain that hates me to do some serious damage, the rest being too weak and shrivelled to resist.
However, sometimes people say things related to the situation that particularly hurt, and at those times I guess I am upset with them. I suppose some of these are merely innocuous remarks, but nevertheless. I shall refrain from posting examples. I should probably go away until everyone stops talking about it but that's difficult knowing only one set of people and being too shy to go and find any others.
This has been another cryptic remark from the people who brought you the The Analogy Of The Shared Box Of Christmas Crackers.
If I Leave The House Today I Will Have Done So Every Day For A Whole Week!
It's true you know. As regular readers know I spent four days last week having a job. Then on Saturday I felt sufficiently motivated to go out and buy some wires (and more as it turned out) and of course on Sunday I went to the cinema with a bunch of people (BDave, Matt, Warwick, FDave, Amy)
Cables, cables, cables (and CDs)
I am a sucker for punishment in many ways; one frequent one is the distribution and/or public airing of records from the anARCHy tracklist (whose 10th birthday, I might add, is rapidly approaching... oh man...) Furthermore, I am fed up of having to copy stuff between my computers via floppy disc, so I figured I'd give the RISC OS serial cable networking page a go. So these are the cables and the plans:
- 3.5mm jack - 3.5mm jack: You take the output from the A3010 and put it into the stereo. Then you plug this cable into the stereo headphone socket and the soundcard in my linux box ("anarchy"... it's just so wrong as a hostname...) The stereo then acts as a post-amplifier for bass and treble, and I can record audio like it is heard from my speakers (instead of really quietly out of the A3010's headphone socket; I believe this was one of the causes of the complaints about sound quality I got the last time I made mp3s of my stuff)
- 3.5mm jack - 2 phono plugs: I must admit this is pure lazyness. I've already got two of these; my stereo has two audio inputs, so I have the two computers most needing of decent audio output wired up (the other one has some ancient portable speakers) But the thing is, whenever I want to record audio off the radio (twice a week, sometimes more) I have to go behind the stereo and the computer and swap both ends of one of the cables... Now I don't have to, because both inputs and both outputs are connected by different cables... Just have to be careful I don't get the whole thing into a loop and blow itself up, heh
Actually I bought two of these because I mentioned to Amy I was going and she asked me if I could get her a cable "to connect the computer to the hi fi". So I did, because I am weak and pathetic and can't say no to girls. But at least she paid me back the money for it
- Null modem cable: Okay I might only be able to copy stuff at eleven kilobytes per second, but RISC OS networking hardware is gratuitously expensive and I don't copy stuff between the computers often enough to justify the cost. I have to also work out how to put the networking stuff back on my Risc PC; in 1996 I never imagined it being connected to anything else, so I deleted all the networking stuff on the hard disc. It's not like it's gone forever but it needs careful investigation, and I only have two weeks else I can't take the cable back to Maplin and get a refund.
On the way back, I dropped into a couple of record shops. For the first time ever I saw a copy of a CD I've been after for about a year, namely High Contrast's True Colours. I couldn't afford it, but I bought it anyway, and I'm glad I did, because it's fantastic:)
The Matrix: Reloaded
I should code one of those "(read more...)" things into my site, so I can post spoilers but you have to click on the (read more) to view them. All I'll say is this: it was good, the special effects etc were cool, but there was a lot of content there that I felt was simply put in for gratuitous appeal to people's base instincts rather than actual plot advancement. But I guess that's Hollywood for you.
Hmm, let's try screwing with the colours. This won't work in Lynx, but I don't think anyone uses that to read my site any more, not since Amy got her computer and emerged from the cupboard...
For example, there was that whole long scene in the cave... And some of the fight scenes just felt tacked on, like this is here because we want a car chase, because car chases look cool, not for any other reason... And don't even mention the bit with the cake, talk about any old excuse to animate-- well, you'll know when you see it. On the other hand, ssh 10.2.2.2 -l root>(link) made up for it... until I realised that by going "hey, fantastic!" I had just been in the biggest spot the nerds moment ever in a cinema... I looked round at the contrast between the split-melon grinning geeks and the blank stares of the normal people, and I felt incredibly embarrassed.
Anyway it was fun. Afterwards we went to Fiona's house for a while. On the way I put a traffic cone on my head. Amy said she wanted to fly like Neo so I picked her up and chucked her at a big wall. It was hilarious.
Can we maintain the record?
Can I manage to leave the house every day for a week? Well, apparently Matt is DJing at Underground in Top Banana tonight, so I might try to get myself invited to that. I know I have work again tomorrow so I'd have to go home early, but that's not a problem. Top Banana is well known to be really, really shite and so at least in theory it would be really easy to leave. We'll see.
The plan to go see The Matrix Reloaded this afternoon at the Skydome is to catch the 3pm showing, arriving at around half two or quarter to three. I know that's pretty early, but in case the queue's pretty long, I'd rather avoid missing the start or whatever. Feel free to show up, I guess
http://www.phys.warwick.ac.uk/teach/mathphys/year3b_reg.html: Seems that Writing Skills is still a required course, but it has been renamed to Communicating Science and one or two of the six assignments have changed. I am very glad that my earlier discovery to the contrary turned out to be incorrect and the little bastards do indeed have to suffer like I did...
I will update about the acquisition from Maplin of a load of cables (audio leads for recording tracks, serial cables for linking computers together...) later.
reloaded
I am part of a bunch of people (at time of writing, the others include, well, lots, but in particular, BabyDave, ObMatt, and Warwick) who want to go and see Reloaded this weekend.
I was thinking Sunday afternoon at the Skydome. The best time has not yet been found but apparently it's on every hour on the hour, so there's plenty of choice. We can't decide between the afternoon or the evening; most people have no preference, so one person could swing it.
So if you're reading this and are interested, get on IRC or whatever and talk to me about it.
eleven tracked sites
SNAFU welcomes Julie, who started a weblog, and posted it to the triv lists, but said she didn't want to be listed with her full name; and James "Boony" Boon who dropped into #warwick this evening and actually asked me to add his site. I figured, what the hell. I had considered adding it back when I wrote snafu, but had decided not to, because it's not a site I read much... (sorry, but there you go...)
day four
Final(*) day of work was a bit different. We finished the forms by about 11am, so we had to check some of them. You check and correct 10% of the total number of forms, and note how many are wrong, then you have 10% you know are correct and an estimate of whatever percent of the rest are correct. If that estimate isn't high enough you have to carry on checking. But by then it was time to go home.
There were 1000 forms, so each of us got 250 and had to check 25. Now you had to pick those 25 at random... Of course the only way I could even begin to decide which numbers to use was to be a complete nerd and do this:
perl -e '@a=(501..750);
for ($i=0; $i<25; $i++) { $j=int rand @a; push @b, splice @a,$j,1; };
for (sort @b) { printf "%5s", $_; }; print "\n";'
I'm sorry, but there you go. I don't even think it's very efficiently written. Also I wanted to post some of the more humourous form responses, but I haven't been bothered to look through the data I saved very much, and anyway most of it doesn't work out of context. I'm sorry, it turns out work isn't that good a source of comedy value, you just have to be there...
(*)Not quite final:) They want us back for one more day next week. I accepted pretty much immediately... I mean it's not like I've got anything else to do, and... more wedge, heh.
Hmm this update doesn't read very well as I've been on IRC at the same time as writing it. But screw it.
They're Giving Me Money To Type Stuff Into Computers
Yes, the rumours are true, hell has indeed frozen over... Although it's only temporary, and by that I mean 4 days, I have a job.
I have long maintained that I lack well over half the skills and personality traits that make a person employable. I still believe this to be the case and indeed long ago rejected the idea that I would ever be sufficiently able for the kind of job people go to university to get.
However, I know I need to earn a living, and I could probably do something menial provided it didn't require too much interaction with other people. For graduate jobs, you need a degree; unfortunately, for crappy low wage jobs, you need experience, of which I naturally had none.
For example, way back when I was registered on jobseekers allowance I had applied for several such positions only to be rejected on experience grounds. One thing was through an agency who made me take a test. Although I performed very well on it, they still said their client was asking for people with one year's experience. Oh well. I'm starting to go on a bit here, so let's move on...
Unitemps
Tuesday 13th May 2003 Having pestered me about it for ages, Amy makes me register for Warwick's temp agency Unitemps. I had fiercely resisted this move previously, on grounds like "They want three references! I've barely got one" and "Eww, scary, no." But, she was in my house and she made me do it.
Thanks, hon. Seriously.
Wednesday 14th May 2003 I start getting emails off them. If you like what they offer you copy the link into your browser and apply for it online by typing up to 100 words saying why you think you're suitable. It's just like sitting in your house using a computer, which is nice. I surprised myself by applying for a couple of things; given the mood I was in it wouldn't have been beyond me to just delete all of it on "it's pointless they'll never have me" grounds, but I didn't.
"What do you mean, you've got a job? Already? :("
Thursday 15th May 2003 Unitemps sent me this thing about Perl and PHP that seemed ideal but they required examples of your work, so instead of applying for it I went off to tidy up my site code a bit:) Wrong decision. I should have applied for it as soon as I got the mail. Oh well.
Got even more upset when I heard Amy's pub application had been successful. This upset me on the grounds that she'd "only been seriously looking for work for the past week or so" and so it seemed to me like she'd just walked into paid employment just like that. Despite the fact that there's no way I could work in a pub on account of mind numbing fear of the general public I was still upset that she'd succeeded that fast.
"Okay I'll apply for this. Bloody hell, the phone's ringin'!"
Monday 19th May 2003 It came at just the right moment. I was fantastically depressed and had spent the previous half a day trying not to burst into tears, having more nasty dreams and generally not sleeping at all. On the other hand I'd done some research; you'll be pleased to read that I don't have anywhere like enough sleeping pills left with which to kill myself.
"Urgent! Data entry clerks. The Students Union require 4 temps to undertake data entry for them from Tues 20th May until Frid 23rd May. Hours will be 8.30 - 4.30 Tues - Thurs and 8.30 - 3.30 Fri." - what the hell, this is exactly the sort of dumb monkey job I could do. Apply, blah blah accuracy speed blah did a test once blah 100 words, click submit. Five minutes later the phone rings. "We'd like to offer you the position if you're still interested" OMFG "Sure!" Plus it started the very next day so I didn't really have too much time to get nervous.
Day One - "Crikey, I'm at work!"
Tuesday 20th May 2003 I couldn't get to sleep before 3am, so getting up at 7 was fun. However my fear of authority and letting people down can actually be useful sometimes... I got to the union early, thanks in most part to my mum who gave me a lift (it's not so much of a detour for her, given where she works, and the hours fitted too) and ended up waiting around for ages. It seems when they're pretty relaxed about times and so forth. The four of us were taken into an office and shown what to do.
Turns out it's a questionnaire they sent round to undergraduates about a month ago, asking them to review their degree course. Whether it is meeting employers' needs, what skills you think employers want, ones you have, are you satisfied with the course, how you think the course could be improved, and an interesting question on the end about what you think of the idea of your 3-year degree being spread over 4 years. We were inputting these forms into a statistics program called SPSS.
Our work was being saved into files on the network which our supervisor (to whom I must admit I was mildly attracted, yeah, total cliche...) could check on. She wanted ten done per hour but on that first day nobody managed more than about five or six. Over the day I did 38, in 7 hours or so. You work it out.
Having said that it was very relaxed, we were just left to get on with it and laugh at the dumb stuff people put on their forms sometimes. Spelling. Grammar. Overenthusiasm for leaving university to start work. Putting "drinking" as one of your extracurricular activities, then saying it benefits you because it "improves my people skills". I could go on... Instead let me mention that I found the computers were actually on the internet. So I went on #warwick via the chat applet on Astrolink.
"16:25 <rob> hay guys im goofing off:)"
I was going to write an update about all this, but then I got one of my really evil blindness headaches and couldn't really use the computer very much.
Day Two - "Save my data, you stupid program"
Wednesday May 21st It started off so well. I did 33 forms before lunch, in 4 hours, compare that with 38 over the whole day yesterday. Then it happened. The program crashed.
Okay, fine, reload the data file. Where's my 33 additions? The damn thing hadn't been saving them! I couldn't believe it, the entire morning's work had gone. I also couldn't believe I hadn't noticed SPSS hadn't been saving my file, either.
I went to tell hot babe supervisor woman, who said it wasn't a problem, these things happened, but you could tell she was annoyed. I managed to redo most of the ones I'd lost, but it was upsetting. I told a few people about this and they all said "so what at least you're still going to get paid" which I guess is true but... I dunno, what if they find some way to blame me, or, even if they don't it was still pointless my sitting there all that time.
I took goofing off to the next level by downloading PuTTY, logging into triv.org.uk with it and IRCing from there, though I had to close it and hide the executable files when the IT guy came round to try to fix SPSS's file saving problem. It was worth being scared to hell by the thought of being discovered for this...
21/05 16:30 - 21/05 16:31
<Amy> why two rob's?
<Amy> bisc, seen rob
<bisc> rob was last seen on #warwick 4 minutes and 13 seconds ago,
saying: and if spss actually saved my data like i told it to [Wed
May 21 16:26:42 2003]
<Amy> seen rjy
<bisc> rjy was last seen on #warwick 8 hours, 44 minutes and 52 seconds
ago, saying: offtoworkagain! [Wed May 21 07:46:06 2003]
<Rob> i'm goofing off:)
<Amy> what?
<Amy> how?
<Rob> i'm at work
<Amy> !!!!!!!!
<Amy> and rjy is at home?
<Rob> and i downloaded putty and logged into triv and am ircing from
there
<Rob> yeah
<Amy> lollerine aren't they keeping you busy>?
<Rob> i should work out how to use screen and reenable ssh
Later I got yelled at for not updating my site about the job. I was about to do it, when The Matrix came on TV, so I had to watch that instead... Not just because I really like it, but because it's now turned into a comedy as well, thanks to Something Awful.
Day Three - 64 forms, remote logins, Comedy "420" option
Thursday May 22nd 2003 Well the third day went about as well as it could have done. Supervisor woman was wearing an interestingly low-cut top. I got 64 forms done (I wanted 60, then I thought, let's go for the power of 2) and with only minimal data loss when SPSS crashed when I was about a quarter of the way into one form. It was managing to write to disc today, so that's all I lost. I saved often and into a few different files just to be on the safe side.
Furthermore, following talking to Iain about it last night I made good on my threats to re-enable sshd and log into my own computer from work, and to set up screen and run irssi under it. Screen has turned out to be one of those pieces of software that catches you and makes you go "oh man, this is the one, you know, this is heavy, this is really, really good"... it's the best thing ever. I could log in, "re-attach" my terminal to its session, and retake control of irssi without having to quit and restart it. I think this is really cool:) Yes I am that sad. Go away.
Oh yeah.
22/05 16:21 - 22/05 16:22
<RjY> i've been waiting for the moment and i missed it.
<RjY> but here goes
<RjY> 420 GOOF OFF ON IRC EVERY DAY
<RjY> oh yes
<RjY> that was goooood
<Amy> heh
<Amy> poor RjY
Finally, I was invited to the fair (yes there's another one on Hearsall Common) but I didn't go on account that it was far too wet when I was going home (and I kind of couldn't be bothered with it, anyway) It was a shame because apparently Amy had chosen the time to go to coincide with my finishing work:\ I bet they decided to go and do something else pretty quickly and I've missed out on some hilarious hijinks again...:(
Oh well screw it I have to go sleep now. Last day tomorrow.
tinkered site code
You may have noticed recently there have been periods where this site has been unavailable. Actually it's more likely you noticed snafu wasn't there, because let's face it the main page never has anything on it anyone would want to read, but the other sites we track here might do (even if we don't have comedy descriptions like Bex does)
1. Included pages, callback functions, and cache control headers
Recall my pages are accessed via having, say, ?p=foo on the end of the site URL. Now what happens is that the main code file index.php will php-include a file called foo.php and then call a bunch of support functions (in the included file, naturally) whose names start with foo_ (via PHP's call_user_func())
Two of these supports are pretty trivial, they just tell the main code which icon to use in the corner above the navigation bar and any extra bits to put in the <title></title>. Then there's one that is called before any content is written, which is used for sending out HTTP headers (the need for which was the point of this reworking) and a final one that does all the page content. Naturally this one tends to be a lot longer than the others, heh.
The outwardly-visible consequences of these changes are few, but in particular it means I can make the pages displaying regularly-updated information (e.g. snafu, webnewsstats) return specific last-modified times and other headers to try and coax non-retarded webcaches into ignoring them. This might fix a few problems people have been having with these pages failing to update.
2. Linking to specific entries
You may or may not be aware that to link to a specific entry on this site you can get the URL from the white box containing the dates, above each entry. It ended in the form ?t=TIME. The archive index was implemented similarly by having a link to the final update in a given month. The code would take this time (or whatever the current time happened to be) and return entries to either the start of that month or the start of the previous month (depending on whether or not TIME was before the fifteenth of the month)
The problem was that you'd get anything up to a month and a half's worth of updates prior to the one to which you were linking; this was fine for the archives, but bugged me for linking to specific updates. So the following change was implemented:
If TIME is exactly equal to the time of an entry, then you only get that entry. If not, you get the usual page of entries between that time and going back to the start of the month or the last month.
Then to do archive index links, for each month, we work out the epoch time of the start of the next month. Then clicking that link returns all the entries from the start of the previous month, up until that time. I decided that the chances of my writing an entry coinciding exactly with one of the month boundaries was sufficiently slim that this system was viable.
Okay that lot probably didn't make any sense so here's an example. If I link directly to this entry using ?t=1053089961 (that's the same link as you'd get from clicking on the white box above this entry) you'll get a page with only this entry on it. If however I link to one second after it - that is, ?t=1053089962 - you get not only this entry, but all the ones in May prior to it. If I link to one second before the time of this entry, that is ?t=1053089960, you get all of May prior to this entry, but not this one.
Got it yet?
hardware upgrades
This was my backups plan, which I made about a year ago. Get a big hard disc onto which to copy the current one and a CD writer for the important stuff. My current disc is a 20 gig disc, so I thought, 80 gigs would be enough to keep two copies and still have tons left over for some other ideas I have (like a local copy of the idgames archive; the mirrors at gamers.org and sunet.se are the ones I use the most) Then I have a CD writer, which would have other obvious uses, as well.
It takes me ages to actually spend any money though. The number of times I searched out products, made shopping lists on various websites and then failed to click the "buy now" button was quite astounding; that is, until last week, when in dire need of cheering up, I told my mum the whole thing and she said I should do it because spending some money for once would be good for my soul. I'm still annoyed that I had to tell her about it before I did it though. It's like I still have to ask permission before I do anything.
So the other day, all the stuff turned up and yesterday I installed it all. Yeah, for some reason I didn't mention to anyone that I was going to get the hard disc as well but there you go. I haven't partitioned it yet, I'm still wondering how to do it best. I don't want partitions that are too big, fsck takes too bloody long to check them. I shall tweak the number of times the partitions have been mounted to stagger their checks across different reboots.
The CD writer, on the other hand, is known to work; as usual thanks to Iain for telling me a lot of helpful stuff. The CD Writing HOWTO was useful too; I decided to build the CD support as modules in my kernel, so I needed to screw about with my modules.conf, as well as all the symlinking in /dev/, mucking about with /etc/fstab and putting myself into the right groups so I can access both my CD drives without needing to be root. But it reads discs and writes them, I made an audio CD last night with a couple of tracks on, as a test, and wiped it afterwards.
I was rather enjoying being right at the bottom of the table, but of course this update will screw all that over.
Welcome to the owner of its newest tracked site, Merlywerl aka Catslave aka... (he told me he didn't want his real name listed. Shame about the address, then...) On the other hand it seems Nelis has given up doing Robo Blog again, and Lllama, Inc. is about to close due to real life (Felix is having to move house) I thought if it ever did close, it'd be because the server it runs on isn't powerful enough to run what Felix wanted to do with it. Anyway, it's sad to see two of the original tracked sites go, even if it might only be temporary, but, life goes on.
There was a weird bug that made it fail to detect certain types of site changes. I fixed this, but made a mistake in elementary logic, which made it even worse. But that's been fixed too. Thanks to Matt for pointing out that updates to Pete's site were no longer being noticed; I simply assumed he simply hadn't been updating his site. But this would imply that I believed snafu to be infallible, which I find odd.
However, apparently for some the page has problems with web caches. I suppose I need to put some cache control headers in but the current way the site's code is organised makes that non-trivial:(
Finally, Dave from Link of the Day emailed me asking about its source code. I had always planned to release it, I just haven't got round to it yet. You know how it is, you can't just release it, you have to comment it, document it, etc... I hate writing documentation:/
meeting people
One. Elliot came back to Coventry for a party last weekend and dropped in to see me. The usual thing happened, played records, talked a load of nonsense, played Spheres of Chaos and Marsquake, and took the piss out of each other. I'd forgotten how much he makes me laugh sometimes.
Two. Later that day I went to another party, the one which I mentioned briefly in the previous update. Other than failing to tell my story, I managed to continue the running gag of taking lumps of wood to Matt's house by dragging along an enormous branch that was taller than most of the people there. Also Nelis was there, so I was able to talk to him about stuff from the SA forums ("STOP! HAMMERTIME!") and we went round bursting the balloons with a big knife (yes you may remember I did that after my party as well) Yes I know there was other stuff going on. Alcohol, bringing estranged couples back together since 1862.
Three. The rogue #warwick had a meeting in a pub, so I decided to go to it. I was feeling confident right up until we got to the pub, then my natural cowardice in the face of strangers took over and as usual I failed miserably to talk to anyone I didn't already know. I made a whole load of those flower things out of PostIt notes and there were some interesting drawings made of all present. I believe they are being scanned and uploaded somewhere, but I don't know where yet. Also a list was constructed of everyone's greatest exam failures. Yes, thankyou, I am so funny. In fact I'd forgotten about the stupid joke I made here so seeing it again made me giggle, which was nice because as usual I need all the cheering up I can get.
Four. Just this afternoon Bex, Rich (I'd link to his "Things I've Done Today That Bex Thinks Were Wrong" page if he finished making it) and Julie came round my house for an hour. Bex, who was in the area to see her favourite dentist again, wouldn't tell me from whom that quote came, only that it wasn't who I thought it was. However I did hear some funny gossip: e.g. apparently having a weblog can get you a girlfriend!
(Speaking of the site that quote was about I might as well throw this in here, as it's got nowhere else to go: I was quite pleased to hear about Amy getting her interview, because I wrote the covering letter. Seems she forgot to mention this, in fact in her 3rd April update it says "Rob phoned up and more or less invited himself round", well that's why, heh. The long delay isn't so surprising, companies often collect together all applications and don't look at them until the deadline has passed, so you don't hear back until a couple of weeks after it; at least, this is what happened the one time I got a job interview)
Here's the humourous story which I said I'd post on here (after I tried to tell it at a party, but couldn't get a word in edgeways)
We begin about ten years ago, while I was still at school. Towards the end of every summer, I'd be taken, usually to the Co-Op, to purchase new pieces of uniform for the upcoming school year. This was necessary as I was still growing.
Having left the shop my parents and I went around the city for a short time afterwards, largely window-shopping. As we were looking into one place I sensed someone looking at me, and turned round. It was the guy who'd been working on the till in the Co-Op. I figured he must have recognised us from earlier.
Of course, my memory being an excellent capturer of useless information, I now knew the guy's face. He was probably about five foot nine, and vaguely reminded me of that guy who used to present The Krypton Factor, only he had glasses and was mostly bald. The following year, in exactly the same place, doing exactly the same shopping, I pointed him out to my mum, and she too remembered him.
Forward another couple of years. In particular, past the time when we moved out of my dad's house. It was local elections time, and all the usual campaign leaflets were arriving through the letterbox. Imagine my surprise; I recognised the photograph of Bald Guy From The Co-Op, standing as a Tory candidate for one of the seats on the city council. So now he had a name, too; it turned out to be Stidworthy. He succeeded in his quest for local power and was elected; he had also been successful in changing jobs, and was now, of all things, a bus driver.
That's how it all stayed for a while, that is up until some time last year, when scandal broke out! Stidworthy had been removed from his seat on the council, and suspended from his driving job. But for what reason? He was alleged to have met a rent boy and taken him to a public convenience where they proceeded to have sex! No, don't stop reading! There's more!
Unfortunately the boy stole his mobile phone, for which Stidworthy reported him to the police. But this proved to be a mistake. The police discovered that the boy, whom Stidworthy had believed to be of age, was in fact only 15.
WHOOPS.
Stidworthy was promptly arrested. The police searched his home, and found on his computer something of the order of 4000 images of underage children being sexually abused. He was sent to prison.
But just think for a moment. Go back 10 years again to that day I turned round to be confronted by his face. Was he merely looking at me in recognition of an earlier customer... Or was there far more unpleasant thoughts going through his mind...
Final note: last week, there was another round of local elections. This time, there were two votes for council representatives from this ward; the second was of course because a replacement for Stidworthy needed to be found. Stidworthy himself has recently had his prison sentence cut from twenty-one to fifteen months...
Links: Councillor on sex assault charge, Councillor jailed on sex charges, Ex-councillor's jail term cut
This has been no. 2 in a series, "RjY's encounters with child pornographers"
