Just as a matter of interest ...

... here is an interesting blog giving some figures comparing the current situation in Iraq with the situation three years ago when the great Commander-In-Chief enthralled the world with his grasp of military campaigning.

Mission accomplished ...

... as the banner behind George W. said on the USS Abraham Lincoln. With the same breathtaking hubris I can also point to a job well done. I have just completed AZX103 An Introduction To The Humanities and, like the great Commander In Chief, I like to bask in the applause while the going is good. And, also like George, I'm getting the photo opportunity set up before I know the final result. Why waste time waiting for the marks to come in, let's get the party started.

I am just glad that it is now over. I posted my final TMA today by courier and I just hope it gets to the right place. Some confusion arose when I was trying to figure out who to send it to. The very specific instruction sheet gave one address in Milton Keynes. However there was included with it a pre-addressed envelope for the purpose of enclosing the same TMA and it had a different address in MK. What to do? Well I phoned the OU Student Support lot and the woman on the other end gave me yet another address. Well, fuck it I thought. I just went with the first one given on the instructions and hoped for the best. All very confusing.

Will I do another one? I had the notion before I started this that I might use this as the basis for a degree. I'm not so sure now. My work life and private life would have to be a lot more tranquil than it is at present for me to be able to do another 60 pointer properly. It was enjoyable even though I was doing it more or less totally on my own. The on-line tutorials were almost non-existent and the conference was dead despite my early efforts to inject some life into it.

I did learn some stuff about art appreciation and expressing myself which I can perhaps build on and that is a real positive. It is good to tackle some thing new and get satisfaction knowing you've made a decent fist of it. It was fairly basic stuff but, hey, it still required a lot of effort so good for me.

The question now is - now that the OU is out of the picture for the while - where does the blog go? Looking through past posts it is a bit of a dog's breakfast. The OU provided a thread but there's a lot of other stuff which doesn't really sit readily beside it. I'm not sure now. I know that nobody out there gives a shite but the blog does serve a useful purpose for me so I want to do it well. I reckon I should follow the fragrant Lingo Slinger's example and get more short fiction down. That will maybe stand me in good stead if I ever get round to doing A215, you never know. And on reflection it's good for a body to be able to rant about politics every once in a while. It also feels good getting my views out there where they might meet up with some similar opinion and take energy from that and grow and ... wow, gee whizz! Who knows where it might all end up!

Teethmarks On The Clenching Bar ...

... is the working title for my autobiography. You need to know, of course, what a clenching bar is exactly to get the full impact. It's a piece of nautical equipment, a sloping bar or hand-hold, bolted to the bulkhead adjacent to the toilet bowl in a ship's toilet. It's there for when the ship is rolling or pitching violently and you need a little assistance in keeping your arse tight to the cludgie. But sailors have another function for it and that is for when one is afflicted by the trots, gippy tummy, Ghandi's revenge, the squirts, or whatever other fragrant name you wish to call it.

Thus - the clenching bar, there to grip tightly as you give your bowels that extra squeeze, hoping your arse is not about to fall off, while you sit there, eyes bulging and sweating like a rapist, resolving never to spend another night drinking Tiger beer and eating dodgy noodles on Bugis Street, before staggering back to the ship at half past three in the morning, just in time to go on watch at four o'clock. And then, just when your ring is scorched to a white heat by the passage of the undigested raw chillies you somehow thought were a good idea twelve hours ago, you stifle your screams by biting down on the clenching bar and you wonder - Why did I ever come to sea? And then you remember. It was for the uniform, the foreign travel and the chance to see exotic places, meet new people, the glamour. And then your travails for the time being are over and you hitch up your breeks and sweat-soaked boilersuit and head back down to the heat of the engine room.

What's Happening With The OU?

You might well ask. I'm back in old Dalmatia once more and have run out of time for the latest TMA. I did ask for an extension (again) and I fully intend to submit something. I've now got the weekend to get it done. The Swinging Sixties - Eng-ulland swings like a pendulum-doo, Bobbies on by-sickles two by two - and all that bollocks. We'll just have to give it a go, see what happens. Then the final TMA just when I've got a trip to Trieste coming up. Ohhh n-oooo!