Concerned

Very lovely weather this weekend. We went to Devon. We should have gone to the beach but circumstances did not permit it. There will be other opportunities. We did give the boy his birthday bicycle though, which he seems to like. He was getting too big for his old one.

We leave the country on Saturday for Taiwan. I haven’t been back for a couple of years. I’m looking forward to it. The dragon is also excited about seeing friends and family.

My office has given me a mobile phone. I didn’t ask for it and I’m slightly concerned by the whole thing. I suppose it doesn’t have to mean anything. They did offer me a Blackberry a while back, but I turned it down. Apparently I need one. Maybe I should drop it in the lavatory or something. Talking of phones, I was paying about £30 a month for my Android package, which included 300 minutes of calls and 750MB of data or something, and they put the price up 5% which really got up my nose. So I called them and had a stampy and they said there was nothing I could do, but they would let me review my contract because I’d been with them for 6 months. So we reviewed it and they put my monthly bill down to about £20. It all seems like bad practice to me. I’d never have reviewed my contract if they hadn’t put the price up. I actually ended up paying about 30% less because I was pissed off that they raised my tariff 5%. I’m not complaining.

So, lets talk about naked mini golf. As you know there was a world record attempt this weekend to get the biggest number of naked people playing mini golf together. The attempt went ahead with, rather disappointingly I felt, 30 naked people at Adventure Island, Southend. Reading between the lines however, I think they were setting a record rather than trying to break one, so I suspect it will be verified and added to the book. The event also raised £3,000 for prostate cancer which is of course very wonderful. It seems Adventure Island has a history of naked records. The record for the most number of naked people riding a roler coaster was also set there in 2010. And in case you’re interested in trying to break that record, it stands at 102 people.

There was an interview in the GUardian this weekend with Steve Gough, the Naked Rambler. Gough’s is an interesting story. He is currently in a Scottish jail. He was sent there six years ago after being arrested for breach of the peace as he hiked naked, for the second time, from Land’s End to John O’Groats. Since then he has been released several times, but each time they let him go, he tries to leave naked and is rearrested. He’s been in prison for a combination of breach of the peace and contempt of court ever since. I’m sure the Scottish authorities regret ever charging him with anything in the first place. He’s not going to give up until they let him leave prison and return to his home on the south coast naked. He’s been warned that he could spend the rest of his life in prison, and he doesn’t care. He’s kept away from other prisoners because he refuses to wear clothes.

It’s odd that the English and Welsh legal system has given Gough very little trouble for naked rambling. He’s hiked naked through England and Wales twice without major incident, but on both trips he’s been arrested as soon as he reached the Scottish border. I think he’s slightly nuts. At one time I thought he was just dim, but I’m not so sure now. He does have a philosophy. He’s not simply an exhibitionist or a bandwagon jumper. He does this for a reason, though I’m not sure I really understand it or agree with it. It’s really worth a read anyway.