Welcome to Mike's blog! Musings from Market Harborough written by one of the town's reporters!

The idea for this blog originally started as a place where I would write about the town and invite people to have their say on the stories of the day.

It's now evolved into something a little bit different, and most of the things I write on here are for my own benefit (so I can read it in years to come), but I still welcome any comments!

So, have a look, and if you like what you read, or if you hate what you read, leave a comment or drop me a line.

Until next time newshounds, goodbye!

    

Some subjects don't really lend themselves to theme parks. There won't ever be a Knitting World, for example.

Despite this, an enterprising and somewhat deluded chap has just opened a place called Dickens World in Chatham, Kent.

Normally, I wouldn't ever darken the door of such a place. Unfortunately, my girlfriend's an English teacher, and she wanted to check it out just in case it would make a good venue for school trips.

So, with heavy heart I agreed to go along. It took nearly three hours to get there, so on arrival I wasn't in the highest of spirits. Still, with open mind I ventured through the doors.

Inside (the whole place is indoors in a large warehouse-type building) there was a mini-Dickensian London with a couple of streets and a large square surrounded by buildings. Venturing down some of the streets you could cross little rope bridges and there was even a boat ride (I got soaked to the skin) between rickety buildings.

All in all, it looked very impressive, but there wasn't erally anything to do. There was an animatronic show in a mock Victorian theatre in which models of a few of Dickens' characters told you a bit more about the man. Sadly, most of what they said was just boring, or pointless. There were a few other attractions, like a haunted house and a cinema, but they were all a bit disjointed and confusing and didn't really make any sense.

One of the best bits was the people in period costume walking around and greeting people. One of them called me 'andsome'.

Apparently, scientists have discovered a rare breed of super chimp deep in the Congolese Jungle.

Decades of civil war in the region means it's been virtually impossible to examine them up-close until recently.

They're super because they eat lions and they sleep on the floor. Sleeping on the floor is impressive because it means they're not scared of getting woken up by something that can kill them.

There's no picture with this article because there are no pictures of the super chimps yet. But they're real, I think.

On another wildlife-y note, watch this video on Youtube. It is some amateur footage of some lions trying to catch a buffalo, which they do, but then the rest of the buffaloes turn on the lions and attack them. Over 12 million people have watched it so far and nothing like it has ever been filmed.

Remember this article?

In a nutshell, I went to see Idlewild, lead singer was sick so couldn't perform, people from crowd sung, it was excellent.

To keep the fans happy, the band put on a free gig at the same venue in Northampton. It was just as good but there were a few-too-many songs from the latest album, Make Another World. That isn't bad in itself, because it's a good record, but I was hoping for a few old classics. The crowd was also terrible, looking around, there were a few people who looked like they wished they'd stayed at home. They should have done.

Roddy's (the lead singer) crowd banter was up to its usual standard, which it has to be said is pretty poor.

Here's an example:
Random bloke in crowd - "Play Mistake Pageant!"
Roddy - "No."

Still, the band encored (is that a word?) with When I Argue I See Shapes and 4 People Do Good, which was excellent.

As an aside, this was the tenth time I'd seen Idlewild live. That's double figures, that is.

There's a big tree behind my back garden.

It's annoying. Our garden faces south, so for most of the day this big stupid tree (actually it might be two trees next to each other, I can't tell) blocks the sun and leaves our back garden in the shade.

I contacted Harborough District Council to ask if they would trim it down or something because it was on some allotments they own. They told me they wouldn't do anything because the tree belongs to me. I thought this was an outrageous lie so I met a council officer at the site. He showed me the boundary line. Turns out he was right, the tree does belong to me.

That tree has an appointment with a saw.

The Harborough carnival was at the weekend.

This year, I didn't have to wear the Harbie suit - that job went to the very red-faced Ian O'Pray.

Being on a float is actually good fun. People cheer and wave at you like they're crazy - there doesn't seem to be any reason for it. We dressed as superheroes and only a few people flung coins/tried to soak us. Some Chinese students got very excited at seeing us while we were lining up ready to go and had their pictures taken with us. I don't think they really knew what was going on.
 
Afterwards we had a barbecue at my house. I got a bit drunk - but not too much.

"I did a hammer. It went pointy-knifey so I did a perfect thumber to Lube."

Apart from a mental home, there's probably only one place in the whole world where no-one would bat an eyelid at hearing a sentence like that one. It so happened I was there at the weekend.

Remember this blog entry from last year? It was about the Jestival in Leicester. A festival dedicated to all things disc shaped that can be thrown - or just frisbees.

Ultimate frisbee is a sport a bit like netball meets American Football, only without any contact. I don't play it myself, but my sister's boyfriend is in a perenially unsuccessful team called Rehab, based in Stoke-on-Trent, and at the weekend they were playing in the Jestival - kind of a fun tournament for teams all over the country.

It's a more popular sport that you would think. There were 16 teams there from all over the country, probably about 200 people in all, and I was told that the Jestival is one of the smaller frisbee festivals.

Anyway. We arrived just in time to see Dave's team lose 9-5 to a team from De Montfort University in Leicester. It was their last match and before that they had actually not done too badly, they finished in 8th place.

The picture above is of two people doing the 'frisbee dance', it's a bit like tha Highland Fling, only more dangerous.

Does anyone else use Facebook?

I do. Well, I say I do, I have, that is, for the last few days.

I never really liked the idea of these networking sites. Myspace is my least favourite. It's just full of webcam pictures of floppy-finged people taken from a flattering angle. I always thought it was a bit teenage oriented as well.

Anyway, someone at work has now introduced me to Facebook. Facebook is completely different because the floppy-fringed people all had their pictures taken using digital cameras. In my book (geddit?!) that makes it okay.