Thursday, August 11, 2005

It's Grim up North

Well, we moved into our new place this week.I could hear the crowds at Tranmere's game on Tuesday night. Don't have any furniture yet, but I managed to buy a t.v. for £4 at a boot sale-it works as well! Sitting and sleeping on the floor at the moment, although we do have a dining table to eat at.The oven is cool, it is great to be able to experiment roasting meat.
Big brother fever is very high this week, I have tuned in for a few minutes and I have to say it is the biggest pile of shit you have ever seen.It does make me wonder about the nation's sanity and intelligence.It seems that the whole population stayed home last night to watch the penultimate episode, not me, I watched a docu-dramatisation about the slavery trade on BBC2.Every other programme is about people setting up new lives in France or Spain, or their dream is to get out of the UK to anywhere.It feels like I am the only idiot doing it the other way around. Repercussions from the bombings continue, with the emphasis this week on relabelling ethnic minorities to British-Asian, British-Muslim, British-African, they haven't mentioned what us white people will be called- British-British, Irish-British, Native-British, British-Wanker.The government is introducing tough new legislation so that nobody can critise Tony Blair, sorry that is not true, nobody can agree with terrorists.
20c here today, and sunny! P.s. these tablets still haven't stopped me smoking yet.

Friday, August 05, 2005

The wild wild west

Not a good week for Liverpool this week, in the news for all the wrong reasons. An 18 year old black boy was killed by an axe to the head in a racist attack! A fire in a home that killed a mother and her 2 kids was found to have been murder after they found 2 gunshot wounds to her head, witnesses remember 3 masked men acting suspiciously outside the house(have you ever seen anyone with a balaclava that wasn't acting suspiciously?)These are stories that have made the national news, not all of them do. There have been at least 3 other murders here in the last 10 days or so, all horrific, all pointless. A man was beaten to within inches of his life here in the housing estate where I am staying by a group of yobs for no apparent reason. Liverpool is not alone by a long shot though, a man was stabbed to death on a London bus when he tried to reason with a yob throwing chips at passengers on the top deck of the bus!
I try and tell people here that relatively Hong Kong has no crime, I don't feel safe here at nights, I worry about muggers robbers and rapists here that is not an issue in Hong Kong. But these things take time to get used to, everybody else here doesn't bat an eyelid.
Well we found a place to live and will move in tonight. It is flat in a house which is bigger than a village house in H.K.. Dining room, huge kitchen, huge garden, living room etc. The price here is the same as HK, £450 per month. It is in Tranmere, literally across the road from Prenton park- The stadium of Tranmere Rovers.The season starts this Saturday so I should be able to get to some games with Joseph.
19c here today, feels cold in the wind.