Araf

Right, that's the blogging fatigue out of the way so here is your friendly neighbourhood grumpy dragon back on the intertubes and flinging bile at everyone and everything, especially if you happen to be a sattelite broadband provider called Tariam whose fucking system has gone down leaving me without warez and pr0n for the past four weeks and necessitating me dispensing more baubles from the horde to upgrade my kit - but I get promised 2Mb/sec (yeah like that's going to happen) and a free virgin every three months so long as I stay a subscriber. They are based in Gloucester so good luck finding those virgins guys.

And Vodafone, don't you sit there looking smug because if your GPRS sucked any harder than it does I'd probably enjoy it. And how about erecting a 3G mast anywhere north of Cambridge sometimes before the next millenium, eh?

Anyway I just spent last week getting back in touch with my inner fire-breathing lizard by walking up and down large hills in Wales. I quite like Wales, sure the locals can be a tad on the neanderthal side but the scenery is pretty.



and the local good-time girls are friendly



and a big up for the Black Lion in Hay on Wye



for good beer, good food and comfy rooms and being very, very close to England.

However one thing bothers me a lot about Wales and it is all the money wasted on writing "ARAF" as well as "SLOW" on the roads. Now I know if you kill a language you kill a culture but for crying out loud is it really necessary to write down something that sounds like the yelp you would get it you accidentally trod on a fox's tail?* I mean it's not as though there is anyone in the whole principality who can read who does not know what the English word "Slow" means? But it's not just that it's everything in the public space, parking restriction signs are twice as big as they need to be to allow for the random collection of consonants underneath the English bit and even my fucking bank is wanking away my share dividends (such as they are) by having special posters printed offering loans at 8% in Welsh.

So I got to wondering, who pays the extra for painting the road twice. Don't recall taxes being double in Wales so they can pay for their linguistic willy-waving?

Somehow, I suspect that all that cash to print fox-yelps on the road is coming out of my pocket.

There's lovely.




* I have a fox here and indeed it did go "Arraff" when I trod on it just now.