Heh, just woke up from an amusing dream. I dreamt that a gypsy woman was trying to sell me domain names. Glen was there too, and when her selling tactic didn’t work on him, she tried to get me to buy some. I kept replying with “No, not listening”, things link that telling her that I wasn’t interested. She tried to hold my hand, I told her to leave me alone, and that it was assault. I even went to one of the government websites to look up the laws of assault.

Eventually, she said that she was the worst person I’d met. In the end, I challenged her to a game of I Spy, while Glen stared out of the window and began counting a jar full of loose change.

Just before I woke up, I dreamt I’d left the house just in time to see her turquoise Volvo be towed away.

That’s it, I’m officially weird.

In other news, the demolition of Steetley Magenesite is resuming. The large oil container that has remained on the site is about to be pulled down. This means that there’s very little left remaining on the site still standing. Thanks to a series of amazing coincidences, I was able to take a trip around there.

It started off yesterday, as a Flickr user posted to my Steetley group stating that work had recommenced on the site.

The following day was a lovely summers day. The sun eventually managed to break through the clouds, and I was itching to go for a walk. I haven’t done any of my stupidly long walks for a while, as I’d lost the headset for my phone, but seeing as it turned up in the washer a few days ago, I decided to go on one.

A stiff breeze was blowing, which made visibility excellent, therefore I decided to head down to the Headland and collect a few more photos.

While I was taking this photo, a car pulled alongside me. By sheer coincidence, it was Phil! You may remember him being mentioned on the trip to Rievaulx Abbey last year.

He was down the headland too, dropping someone off. We both went our separate ways, and I carried on walking. Just as I headed onto Durham Street to take a stunningly interesting photo of my doctors’ surgery, Phil pulled alongside me again…

“I’ve got my camera with me, fancy going up to Steetley?”

Wild horses wouldn’t have stopped me. Despite the amount I talk about the place, I’ve never actually been up there and had a really good look round. Most of the photos I have of the place are actually from Chris, and not me. Also, seeing as they were pulling more of it down, it was probably one of my last opportunities to get up there.

The first thing clearly visible were the large chunks missing from the oil drum…

We then explored the site in detail, taking photos of the desolation and decay left behind. I found it highly amusing to see some of the stuff left behind in there, including parts of an old Dell 316SX

The specs of this machine make interesting reading. It dates from 1991ish.

I took pleasre in photographing all of the old, smashed up concrete streetlight columns that would have once illuminated the roadway through the complex.

It was at that point we headed back to the car. Phil dropped me off at home, and I began the process of uploading all of the photos I’ve yet to see his photos, but they’ll probably be better than mine!

Technorati Tags: dream, flickr, hartlepool, headland, Photos, steetley, walk

You know, sometimes I have the weirdest dreams. I actually dreamt “I wonder if you can buy freshwater fish in a seafood shop, and if thats the case, surely it’s against the trade descriptions act”. And I thought about it so intently, it woke me up. This is, indeed, a strange thought for me, considering I can’t even walk past the seafood counter in Asda without holding my breath.

And I had another strange dream the other night too. I dreamt of a game where you have to think of a famous person whose name begins and ends with the same letter. By the time I’d woken up I’d thought of Yvonne Murray - ex scottish athlete, and Dominik Diamond…

There’s probably hundreds more.

I found some old photos the other day, while retrieving the Chrimble deccies from the loft. Over the next few days, I’ll be scanning them in, and probably making comments on them here. So… um… hooray.

Now I’m off to work. I’m going to hazard a guess that tonight is going to be “fun”. Argh.

Technorati Tags: Dreams, fish, seafood, the name game, yvonne murray

Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Meh. Either way, let’s discuss the weird dream I just had.

I dreamt I went swimming with loads of people from work. I dreamt that I was outside Karen’s house, who had mysteriously moved from her current location to one of the houses near Mill House baths. Robbie Williams was there, but he went to Mill House, to get something from the vending machine. Next thing was, I was on a bus, drinking a bottle of milk. And, from there, I somehow ended up in Mill House baths, still with this bottle of milk, doing my best not to get water in it. After failing miserably at this, I drank the milk and left the bottle on the side. Someone saw me drink it, and said “I should have got the lifeguard to kick you out”. Meh, I thought, and carried on attempting to swim. Now, you know those dreams where you can’t run? well, in this dream, I couldn’t swim either.

So, I go down to the deep end, which was only 1.3metres deep for some reason. Now, in this dream, there was also a televised snooker tournament going on in the cafe, which is pretty much above the swimming pool (in real life). There’s a viewing gantry that overlooks the pool,and there was a TV camera with a huge monitor pointing over the pool. Everyone got out of the pool, except me, and I practised my diving on this contraption that catapulted you into the water. I wasn’t really interested in the telly, but Andy F and Alan A were there, trying to get on telly. Then I realised why I couldn’t swim - I had a great big wooly jumper and a shirt on. So, I took it off, then I became self conscious that eveyone from work could see my chest.

But then, the firewall power supply kicked in, on its daily GRIIIIND, and it woke me up. Bah.

I was going to start recording my dreams, just for fun, sort of a dream blog, but normally, by the time I wake up, all I can think about is getting back to sleep again. and by that time, it’s forgotten.

Anyway, work beckons. I’d better go in the bath. I smell.

Technorati Tags: bath, Dreams, failure, fan, grind, karen, milk, robbie williams

The disk arrived from work unscathed! Here’s the post you SHOULD have read on Sunday…

Oh, and today is a sad day, as it’s almost the end of mercury vapour streetlighting in this jolly old town of Hartlepool. The last street to be fully lit up by them, namely Lister Street, is currently undergoing refurbishment of its lights, and there’s brand new streetlights overshadowing the 1960’s mercury vapour lights. Sob. The old lights were still working last night, but it can surely only be days until they’re disconnected and torn down. Hopefully, the replacement lights have Metal Halide bulbs in them - although they’re not mercury vapour, the difference in the colour isn’t that far off, and they’re not too bad to look at. Metal Halide lights are starting to appear everywhere. The place I work in has two of them on the side of the building, the place I pass on the way to work has recently slapped 4 MH lights on the front of the building to light up the car park, the hospital’s slapped quite a few up to line the dingy car park areas, and last but not least, the petrol station near me has put one up. However, this has apparently replaced the mercury vapour one that used to be there, as it’s switched off all the time. Absolute bastards!

Technorati Tags: Dreams, mouse, weird

Yes, yes, before you start bugging me, I know the webcam’s not working properly. For some reason, it’s stopped uploading the thumbnail images correctly, all I keep getting there is a shitload of temporary files, and no thumbnails. And I can’t determine if it’s a problem with my server, or the software I’m using to upload them. Grrrrrrr. I hate problems like that, I really do.

Still, I’m in a better mood than I was yesterday, I’ve finally had a good sleep under my belt, and a weird dream to boot. I love my dreams, they just don’t make any sense at all…

I dreamt I was at work, when I suddenly realised I could solve the world hunger problem, using two kitkats, and RealPlayer…

Owen was with me, so off we went down to the chocolate machine. I said to him “Think you can eat two chunky Kit-kats?”. He said he could. So, I got the choccy out of the machine, and we went back upstairs. When we got there, I put a webcam in front of him, started recording, and he proceeded to eat the kitkats. Now my thinking at this point (remember, this is a dream) is if I transfer the video file I recorded with the webcam to lots of computers, then each kit-kat would become edible, thus solving the hunger problem - everyone could live off kit-kats! My bubble burst shortly after, when Maria, another team leader (god, I hate that phrase) pointed out to me, “How are you going to unwrap them?”

And, then, I woke up……

So that was weird dream #1. After that, I got up, and went downstairs to set the video for Knightmare. Imagine my horror, when I switched on the light in the front room, and ended up with a disco show….. yes, the cicrcly fluorescent tube in the front room has decided to go south…

I hate it when that happens - it always takes me back to my childhood, and being the most scared I’ve ever been about anything…. there I was, a little 3-year old, playing with a mini snooker table in the front room. I started to lob the snooker cue up in the air. I remember my mother saying “Stop that, you’ll break something”… well, I didn’t give it a second thought, and continued to lob the cue in the air. Next thing I know, there was a loud bang, with the room in darkness, and glass everywhere. I screamed my fucking head off… I remember looking up, and knowing the remainder of the bulb, hanging down, with the ends of the tube glowing orange… at that point, I thought the house was going to burn down. Ever since then I’ve had a strange fear of fluorescent lamps when they start to die. I’ll be the first to admit I’m a weirdo.

Went back to bed after that, and proceeded to have another weird dream… Well, not exactly weird, but I dreamt about how much I want a girlfriend, and how much I’m sick of being on my own, while watching someone climb up to the top of the lamp post outside our house, and cling on for dear life. So, my idea on getting a GF in this dream? Going to church. No, honestly. Unfortunately, this dream didn’t get much further than that, so I have no idea if that would have worked…