JP's Corner of The Blogosphere

Or so said the sub-headline on the letters page in Wednesday's Metro .    I couldn't have put it better myself...

Those of you who've been here often, or who read my column in Impact * last summer are probably bored of my tale of failed romance when an attractive young lady smiled at me on the train, I smiled back, and...nothing else happened.   Yesterday I was given a second chance, when as my train pulled out of Swindon I looked up to find the attractive blonde across the aisle staring at me.  As is my custom I returned her smile, and sat back in my seat thinking how the moment of leaving Swindon had just become brighter still.  I settled down to watch 'Battle of the Bishops',** but my concentration was hampered by the fact that I continued to exchange the odd smile with the beau opposite.  I even like to think that she was staring at my reflection in the window, but my hunch would be that I am mistaken on that one***.  Anyway, she got off at Reading without so much as a backward glance, and that, as they say, was that.     >>   *See wh...

There was a humorous article in yesterday’s thelondonpaper which reported the discovery by a “top London scientist” that “men find women most attractive if they have big breasts and shapely legs”.   You don’t say. I agree, of course, though more so on the point about the legs than the breasts, if I am honest. Maybe the phrase “beggars can’t be choosers” springs to mind, but I’m not overly fussed about massive huge breasts.   When it comes to what women find attractive about men though, I was surprised and perhaps slightly disappointed by the report. Broad Shoulders – tick. Long upper body – hmmm. Short legs – Oh dear.   Whatever happened to tall, dark and handsome?

I've had the privilege recently of spending quite a bit of my day onboard an Airbus Flight Training Simulator. For the purposes of pilot training, the whole cockpit needs to visually resemble the real aeroplane, right down to the last detail. So, on the circuit breaker panel behind the seats you will also find various items you’d also expect to see at 30,000 feet in the real deal, such as a container labelled ‘Gloves’. In some cases it’s possible to be a bit creative, perhaps with the aim of saving money. So the gloves in the box are obviously not vital for crew training because on the Simulator I discovered two hand shaped pieces of cardboard*. When it comes to the item labelled ‘Crash Axe’ on the other hand... >> *Incidentally they’ve not been there since the beginning of the week, so whoever thought they’d avoid petty theft by not supplying real gloves was possibly mistaken.

I think I might have mentioned before that one of the things I like about the londonpaper is the londonlove section. In particular, I’m often amused by the texts sent in by people trying to take an exchange of smiles on the Tube to the Next Level.   Sometimes I think that people need to be a bit more original, because “I’m the brunette who smiled at you on the Jubilee Line” is not particularly eye-catching (even if smiling at someone on the Tube is noteworthy these days) and could illicit all sorts of dubious responses from people trying their luck. On other occasions I can understand why an exchange of numbers never happened in the first place; I can’t say that I’m especially well-versed in this sort of thing but I’m fairly certain that “I really did have some cold-sore cream in my bag” is not a follow-up to a great chat-up line. I also wonder why some people bother when they end their messages with such gems as “you ...

I’m not really sure what defines a Cardinal Sin, but I’m fairly certain that I committed one recently. A guy on the train was wearing the same tie as me.   I positioned my copy of the Metro to conceal this fact, and as I buried my nose in to the pages even closer than usual I shot a furtive glance across the aisle to make sure that he hadn’t noticed. I then glanced around at the rest of my fellow commuters to ensure they hadn’t noticed either. I’m not sure what this glance would have achieved, as anyone pointing out my offence would have risked committing a greater social faux pas, but I feel that on this occasion I got away with it.   I wonder if this is what women feel like when they turn up somewhere and someone else is wearing the same outfit?

In case you're wondering, I don't smoke. But I did think that it was ironic that to watch "Would I Lie To You?" on the BBC iPlayer I had to confirm that I was over 16 by simply ticking a box.

I have no reasonable excuse for my long silence, so I'm not going to bother wasting my time making one up for you. I've been away for so long that I feel like I'm shouting in to an echo filled cave, and all I expect to hear back is the slow drip, drip of water in the distance. I may as well say "hello" though.

If you've been keeping up with the news recently, you won't have missed the fact that the Church of England's governing body (General Synod) had an emotionally charged vote on the issue of Women Bishops at the beginning of the week.   It's certainly an interesting and complicated issue.  Personally, I am saddened by the fact that the main picture painted of the church in recent weeks has been one of division and apparently irrelevant bickering, whilst the good news of the Christian message has been left unproclaimed.  I would. however, like to offer one or two thoughts on the matter.   Firstly, a comment was made in a news report I saw that "both sides were taking their arguments from the Bible".  There is a popular, if ignorant argument which claims that the Bible is full of contradictions (and therefore unreliable and irrelevant).  Unfortunately, I suspect that such comments have only served to reinforce such a notion, whilst my percepti...

This time I do have an excuse for my absence because I've been away.  I have now returned, with a tanned body to die for, and might even have a few things to say which don't involve trains.  Watch this space.   I don't think I've missed much in the meantime, aside from the fact that Gazza is to wed Shezza.  Or so the tabloid headline I glimpsed in Budgens just after I got home informed me.  It's all been happening here.  Who is Shezza, anyway?   That said, there are a couple of items on the BBC News Page this evening which made me smile.  Firstly , it looks as though it's going to become cheaper to pop and not stop thanks to some bizarre tax law.  Maybe we should find some way of running our cars on Pringles.  The article is also quite interesting because it outlines the new guidelines on what constitutes a proper tomato.  I don't know how I ever slept at night before.  Is it me though, or is the start of the list of ch...

It's been a while since I've taken the time to complain about anything train-related, so I'm going to rectify that with a short moan.  Rejoice, or bear with me as appropriate.   My commute takes me about half-way to London, and at the end of last year I paid a four-figure sum for the privilege of holding a Season Ticket for this.  You'd have thought, therefore, that when I actually want to travel all the way in to London I'd enjoy some reasonable savings, given that I only have to buy a ticket for half the journey.  If like me, however, you did think that, you thought wrong.  Especially when it comes to Saver Returns, as I found out this weekend.  I paid £15.70.  If you want to pay for the whole 1 1/4 hour journey in full, you pay £15.10.  The saving didn't even cover my Krispy Kreme doughnut* on arrival, and given that my Season Ticket works out at substantially more than 60p for that part of the journey I feel a bit short-changed. ...

I have just realised that it was three years ago yesterday that I first surfaced in the Blogosphere .  How exciting, and how fitting that I chose to write a post today about cake .  Obviously, it would be better on such on occasion to celebrate by actually eating cake, but such is the reality of the virtual world we inhabit.   It would probably be the Done Thing now to reminisce about my time in the Blogosphere and look back over the last three years, but I'm afraid that I don't have time now to reel off such a spiel.  It's all there in the archive though, so please do peruse to your heart's content.  You might find a few hidden gems - life in Oxford was generally more blogworthy than it is now.  Had I still been there this year I'd have celebrated my birthday with all the festivities of May Day and Ascension Day rolled in to one.  The excitement would almost have been too much!   Has anyone been journeying with me since the very beginni...

I notice that I am still getting a steady flow of people landing in this corner of the Blogosphere in search of JP's Kake Korner.  If that's you, I'm sorry, but I do hope that you'll take the opportunity to break your journey and look around anyway before moving on.  I believe that the site you are after can be found here   The cakes (kakes?) look pretty good actually, and if I lived anywhere near Maryland I'd be sure to pop by.  If I lived in Laurel itself I'd probably be quite fat by now.  Many thanks to Della for taking the time to comment and help me understand what most of my visitors are actually looking for.   In case you didn't see it, here is what she said:   "JP's Kake Korner is an awesome little bakery in Laurel Maryland. I happen to be lucky enough to be employed there by the multi-talented Diane the Cake Lady. We make delicious custom cakes for all occasions. I would direct you to our website, but it's being updated and...

The trouble with writing in this context is that sometimes things don't come across quite as they were meant.  Furthermore, even though I do have the option of checking what I write before I blurt something out in to the public domain I sometimes get caught up in the passion of my argument (as it were) and risk speaking my mind before engaging my brain.   Not for the first time, I think I've got it a bit wrong.  Obviously I have strong feelings about the recent ruling on IVF treatment - as I commented on the last post, I'm going to stick with the sentiment that I don't like the implication that a father figure is unimportant.  But equally, I know lots of people who, for one reason or another, have not been brought up by both parents and I'd like to take this opportunity to apologise if I came across as harsh or ignorant; I certainly didn't mean to offend.

The last few days have seen some major ethical issues being debated in Parliament.  I am generally disappointed by the way in which the voting has gone, if I am honest; something which probably won't surprise you. I'm worried about potentially dangerous precedents which have been set, and wonder where the line will eventually get drawn (particularly regarding such things as hybrid embryos). I think that Kester makes a fair point here about the IVF issue, and the fact that the father is no longer seen as important.  Children aren't a commodity and should ideally be brought up by a parent of each gender.  We all need a good male influence and a good female influence. I was also disappointed by the abortion ruling, and one MP really wound me up when she put forward the argument that she'd "had an abortion at 21 weeks and it was so important for her because she just wasn't in a position in life to bring up children".  I have no sympathy for her in that ...

Perhaps unsurprisingly I was not impressed by Labour's campaign for the by-election in Crewe, which seems to be trying to woo voters on the basis that the Conservative candidate is a 'person of wealth or social importance' (or nob ).    This BBC Video makes for interesting viewing, and highlights just how awful the Labour campaign is.  Harriet Harman pointedly judges the Conservative candidate on the basis that  she *thinks* he is a multi-millionaire.  There's some waffle about being 'excessively privileged' and when it's pointed out that Ms Harman would certainly fit any reasonable definition of that phrase she bats it away by claiming that she's "not making an issue of it" in her case.  That may be, but something in me thinks that Edward Timpson (the Conservative candidate) isn't making an issue of his background himself either.  It's only come about because of the blatant hypocrisy of Ms Harman and her ilk.   I should add th...

As I approach three years in the Blogosphere, I see that the cowardly art of the anonymous 'insult' is still alive and well...

It's possibly been well documented in the past that I am not the world's biggest fan of Microsoft. I've not followed the extreme trends of some (I didn't write this webpage using vi, for example) but even so, I'm definitely more Firefox than Internet Explorer and more Gmail than Hotmail. I've always been pro Open Source and I do really like Linux. If there was a quick and painless way of running Linux on a Tablet PC I'd be tempted, but needs must and I'm happy with XP for now. However, I've just discovered Microsoft's Windows Live Writer, and against my principles I'm giving it a go. You may have noticed that I've been quite quiet in recent months, and one (just one) reason for that is simply that I've become a bit disenfranchised with the Blogger user interface. For a start, I've found the site to be painfully slow recently, to the extent that writing new posts and adding comments to old ones has become quite a chore. ...

I was relieved this week to get the news that my colleagues who are currently out Chengdu are OK following the recent earthquake. I was however amused by the way in which the email was worded. "(they) are well (which is excellent news), although they are a little shaken". You don't say...

On my travels today I've been able to take in a braod spectrum of the nation's newspapers* and I'm wondering what all the fuss regarding the new Sex and The City movie is about. To be fair, I'm a man and I've never seen the TV series, but even so, I can't understand why it's such big news that some older bird has turned up in London in a green dress and a silly hat. Even taking her age in to account, she's not really that much of a looker. Talking of 'not being much of a looker' I have to say that I was very disappointed by the lack of eye candy as I crossed town earlier on the Tube. I hope that this isn't a sign that Boris has banned more than just booze, but on the plus side it did mean that I didn't feel the urge to try and nonchalantly appear to be cool and sophisticated. >> *I say broad spectrum, but it wasn't entirely unbiased; I decided against pulling the Guardian from the rack in the Waitrose cafe, because I had no d...