I’ve already linked to it, but…

…if you have any passing affection for the English language, you HAVE to read Gill’s latest review in The Sunday Times. Gill sculpts his words with all the genius of Michelangelo and the bile of a spurned lover ::

…I bet she was livid for getting turfed off an aeroplane, having to be told off by a customer anger facilitator and spending another four hours in an airport, all for calling some big bloke in a uniform an arsehole. If she’d known, at least she could have called him a suppurating sphincter-faced poxed toothpick-pricked moronic dribbling lackey loser of an arsehole.

Never has a Murdoch coin been better spent, than on Gill’s salary. Fact.

The irregular quote of the day

From The Sunday Times, by the saintly A.A. Gill ::

Airports are anthologies of parables, illuminating the eternal truths of humanity, one of which is: the greater the luxury, privilege and entitlement, the greater the self-pity, disappointment, blame and anger.

On car seats

Jesus, getting the kids in and out of the car is a drag.

Child car seats, and now those bastard compulsory booster seats, must be specially designed to make journeys as stressful as possible.

I think companies are mandated to make them dysfunctional. There I am in the back of the car, doubled over like a porn star being drilled by a moustachioed washing-machine repairman, trying to get two pieces of metal into an impossibly small slot while my kids wriggle and squirm like captured fish.

Maybe child car seats are a subtle weapon in the war against climate change. The government, it seems, are committed to making every car journey as painful as possible.

It was raining this morning, and both of my children have the sniffles. It made sense to keep them dry and warm in the car, but I spent all morning dreading the rigmarole of getting the little scamps into their seats.

The wife is over in Paris for a week with her sister, so the opportunity of getting out of the school-run this week is non-existant. Tomorrow I’ll put an extra layer on the kids and brave the winter air sans automobile. I guess you win, Al Gore. You smug big-faced bastard.

BJ the Mayor Bear wrote about car-seats a few years ago, so I’ll leave you with opening paragraphs of his rant ::

Of all the sensations of joy and release that Nature in her kindness has bestowed on the human race, there is little or nothing to beat the moment when you get rid of the baby’s car seat.

It beats getting off a long-haul flight. It beats taking off a pair of ill-fitting ski-boots after a hard day on the slopes. It verges, frankly, on the orgasmic. As you take the wretched thing to Oxfam, you thank your stars that never again will you have to grapple with that incomprehensible buckle.

Never again will you stand sweating over your baby as it screams and writhes and sticks yoghurt in your ear. Never again will you have that struggle of wills, as the child’s efforts to escape become ever more desperate and violent, and you grow later and later in setting off on your journey.

For children and parents alike that precious moment – when it is deemed that the offspring are capable of sitting on their own in the back with only a seat belt – is one of the pleasures of growing up. It is a rite of passage, a moment of pride and childish prestige.

It is, therefore, utterly incredible that the state should now be trying to prolong our national car seat agony. How old do you think they have to be before the nanny state will let your kids sit in the back without a car seat? Did I hear six? Did I hear seven? No, my friends, we are being asked to put our children in plastic booster seats until they reach the ripe old age of 12 or attain a height of 135cm, whichever is the sooner.

Airports crippled. Again

From The Guardian ::

Baggage handlers and check-in staff at Gatwick and Stansted will stage 24-hour strikes on bank holiday Monday on August 25, and August 29, after rejecting a 3% pay rise offer.

Most people, with the economy the way it is, would be glad of a 3% increase in their pay. Luckily, Mrs. tyger travels back to the UK on the 24th.

heathrow t5 still losing 900-bags a day

Seriously. WTF?

Is it me or is travelling just becoming more trouble than it’s worth?

Or maybe that’s want they want us to think…

the irregular photo of the day

Tallinn. Tower block, originally uploaded by tygerland.net.

hot and sticky

Nice title, eh?

The weather here has been awful today. It’s been raining, so wearing a jacket on my walk into the city (in search of the second series of The Wire on DVD - FAIL*) was a necessity. But it was also t-shirt hot, so inside my jacket I was sweltering. Indeed, on exiting a shop near home, I decided to leave my jacket off and just bear the rain in my polo shirt.

I’m now drying off in the apartment. Double FAIL.

*how the watery twat, can self-styled hip DVD stores, which stock all 85 episodes of Allo Allo, not stock copies of the best fucking TV show in history? So infuriating. Amazon it is, then.

Old Town, Tallinn

Old Town, Tallinn, originally uploaded by tygerland.net.

Old Town, Tallinn

Old Town, Tallinn, originally uploaded by tygerland.net.

the irregular photo of the day

Tallinn, originally uploaded by tygerland.net.

the irregular photo of the day

Estonian House, originally uploaded by tygerland.net.

Estonian House, Tallinn.

busy, busy, busy…

I know. The blog has been horribly slow.

I’m getting things sorted for Tallinn and toying with a few things. Last weekend I took an intensive TEFL course, which may open a few opportunities over in Estonia to teach English. Indeed I’m thinking - in the long term - of maybe opening a small language school of my own. Not sure; but you know me, if there is the slightest chance of a business opportunity…

I also have some fiction I want to develop, for a book or a screenplay. I have bought the excellent Scrivener, which is looking to be a treat and a great writing solution.

I’m going to continue to write my travel and politics entries here, but I may cross post relevant ones over at Rational Geekery. I actually expect RatGeek to be busier than tygerland as I get stuck into some tech stuff. This will remain my “personal” blog… for now.

BTW. I’m getting on wonderfully with my MacBook Pro.

tallinn

As regular readers will know, I travel to Tallinn (Estonia), several times a year for a week or two.

This year it looks like I’ll be going for the whole summer. I fly out in June, with no return flight booked. The kids are going into Nursery, and I’ll be doing some private English tutoring. If I can make enough to tick over, then I’ll probably be staying until at least the back-end of the year.

I’ll post the occasional piece here, but I expect I’ll be doing most of my blogging over at Rational Geekery - Tallinn is Europe’s tech haven, after all. I’m not sure how this will affect my daily blog review, but if my diary permits, I’d like to continue. Although I’ll probably take a “holiday” while I settle in at the apartment and try and get some work.

Also, If anyone needs a freelance tech correspondent in the Baltics - drop me a line.

430

Four hundred and thirty.

That’s the number of flights that have been cancelled since the Terminal 5 debacle began. That’s 430 planes worth of really pissed-off travellers.

The sheer scale of this colossal fuck up is astonishing. Bags are now being flown to Milan to be sorted. We’re so shit, we’ve started outsourcing our gaffs to the Italians - who let’s be honest, probably don’t need the extra work.

casting the net - rightwing revisionism, and the left fighting back

Today’s netcast is up, over at LC.

Mrs. tyger is back from Madrid, and has brought back some tasty Iberian dried ham. It’s so yummy. I rushed out for fresh coffee and Petit Pains, and we had a continental breakfast to die for. Now Mrs. tyger and her sister have gone into Nottingham shopping - with the kids(!!!!), leaving me the afternoon to myself. Well, I have coffee and XBOX so I’ll be fine, don’t worry.

I’m going to be really busy for the rest of the week on a finance project (yeah, I have my accounting hat on again), so blogging (even maybe even the netcast) will be irregular.