Mars ahoy!
Last night, the brightest light in the sky was the pinky red glow of Mars, which is now closer to Earth than at any time in almost 60,000 years.
I'm an old enough bastard to remember the Apollo missions and can recall the excitement of looking up to the Moon and knowing that at that very moment, there were astronauts roaming its surface. I was so excited by space travel that I wrote off to NASA and they sent back a big glossy pack of photos with some literature predicting that by 2000 there'd be humans stomping all over the surface of the planet. So what happened?!!

Back from Wales
Just returned from a fabulous short holiday in my hometown of Cardiff - and what a great trip I had!
On Saturday night I celebrated Cardiff's mighty victory over Notts Forest (away) with a feast'o'pints in the Ty Mawr Arms, Lisvane with a full family contingent. The pub lurks off an obscure country road in north Cardiff and offers superb views of the city, with its huge lawns giving ample space for drunken dads to show off their much-declined footballing 'skills'...

Sunday we took a trip to the spectacularBrecon Beacons in mid Wales and walked along the banks of beautiful crystal-clear reservoirs.
Monday saw us boarding the 1949 ship, The Balmoral from the pier at the small seaside resort of Penarth.

We then sailed across to the north Somerset port of Clevedon and disembarked on its delightfully restored pier - incredibly this graceful Victorian structure only narrowly survived demolition in the the 1970s. A 40 minute bus ride then took us to Bishops Lydeard station , the southern terminus of the fabulously restored West Somerset Railway, which runs 20 miles to Minehead.

The railway recreates the atmosphere of a Great Western Railway branch line, with authentic flower bedecked stations, signalboxes, steam engines and carriages. Lovely!

We broke our journey at Williton and walked up to the Bakelite Museum, some 15 minutes away - and it was well worth the walk! This uplifting labour or love packs in three floors of Bakelite beauties in a lovely old watermill. We finished off our stay with a satisfying cream tea (scones and clotted cream...mmm....!) before catching the steam train to Minehead.

The impressively-sized terminus in Minehead is almost on the beach itself, right in the middle of town, and it makes you wonder what kind of idiot it was who closed the line back in 1971.

Anyhow, this blog is starting to turn into a book, so I'll just tell you about the sign proudly proclaiming a household's 14ft sunflowers ("and still growing") in Minehead harbour and that the day ended in the best possible way - after a pleasant journey back across the Bristol Channel, I turned on the radio to find that the mighty Bluebirds had just whipped Derby 4-1!
Now that's what I call a great day!!!

(Photos to follow soon)

I hate football...
Cardiff 0 Bradford 2
Serbia & Montenegro 1 Wales 0
What made the Welsh result all more depressing was the filthy torrent of disgusting racist abuse coming from the home crowd - it was so bad that the FA of Wales is going to make an official complaint

Dribble, salivate, lust.....!
Sony has announced its new Sony DSC F828 camera and it's an absolute beauty! It comes with a thumping great 8 megapixel resolution, 28mm-200mm lens, a wide f2-f2.8 aperture, a stonking Carl Zeiss T* lens and a neat swivelling body, encased in heavy duty black metal. I want! I want! I want!

Deadline battling again
Once again the urban75 mansions are resounding to the sound of exasperated sighs and table-thumping hissy fits, as yours truly battles to start an overdue article for Internet Magazine. Why does writing have to be so hard?!
On the road:
Of course, I have no problem knocking out articles when I'm not getting paid for it - so there's a new article about my trip to Bristol with the Actionettes and a short photo essay of Bristol.
Virus hell:
I'm currently being bombarded with thousands of copies of the Sobig.F virus - if you're using a PC get a free firewall and virus checker now!

Stevie Wonder had an album out called 'Hotter Than July'
He's been better off calling it, "fucking boiling hot August", in my book.
Yesterday was the hottest day in UK recorded history, reaching 38.1C (100.6F) in the south of England - although Europe has got it far worse with forest fires ravaging their countryside and a rising casualty rate from heat strokes.
Some may think that this freakshow weather is a result of Climate Change brought on by Global Warming. In fact, you'd think that there's been enough warning signs from scientists - and nature - to make ratifying the Kyoto Treaty a major priority.

But George Bush has declared the Treaty "bad for business", thus declaring the American economy to be far more important than the lives of millions. The useless fuckwit that he is.

The fattest pigs in the world
As ever, man's cruelty to animals know no bounds. In Taiwan, pigs are penned in and force-fed sand or heavy metals such as lead to add as much weight as possible before being ritually slaughtered. These poor super fat pigs are so over stuffed that they can no longer walk and weigh anything up to 900 kilograms. The cruel fuckers.

Aaaargh! The heat!
Bollocks to his chuffing heat. It's now a blistering 34C in my office and I'm hating it - and there's more of the same on the way as the UK swelters through the third hottest summer in UK recorded history
I say: roll on autumnal browns, October storms, November woodsmoke and December chill...!
Last night we hit the Lounge in Atlantic Road, Brixton for a pre party drink. Nice place, but, sadly, still awaiting the arrival of the air conditioning. The planned small meet up quickly expanded to a room filling posse of hot quaffers before we headed off for my mate Gibby's farewell drink. A former writer of the excellent SchNews (Brighton's finest direct action newspaper), he's off to hook up with the girl of his dreams in Brazil. Good luck and Bon Voyage mate!

The football season kicks off!
For the first time in 18 years, the mighty Cardiff City are now playing in the heady heights of the First Division! The good news is that we get to play better teams and play in bigger stadiums. The bad news is that skipping up a division means that it becomes increasingly harder to get your hands on (hugely inflated) tickets. Still, this afternoon we're taking on (sorry, "opening up our account against") Rotherham away. I was going to travel to this game but the thought of a long, slow train journey up North in this heat is definitely not my idea of fun.
Come on you Blooooooooooooobirds!

Sweltering in the sweaty, sticky heat
Today was the hottest day in London since records began, with the temperature climbing up to a hideously steaming 35.3 degrees Celsius (95.34 Fahrenheit in old money). I've been stuck indoors all day, with my fan feebly pushing hot air around the room. But I managed to meet my deadline (an article about optimising websites for search engines, if you're interested) and now I'm ready to celebrate with some unfeasibly large lagers down the pub...

The heat! The heat!
Let's get one thing straight. I'm not a fan of hot weather. That's not to say I don't mind a bit of sun if I happen to be sipping a cold beer by the sea, but as a rule of a thumb, I'm an autumnal and winter kind of fella.
So, as you might imagine, this current heatwave is not going down a storm in Chez Urban75, where I'm stuck in in a steaming room, battling with another of my writing deadlines with the heat way up in the mid-90s F (there's a funny thing - I always refer to hot weather in Fahrenheit and cold weather in Celsius)

Apparently, the weather is so hot that trains are having to slow down amid fears of tracks buckling in the heat, and forecasters are predicting that the UK's record temperature (37.1C (99F) recorded in Cheltenham, 3 August 1990) could be beaten this week.

Aargh. Roll on the beautiful autumnal hues of October...

Meanwhile, my camera dilemma continues, but I'm going to hold out for an expected announcement from Sony in two weeks about a possible replacement for the perennially tempting Sony DSC-F717

Today's top news is that my chum, Shane Collins, has been released after receiving a ludicrous six week jail sentence for growing cannabis at home. He only spent a day in jail before a judge threw out the original sentence on appeal.