but I can count on my fingers!

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One eighth of 32 is... uhhh?  Really though, how are people that stupid?  Actually, they're probably not - a survey of 2000 ITV viewers is not a representative sample of anything and statistics are crap and easily manipulated and should probably never be listened to.  ever.

And whilst I'm thinking about it...  1 in 14?  from 2000 people?  yeah, that's a nice round number.  Same as all those stupid shampoo adverts: "90% (of 142 people) say their hair is shinier".  Oh really, do they now?  Best not to get into the 'science' of how you can measure shininess, or the other sneaky lies in those adverts (shampoo+conditioner vs normal shampoo...) because I'll just end up ranting about it even more.

I've not been writing much recently..  Partly because the last few weeks have been quite busy - my brother graduated, which was a few days of fun chaos.  But aww, I'm quite proud of him for some daft reason :)

Walking in the Black Mountains

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I'm currently recovering from two days of hiking in the Black Mountains :)  Nice and relaxing, but I'm rather tired now.

photo from Black Mountains weekend

Most of my scouting memories of walking around the Black Mountains/Brecon Beacons involve lots of cloud and rain.  Luckily this weekend was beautiful.  No rain, not too hot or hazy and a nice cool breeze.  Lovely :)  Unsurprisingly I took loads of photos, but I'm not so great at taking really impressive landscape shots so they didn't all get uploaded, heh...

My new boots appear to be rather good at repelling mud.  This is slightly annoying but probably a good thing really... New rucksack, on the other hand.  Went to fill the water pouch bit up on Saturday morning and discovered it has a tiny hole in.  bah.  This does explain why the bottom of my bag got wet the last (and first) time I used it..  I'd put that down to a mixture of sweat and rain, but obviously not.  So that means another trip to Merry Hell to take it back and get one with no holes in.  oh joy.  Slightly worried about how I can cope with a not-entirely-full 17 litre rucksack when other people are having trouble fitting everything into a 35l though.

Thought I'd be unable to move my legs today but apart from slight knee ache (stupid downhills) they're actually not complaining at all. Or at least they weren't until I went trampolining this evening and have probably pulled a muscle a little bit.  ouch.  I'd like to say I did it whilst attempting something very complicated but that would be a very big lie...

Flooded Ludlow

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It's been raining.  Lots.  This means lots of water in the rivers, and then lots of water on bits of land next to the rivers.

flood image 

Yup, floods.  I'm well practised at floods - Monmouth is very good at them, and I've seen some quite impressive examples.

Ludlow, on the other hand...   The big river here is the Teme, but there's also the Corve which is usually small and weedy.  However, yesterday evening it decided to stop being small and weedy and rose very very quickly - from being within its banks to completely flooding the main road in about an hour and a half.

Then at about 3 this morning it obviously got fed up of there being a road blocking the way, and decided to remove a large chunk of it.

The police haven't been letting anyone down there today because of the burst gas main, but now that's fixed and half of Ludlow seems to be down there with their cameras.  Including me, of course :D

It's impressive, to say the least.  Bit worrying too because I (along with loads of other people) was standing on that bit of road at 10 last night watching a farmer rescue sheep, taking photos and generally admiring the flood.  And now that road isn't there :s

Quite glad my flat (and the office too I suppose...) are near the top of the hill!