I went walkies yesterday   10 miles of mostly flat up in North Shropshire (Prees/Whixall ish).  Nice day out actually - and I'm quite glad it was yesterday and not today, silly weather!

Would anyone be surprised to hear that I went out in shorts?  I guess not, hehe.  This slightly backfired as there were stinging nettles and things, but I survived with just a few scratches and a couple of bites of some variety.  Need to invest in a pair of those trousers that zips off into shorts I think.  New hobby yay (or more correctly, rediscovered old hobby)

Part of the walk was alongside the canal, which was quite interesting as we got to see some of the lifty-uppy bridges (I realise they probably have a more sensible name than that) and also on a disused bit of canal, some swans.  And baby swans.  Then more swans and cygnets actually on the towpath a little bit further on. Evil creatures...

Bit achey today, and there's a few weirdly positioned blisters on my feet.  Ah well.

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so, Keele's in the news again today.  This time because someone vaguely high-up has taken offence at students saying not-entirely-positive things about the uni on Facebook.  Shock horror!

OK, so having a group called "so and so is a twat" probably isn't the nicest thing to do, so I can almost see their point on this, but sending an email to all students about it, and threatening a code of practice is a little bit over the top perhaps.

Also, Facebook is full of completely stupid and pointless groups (heh, I'm a few) and there's a whole system there for reporting offensive things etc.

Stupid Keele.  Slagging off the uni/staff/corrupt VC/general lack of interest in anything apart from money is nothing new.  There can't be many people who've survived studying at Keele and have never had bad thoughts about it.  Or probably any other uni out there...

kerching! government grants, new med school... but oh no, we can't possibly have a physics/chemistry department any more because it doesn't make enough cash - let's replace it with forensics because that's a "cool" subject.  And hey, let's give Janet Finch a ridiculously huge payrise and then sack lots of other staff because we can't afford to employ them...

Oh look.  I'm saying bad things about my old uni!  And on the internet as well!  None of that stuff is anything new that I haven't frequently discussed with my mates over the last few years.  I mean, come on, I've talked to members of staff who have, shall we say, expressed their dissatisfaction about the way the place is run... Sending stroppy emails and drawing up 'rules' for use of facebook etc isn't going to stop people talking about Keele.  In fact, it's probably backfired a bit because now everyone's on about it.  Freedom of speech?  hah.

Despite all that, I am still rather fond of the place  

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I got IDed (how do you spell that?) again today.

Given that I will be 23 in a month's time, this is almost annoying. Actually I don't really mind, because it doesn't happen that often and it is just them doing their job with the "if you look under 21" thing.  If I thought it was because I looked under 18 I would be upset.

But urgh, it's the way they do it.  Last week at whatever club in Hanley, that's fine because they simply asked, looked, then said ok and that was it.  But today in Somerfield the woman was really fussy and slow and obvious about it.

I only went in for cereal and bread.  But they had some reduced 4 packs of Quinns and I really like that and ooh bargain (£2.89!).  Get to the till, wait a few minutes while the cashier finishes some big long gossipy sounding chat with the person in front, and then in some weird and slightly slow motion way watch as she looks me over a few times and eventually decides that maybe she should check my age...  This is after scanning the stuff and putting it in a bag (incidently, it does not take two carrier bags to pack 3 items).

Then she peers over the top of her glasses at my driving licence - "eighty four...?" yes.  Eventually she decides that that's ok, and launches into some speech... "oh, my daughter is a year older than you and she gets asked for ID all the time, isn't it annoying? ha ha ha.  but then she hardly wears any make up you know so that probably explains it and isn't it better than people just assuming that you're old enough..."

It must be something about Somerfield.  This is quite similar to the woman in the Somerfield in Ilfracombe last June (the day before my birthday!) who was almost equally annoying about it.  But I was fairly arsey then (not on purpose), whereas today I managed a fake smile and laugh and some sort of polite reply.

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