Arrpy Noo Yerr

...as they say round here.

We went to Amroth in West Wales yesterday to see them set a record for the number of Elvis lookalikes going for a dip in the sea on New Year's Day. They had 24.

Or, to put it another way, watch mental people risk hypothermia. It was cold enough on the beach to give me internal plumbing.

I'll put some photos up of our New Year's celebration sometime. On the Eve itself we went to an Alice in Wonderland themed party. We arrived to find the Queen of Hearts was demanding that all latecomers have their heads cut off. What a welcome.

IT's bizarre to think that it's 2009. I still remember the big celebrations for the millennium in 2000. Now we're almost a decade down in the 21st Century and it makes you wonder what exactly has changed, what we have learned as a race, what makes this century any different to the last.

Apart from the ubiquity of mobile phones and other personal computer devices, and the "War on Terror", I'd say not much. A black president in the US is big news I suppose. The circle is now complete in the Star Wars saga. The 1980s are back in fashion...

In fact that's probably an indicator of how depserate people are - that the decade of greed and bad electronic music is now being nostalgically recast as the decade of excitement and cultural change. Nobody seems to be trying to recreate the miner's strike, yuppiedom, gaybashing, or Thatcherite attitudes to the unemployed, do they. When people start committing suicide over the prospect of nuclear war/nuclear winter, then we'll know the 80s are back.