Yep, I can see what they mean...... or maybe not....

NY Post headline photo....

Good, but not as wonderfully telling as this one....

But anyway, the World Cup, it seems, is determined to continue, so I shall continue watching it. Except not today. Because today is my first non match day since the thing started. And worse, it's a non match day on Thursday as well. Withdrawl......

Although frankly I sat through the Japan-Paraguay 0-0 match thinking they really should have agreed before the 2 hour waste of time and effort that was the match and extra time to just skip it and go straight to flipping a bloody coin.

Spain V Portugal was better, lots of skill everywhere but the whole putting the ball into the net. Nice to see Ronaldo looking a little blubby and red eyed at the end though.

Quarter Finals may be wonderful, but more than likely we'll see four matches of teams desperately trying not to lose and ending up with at least two matches decided by penalties. Personally I can't see past a Brazil v Argentina final with Brazil just steamrollering all before them.

World Cup - oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ... and a weekend roundup

Well, that didn't go very well did it? Utterly miserable performance. Dire. Dismal. The words just aren't enough to get over how bad a match it was. The highlight of the entire thing was watching the Match Of The Day pundits just amazed at how bad it was. Everything else was just awful.

Yes, obviously they should have some sort of technology involved for things like the Lampard goal. And the Argentina goal later in the night where Tevez was offside. The fact they accidentally managed to show the offside immediately after the goal on the big screens shows how easy it is. Except FIFA and Blatter just don't want to know. Ridiculous.

As has become the norm round here, the plans for the weekend were to have no plans. Except football, Dr Who, football on Saturday. And football, drop Molly off at badly timed laser quest party in the middle of a crucial England world cup match, pick her up and football later on Sunday.

And as usual, the lack of planning was proven correct. Friends called round Saturday and Sunday. The afternoon meetup with another set of friends turned into an impromptu sleepover and we ended up not needing to pick her up from Laser Quest as someone volunteered to bring her back. And she had a wonderful weekend. As she often does. but more and more, these wonderful weekends have less and less to do with us. I hate this getting old stuff and the necessary shift in parenting it entails. I love that she's so independent and so blessed with her lovely personality and a wide range of friends. But I'm not so keen on the back seat we're taking now...

So that's our weekend. We enjoyed it all. Except for the nadir of years of watching England. That we could have done without.

What next? Hermetically sealed children released at 18?

I despair. I really do. Increasingly I find myself shaking my head in horror and frustration at the insanity of modern living. Where the default position appears to be "everyone is under suspicion" and the shrill, paranoid cry rings around of "who will protect the children?"

All of those helicopter parents, worried about any adult, especially any man who goes anywhere near their child. Suddenly no one trusts anyone, and everyone is a potential paedophile, everyone is out to hurt or harm their child. And we end up with a shrill, media driven, mass of hysteria that has no basis in reality. The sort of child protection that ends up creating a generation of children who can't actually function amongst their peers, don't know how to be independent or cope on their own.

I'm trying not to harp on too much about it. But the mass hysteria over the safety of our children is ridiculous. Children are far more at risk from injury or death on the roads, but I don't see many Daily Mail covers screaming how we're all potential child murderers because we drive. And in the majority of those horrible cases of child abuse, abduction or murder it's far more likely to be at the hands of family members or by adults known to the family.

Reason for the little rant? It transpires that a new ruling is likely to come down that anyone in a care environment will be banned from using their own cameras or cameraphones. Presumably all down to the terrible case of Vanessa George, the nursery worker who abused children and took cameraphone images to spread to friends on Facebook. So because of one hideous, unusual crime committed by a twisted abuser everyone who works in a care environment has another rule imposed upon them that tells them that they're not trusted to look after children at all.

It may not seem that serious and too be honest the actual practicalities of it aren't. I take my camera into school sometimes when I want good photos for the website or know that all of the cameras will be in use. Other people do the same. Not being able to do this will be a pain, but not terribly serious. Except it's simply a small part of an ongoing regime of distrust and blame that's crippling our children. They aren't being allowed to live life and they're being denied a childhood because of a fear of something that mercifully is incredibly rare.

And as usual, the imposition of this new regulation will not help solve the problem at all. Anyone able to hide her terrible crimes from her workmates would probably be able to figure out a way to hide a mobile phone - maybe in her pocket?

But never mind, the fact that the new rules wont solve any problems doesn't matter to the knee jerk reactionaries. Maybe we should just turn our nurseries and schools into barbed wire covered, 24 hour CCTV coverage and where our children aren't actually allowed to do anything -all in the cause of "keeping them safe".

World Cup stuff.....

Well, it's been bloody fun so far. Molly keeps wondering when it's all going to end, keeps asking why I insist on watching every single match that I can. But luckily Louise is into it as well - she's not quite watching every match, and I have to agree with her that the whole first set of matches were really dreadful affairs (bar the first South Africa match). But since then the second and third set of matches have been great.

I wish South Africa would have made it through, as they've played wonderfully. But the most importantly is that England (finally) made it. Granted, the group games have been awful, the Algeria match was the worst I've ever seen them play, but the Slovenia game was better, much better (although it couldn't have been any worse to be honest).

Louise took the day off work, I had to go in and just couldn't get home in time for the kick off. I made it home for 3:20, Louise had the door open and the beer on the table. Molly was at school sports club so we could shout, scream and swear to our heart's content until she eventually came home just before the end. She said that she and her friends could hear us screaming all the way down the road.

Joe Cole's inclusion was worth it just for the spectacular way he took the ball into the corner and played keepy with James Milner.

Rooney looked injured or off form towards the end but it seems to be a minor thing, maybe he just needs a bloody goal to get him going.

Sunday we have a tricky situation though. England kick off against Germany at 3pm. Molly has a laser quest party at 3:45. England game finishes (full time) around 4:50. Molly's party finishes at 5:30. So we're desperately trying to figure out how best to schedule it all, maybe missing the first half and catching the second on TV.

And what the hell happens if there's extra time and penalties I have no idea. Do you think Molly would mind if we left her at Laser Quest till it's all over?

(Nah.... maybe not)

So, computers. Aren't I meant to know something about them.....

Two weeks ago my beloved old desktop machine decided to break. It's 5 years old, runs XP, does exactly what I want it to do and does it fast enough for me. I don't want a new machine, I've got this one set up just right and the prospect of upgrading just fills me with dread.

But suddenly, I turn it on and it hangs on the desktop. No icons, no start menu, no taskbar. Just wallpaper. So, being IT savvy, I head over to google and start working out what could possibly be wrong with it. This is where having the second machine - the lovely little netbook always comes in handy. How people solve computer problems without a second machine to google the trouble I have no idea.

Lots of different things. Lots of attempts. Lots of reboots. No luck.

In the end, resigned to the fact I was looking at getting one of those newfangled Windows 7 machines I gave it one last try. The complete reformat of XP.

I've done this before. At school. And somehow, on machines where they're just 1/50th of the total it doesn't hold as much fear. But this was mine. All mine. And I fretfully sat by as it went through the whole process. And bless my soul, it worked.

Except then I had the problem of reinstalling everything and trying to make it look and function exactly the same as it had before.

[TIP#1 - always have a list of programs you need installing]

[TIP#2 - make sure all your data is lovingly backed up and ready to just copy over]

[TIP#3 - do try to make sure you actually have a list of what needs doing to the machine to make it work like you want it to]

I managed Tip #2 just fine. My paranoid obsession over backups paid off. But #1 & #3? Lets just say I have a very good list now.

So. Thursday night - Reformat, start reinstalling. Friday afternoon - finish reinstalls and download god knows how many windows updates. Move data across. Friday night, Saturday, Sunday - screw about with iTunes. Yes, three days of messing about, importing all the music, finding out where it's imported wrong, where it's messed up tracklistings, pictures, info and all the other small, annoying crap.

Finally. It was done. I have a functioning, lovely, just like it used to be machine again.

And then it does it again last night. OH MY GOD.

Except this time I notice that it happens to do it just after one particular windows update install on shut down. It took me the best part of two hours trying to figure out how to fix it, and in the end it was as simple as stopping automatic updates and deleting the Windows/ Software Distribution/ Downloads folder. Since then it's all worked wonderfully.

Which means, oh yes, that the entire problem last weekend, the four days spent reinstalling everything just right, all of that could have been avoided.

And I'm meant to know what I'm doing.

At Least We're Not As Bad As France.....

So it's not all bad then..............

What's going on with the blog Richard?

Well, if you've been here a while you may have noticed that over the last year the blog has become rather .... empty.

Not if yo just cast a glance over it certainly, but it was becoming simply a repository for reposting reviews that I'm doing for the FPI blog and had stopped being MY blog quite a while ago.

Not that I've done it deliberately, just that a combination of many things kept me away from doing things here. Most of my writing time is spent on the FPI blog to be honest. I'm doing the majority of the reviewing over there - which people seem to like, which is nice. And I'm also posting articles and news up there, most of which would have found a natural home here on Fictions to be honest. It got to a point where I had to let something give.

And it was Fictions.

And quite a few people have told me that they miss it.

So, here's the new plan..... I'm stopping all of the reposting of reviews, I've deleted a lot of the old ones. I'll still point you in the direction of new reviews over at the FPI blog and I'll still put comic stuff up here when I want to talk about it. But this has to be MY blog, has to have something away from comics. And from now, it's going to be again......

Right, now expect some content this week. I shall try....