Speaking of the BBC, this is cool.

Three schoolgirl sisters have given birth aged 12, 14 and 16.
“Their mother Julie Atkins, 38, who said the girls were too young and had ruined their lives, blamed schools for providing poor quality sex education.” (BBC)
Why on earth does she think it’s the schools responsibility to teach her kids about sex? It should be taught at school, but surely sex education should begin well before the age of 12, and IMO it should begin at home. Two of them discovered they were pregnant after the first one had given birth, so it’s not like the topic wouldn’t have come up in conversation once or twice.

Russian lake goes walkabout.

I’m off to County Tipperary, Ireland, tonight. Woo! I have to go straight to work from the airport on Monday morning. God only knows how I’ll stay awake while writing a functional spec. Hopefully the thought of picking up my passport and Russian visa on Monday night will keep me going.
I saw Shunt’s Tropicana during the week. I enjoyed it, though there were times when I was bored and waiting for something to happen. Like Firebird, different parts of the audience would have experienced a slightly different show, but I’m not sure the mix of promenade and traditional theatre worked that well. Perhaps it was the way the ‘spectacle’ bits of the show didn’t quite mesh with the narrative. I really liked the venue – the arches of London Bridge station. Rosie and I decided that we wanted to take one (or more) of the burlesque girls home with us. Funnily enough, when I got home and told my housemates where I’d been, one of them said that people from Shunt used to live in our flat. Small world.

I used to hate Choose your own adventure books. Via www.retrocrush.com.

People are getting their knickers in a knot over the announcement that Rolf Harris is to paint the Queen’s 80th birthday portrait.

I saw ‘The Lizard‘ this week, worth seeing if it’s playing near you. I also saw ‘Turtles can fly recently – almost shockingly powerful.
In other news, my passport is with some dodgy tattoo-covered guy in a flat in Islington while in the process of getting a Russian visa. I can’t decide whether to do a day trip from St Petersburg to Novgorod, or stop off in Novgorod on my way to Moscow, but I think Novgorod is a three hour trip from St Petersburg, so it makes more sense to go there on the way to Moscow. If I catch the train from Novgorod to Moscow, it means arriving in Moscow at 5am, which is a little daunting.
The Russian train site at http://www.rzd.ru/ has a brilliant sound file on loading, with bonus train sound-effects. I’m not so sure about the Babelfish translation of the page, which doesn’t seem to have translated much except the mysterious phrase ‘of 3 milkings’.

Ha ha ha ha ha.

Which personality defect are you?

There’s something really cute about this story.
In other news, I’ve had a song stuck in my head all day, and I told my boss, “I can’t get that Tom Jones song out of my head” and he ACTUALLY SAID, “It’s not unusual”.
I voted in the UK elections yesterday. While I miss the freedom of expression of preferential voting, I’m just glad the Tories didn’t get in (let alone UKIP or Veritas). There was a swing against Labour, but they’ve still retained a majority. I wonder if people will now feel they’ve done their bit in punishing Blair for Iraq.
I don’t know if it’s because I hang out with politically aware, passionate Australians, or the influence of compulsory voting but I’ve noticed that Australians tend to be more politically engaged than the English.