I was easily amused tonight.

First, a little bit from the global chats channel:

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It was quite an active crowd on the Rogues rooftops in Terris too.

On gaining mounts:

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On Rogue clothing choices:

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On Venis' use of the term 'numpties':

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Something I have to use more often:

Guise says 'Ooh look, is that a different subject to segue into on the horizon...'

On quests for power:

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Bored, lonely and in the wake of another day. Was talking to Spin and after finding out that Tink was out enjoying a mini Terris meet (so dejected, I wonder if dreams are a portent...hmm), I decided to gatecrash with some abrupt txting. This was made even more gatecrashed, because Tink didn't record me as a sender (see how influential I am in people's lives ::sigh::).

After a slight bit of winding up getting Tom and Nat to say things like "I can't believe she did that!", which without fail got me into trouble, but at least gave me something to consider a highlight of my day, Tink mentioned the Britishness Test that the Home Office is going to run for immigration cases.

Unfortunately, none of the stories with samples give you a very good mix of questions without revealing the answers underneath. No doubt someone will OkCupid one up in the next few days.

Some are very easy (ie. Where are the Geordie, Cockney, and Scouse dialects spoken? What are MPs? Which type of court uses a jury system?), whereas some are quite difficult (Do many children live in single parent families or step-families? What is the Queen’s official role and what ceremonial duties does she have? What is the Church of England and who is its head?). They do mention they are multiple choice though, which I'm unsure over suitability, and you need a 75% to pass.

I'm quite in favour of testing, hell, I think a lot can be achieved by testing people who have lived here for generations - especially chavs who want to breed.

Went out to the wrestling last night with Tim.

A fairly good night and likely to be the last show until at least February. Afterwards, we went for chips.




About 140 of the 160 seats were filled tonight, but it seemed more and was a remarkable difference from their begging figures last time. Ely, the pensioner fanboy, was there and getting involved in the chants and catcalls, though more subdued this time. The over-reactors were there too.

The show decided to go for the one-night tournament focus again, between Chris Andrews (fan favourite from Gosport), "Mr Vain" Peter Collins (heel for the tournie, from Bristol), The UK Kid (other face, trained by Shawn Michaels school) and a guy called Matt Jarrett (a face, a stand-in for Johnny Storm).

The main event was a £1,000 side-stake match between Phil Powers (heel from Dagenham) and James Baker (fan favourite from Taunton).

The night, of course, began with Europe's "Final Countdown" and progressed into promoter John Freemantle losing the microphone - ha, beat that story arc, Vince! Eventually referee-turned-timekeeper John Allen found it backstage and all was right. Referee for the night was Roger Brown the heavily goateed baldy.


Jarrett vs Collins

Theres one fundamental rule in house shows, if you are the stand-in then you probably aren't going to get any further than your first match. An addendum should be not to waste five-minutes of the audiences time in the process. Jarrett spent the entire five minute first round trying to get the audience to clap, any time Collins approached he'd be going for a clap, even Ely seemed bored.

To be honest Jarrett wasn't even all that spectacular, the highest points of the match was Collins complaining to the ref for shouting in his ear to break the holds.

Collins eventually won 2:1. I was so glad, anymore of Jarrett clapping and I was ready to sit out in the closed bar.

After the match, Collins tag partner Romper Stomper - out of action with a bad back - came out and we saw the disolution of their partnership when Collins pummelled him. Of course, this led the same girl who had to be led out last time, to start screaming at Collins and then getting in the way near Stomper.


Andrews vs. Kid

This was, without a shadow of a doubt, the match of the night and the first minutes of it made up for the previous match. It was a very british event with some americanisation; handshakes at every round, plenty of reversals and follow throughs.

It really was a spectacular match, both knew how to work the crowd and the crowd loved it. There was rarely a full minute without the crowds hands clapping.

The match moved at a swift pace, plenty of fast flighty moves from Kid and power displays by Andrews. Andrews scored a 2:1 win, but the applause was amazing, it was the type of match everyone loves to see and the gentlemanly sportsmanship was remarkable.


Powers vs. Baker

Powers was accompanied by his manageress, Erin Angel (and if you follow the link, that was her ring attire). Poor Erin, getting annoyed at the cheers for Baker and then getting some of the typically british chants of "Easy!" directed from the match to her.

Baker was a much better performer than when last I saw him, but I think that was down in part to Powers being a different type of opponent and more speed and movement needed. Powers started the match predicting he'd win in two minutes, Baker almost immediately had him rolled up for the first pin in one minute two seconds.

From then on Baker and Powers had to work a bit, while Erin sashayed around the ring and got upset at the cheering. Powers flipped Baker towards the ropes, and connected with Erin who was standing there. Powers equalized with a leg drop from the top rope.

From that point on, Erin was suffering from catcalls, James cheers and a headache. If that wasn't bad enough, she ended up getting headbutted by Powers later too, which led to him being suplexed and pinned.

The match was really good, with a lot of piledrivers and suplexes from the turnbuckles.


Collins vs. Andrews

This was a decent end to the night, but not as good as the match against Kid. In briefest summary, Collins won the first fall, Andrews scored the second when Stomper came back out and distracted Collins and then Collins was disqualified for shoving the referee giving Andrews the win.

Collins provided quite some entertainment with the variation on the "bad guy wanting to shake hands with the good guy", the audience issued their distrust and Collins got down to one knee, then the next while crossing himself and swearing he meant it, eventually Andrews agreed and shook hands and Collins shook hands and backed off. The audience were silenced, except for a very low "Ooooh!".

The best bit was after the match, when a shocked Collins started screaming at the referree and the ref started shouting back, managing to verbally eject Collins from the ring.

British Pro Wrestling differs greatly from American Pro Wrestling, from the basic rules to the style to the effect of moves on the performers.

The rules put the majority of matches as being staged over multiple timed rounds - like in boxing - and usually a win is decided by best two out of three falls. These falls can be either two pinfalls or submissions; one disqualification - you get two 'public warnings and then you are out (three strikes); or, a Knockout/failure to answer a ten count. The style sees a lot more mat-based wrestling and very little aerial or power moves, these moves are usually left for finishing opponents, and whole rounds can be played out using just reversals of moves. The effects of moves are played to a more human standard, I borrow from Tim :

Back then a piledriver, boston crab or half crab would actually win the contest. Today if someone's put in the hold they break out of it, they're superman in a wrestling ring.

Somebody once mentioned wrestling is not fake, it's fixed. Well you have to wonder how many times a guy can get hit with a chair and remain standing. More to the point if they're so indestructible, why don't we put them on the front lines. Forget the army, send a bunch of WWE superstars to hunt down Al-whatever. Just tell them the paycheck is hanging above him.

Ok, the point is slightly extreme but becomes increasingly valid when compared to British pro wrestling, every move is shown to have the same sort of result you'd expect if a 'normal' person was hit with it, a bit of clapping doesn't make the guy act like he's all better now, because he's actually showing "Ow, my back was just jumped on by someone twice my weight". In my opinion, there is a slight level more realism in the British version, though there are numerous Americans who show cumulative pain well (mostly those who have been through ECW and float around TNA).

The moves are reduced to the degree of a lot of variations to moves, and mainly around submission or lead up to submission moves. If you expect a fast-paced series of matches, British isn't going to be your thing, if you like people showing a face displaying agony then it is.

( Premier Wrestling show at Winter Gardens, Weston super Mare, on 30 August 2005 )

The Department is now doing security checks on all bags within it's estates, if you can imagine the amounts people bring into local offices and the normal attitudes of most contracted security guards then you can appreciate the problems, however, the public is mostly helpful given the circumstances. It would have been nice for the staff to be told we had upgraded security again though, just so we could tell people coming in. It's worse in other offices, like the highly secure Leeds and Newcastle, and obviously London is on the vigilance stakes, but my contacts all seem jovial and I even got told that if I wanted to speak to one of my friends in Gray's Inn Road I'd have to at least match The Sun's offer.

And yes, I do feel somewhat guilty about any offence I might have caused yesterday, especially to people (like Tink) with family and friends there, because I can sympathise with how I might have felt had I heard something had happened to one of my contacts. Hoeever, I stand by my statements of the resolve of the people in London, who have the most steel like nerves and the most laudable ability to bounce back, and by the statements I was relaying from the message I got from my friends nearby who had friends and family themselves in the city too.

Annie is leaving the team, which is sad, but we get a meeting before, which is good. The whole Department feels like a ship that's just scraped by an ice berg and people are already grabbing a rubber ring while they can - I don't blame them, and wish them luck.

The day has been gorgeous, weather wise, and it would have been the perfect way to welcome back the Olympic bid team after their hard work, those people should be heralded to remind us why there was so much ecstasy across the papers yesterday morning.

Another person to be cheered is the creator of the bikini top...

I got cornered by Vicki today, who told me Liam from school is chasing down everybody for the ten year reunion next year. Yeah, because I'll be going to that. Seriously, if I wanted to know how any of these people were doing, wouldn't I already be in contact with them?

Work was ok, bit of a downer with all the rest of the office feeling in a slump over their future after 'corporate restructuring' comes into effect - I mean, the Civil Service without bureaucracy is surely heretical, isn't it? Found out one of my team mates may be planning to jump ship quickly, but nothing solid yet.

Managed to save a mass of effort on tracking down legislation and House of Lords session documents when I remembered Hansard has a responsibility for making them available for public scrutiny on the different Government websites. Saved me having to scan in a 30 page document to email it.

Of course, there was the big news from the UK on the horizon of the G8 summit :

Bush bruised in bicycle crash

George Bush has collided with a police officer during a bike ride on the grounds of the Scottish hotel hosting the G8 summit.

The US president suffered scrapes on his hands and arms and was treated by a White House doctor, his spokesman said.

The Scottish police officer, on security duty, was sent to hospital to be treated for a minor ankle injury.

Mr Bush, celebrating his 59th birthday, was said to be going at a "pretty good speed" when he fell from his bike.

It was lightly raining at the time of the accident and Mr Bush slid onto the road, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The doctor bandaged the grazes and Mr Bush was taken back to the summit venue in a van.

It did not prevent him attending a dinner with other leaders of the world's most powerful nations, hosted by the Queen.

Mr Bush took up cycling seriously after a knee injury forced him to give up running some years ago.

This is not the president's first accident.

In May 2004, he was badly grazed after falling off his mountain bike during a ride at his Texas ranch and, in June 2003, he fell off his hi-tech Segway scooter.

In January 2002, he grazed his cheek after choking on a pretzel and fainting.

(Source : BBC News, 06 July 2005)

I know what you thought I was going to post about, but seeing as the British public have been very 'British' in their reaction it's not made out to be that huge of an ordeal - hearing some reports it really only interrupted the morning coffee session and was rather a bally inconvenience.

Not surprisingly a small number of alarmists were going on about it, but in the scale of any other activities this is probably one of the least damaging attacks in any country for some time. If you want mass disruption, don't target our transport network, we wont notice.

As Government premises we had our security awareness upgraded across the UK (in case terrorist groups have a thing against their claims to benefit), had a few offices close down for the day and we were allowed radios switched on to hear any crucial broadcasts. Luckily, we have a voice of experience visiting us if we need advice - well, it's Dubyah, so how lucky we are is open to debate.

Still, those bloody French, this is a bit extreme for losing the Olympic bid...it's just not cricket.