These Are The Voyages...

What an Easter weekend that was!

Train back up to Newcastle on Thursday, arrived 16:00. Matt flew in to the airport at 21:00, an hour late, and we had a few beers and swapped journey stories. An early start on Friday, and a tour of the city, including the most important sight of the North: the scene from the Newcastle Brown Ale bottle (according to Matt, that's all that he wanted to see and his life "was complete"). I got my third 18" Starship Legends model from Forbidden Planet, this time of the Starship Enterprise-E. Then down to Saltburn for the rest of the time! Saturday was shopping and a trip to see Inside Man at the cinema: a very good psychological thriller with top-class acting. Sunday was surfing and falling off a surf canoe repeatedly, looking very unprofessional but having a great laugh. Monday was mountain-climbing, in which I totally rocked (pun intended), and then Matt flew back to Exeter. Tuesday, from 08:00 until 16:00, Dad and I drove the length of the country in a pinball fashion, bouncing from Newcastle to Manchester, down to Birmingham and then across to Guildford! Arrived home tired, and since then, Mum and I have been relaxing, sorting out all the odds and ends before I leave for Newcastle again, and playing my new PlayStation games that arrived from the multiple eBay.co.uk sellers across the land. Quite frankly, I'm surprised I haven't had a cardiac arrest.

Of course, coming home to the slogan "Vote Blue, Get Green" isn't exactly the best homecoming present ever. While I find it very noble of David Cameron to take the Conservatives up a level and make them accessible to the younger generations, this focus on a specific issue seems to be narrowing the political scene to, let's be honest, one of the least important factors of government. The environment is not going to come crashing down around our ears for at least another one hundred years! Okay, sure, so our generation has a certain obligation to the children of the future (not mine, mind, since I loathe children), but there are already measures in place to slow down the impact of global warming (which is often inflated to silly numbers: while many people don't like him, read some Jeremy Clarkson and he'll tell you how little an impact cars have on global warming, and yet every single time the environment is mentioned, ITV News runs a feature on mothers using sports utility vehicles to take their little darlings to school). This "Vote Blue, Get Green" initiative is heavy on catchphrases and popular movements: while this isn't as terrible as the lies and spin coming from the Kremlin and His Tonyness these days, it still seems to be pandering unneccessarily to anyone but Conservative voters. This could be a danger. Cameron is already under fire from the traditional right within his party for going too far left. Any more policy drives like this could push him so far left he falls out of the Conservative sphere of influence and, horror upon horrors, he'll become a member of the Liberal Democrats... urg...

But for now, it's all good. Peace out, madcap Bonkers fans!