It's shocking what you find out from Islamic fundamentalist websites. This is from an opinion piece at www.alghurabaa.co.uk:

The Muslims in Britain have been forced to make a decision regarding their allegiance and to whom they regard as being sovereign. We are told by Tony Blair and his muppets that you must renounce your Islamic ideals and values and adopt a more modern and progressive way of life...

You know that governments mean business when they get those guys involved. Miss Piggy says to all extremists: Hiiiiii - ya!

Back to the old Minima template. I liked the new one, but for some reason Google wasn't indexing individual entries properly - it was grabbing them on the main page and maintaining the main page link for them even after they'd past into the archive. I know for a fact that when this page is spidered the algo picks up the individual entry pages. The nav bar needs some tweaking, but I should have that done soon.

I like it that way, as it means the various people I say rude things about can enjoy the full force of their humiliation when they Google their own names or the names of their businesses. Before the advent of the blog, what did we do about egomaniacs?

The thing about maths and physics is that they're actually quite difficult. At first I thought, 'OU degree in maths and physics. How hard can it be? From what I've seen, mathematicos and physics types can barely dress themselves properly of a morning, so all these equations they keep banging on about can't be too bad.'

Then the bastards hit you with something that looks like this -



- and before you can say 'ask me a question about Shakespeare' they start talking about wave functions and the square root of minus one.

I'm really enjoying the modules I'm doing, because they're fascinating in themselves and they're leading me to a range of new experiences. One of these new experiences is thinking. Well, it's not exactly new, but I haven't really done much of it since primary school. An English degree, to be frank, doesn't really require much in the way of hard, applied cogitation. Anyone who's bright-ish, doesn't mind reading and can write reasonably well can get a First in English. It's just a case of convincing some sappy examiner that you (a) agree with his/her pointless ideas about Queer Theory (yes, yes, it really exists) and its relationship with feminist critiques of Don Juan and (b) you've actually read A Passage To India rather than just watching the video. In other words, getting an English qualification is simply a matter of reading quite a lot and then engaging in the fluent communication of applied bullshit. Some would say that's a talent in itself. I never really found it difficult.

But when you're messing about with differential calculus there's no messing about. You're either right or wrong. Maths and physics simply aren't for those who can't be bothered to think for themselves, and think precisely. It stretches your brain then snaps it back again so that it hurts. You have to bloody suffer in this game.

Not long ago I promised I'd relate a story about the late, much-loved Kate Stokes. Here it is.

As I wrote in her mini-obituary, she and I were both members of the Bangor University Mountain Walking Club. Although she was a first year when I was a third year we were mighty good pals and did some great hills together.

In March 1996 - Christ, ten years ago this month - we both went on a UMWC away weekend to the Cadair Idris area of mid-Wales. Although I didn't know it, I was about to be the first victim of an outbreak of viral gastroenteritis that laid half the club low over the next fortnight. I'd been feeling a bit queasy during the minibus journey down to Cadair, but I put that down to the windy Welsh roads. We found the campsite and pitched our tents. I was sharing with Jonesy. Kate, I think, was in with Caroline Hattam.

I woke up about 2am feeling just a bit funny. Matt was snoring quietly in his sleeping bag next to me. Ten seconds elapsed, and I felt funnier still, so I sat up. 'Matt,' I said. 'Matt!'

'Hrrumph? Har bag zleep. Zzzz.'

'Matt, I think I'm going to be... I'm going to be - BLAAAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!'

He woke up pretty quick after that, let me tell you. I know this is supposed to be a warm, affectionate story about someone we all loved very much, and therefore taste is an important issue. But I wouldn't be doing the tale justice if I didn't underline the fact that I've never been quite so spectacularly sick in all my life as I was at that moment. I was plastered in vomit, Matt was plastered in vomit; all our precious gear was likewise contaminated. We evacuated to the minibus and stayed there for the rest of the night.

It wasn't a very nice night, either. I was sick again hourly, the bus was freezing and Jonesy was slowly going mad from lack of sleep. Finally, morning came and other club members began to stir. They gathered around the open side door of the minibus to gawk at the whey-faced leper and the delirious Welshman within. A few people asked how I was and kindly brought me a cup of tea, which was handed to me rather gingerly. Nobody came too close. A few said they'd heard me retching in the night, but had decided the noise was actually the distressed bleat of a mortally ill sheep in the next field.

So although there was a decent concern for my welfare, nobody was concerned enough to risk coming too close. Or at least until Kate arrived. She took one look, shouted 'oh, baby!' and threw her arms around me. The fact that she did this at exactly the same moment that I involuntarily began another of my hourly throwing-up sessions - which proceeded to take place over her shoulder and down the back of her jacket - didn't bother her in the slightest. She was that kind of human being.

Occasionally, we'd buy each other books. The one she always claimed to like the most was a facsimile first edition of A.E. Housman's famous collection of poetry, A Shropshire Lad. Housman's a bit simplistic and a bit sentimental, but moving and readable for all that. He clearly spoke to Kate.

WITH rue my heart is laden
For golden friends I had,
For many a rose-lipt maiden
And many a lightfoot lad.

By brooks too broad for leaping
The lightfoot boys are laid;
The rose-lipt girls are sleeping
In fields where roses fade.

She was tough, clever, determined and enormous fun to be around. She was brave, spending gap years in the less respectable parts of Ecuador and Jamaica. When I first knew her she had a verbal tic: everything good or worthwhile was 'stunning'. Of a book - 'it's stunning'; Ecuador - 'stunning'; a view - 'stunning!'; a plate of egg and chips after a day's walk - 'stunning'. In Kate's world everything was stunning - as, in every sense that she meant the word, was Kate Stokes herself.

Been out with Niall, playing pool. The boy is not in a good state. All his banks mislaid their Ethical Lending policies while they were getting him up to his neck in debt. Now they've found their Let's Screw Over The Mentally Ill policies and are pestering him round the clock for repayments.

Even The Co-operative Bank has joined in. Look at their website. I mean - just look at it. All the sickening "oooh, we're so nice and so cuddly, we love poor people, we'd never hurt anyone we're so lovely" copy on their sanctimonious bloody ethics pages isn't worth a brass farthing. They saw Niall coming like all the others did. Anyone who meets Niall realises he's not quite like other people, and perhaps has a few problems. Did they investigate? Of course they didn't. Here you go, Niall, they said. Here's a load more dosh to blow. And now they're on his back just like all the others.

So he's sunk into depression and spends most of his days in bed. He's still going to work three days a week, doing his poverty trap-limited hours. That's something. But, nonetheless, we had a good game of pool and a couple of beers, which at least cheered him up a bit. He's getting better at pool, too. Bloody nailed me on an eight ball twice tonight.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm a big fan of Germans. Serious. No irony. I love their cute little teutonic quirks, and the way they so badly want to be like us and get so very close, but never quite make it - often with hilarious results. Regulars will also know that I'm a big fan of the German sense of humour, and I just love collecting examples.

Here's a great one. If you can't be arsed to read the whole piece, it's about a film that's been made in Berlin and the fact that lots of people are quite taken aback by all the swastika banners and SS uniforms to be seen on the streets of the city as filming takes place. The bit I love is at the end:

“I think it’s really tasteless, especially as it’s happening next to the cathedral,” said Gabi Metzler, from Bavaria, standing on the church steps to get a better view.

“It’s our first visit to Berlin,” said her friend, Gertrude. “Things seem to have changed much less than we had expected.”

God, they crack me up.

I'm writing this at the dining table of The Logs, a big wooden house just outside Fort William. I'm up here with TLMH, Bruce, Clive, Carmel, Matt, Chalky, Kate, Michael and Michael's friend Kirsten. The ground's white, the pile of empty beer cans is getting bigger and it's six degrees warmer inside the fridge than it is outside the front door. Everyone except me, Michael and Kirsten has gone for a suicidal ascent of some mountain or other.

I've spent the whole week reminding Bruce of the avalanche risk and calculating his chances of survival on each day. Although I had a day on the hill on Monday most of the time I've been out on my bike.

Chalky, Michael and I had a stunning day yesterday biking the Witch's Trails in Leanachan Forest, which is conveniently just over the road from the house. I think the trails are pretty new - we've biked around Leanachan a lot in the past and never noticed them before. They're graded similarly to ski trails: green for mincing lemons who don't want to chip their nail varnish, blue for the adventurous but scared, red for real men and black for unhinged would-be kamikazists. We spent most of our time on the reds, although Chalky - who fancies himself a bit of a ninja - had a go at a black run. He bottled out halfway down. Still, we've found a great camera angle for taking shots to make it look like we're shooting out the bottom of Nessie, the most dangerous of the blacks. As style is just so much more important than substance in this game, we'll be taking advantage of this today.

Most of the red runs were very cool indeed, with great mixed ground and quite a few thrills. I managed to avoid the spills, which is lucky, because as usual I was clipped into my SPD pedals. You get a lot more power and control if you're clipped in, the only downside being that if you fly over the handlebars the back end of the bike follows you and lands on your head. One of the particular hazards of the trails is that many of the routes have sections of raised duckboard a foot or two above the ground. Chalks took a great nosedive off one of these but recovered quickly. If it had been me there'd have been a complete wipeout.

Still, I'm turning into a better biker than I once was. Today, Chalks is out climbing some big hill in nothing but a thong and a pair of flip-flops to prove what a hard man he is, so Michael and I are off to explore the Witch again. Toil and trouble, especially on the uphill sections, but great fun all the same.