Wild Haggis

"According to a survey released on 26 November 2003, one-third of US visitors to Scotland believed the haggis to be a real creature."

Thanks, Wikipedia.

Edit; 5th July 2007: Thanks, Wikipedia. Thwikipedia.

Next Week’s Terrorist Attacks

Here’s our predictions:

  • Terrorists detonated a pollen bomb this morning in Birmingham City Centre, spreading chaos amongst hayfever sufferers throughout the area. Four people have been treated with antihistamines, one of also has asthma. “I was scared for my life,” she said in an interview with our correspondent.
  • Simultaneously, two suicide bombers from different terrorist factions attacked one another in a field in Cornwall. A cow was injured in the resulting explosion, and police have sealed off the area.
  • In an unexpected attack this afternoon, a terrorist group has let all of the air out of the tires of the buses in Daventry bus station. This is believed to be the a follow up attack to the brutal assault on Daventry police station last week, in which seven police officers found their shoelaces tied together. Chaos has ensued in Daventry: at least one guinea pig went hungry as his owner, who was due to bring home some broccoli on the bus, was delayed by four hours.
  • And we’re just receiving word that the missing garden gnomes from Mrs. Evan’s garden in Hampshire is being treated as a kidnapping. A tape delivered this evening stated that the group responsible was going to execute the gnomes and send recordings to news agencies.

Reflections

Ruth wrote:

Something surprised me today. I was looking through the various blog-posts relating to the nastiness with the Union, and I was quite shocked to realise how many of the people that I (certainly now, probably always) think of as nightliners are now, in fact, ex-nightliners.

And I thought about the influence that those people had had on me, on who I am and how I answer that phone, and I realised something that hadn’t really occured to me before: even though we have a high turnover, and people aren’t normally with us for more than three or four years, that doesn’t mean that the org ‘loses’ them. Each successive generation of nightliners is built on the last.

And whilst, to the people answering the phones in ten years time, our current struggles may seem distant (if they aren’t forgotten entirely), hopefully we can achieve the kind of changes in our relationship with the Union which will mean that they are free to get on with doing what we’re here to do.

Aye. I still think of myself (and other ex-‘s) as still being “Nightliners”.