I don’t think this is generally a whingy blog, but there are a few recent niggles that I could do with getting off my chest. But don’t worry, I’ll then talk about some stuff that I’ve enjoyed recently to bring some sweetness and light back onto the blog.

Things that I’ve been annoyed by recently:

• Fussy newsagents

In the Humanities Café the other day, I was looking at the newspaper rack and picked up a copy of The Guardian to examine the front page, only to be immediately pounced upon by the woman on the till who said I wasn’t allowed to read it unless I was going to buy it. I replied that I didn’t know whether I was going to buy it until I’d looked at the front page to see if it looked worth buying, but unfortunately she didn’t buy my argument. Honestly. I could understand if I’d opened it up and was reading through the thing, but reading the front page? I told her that if I wasn’t going to buy any of her papers without having any basis on which to make a decision, and went over to the Union shop where I could examine the papers without complaint. I often don’t buy a paper until I’ve looked at them and found one that looks interesting to me that day, so shopkeepers who get so precious about their papers are really shooting themselves in the foot.

• Unhelpful bureacrats

In an unfortunate sequel to the saga of my missing phone (which also annoyed me, but that story deserves its own telling, I lost my wallet. What’s annoying is the way that people behind desks don’t seem to appreciate the implications of this fact. If I have lost my wallet, then no, I don’t have any other cards to my NUS on me, because they were in my wallet too. Particularly irritating is the way that the rules and those who carry them out are too inflexible to allow common sense to be applied in such situations, resulting in much inconvenience in borrowing library books, going into the Union bar and so on.

• Setting up broadband

Why do computers have to be so moronically uncooperative? They’re almost as bad as bureacrats, but not as satisfying to shout at. The hassles I’ve had over the last couple of days in setting up wifi and broadband access have been endless. I think everything is working now, but I thought that on Thursday evening just before my computer’s internet connection suddenly and mysteriously stopped working for no apparent reason.

Things that I’ve enjoyed recently:

• Debating the use of child soldiers with Swithin

I had a great time on Thursday evening in the Debating Society. The motion was “This House Would Support the Use of Child Soldiers in Warfare”, and the already (in)famous Swithin . Swithin is a first-year Economics student, and is one of those people often described as a “character”. He’s very confrontational in his opinions, perhaps sounding rather pompous, though he says “I’m not pompous. I merely have an air of authority”. This sounds rather alarming, but he is actually a nice guy with a sense of humour. And he had the job of laying out “the policy”, what exactly his side was arguing for…

Children would be enrolled in military school at 4 years old (it wasn’t clear how they’d be recruited – conscription, perhaps?), to be deployed on the battlefield at 10 years old, or earlier if they were mature enough. A dedicated miniature arms industry would be created to manufacture special small guns for young hands . This army would enable us to liberate the people of tyrannical regimes, as in Zimbabwe and North Korea. Children would be able to reach those places that ordinary soldiers can’t reach, like small holes. Using children is a more efficient because it only takes ten years to replace a 10-year old as opposed to thirty to replace a 30-year old. And, of course, nobody would suspect them of being spies at such a tender age.

The Debate got progressively more ridiculous, as the proposals became crazier and crazier, and as summation speaker for the opposition, I had the job of summing the whole thing up. Lio and I had great fun ripping the proposition argument to shreds in our speeches. If only we could have recorded the debate. It would make great listening if broadcast on the student radio station. The judge gave Swithin a bit of a telling-off for going against “the spirit of the debate” or somesuch, but I salute him for providing such a good night’s entertainment.

• Walking in the hills above Cardiff today

The Navs, that wonderful group of Christians who meet for discipleship through small group Bible study, had a social today – a walk up in the hills above Cardiff. With heavy rain last night and a severe weather warning for Sunday until Wednesday, we approached the walk with some trepidation. But we needn’t have worried, since we had an uncharacteristically bright and sunny day today. It was really nice to get out of the city and out into the fields and woodlands, and to have good company and conversation as we wandered our way along the walk.

On our way we stopped at a pub for drinks on the other side of the hill, and further round we came out on a hillside with a magnificent view – you can see across from Newport and the Severn Bridge to Cardiff and beyond, with the Severn estuary stretched out in front of us and the strange and foreign land of England beyond it.

• The Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Wallace and Gromit are back! This film is hilariously funny, full of very British humour. Fun, exciting and action-packed, with a hint of romance, this is a wonderful film. It’s one of the funniest films I’ve seen – certainly better than Aardman’s previous feature length effort Chicken Run, and up there with comedy greats like Shrek. Dogwarts school, indeed…