Well the emails are coming thick and fast now.

Today I had an email from Mindy Wren (Hi Mindy!) which had the above picture. The immediate thing that struck me about the picture was how like a 1950′s woman she looked. This conjures up to me a time when women stayed at home and looked after the children while the men went out to work and everything was fine as long as dinner was on the table when he got home.

Given that Mindy is a republican this may well be the image that she is trying to put across but that really seems like a backward step to me. Mind you EVERYTHING on Mindy’s email seems backward to me so I am guessing that I am not her target voter.

The great think about Mindy however is that she is more tech savvy and has included an unsubscribe link in the email. Click!

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The American elections are in full swing and the Republicans seem to have decided that I need to be fully appraised of the situation, which is odd since I am a UK citizen and have no right to vote in the elections. More importantly I also have no interest in voting and if I did I certainly would not be putting my X against the Republican nomination.

However, all this does provide a fascinating insight into the workings of American political parties. An email this morning informs me that Randy Brock (really? That’s got to be made up, right?) is running to be governor of Vermont. Even more exciting is the news that  his “new website is a critical tool in giving voters a real choice, and communicating our message of creating economic opportunity and prosperity for all Vermonters.” There isn’t any detail on how a website can give voters a choice but at least the email came with an unsubscribe button. Click!

Mike Hutchins emails me to say “I am emailing you in hopes to gain your support for myself and my wife Kim to become national delegates.” Hey Mike! I’ll consider supporting you when you learn English and add an unsubscribe button to your emails. I was, however, touched by his “see you in Montpelier” line but it’s not clear if he’s paying for the flights and accommodation.

Adam Howard says that the Republicans have a problem appealing to the “young folks” but suggests that they can appeal to them by saying “look, I’m not unlike you, we share a lot of the same values, the Republican party is filled with people just like us.” He somewhat spoils this drive at equality by including a quote from the “captain of Lamoille Union High School’s lacrosse team”. I don’t know about you but if I was going to choose a sport that appealed to all it certainly wouldn’t be lacrosse.

Adam has included this story is because it re-enforced his message that he is down with the yoof. The captain recounted a story about when he was on his way to school he “saw you riding your skateboard, in a suit….” Now I would have probably thought “twat!” but the captain apparently said “I thought that was awesome.”

Once again there is no unsubscribe button so I stand a good chance of being bombarded with Adam’s twaddle again at some point before the elections are over, which is kind of depressing. To make matters worse Adam doesn’t know how to use the blind copy function in his email client and so has cc’d everyone exposing my email address to even more cretins. I thought that there was a law against this sort of thing? (I mean not putting an unsubscribe link rather than being a cretin, regrettably).

The reason that I appear to be getting this flood of messages is because they are aimed at one Don Williams who either doesn’t remember his email address too well or it has been entered incorrectly by enthusiastic party workers at the Republicans. Don must be really upset that his inbox is devoid of Republican party propaganda but Don, if you are out there, I will happily forward it on to you. Just send me an email…

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Those that know me even moderately well will know that I am a huge WilliamsF1 fan and have been since my teens when the team was new and had yet to win their first world championship. And I have stuck with them through the fallow years, which have seemed interminable. But now we have a win – the first in eight year. Boy that has been a long time coming!

The team have taken some stick in recent years from many quarters, including myself, for a variety of reasons. Many criticised for taking on pay drivers but that seemed to be a natural reaction to a lack of sponsorship and a need to keep the business afloat. My gripe was that the team stuck with the same people who had been responsible for the downward trend for what I thought was far too long.

Then, last year, there was a wholesale clear out and a load of fresh faces were brought in and what a change they have brought about! And the ‘pay driver’? Well he coolly and calmly drive the race of his life yesterday to take his maiden grand prix victory and Williams’ first for eight years.

The team deserved to enjoy and savour the win but shortly after the team had their photo taken celebrating the win a fire broke out gutting the garage and putting several team members in hospital. A sad end to what had been a fantastic weekend.

I look forward to a resurgent Williams over the rest of the season.

Photo Credit: NA.dir

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Checking through my spam folder this morning to see if anything legit had slipped through the net when this appeared. I really like the line about it being “very difficult for people to believe anything that comes through the internet”

Dear Friend,

I know you will be surprised to read my email. I got your contact from your Email domain, apart from being surprise you may be skeptical to reply me because based on what is happening on the internet world, one has to be very careful because a lot of scammers are out there to scam innocent citizens and this has made it very difficult for people to believe anything that comes through the internet but this is a different case

I am In 4th Battalion, 64th Armored Regiment unit here in Iraq,looking for a chainsaw to cut down a tree next door to our headquarters here in Baghdad stumbled upon a king’s ransom.

I can’t keep these funds so i want to move the funds to you to keep it In your safe account.The money is legit. If you are interested get back to me for details.You may wish to confirm with this link.

Humm, I wonder what happens if I click this link…

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It’s been years since I have been to anything that you might consider a music festival, although Hard Rock Calling might count I guess. My last “proper” festival would have been to Reading in 1988 when a very pissed off Ricky Ross, lead singer with Deacon Blue, declared “anyone else throws a bottle at us and we’re off” – you can guess what happened next. Since then I have been to many more gigs but not really any festivals. In the intervening years the number of festivals has mushroomed, quite how they can all be sustained I really don’t know. Well now I have found one that might just be for me – Weyfest.

Weyfest is held in Farnham, Surrey and this year seems to have headlining acts that sum up my formative years in 10cc, Steve Hackett (as part of Genesis) and Asia. They just need to add Marillion to the bill and I think they will have covered the full set! Another plus is that as Farnham is relatively close to where I live I can travel down each day and so don’t have to camp out which I might have been keen to do 25 years but I am way past slumming it now!

So this summer it looks like I might be joining my children (metaphorically rather than actually as they are going to Reading) and hitting the festivals once again.

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