It’s amazing how many times I’ve been involved in a drunken conversation about this and argued over the facts of how it was made - is it under the sea bed or sitting on top of it? Or is it floating half way down like giant industrial seaweed?! Who bloody knows? Some things are just better to argue about than to google for the real facts.

In French it is Le tunnel sous la Manche… Yes – the French version doesn’t quite have the same ring (now there’s a first!) as the English pet name for that beast of engineering, The Chunnel.

I’ve been through the Channel Tunnel more than once. Yep, there AND back. At least I assume that’s the case but I can’t really remember the ‘back’ having been drunk on all that good French wine (see picture).

Anyway, I did google it, just (obviously the French name for the chunnel is not something I just happened to know) – I didn’t read much of the boring (or should I say ‘boreing’ ahem) stuff about building it, but here’s what I have found out: There have been three fires; no one has died. At least not in Chunnel fires – a dozen refugees have died trying to sneak into the UK via the Chunnel jumping onto moving trains from bridges, tampering with railway equipment and the like.
One thing I did read about building it was that both England and France had machines on either side drilling the tunnel and whilst England's ones were called dull things like ‘1A’ and ‘2B’ the French gave their machines sexy lady names like Brigitte and Virginie…
Somehow I think men’s names may have been more appropriate for drilling machines…

I don’t often listen to local BBC Radio Bristol because, well, it’s a bit shit.
Anyway, I decided to check it out today because believe it or not, school closures in North Somerset do actually affect my life... (don’t ask)…
So I open up RadioBOX, (it’s a slick little app that allows one to stream most any radio station straight through one’s iPhone… yep, I sound like a wanker) in time for the 5 o’clock news and weather update and whaddaya know, I get hit right in the earholes with a conjoinulation…
Bristol really isn’t used to heavy snowfalls, and although we have been getting a lot recently it still causes complete carnage. This morning for example, the airport was closed and there were no buses or trains running, nor were any of the schools in the region open.
I stayed home, and so did everyone else judging by the number of snowball-armed delinquents running about in the streets in my neighbourhood.
So when the radio announcer mentioned that it’s Snowmageddon out there, I gained a new respect for our local radio.
He’s right though… it’s a kind of gorgeous picture postcard destruction scene out there; Cars have been abandoned on the sides of roads, people have been panic buying, and although I made it to the shop today, (vodka supplies at mine had become critical) narrowly escaping falling on my arse, the shelves were looking decidedly bare and the people had that crazed look in their eye – the look of people who have broken out of mental institutions (otherwise known as work and school) and were now roaming about looking for trouble. Or vodka.
Only time will tell what happens in the following days of the Icepocalypse…

One thing I love about conjoinulations is how very descriptive and self explanatory they are, and the whole recycling two old concepts into something nu and snazzy.

Actually, one other thing I like about conjoinulations is when they're so obscure that a fully long-winded explanation is needed to disclose the subtleties of the concept. But that's another day altogether.

I got a text from NYC. Someone, who shall remain nameless, clearly doing exactly what we do when WE go on holiday together - eating and drinking - had just spied 'Cidertini' (hmm - that sounds kinda good - metropolitan chic meets West Country tractor driver) and a 'Chaiaccino' (hippy festie meets starbucks office drone possibly?).

Clearly I am none of the above, or people that know me would never let me forget that I'd written about such types (do such types exist?) as if they were some sort novelty...
Actually... strangely enough, on second thoughts, maybe I do have a little bit of each in me. (Except the starbucks bit.)

Stepping out in Brixton yesterday (yet another weekend spent in my London Pied a Terre :-P [sorry], avoiding facing up to my new/real life which apparently exists, albeit largely without me, in Bristol) I discovered the first negative side effect of the new English smoking ban in pubs – all those leery ol’ cunts that you normally don’t have to deal with unless you actually go into the pub, are now outside on the street spouting forth their opinions to anyone who is unfortunate enough to pass by close enough, commenting on personal attributes, and generally making wankers out themselves.

Which reminds me, have you ever been on holiday somewhere, you’re wandering around some unknown area, maybe a little lost (not seriously lost, maybe just a little off track), you see a quaint little pub so you decide to stop in for a pint or to check out the local cider?

Rocking in, with all the confidence of a city dweller, you are suddenly put in your place when confronted by a wall of Smocals (no, it’s got nowt to do with smoking, this time), they’re the folk that have chosen that particular establishment as their territory, clearly maintained by the fact that they spend 17 hours of every day there, are practically fused to their bar stool and the bar would actually collapse if it weren’t for them fervently propping it up.

Anyway, their attitude to outsiders is what I’m describing with the term ‘smocals’, or ‘smug locals’ – princely as they are in their comfort zone, looking down their red and misshapen noses with double vision at any hapless traveller who dares to blunder into ‘their’ pub – you may as well stroll into their own living room without knocking for all the silent disdain directed your way…and don’t even think about trying to order a vodka, lime and tonic.
However, drop them in the middle of a bar off Shoreditch High Street, and see them drown like rats in a barrel.

Ooh – sound bitter don’t I? Don’t worry, I’ve been on the other side of this too – sometimes there are just days when I just don’t feel like helping that tourist with a backpack the size of the African continent struggling to read their map in the gale force wind, secure in the knowledge that I know where I’M going, at least.