The Canary Dave

Thanks for that Toby. I can no longer get fawanews.com. It has been very good, and well-used by football fans, but has it been taken down ,

 

What a great shame

 

It works for me? Are you using a VPN? It could be your internet provider blocking it.

 

I did wonder if it was my connection, as others were not reporting it as being down. There are a multitude of VPN's out there, both free and pay for, which has put me off trying one. None of the people who compare them seem to agree on which is the best. Seeing as I would use it for streaming football, would I use up a free GB allowance if there were six matches in a month., as I don't know. My son-in-law gave me a firestick with a free version of Windscape on it, so I could watch i player on TV, which worked well for about three weeks before BBC blocked it. It all appears to be a bit of a jungle out there with your info being shared with some providers, the opposite of private.




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I just tried Fawa here, we are in France too, and it is non connectable...
Toby I will have a word with you at some point to set up a vpn...cheers

 

I don't know if this will help either of you - Purple DNS. It seems to function in similar fashion to a VPN - the only thing it doesn't appear to do though is unblock geo-blocked content. When I tried it, it turned my VPN off.

It's free in the Amazon store - worth a try and if it doesn't work you can just delete it.

 

I use BrowSec VPN as a Chrome extension. Works great for anything blocked in UK/EU, it connects to a US server. That'd only work on laptops though, not sure about Firesticks, never tried to use one before...

 

I have just installed Browsec VPN and once again can see FawaNews. com. As you could see it I set it to the UK and it works. Thanks a lot.

It doesn't seem to work though with iPlayer

 

I'll try to find you a UK one that works for iPlayer if I get some downtime tomorrow!

 

A big day tomorrow as the Olympics flame comes to town. All sorts of events have been planned, so things will be going on from 2 pm until 11 pm. As it is May this will be a day to be outside, and at the moment the forecast is good. Barriers were being placed alongside the road this afternoon to keep it clear of parked cars, and the marketplace in front of the Town Hall was being prepared for an evening of music, food and drink. Things do happen here from time to time.

 

It is overcast and breezy, although the forecast rain has held off. Being the 29th of the month, the huge open air market is taking place in the adjoining community. At this time of the year it is a large tourist event, and some of the prices on goods reflect that. Some of the stallholders will go from one market to another one the following day, meaning that they have to collect all their items together after one market, then set them out again the next day somewhere else. Not good when we have a wet summer like this one. Have a good day all.

 

A bit of a special day in the hamlet tomorrow, as my neighbours Bernard and Josiane celebrate 60 years of marriage. It is also Josiane's birthday, as she was married on the day when she was just 17. Neither of them is above 5'.0" in height, but until some years ago they were both constantly on the go. Bernard had pneumonia quite badly and was ordered to take life much more slowly, which stopped the seasonal wood cutting and gardening that were a part of his life. I learnt a lot from him about the rhythm in really rural surroundings, as well as being told to stop working when it was too hot, sit down with him and a cold beer or two, and watch the Tour de France. While we were still living in the UK, but working on this house, having let them know we would be returning to do some more, we would arrive late on a February night, but find that they had lit the wood burner early, so the house would be warm. So I am happy for them both, although Bernard is rarely seen outside the house these days, and is clearly feeling all of his 85 years. At least I no longer fear meeting him driving along the lane too quickly for his or my good.

 

Back in my beloved Mexico after a good trip to see fam & friends in Europe.

Need to reboot life here.

Elections here Sunday, a woman will win!

 

Very pleased that you had a good trip Mex and you are back safely. I expect you noticed big changes from how you remembered things. EU elections here next weekend that I do not get a say in any longer. French TV is covering them very factually, a different approach to that in the UK.

 

Here we are in June, and still the rain keeps arriving. I don't know when I will ever get down to my fields and start growing things to eat. Still I have a mystery to solve this morning. Sometime since last night a warning sign has been placed on the verge opposite, and just along from the house. One of those with an exclamation mark on, but no other information. What it is there for I haven't a clue. There is no sign that the roof under where it has been placed is about to fall into the road. Maybe there will be some digging up the verge to lay some cables, which seems possible, but that will not happen today. So far no one has been seen to ask if they know what is going on, and the weather will not bring them out. Maybe there will be an answer tomorrow.

 

Well, I will mention it quietly, we have blue skies, it is warm, and no rain is forecast. The mystery of the warning sign has been solved. A second sign appeared about 20 metres down the road for traffic coming from the opposite direction. Having scanned the ground for sinkholes appearing or burst water pipes, I looked upwards. There was the problem. A telephone wire that goes across the road, although still attached at each end, it has sagged, and is now about three metres above the road. A passing tractor or the dustcart on Wednesday would bring it down. The question is, will they look up, or just scan the ground?

 

A second warm sunny day on the trot, so I have finally started the strimmer up again. Grass that is often cut by the council has been left this year, so I had to cut a footpath through shoulder-high grass just to get to the green lane. Having got there, I find a mass of brambles and blackthorn to be removed. I managed to get halfway to the field entrance before I ran out of steam, and now ache from the twisting and turning. Another decent day forecast for tomorrow, but we are off for a belated birthday lunch with friends at our favourite restaurant. Probably for the best.

 

Some news from my hometown that brought back some sad memories.

I don't know if the story of Natasha Ryan ever reached these shores. As a 14 year-old she ran away from home in 1998 and disappeared, leading both her family and the police to eventually believe that she was dead - murdered in fact by serial killer Leonard Fraser, a belief helped by the fact that he actually confessed to having killed her along with the murder of three other women as well as the rape and murder of a 9 year-old girl.

In one of the few, if not only, cases in which a murder victim turned up at her own murder trial and testified for the defendant, she appeared five years later at his trial in Brisbane - having apparently spent the whole five years living with her boyfriend & hiding in a cupboard whenever visitors came.

Last weekend she disappeared from home again - and this time was found dead on a golf course, I think it says a lot about human nature that people remember her name, but almost no-one remembers the name of the 9 year-old - even though the lurid details of her murder & rape (in that order) had been made public by the police in an effort to find both Fraser and her body.

 

It truly was dreadful ofh - two things from the whole episode affected me for a long time afterwards.
Having just recently started at university, I had some time on my hands to help look for the body of the 9 year-old victim - unsuccessfully. The police found her remains in bushland around 20k out of town about 3 weeks after the event - given the temperatures at the time, I'm glad I wasn't there for that.

I knew one of the other victims - a lady in her 30s - she had been missing for a while. Her body turned up after a heavy overnight storm washed away the topsoil where she had been buried. That was in the botanical garden near where we lived, and where I walked our dog every morning. Another dog walker actually found her body and shouted for help. I made the mistake of going over to see what was happening - and was physically sick when I saw what had been done to her. Not a pretty sight.