Chris Worfolk's Blog

Earlier this month, the Atheist Society held a meal at The Reliance.

To ensure the Leeds clubs are the best clubs they can be, I’m trying to get round some of the other local Toastmasters clubs to see what ideas we can take from them. The first club on my list was York EbOrators.

They’re a small club, similar to White Rose, though they do seem to have a slightly more established membership – they had most of the roles filled, with a few duplicates and interesting, omitted the sergeant at arms role entirely.

There were a number of differences that got me thinking – they have CC and CL achievement boards in the room, and they also include grammarian and ah counter in the evaluation voting. Definitely worth the visit, if only to truly appreciate the high standards that Leeds City has achieved.

Ulysses is heavy reading, so in between reading a chapter from it, I’m reading Discworld novels. So far, it’s proved a very successful formula. The most recent having been the ninth in the series, Eric.

It is much shorter than all of the novels so far – about half the length of the most of the others. It is based on Faust, but as I haven’t read that, the references were lost on me.

Never the less, it proved an interesting read. It isn’t my favourite Discworld novel, far from it, but the short length meant that the arguably sparse storyline didn’t get boring because it kept moving in a switch fashion. Plus having Rincewind in a novel is always a good thing.

Not a book for those new to Discworld, but for those who are already fans of the series, it makes for a short and fresh instalment.

In April, I mentioned a Huffington Post article discussing how everyone loves pornography, even in Islamic countries where it is banned.

I thought I would share some stats from some of Worfolk Online’s sites. Here are the most popular countries for our Finnish language site:

• 1. Finland
• 2. Iran
• 3. United States
• 4. Sweden
• 5. Estonia
• 6. Germany
• 7. Pakistan
• 8. United Arab Emirates
• 9. Turkey

Iran appears in the top nine of our English and Swedish language site too, and Saudi Arabia features in the top nine of our English site as well.

James Gandolfini, best known for his role as gangster Tony Soprano, passed away aged just 51, from a suspected heart attack. A Sopranos marathon is definitely in order.

Does this mean they sell hot drinks for £1.20 a cup, or they have a range of hot drinks priced between £1 and £20 per cup? Because that must be one fancy drink…

Actual places featured in the television series Heartbeat and a steam railway – what more could you ask for? Indeed, personally I would ask for less, given a steam railway is in itself enough, especially when you’ve never even seen Heartbeat.

Apparently it’s just a big hole. Does have a good name though.

The eighth book in the Discworld series, Guards! Guards!, follows the adventures of The Night Watch in the city of Ankh-Morpork. It is almost certainly my favourite novel in the series so far, as I love anything to do with the city, so spending an entire book there was a delight.

The more I read through the books, the more I can see Prachett’s world come together in one cohesive, precisely disordered and very entertaining world. Plus anything that features the head librarian is always going to be awesome.