Juliette Heppell My Home Page Mail me at: -- juliette@ultralab.anglia.ac.uk

Damon Albarn loses his shirt...

Sailing

I am 17 and race an International Mirror Class Dinghy, GBR 69583. My first Mirror was called Pootle for reasons lost in the mists of time. My new boat is called Ptwootle for obvious reasons and this year I sail with Hannah Stodel as my crew. Sailing is a big part of my life. Together with my sister I was selected as part of the UK squad for the World Championships, back in August 95 (my brother was also in the squad) and stonking news Melissa and I won the ladies title whilst Clive and Toby won the whole championship. Anyone out there want to sponsor the Brightlingsea Squad - guaranteed success!!

Read my report of the 1995 Mirror World Championships. It's worth it!

I belong to Brightlingsea Sailing Club and the Colne Yacht Club, both clubs, by the way have a very strong joint mirror fleet with many up and coming teams who look like they will be good. We also have a growing hornet fleet which (hopefully will be traveling the circuit next year following the b'sea tradition). They have a long tradition of racing going back to the last century. The original America's Cup boats from the UK were crewed almost entirely by sailors from Brightlingsea and Wivenhoe (just up the coast). We have had a string of local sailors in the Olympic Sailing Squad over the years and a medal or two.

Music

I play the flute in the Colne Community School Orchestra. We have a wind band and a jazz band and have just completed a tour of Holland - good cycling (we cycled 84 miles!), cheap beer (the drinking age is 16), great cheese (well my dad liked it anyway!). I also like lots of different sorts of music - I am very into indie music (Blur being the exception). I get to go and see Blur twice (hopefully) this year - the first time was the 17th September when I got to see them in Clacton with my mate - cool or what? Speaking of blur check out the groovy BLUR pages at Blur Central. They are worth it! (see above) I like Pulp, Oasis, Levellers, Blur, Belly, Green Day, supergrass etc so if you can find anything that you reckon I might like give us a shout! There are also links to some of these at Blur central!

Live Export Protest

I think that moving animals in lorries across the country before loading them in a ship and taking them the over the North Sea, in both the wild winter seas and in the very hot summers just so that they can be killed in the end or be put in a tiny veal crate was complete madness. We saw animals suffer terrible condition in the lorries as they come through the town and inevitably everyone wanted the trade to stop. Sending over 600 riot police into our small town to clear the streets and force the lorries through seemed like a waste of money and did nothing to calm the situation. In the end we had to protest for month after month but it was always good humoured on our side with lots of joking and singing. The oldest arrested was 83 and youngest 13 with over 500 arrests before we won (out of 5,000 in the town).

Here are some policemen offering me their views on my way to school (can you read their numbers? me neither, black on black didn't seem to work). I was only arrested once but since they arrested just about the whole town (including teachers!) this is no big deal. Anyway, in the end we won and there was excellent atmosphere at the end with everyone partying. BE HAPPY its good news, if we can do it here perhaps it can be stopped everywhere else!