finally got round to updating www.davescollections.com with the latest two found photos

we had a multitudinal luncheon activity today. 10 round the table which was great. children played in one room whilst adults chatted in another.

well, that's not quite true.

the children DID play in another room, but the adults played dressing up in wigs:

and doing the jigsaws and a marble run which we originally put out for the children:

here is a contributed sign from some friends. they saw it at Hughenden Manor. it says:

"No more food orders due to no more food - Many apologies"

that's the voice of english heritage (national trust actually) saying it like it is

it's still august and not lets forget it. i thought it might be the first of September today, but we have 31 days in August. it's like we are pleading for the summer to continue forever.

my advice is just to go with the flow. the quicker we get this winter started, the quicker it will be over with. let's get our coats out the cupboard and start enjoying some cold weather.

i can smell a chicken cooking downstairs (because there is one cooking) and I feel very Christimasy.

Let's hope Jesus doesn't come back before lunchtime else we won't get to taste it. I suspect they'll have some nice lunches in Heaven though.

we tried to go to Hillier Gardens today.

It looked great but it was closed when we got there because of a concert in the evening. we will visit this place another time ...

blokes toilets at Broadlands.

there was more to it than just this hose pipe and mains lead

there were a load of sinks in a row:

after visiting jane's granny we went to Broadlands, which was the home of Lord Mountbatten.

It costs £3 each (for the growned ups) to go for a walk round the grounds (you can go round the house if you pay more but that didn't seem a great idea with the kids). for £3 you got to go round the exhibition and we spent about an hour there and the guides were really nice. i still felt it was a little expensive.

we picnic-ed in the carpark, but there is a nice picnic area inside

kezia enjoyed shutting these massive gates:

i don't know much (or care about) dogs. but here is a no-dogs sign of a version i haven't seen before.

here is jane's granny:

we went to visit her this morning (she's esther and kezia's great granny). she's 92 i think, but mentally totally alert. fantastic !

the first chair i saw this evening was a swivel chair. it contained an empty can of beer and an old cigarette packet. i suspect this was once the seat of a smoking alcoholic who liked to face in different directions whilst sitting.

the second chair i saw was made of wicker and contained old egg shells. i suspect this chair was once the seat of a bird

i love how unproductivity is catching. here we are celebrating lucy and arjan's leaving again.

the unwritten rule on such occasions is to remain in the venue until the most senior member of staff leaves. any earlier is seen as not being a 'team player' and later reveals you to be a slacker.

we were delighted therefore when will ordered icecream and banana.

it was then passed around the table like a last supper. we were provided with plenty of spoons which was nice.

a couple of my colleagues went to canada and found a glove mountain (as you do). here it is in all it's fingerly glory. doesn't it look gloverly ?

click for big version

here are a load of union jack thongs hanging on a stand in Oxford Street

here is a fridge near Marble Arch. in the background you can see grid locked power outage traffic. interesting that all the lights are on ...

there was a massive power cut in london last night.

i blame mars and david blaine. Blaine is in london to live in a glass box for 6 weeks. he stood on top of the London Eye yesterday morning as it went round. if there had been a power cut then he would have been stuck.

he was probably in the east coast of america when they lost their power a week or so back too.

so i think it's him that has made it happen. the proximity of mars has increased his powers beyond that which even he can control.

here is a a picture of the grid lock around Marble Arch at 9.30pm last night.

here was a strange thing that happened at Paddington Station. for some reason the electronic screen which said "slippery floor" has fallen over sideways

here is a sign on a urinal in a burger restaurant in Oxford Street

last night it was lucy and arjan's leaving do. it will be different without them about. in particular the number of staff on our floor will reduce from 8 to 6 which is different for a start.

here is arjan:

sara got possessed by the spirit of her moustachioed £20 note

sara and herve respect each other's personal space.

everyone looked surprise most of the time

herve shows off my wooden tie

leaving dos are good for catching up with old colleagues. everyone is on their best behaviour of course

mandie left ages ago, but came back wearing the shoes that she got as a leaving present.

I'm sure someone said "what do you want when you leave Mandie" and she said "oh, a nice leaving do". someone misheard it as 'leaving shoe' and rest is history

here are the shoes:

here is mandie again, this time looking sternly at sherella (another ex-colleague)

and here she looks strangely at herve

on a thames train at 11pm in reading

sara in the office folded a £20 note in half and by sheer fluke ended up with a moustachioed queen.

what are the chances of that ?

i had 23 pence left. so i left it in the street to see who would pick it up and take it away. people came and spoke to me and even offered me more money. i waited some time. then my camera batteries ran out. so i left the cash and went on my way.

here is a close up of the monies

i have never seen either of the following:

* a piece of cheese riding a space hopper down the street
* a bearded man who can actually fly

both of these relate to transport which is interesting

i'm looking at introducing a new directory enquiry service (no honestly, i am).

here were some people advertising 11 88 88. and you thought you had problems (or maybe it was me who just thought that).

there was much discussion over the construction of the giant gerkin this morning. some people will complain about any new protrusion.

i went to our Brick Lane office today and took a photo of it from two locations

Here is it can be seen with pictures of people in underwear in the foreground. Ed of london is not to be confused with Brother Edd who is not in london (though he has been to visit london on a number of occasions)

this one shows it together with a petticoat lane sign and the barbican tower:

update: you can also see it in the background here

sh1ft.org projects

next to Smithfield meat market is an old building with a massive ancient sign on the wall informing us, the public, that is "the central cold storage".

I guess this is where they kept their meat cold in days gone buy. it was with some delight therefore that i saw an abandoned fridge outside it's front door !

there is much in the news about the Hutton enquiry. the enquiry itself is of interest, but of equal interest is the media surrounding the trial (which is itself about manipulation of the media etc).

they aren't allowed to film in the courts so they get people to draw what happened instead.

brief aside: do you remember when they had to do that for people in Ireland. i was too young to understand at the time of course. poor children must have thought ireland was full of drawn characters like in the comics they read like the Beano. i support that is why there are so many Irish comics (it's the way I tell them) - when they are not betting on pies climbing up walls of course.

anyway, i always assumed that the drawings were nicely scanned in before they appeared on the news. but in fact they are stuck on old doors and filmed for the telly:

here is the media frenzy:

upon closer inspection of the photo i realise i may have been spotted taking it (they appear in the top right of the photo above):

i'm glad there were plenty of barriers between me and them

hands up if you love maths. hands up if you love regulation. here's a treat for you people:

i'm reading a tremendous document at the moment. It's called:

"Fixed Narrowband Retail Services Market Identification and analysis of markets, Determination of market power and Setting of SMP conditions, Explanatory statement and notification"

You can get it in two parts from oftel (part1) & (part2). It's 365 pages. one for every day of the year.

it contains this terrific formula:

so, i say to you "do the math" (no 's' please)

my brother is called edd. we refer to him as 'brother edd'. even esther calls him 'brother edd' which is a good name for an uncle.

this morning brother edd informed me of the following:

"i'm looking for a couple of wedding present albums but all i get is cutlery sets"

it makes you think doesn't it

esther has been having a few horse lessons recently. a friend of ours asked how she got on. i replied with the obvious answer.

today represents the first day back to work for lots of people. summer hols are officially over after the Bank Holiday.

and so it was with great delight that I saw the vagabond / tramp chap who sits outside the back of Middlesex Hospital. he's not been on his usual step for the last 4 weeks and i was starting to worry. i suspect he's been off on holiday somewhere. probably down to the back of a hospital south of the river

at the swallowfield show today there was Terrier Racing. a comedy man was doing the comparing. he was completely potty. he was on old man with a flat cap. and he loved dogs.

his job was to compere whilst organising a race up and down the field for terrier dogs. he announced that he had a chap helping him the day before "but he got sun stroke and hasn't turned up today".

he informed us that Terrier Racing was originally believed to have originated in Ireland: "The Irish will bet on anything. they love gambling they do. they'd even bet on two pies climbing up a wall".

i suspect he said "flies" but i like the idea of competitive pie climbing better.

county shows are brilliant. if you like massive vegetables then these are the places to be.

here are some massive vegetables:

this man won loads of trophies. unfortunately there wasn't a category for best turned-out competitor or he would have won that too !

i'm now an official award winning photographer ! I entered 7 photos earlier in the week for the Swallowfield Show.

My total prizes were:
3 first places
1 second place
1 third place
Best Photo in Show rosette
Best Photo in Show trophy (for one year)
and ... £7.50 in prize money

The Best Photo in Show and Rosette:

the prize envelope (containing the £7.50 winnings):

winning the trophy was mixed blessings. prize giving wasn't until after the raffle was drawn (which seemed to have about a million prizes - he mentioned that the ladies filling in the details on raffle tickets had filled so many that they had got "writers cramp". we call that RSI nowadays don't we?).

Anyway, we got to the show at around 1pm and didn't get away until after 5.30pm ! kids weren't particularly impressed. Although esther is proud of her dad, and of the fact that her knees won first prize in the hoovering picture (see below)

the trophy prizes being announced:

collecting the trophy

proud trophy winner

more details:

this bus sign is written in pictures and words in case the bus driver doesn't speak english. in which case he probably can't understand 'except' and will go up there anyway. if he's the bus driver then that's fine cause it's no entry except for buses.

a picture paints a thousand words. you could save a lot of typing that way.

5 children playing (they have to change the sign if they have friends round)

and just round the corner:

10 slow children playing

a country path

style guru

three girls in a row

the last thing we saw in the festival grounds was this beer selling tent. in the half light and from an angle it DID look like it said "carry out ear". in fact it said carry out bar. picture isn't very clear. but then neither was my vision. i think it must have been all the second hand smoke i inhaled (we only drank coke (-a-cola) and water all day)

at the Reading Festival there were lots of playing cards all over the place on the way back to the train. too many to count and archive individually, so here is just once sample shot:

hats were very popular at the Reading festival. here was a stall selling old lady's hats for £2.

damon albarn fell off the stage which was quite amusing. we started off down the front but then got squashed so moved back out slightly. from this position it was only worth watching on the giant telly screens and we couldn't really see hte stage too well. and if you are watching a giant telly, then why not watch it at home.

we watched 3/4 of their set then wandered off for our train home.

(from the telly screens):

black rebel motorcycle club were good. not great, just good. they covered a White Stripes song which was fair enough as it was thanks to White Stripes not playing that they were playing. They sound better on CD in my opinion. it wasn't helped by the fact there was a massive water fight going on around us.

Beck was totally bonkers. he had a keyboard on a trolley which meant he could play and wander about. his backing band were fantastic with robot dancing..

there were some excellent clouds about, including a fantastic sunbeam thing going on.

and a little later as it was getting dark

I thought the Doves were great. some excellent guitar and keyboard noises.

some people clapped when they liked the music

Jane spotted Edith Bowman near where we were standing

when we arrived the Libertines were playing. they were good, but i didn't get any photos.

Then came The Streets. I found them a little boring and a bit too 'ladish'. they had sound trouble which seemed to happen everytime they threw beer all over the stage and each other. I wonder if the sound man was trying to tell them something.

we got a good standing spot two people from the front on the right hand side of the stage. unfortunately there was a giant camera stick which kept getting in the way. it whizzed above our heads and often obscured our view. here is the camera in the sky and the man working it

just been reading the kleeneze catalogue. you can get toilet role holders which have a radio intergrated. nice idea.

off to the reading festival now. byeee

it's an exciting weekend ! not only is it a bank holiday, meaning a lucky bonus day off work, but it's the Reading Festival weekend. Jane and I are going for the day tomorrow.

it's also exciting as i'm entering my first photo competition (hence the trip to Swallowfield earlier in the week). it's at the Swallowfield Show see. Go to the site and enjoy the music !

i've entered 7 different categories, but had only 5 photos at the beginning of the week. so i had to take and print the last two this evening (they have to go to be displayed tomorrow).

Here is one of my last minute photos. i hope the judges are surrealists ...

judging happens Sunday, but we aren't going until Monday so I'll find out what happened then. gulperama.

one benefit of working from home is instant access to the day's post.
i was sent this piece of headjoy from some friends in the north. they said it's all the rage in Italy. i put it on to demonstrate. i had to take the photos myself as there is no one else in the house at the moment !

once i had got the thing on:

what if you can't find this site ? well, here is a google links to bring you back to the blog.

"macaroon macaroon macaroon"

It's one thing being the top of a Google list. it's quite another to be the ONLY link !

i use windows terminal client to access a server at work. i always forget the shortcut keys. particularly the ones to change the screen size (leaving me unable to get to my 'real machine' without disconnecting from the server).

here is a handy reminder for me:
186624 - Terminal Server Client Shortcut Key Combinations

when you have nothing to say, should you just shut up, or tell people you have nothing to say.

macaroon macaroon macaroon

another set

have you ever tried to park a pigeon ? here are two double parked in a nice parking space. they were reserving it i suspect

i saw two chairs on my way home this evening:

this chair doubles up as a laser printer holder:

and there were two very posh chairs (and a nice table, and a naff table) left here:

what's behind this door in our office you ask ?

click for the answer

i'm looking to sell some old theatre programs from the 1930s onwards. i went to charing cross road to see if anyone was interested. cecil court is the street for speciality bookshops.

i found a shop which was full of theatre programs. it was full because he had bought lots and not sold lots. as a result he wasn't able/willing to buy any more.

he recommended adverts in the back of stage magazine. i also found this site:
Antiques UK

here is a lost photo. it's wripped up and over some railings so i couldn't reach it. there was also a very strong smell of urine which put me off retreaving the pieces. nearly all the bits are face down so I couldn't see what the photo was of. oh well.

two failed congestion charging busting devices this morning:

jack knifed trolley. nicely parked up in an alloted parking space. hope they paid the meter

and here on some wooden trolley bits which was obviously such a failure it had been dumped in the bin

i saw at least 20 elastic bands in various places on my walk to work this morning. i was deliberately looking out for them following a comment added to an old post where i mentioned i had seen elastic bands.

Here are three of the many bands. perhaps the mysterons from thunderbirds were actually elastic bands ?

on the way home tonight shout "macaroon macaroon macaroon" three times everytime you see a bald man.

if you are at home, turn the telly on, open the window and play the same game, shouting out the window every time you see a bald man.

if anyone presents you with a macaroon biscuit as a result of your proclamations, don't trust them.

i posted my experience of using a couple of the new directory enquiries numbers last night.

imagine my surprise when I saw the headline of the Daily Mail this morning in the newsagents:

"118 the great phones fiasco" which refers to the new DQ services !

Where this blog leads, the popular media will follow.

they are filming some movie near my office this morning. very exciting. i didn't ask who was in it or what the film was. here is a picture from the street

have you used the new 118 numbers for directory enquiries yet ? I phone both 118 118 and 118 500 this evening ...

it dawned on me this evening that my life doesn't really get dark anymore. i don't know if it ever did get dark even. everywhere i go is surrounded by either daylight (thanks to the sun) or streetlights (thanks to the local authorities).

The key is consistency. Let consistency unlock the door

develop your own "departure message". don't just say "goodbye". craft a neat sentence and use it always. make it your hallmark.

Here are a few examples to get you started:

* Be seeing you
* All the very best
* Toodle pip
* Missing you already

Find one that fits and wear it out some. Let me know what you come up with.

no entry through the parcel tape. tourists could get stuck like flies on flypaper

Found by grahame:

He found it whilst at a meeting in London. Let's let Grahame continue the story:

"I just popped to the loo in the coffee break and, to my pleasure,
discovered a photo to add to your collection which I will hand over to you
in due course (or get it scanned in at the office). For the record:

5th Floor gents toilet
TUC Conference Centre

The picture was laying face up on the hand drier. It was slightly bent,
adding to the appropriately glum face for such a position."

thanks Grahame. great find.

i had lunch in the British Museum with the author of Dragoon.

The British Museum is full of smiling faces:

Maybe one day i'll investigate some more ...

here for my remembrance as much as anyone else's is a link to a voice-conferencing service called powwownow.

You call a national rate number 0870 22 333 44 and enter any old PIN number. there is no set up fee, registration or extra usage charges.

So to make a voice conference you just need to make up a 6 to 9 digit long PIN number (eg the last load of digits from your phone number), tell the other in your voiceconference the PIN and what time to phone the 0870 22 333 44 number.

It's all very good.

Advert over ...

and so the transport misery continues. i think it's a given that my journeys to and from work will take at least 2 hours each way for the next two weeks :-(

i saw this plant pot on a post yesterday. it was here again this morning so i took a photo. i'll keep an eye on it for you

here is one of those cans they put proper movie film in. perhaps it had a section of a latest pre-release blockbuster. i should have gone in to the road, opened it up and sold the contents to a newspaper. but i'm not that kind of chap. so, its contents remain a mystery

glasses in a parking space

beetroot

(at least it is down by the local anotements allotments)

here is a photo of a lady peeping out of a bin. peek-a-boo lady

i had 200 digital photos developed at Boots using their overnight service and it only cost £20 !

They have a special offer on until mid-September and they print the name of the file on the back of each shot which you can use to make a date stamp.

Plain English Campaign: The gobbledygook generator

bad morning for transport. looks like being a very bad fortnight. my train line has been reduced to hardly any trains and the ones that are running are stopping at every station. yeah. packed hot slow trains. great.

it's all explained in a nice press releasefrom thames trains.

it's a pain for commuters and anyone trying to get to the Reading festival this bank holiday weekend.

Someone else who was having a bad monday morning - a car randomly crashed in to a parked car. two police men but no driver at the scene.

i suspect it was driven by a badger. badgers are notorious bad drivers, partly as they can't see out the window and press the pedals at the same time. this is why they usually drive automatics.

this was a manual car. they were asking for trouble.

wow. i missed the fact that i did my 750th post yesterday.

just come across this nice site: Gary Alexander - the start page

got some excellent london street photography. i like the 3d stuff too ...

esther and kezia enjoying an icecream at Pooch and Party's (Jane's parents). They have luxury icecream. We only have necessity icecream in our house so it was a real treat.

Just to be authentic we had to queue up and we were handed our icecreams through the kitchen window. there were no flakes and i kicked up a stink.

i had to stop the car and take this photo out of the window. wife and kids very impressed by my dedication to finding items in the street. this was in the countryside miles from anywhere. why would anyone bother to drive for miles in to the countryside to dump a fridge ? the council can come and collect them from your house i think. nought so queer as folk

in the middle of silchester we saw this fork taped to a post. very strange. if it were an emergency fork then it wouldn't have to be a very time sensitive emergency if you wanted to extract the fork.

"we didn't know which way to go as there was a fork in the road"

we had a family trip to Calleva today. It's an old Roman town and once was as important as London. now it's just a some falling down walls in the middle of some lovely countryside.

however, today there was an archaelogical dig in the middle of it arranged by Reading University. They have a website about it

esther even got to have a little dig in a pit of mud:

here is kezia and her grandma at the ampitheatre entrance:

we have borrowed a load of wooden train set from esther's preschool for the summer. i spent a happy hour on saturday night constructing a most excellent track. i was delighted to see that jane hadn't packed it away over night. so was kezia !

we went for a walk in windsor park today. very good it was too.

here is king george VI on a bike horse:

here is esther with windsor castle in the background:

seen in windsor park

i write to you as a sad failure. i just tried to whip my office in to a frenzy by holding an impromptu disco (an illegal desk-based rave maybe). we had music by Apples In Stereo pumping out from my PC and I even jiggled my shoulders slightly.

unfortunately after approximatly 40 seconds i realised no one else was interested so i turned the music off again and steadied my shoulders.

i'm not sure where i went wrong. might have something to do with the auditors being in the building and most of my desk-mates being accountants ? either on its own could stop the groovest of discoteques. together they are a lethal combination.

i await feedback from my colleagues as to why my 'disco project' failed.

i have a theory about conservation of fun and inflatable things.

premis: every act of fun has an equal and opposite amount of misery.

think about balloons: kids love them, then they pop or get stuck in a tree (the balloons not the kids - have you ever seen a kid pop ? kids drink pop of course)

also applies to bouncy castles. there are always crying kids around bouncy castles, either from bashing in to people or from being told its time to come off.

have you ever wondered what is on the other side of the smoke in 'Stars In Their Eyes' ? i recon it it's a space time portal thing. anywhere you see smoke look to see if there is anyone dressed as elvis, buddy holly etc entering or emerging from it.

perhaps i've been reading too much harry potter and this is an extension to the Flue network thing. or maybe i've stumbled upon the truth ...

here is one entry point i saw at near Paddington Station this morning. A man had just gone through the smoke and dissapeared (he could have just gone in to the van of course).

my chronic pain is called neurophathic pain which means my brain feels pain even if the original source of the pain has long since left. my particular pain is in a particular sensitive part of my body (for blokes) and is very unpleasant.

one way of blocking this type of pain is to give the patient an epidural. sometimes this is enough to trick the brain in to thinking that the pain has ended and once the effect has worn off, the pain magically dissappears.

shortly after i arrived at the pain clinic a little old man was helped over to the seat next to mine. he was very sweet, but very old and a little unsteady on this feet.

i got the train in to reading this morning. took about 1.5 hours door to door so had a bit of waiting.

whilst waiting i read an oftel explanatory document on rules for service providers under the new regime in case any one is interested in how i spend my time during the day ;-)

I then met Jane in town and swapped her my train ticket for the car keys and drove myself home (she'll come back later with the kids on the train). but not before paying for the car park.

the first pay machine i put my ticket in first said £2 to pay, but it owuld not take notes or cash. instead it said go to the machine two floors below to pay by those methods. so i went down two flights of stairs, inserted my card and it told me i had to pay £3 ! When i looked at the ticket it had just rolled over to another hour. how completely annoying.

how do you move an addictive gambler around the country ? answer is to buy a van, put the gambling machine in the back and coax him in with a stick.

outside the hospital is a pedestrian crossing. one crossing, but two sets of buttons each time. good to have a fail safe emergency standby

hoorah. i've been discharged from the Pain Clinic. Doesn't mean I'm completely better, but does mean they can't do anything more for me !

it's a shame really as their new clinic is fantastic compared to their old location. the new one has airconditioning and everything.

the berkshire hospital is fantastic at the moment as it's riddled with funny little passages which aren't signposted very well (or if they are they are in latin or something). Here is a wooden tunnel:

I had to walk through the middle of the breaks and fractures department to get to the Pain Clinic (which seemed fair). it was absolutely full ! i was going to take a picture of about 200 people in bandages, plasters etc but the mob looked slightly unhappy !

the pain clinic has moved from the rather aptly names Battle Hospital to the Royal Berkshire hospital. I usally allow 2 hours by public transport each way to get to the hospital from home. not sure if the new hospital is closer or not. I'll just have to find out ...

i got a spam email today entitled "Get Seductive L|ps - no man can resist!" a really tempting offer i have to admit.

they haven't used the letter 'i' in lips. so maybe, rather than seductive lips they are actually selling seductive LPs, as in Long Player records.

maybe someone has thought of an inovative way of flogging their old vinyl.

i'm off to the hospital to go to the pain clinic tomorrow. be interesting to see what happens. i've weened myself off my gabapentins and now only need to reactive use co-proxomal as required. compared to this time last year it's fantastic. i've had a mostly pain free life for the last 2 months i think.

however, i have been in quite a lot of pain the last couple of days. i think it's probably the temperature. perhaps that's why i went a bit bonkers earlier

i got annoyed today at work. doesn't happen much, but i'm sick of people commenting when i leave to go home at 4.45pm. i often work on the train on the way in, i'm in the office around 8.15, usually don't stop for lunch and usually end up doing extra work in the evenings. when i work from home i usually do even longer hours as i'm keen people don't think i'm skiving.

they've laid new road round the corner from the office and it looks like they have handrawn the road signs. i would love to meet the man who draws the bikes. I wonder if 'bike man' does any other signs ?

have you seen the muffin man that lives on dury lane ? here is a shop which sells muffins and is based in dury lane.

this bus looks like its been built using the same technology as circus clowns' cars.

this man has drawn a square around himself in chalk using a ruler. he looks set for the duration (whatever that means). in life we all put up barriers.

i may pop back later and see what has developed ...

here are a number of different softdrink cans on a parking meter

this morning i saw a neat row of unopened cigars on the pavement:

here are the individual cigars:

upsway down washing machine with its guts ripped out.

... concentrate on the sausage and not the sizzle

you may wonder about the legality of signs which threaten fines for dog fouling, and more importantly who gets to keep the money. here's the answer travelling through UK parliament at the moment:

Litter and Fouling of Land by Dogs Bill

I was watching Open All Hours last night.

a customer entered the shop having recently stood in some dog poo. He said "I blame the owners".

The Ronnie Barker character responded "I agree ... and the dogs"

FKBKO - For Kids By Kids Online

Welcome to About Cookies, a guide to controlling cookies on your computer

keep an ordered note of all typologies. be sure to categorise them appropriately.

an old favourite find this morning: a fridge

it's length fitted exactly the width of the raised pavement it was resting on. sort of makes you feel it was meant to be left there don't you think ?

i walked a different route to work today. i didn't much care for it. it took about 5 minutes longer, but that may have been due my hesitation at traffic crossings due to my lack of familiarisation with the road layout.

on the way I saw these bits of meat:

you don't want to leave meat outside even on cold days. leaving it out on very hot days is asking for trouble. i particularly disliked the bits on the right of the picture:

on the way home this evening I walked past the waste disposal part of the Middlesex Hospital. For the discarded gloves spotter, this is a rich seam.

this first photo shows about 6 pairs of gloves spread over the floor (esp the top left of this photo)

this glove was also there, slightly out of the shot above

you have to feel sorry for the machines in this weather. people and animals can have a drink and cool down. if you are a machine you are simply a slave to your environment. especially if your job is to cool the environment.

the aircon in the building is having a very bad day today. Here is a small snippet of some of the sounds it is producing this morning:
Download wav file (25KB) It sounds rather poorly. aw bless.

update: what it actually sounds like is a deep fat fryer

this morning i saw three chairs:

one burnt (the hot seat)

one stool

one comfy

it's very hot again today. Heathrow which is just a few miles away broke the 100F mark - a UK first.

we had a BBQ with Phil, Sally, Alan and Ann. I managed to get the cooking right this time

kezia stayed cool in her hat, sunglasses and obligatory water bottle

later she realised it was better if she sat in the pool and people poored water on her from a watering can:

I've now set up the blog so it automatically updates the following sites when i add a new entry:

• movable type


• blo.gs


• weblogs.com
  

we had our friends andy and gill round for tea last night. candlelit meal in the backgarden. my feet got bitten lots, but i didn't realise until this morning.

I entertained annoyed our guest by using the night time setting on my camera to take lots of photos. none came out except this one which is a shot looking directly up at our apple tree. It was illuminated by candle light hence the weird colours

esther has gone to stay with my mum this weekend, so we took kezia to the steam rally. we sat in front of this steam organ for 20 minutes waiting for some dancers. The music whilst we were listening was very nice. the dancers when they arrived were a little long in the tooth and it proved to be very disturbing. we went home soon after they started.

here is the 100 year old musical instrument

We British aren't very good at tanning. Usually we don't get enough sun to make it worth going for a proper tan. This year's extreme weather has caught most of us by surprise. 35.6%C today apparently. But it's placed us Brits in a fully position of having a decent pre-tan on our arms, but a white body underneath.

This man, heavily bearded, chose that now was the time to reveal his hidden self, giving a negative T-shirt effect. I think it works for him though.

It good to know that the word is a better place and that middle class England has moved on from the smut filled sexist 70s.

We went to the Knowl Hill Steam Fair today and they had a fair there. There was one ride where people sat in a row and got thrown all over the place.

The sign on the door revealed a particularly special offer

Whilst we were there all the riders were payers

I've heard of local restaurants catching cats, dogs etc to cook and serve to unsuspecting customers. I hadn't heard of 'girl guide hot dogs' before

note: I've put this in the 'signs of dogs' category as it is a sign of a (hot) dog.

( not to be confused with guide dogs )

my local cashpojnt had crashed with a windows-like error message reading:

Withdrawal Flow
Run time error '91'
Object variable on With block variable not set

there was a flash mob 10 seconds walk from my office on Thursday evening and I missed it :-(

FlockSmart.com

i like the idea of flashmobs a lot, but some of their randomness/obvciousness is taken away by the very fact they consist of lots of people all doing the same random thing at once.

i much prefer a random list of instructions where individuals go and do their own private mobbing independently, possibly reporting back to a central point. It seems much more surreal for dozens of unconnected people to wander in to their local supermarket and ask for a bag of loagy-beads (made up thing) all on the same day, all around the world. no-one locally would be any the wiser.

I have been (unwittingly) trying to do this with my Instructions For The Week category.

I was inspired by an exhibition at the Royal Festival Hall foyer a few years ago which was about the Fluxus movement

I may consider a new blog to concentrate on this. What do you think ?

I saw this in the gutter. We don't know who dropped it, so we are unable to say if it is a lover's tif

found on the floor:

"This frame is re-stained and the perspect clean (no need to unwrap)"

i walked past a Christian bookshop this afternoon and saw this Teeny Weeny Bible (it was about a centimetre square). I'm one of those people who believe that the Bible is true ie it contains God's word (I would call myself a Christian).

i find the concept of a Tiny Bible quite interesting however and it's good to see Christians are keeping up with the current trend for miniaturisation. i want my mini-communion too please.

concorde is stopping flying soon. it's sad because it's a beautiful plane and gets you to america quickly (if you can afford it). On the down side it flies over our house twice a day and is INCREDIBLY noisey. the sound certainly won't be missed.

here is a photo i took of it this evening as it went over

these nails were all over the rails. they are clippy naily things for attaching wires to walls etc. i thought they looked nice in a randomly spread kind of way

it's impossible to have a quiet drink in a london pub. here is a man minding his own business, whilst being stalked by the paparazzi.
who is he ? dunno. no one famous i think (i didn't recognise him). probably a local news program "man drinks alcohol in pub - we have exclusive footage"

it's sara's brithday tomorrow so she has brought some cakes today. cake eating in the office is good.

I used to work for an organisation which would shut down for 15 minutes every morning and the whole company would go to a common room and drink tea. they would do the same in the afternoon and drink coffee. it had a really cool laid back atmosphere. they also used to have a company meeting once a week where people prayed for the work of the organisation.

it was over 13 years ago I worked for UCCF. maybe the tea/coffee breaks are gone now ?

"it's not raining"

ooops. i accidentally sent an email entitled "mad french people" to the MD of one of my company's european subsidiary.

The email was an invitation to go see LesGrooms at lunchtime. i suspect he won't fly over to the UK for that particular treat.

my advice to you today is to send your most random email to a senior member of staff in your organisation. To enhance the effect, send to someone who lives in another country/culture who you have never met

currently, it is acknowledged, we are experience extreme weather conditions. in the uk (and loads of other places) it's really hot. every one has some advice to give about how best to stay cool / act sensibly in hot weather.

My advice is simply this: protect your chocolate.

Treat your chocolate right and you'll have no problems in this weather. Dare to expose it to temperature fluctuations and you may suffer from Sugar or Fat Bloom. No one wants that.

I was delighted to find some photo bits on my way in to work this morning (after seeing Hugh Grant). The bits were spread over about 100 metres, all along Tottenham Street. The first two bits I found were the two smiling mouths.

I spotted this bird at the train station this morning. I could just see its legs poking over the top of the rails. Looked a bit comedy so I took a photo

on my way to work this morning i met foppish celebrity Hugh Grant. He got out of a car near Harley Street and was hobbling over to a parking meter, obviously in some discomfort (looked like his back was giving him jip).

I asked if I could take his photo and he said "oh don't please", which i took to be a negative. i left him in peace to go about his day.

I guess I could still have taken his photo as he is a 'celebrity' and therefore public property, but I decided that was a bit cruel.

I did a quick search for Hugh Grant and Back Pain and it appears he has suffered from back pain before. I should have shared some of my stories of Chronic Pain with him. We could have bonded over some Gabapentin (or something).

a sniffly spikey creaturey thing

we've a friend staying with us at the moment who works for the met office. he's an expert on extreme weather and is in demand at the moment for radio interviews a-plenty.

Here he is broadcasting live to the country from our front room.

It's weird listening to him downstairs speaking on the phone, whilst also listening upstairs to it broadcast over the Internet and simultaneously recording it in another room over the cable TV network. I love technology.

His next gig is Radio 4 at 8.45am this morning. Here
are his last words from the Today program. Note the massive pause before the final word. Classic. (File
is 42KB MP3 file, use something like Winamp to play it)

some pubs have peanuts or crisps on the bar. my local pub has something much more appealing. two pieces of quiche and a ham sandwich. they looked like they had been there for a while.

sadly there was no starfish activity this evening.

spotted this on TummyMonsters

cool thing. go to a site. replace the URL with javascript:resizeTo(800,600); and there you have a resized browser window.

great if you are working on a big monitor and want to check what a site looks like on a smaller monitor.

I don't know about you but I've scoured the internet looking for drivers for my Sony DSC-P71 cybershot camera. [SEE UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF PAGE]

In the end I gave up and tried to find the original disk. Half an hour later I found the driver disk. If others are interested, here are the drivers:

(now moved to Driver Guide to save my server some bandwidth) You may need to register, but it's free.

If you have Windows 2K you want to install the USB Update (15KB) after you've installed the main driver. this was sourced from the sony website.

This driver allows you to access the memory stick in your camera as if it was an extra drive on your PC. An ideal way to drain your batteries !

Not worked out how to use the camera as a webcam in this mode. Suspect it's not possible. Sony say their cameras aren't decided to be used as webcams on their online FAQs.

Whilst downloading the file, why not have a quick look at the rest of the blog or leave a comment to say where you are from ?

If you find the driver useful then be thankful. you can thank me by saying "hello" and smiling at three strangers over the next few days.

If you have any problems accessing the file, let me know !

UPDATE: you could also try this bit of the Sony site for the Windows 2K and Windows ME drivers which might work on WinXP and 98 respectively (maybe!)

LATEST UPDATE: Sony now host these drivers on their own site. go here or start on the sony front page then go to the Support / Download drivers section. i've recently found them here (including a TWAIN driver)

promulgate

it looks like another hot day today. news reports say the trains are going to be bad again, so i'm glad i'm working from home today. no aircon at home though ...

i checked my local station online timetable and it's currently (7am) showing train times from 5pm yesterday. this happens when the trains are so delayed they don't know what to put on the boards. oh dear.

according to the stats, someone found this website by searching for 'square golfing umbrella'.

so here it is, your official square golfing umbrella blog.

i saw this tonight near harley street. another congestion charge busting device parked up in the street:

basically, it's the smallest type of vehicle there is ie a wheel. here it is presented in castor form. it's a little small, so i have enlarged it here:

in the paper this evening: story of a man who caught a dead fish and pretended it was something it wasn't. his love of fish ruined his marriage. he's has therapy and everything. his best quote:

"fishing does not make you happy. i know that now"

commuter misery promised for journeys home tonight. seems trains are to run slow because it's too hot according to the BBC news.

it's times like these when people turn to the church. their cool interiors are ideal for days like these. Though not ideal for transporting people from work to their earthly home, they are good at pointing you to your spiritual home.

following the table dancing of a few days ago, arjan has decided to prove he can go from one side of the room to the other by dangling from the roof.

i love internet radio. it's a great way of finding out about new bands etc. i've bought several albums after hearing stuff or being reminded of bands on Grrl Radio

Welcome to GRRL

You may need Winamp to listen

Much thanks to our friends the Newells who surpassed themselves with Birthday goodies (albeit 3 days late!). Here is a picture showing the beautiful ballerina pen holder that Tony and I give to each other every present-occasion (Xmas and B-days). You can also see the rather neat card and a bit of the fantastic drawing produced by Catherine and Anna.

our friends paul and liz came round for lunch today. we were a little tight for time as jane, esther and kezia are off camping in the Gower for a few days.

I was in charge of barbequeing which was a very bad idea. I didn't put enough charcoal and the heat ran out half way through the cooking. actually, we didn't even get halfway through. I put some more charcoal on and the skewers caught fire and bits of mushroom fell all over the place.

result: much late and burnt food (better than early and raw).

BBQing is a stupid idea anyway. we all understand how ovens and grills work (or at least someone in our house does). idiots shouldn't be left in charge of fire. i proved that :-(

esther and kezia played with their Brio Canal set this afternoon. Lots of water everywhere and much pumping of the lock pumps. there is lots of energy in kids and we should work out a way to harness it. i'm sure we could power our house from them both.

it was the last event in the tent today, marking the final final end to the Holiday Bible Club. It was a fantastic cloud free morning and the band played well. i've nearly perfected the art of jumping up and down whilst playing bass.

esther was in a foul mood as she had slightly grazed her foot in a non-dramtic skooter incident.

i proposed she put her feet in a bucket of water. this proved to be no end of fun and she soon cheered up.

therefore, my advice to you is this:
if you are feeling blue, put your feet in a bucket of water.

i took the girls to Trilakes Animal Park today. It's a funny place but has some really nice lakes and random animals wandering about. There was a particularly attractive cockerel on a bench, but when I went to take a photo of it my camera informed me that i had forgotten to load my memory stick. d'oh.

found on a style about 10 mins walk from our house

i went to two pubs with my brother in law (b-i-l)this evening. you know, the one who likes to raise his toilets a couple of inches (with a jack-see). anyway, we were talking and all of a sudden a giant bright blue starfish threw itself off the top of the coral reef in our local pub. incredible thing. b-i-l looked round, but the starfish had already landed so there was nothing to see. but i had witnessed something beautiful.

i have developed a new chic. it's basically a floppy hat and hippy jacket. worked for a week in the rain. i'll probably abandon the look now.

after a week of top notch kids entertainment, the church holiday club is over. we had a BBQ this evening and I got to play in the band in the great outside. It rained, but only after we had finished.

highligh of the week for me was when a leader explained that prayer was like a mobile phone in that we can talk to God at any time and he's always ready to listen. "Of course God hasn't really got a mobile telephone"
"good job" said a 5 year old, "cuz I don't know his number"
"you should ask my mum" said another young child "she keeps all her important numbers in a book"

kids are great. and God is a great big God. (so the song goes).

esther made her own dunce cap

turns out I was 31 today. what a shocker.

the day started early at 5.30 with an encounter with a giant spider. i trapped him and threw him out of the window but he was so huge he stuck to the window like some giant suckery-spider thing. yuckerooney.

do i feel different now i'm 31. no. life doesn't work like that. in the same way that a tree doesn't know it's christmas day so doesn't do anything different. my lawn looks the same on 24th Dec as it does on 25th Dec . We just stamped time on to the world, we can't expect things to respond likewisely back.