my predictions are this:

i'm rubbish at new year's eve.

i'm much happier going to bed early and getting it all over a done with than partying like a mad thing. that said, we were invited round to a neighbour's house for a hogmany do which i quite fancied, but lack of babysitters prevented us popping out (and it would have been bad form for one of us to go and not the other).

so we sat in chatting whilst fireworks exploded around and about. we just assumed they were fireworks from all the noise. i like to think it was actually our neighbours wandering up and down with inflated crisp bags, popping them occasionally to give the impression they were having a good time and we weren't. the loud deep explosions were obviously the kettle crisp bags

hang on to the old year i say. let's have an old year non-party instead.

here is my mum and jane in conversation on new year's eve.

i've spent a fair bit of time moving davescollections over to a better/easier updatable format.

still lots of work to do. but it's a start.

here is the most recently found photo:

day 6 of the amazing hair growing cat

the fur seems to have taken on a more wirey nature. most peculiar. for the sake of variety, today's photo is from a slightly different angle

click for big version

today's been cold (but not wet) so we went for a family bike ride. kezia went in the seat on the back of my bike and esther went on the tag-a-long connected to jane's bike.

yeah for exercise & fun.

following the classic who is brother edd ? entry of a few days back, here is a Who Is Tony ? entry.

Tony often leaves comments. He's not Big Eye Tony. That's a different one.

This Tony comes round to our house with his family and looks a bit like Bill Gates. tony is a man and is married to his wife and has two girls aged the same as our two. so that's four things we have in common (note - i am married to my wife not his).

Here he is playing jane's guitar whilst listening to The Strokes' debut album. he hadn't heard their music (or album) before and so what he played did not resemble the music he heard. it was in the right key however.

this tony also plays jenga (actually our poor copy version from a high street store, but some concept)

this tony is also a very good friend. to celebrate this friendship we give each other (the same) ballerina pen holder each birthday/christmas.

so there we have it. a very quick summary of tony.

day 5 of the amazing hair growing cat

once again, incremental growth is small, but significant.

tony inspects the cat:

and here's the latest big picture (click for detail)

day 4 of the amazing hair growing cat

the growth is small, but detectable compared to yesterday

click for big version

ebony and ivory. live together in perfect harmony.

two gloves, one nature reserve. one black, one white. one rubber, one leather. both lost in a strange world.

(this should prove very popular with those who like to look at damp gloves - in particular those people who end up at this site by doing a search for 'glove wet look problem' in google.)

we had high hopes for today. we were going to walk around Windsor Great Park whilst Esther cycled and it was going to be great.

unfortunately it chucked it down with rain instead so we stayed in all morning. here is jane's reaction:

in the afternoon we braved the drizzle to go to Dinton Pastures, our local nature reserve, where esther was able to cycle through muddy puddles chased by jane.

kezia and i trundled along after with the pushchair giving a nice rear view of the proceedings

day 3 of the amazing hair growing cat

the growth continues ...

click for big version

this is a good time of year for family photography. here is a photo i took without flash (and long exposure) in a fisheye mirror near these christmas lights. i think the effect is quite good

these are the last few days to catch the christmas lights. here are some in the village where we go to church. it's just white lights which is tasteful, and all the animal shapes move which is slightly eery.

we went to see some friends today we haven't seen for a number of years. we both have children that the others have never seen and those we did know as little babies are now approaching teenage years.

it was their daughter's birthday and jane told esther it was her 9th birthday party. "oh", said Esther, "but how old is she ?"

here is esther and kezia on a wooden rocking horse. note how kezia is standing on a beeny horse. i'm sure this is signifcant, but don't know why.

my supposition is this. the world is going mad thanks to kids toys.

.

how so ?

day 2 of the amazing hair growing cat

click for big version

we had a lovely time round some friends house this morning. they have children (two boys) the same age as our girls.

esther and adam loved playing on adam's junior scaletric as the two fathers looked on, quietly itching to have a go themselves.

instead we were assigned roles of mechanics and car-replacers. a demanding job when the cars are driven by two 4 year olds who don't understand about slowing down for corners

here's a present i got from Brother Edd. It's an amazing hair-growing cat soap.

you take it out of its packet, leave it on a plate and within 12 hours it starts to grow fur, increasing in thickness over a number of days.

here it was when i opened it last night and after 12 hours:

i'll keep you updated as the fur grows. are you interested in where you can buy such an item ? do a google search

here's a nice game you can play over the festive period. it works on the principle that when families get together there are a lot of underlying 'issues' which need to be dealt with.

Rules of Play:

here's our christmas:

we went to church first thing:

Mr Party plans an explosion and Kevin wears his hat well

puddings and pie (extinguished) and kezia with fairy wings

a little wooden train

our family. me with tanktop on left.

the last and final day of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a happy christmas

here are some people having a very happy christmas

after lunch with friends (the ones who were there, not the ones who weren't) we went to the Crib service at church. jane was one of the leaders and played a mean guitar.

After that Jane went off to our sister church to do a repeat of service whilst i took the girls to the chip shop ! The chip shop wasn't open so i did what any father would do and let the kids play in a deep bubbly bath for half an hour until it was open. we went back later with the girls in their pyjamas.

After a chips and chocolate supper, we brought esther's duvet down and snuggled down to watched Chicken Run on the telly.

yeah for families and christmas !

we have some friends who seem to cancel at the last minute everytime we go to visit them. they have some good excuses, but i suspect they simply just don't like us.

in order to break the cycle of not seeing them, they invited themselves to some other friends' house so we could all meet up near where we live. unfortunately they cancelled (surprise surprise) but it was ok because we could eat more of the fantastic lunch provided by our host Tanya.

esther and catherine with the shepherds pie and profitable rolls

It was also the first opportunity to have some crackers. Tony bought them because they were half price. they were also unwrippable causing much mirth and merriment

day twenty four of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's another wise man

here is the third and final wise man. it's Alan who plays the Organ at church. he also works for a university which must make him very wise. and to prove the point he's wearing a golden crown.

happy christmas everyone !

(click for big version)

you may be wondering who brother edd is. well he's my brother and his name is edd. esther calls him brother edd too which is quite funny (in the same way that kezia calling me dave is quite funny).

here is esther and edd both wearing the blue wig. esther looks very shifty. brother edd looks normal.

well, i've opened my first christmas present and it was a good one. it's from my grandma and is a pair of my grandfather's old shoes. he never wore these shoes and one look will reveal why. they are white leather with a green and yellow trim, and a red tongue.

kezia said "look, daddy, christmas shoes" which is a nice concept. i look forward to dazzling people with them over the next few days.

a new photo for davescollections. i spent ages picking up the bits in marylebone high street yesterday evening. unfortunately i must have missed a piece !

here is kezia in her new coat, and later with an inflatable santa

day twenty three of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a pudding

here is my photo of a christmas pudding. it's a satsuma. a festive fruit eaten here as a dessert:

crackers means crazy. all we really want from a cracker is the paper hat.

the bang, joke and toy are usually a dissapointment. i think crackers might be a peculiarly british thing. perhaps people will let me know.

jane sends some to france each year so a french family somewhere can enjoy the fun UK-style. it's part of the EU's crackers-for-foreigners campaign.

there is a competitive element to crackers of course. and we can all learn from this study.

here are our christmas crackers in a box. we can only dream of what might be in them. we'll find out on thursday of course ...

day twenty two of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a penguin (or maybe a duck)

and here are the pictures of a penguin by our christmas tree. the penguin has a ball bearing under it so it can mooth (a word i invented which is a combination of smooth and move) around in a non-penguin way.

you wouldn't know to look at it which is why i mention it here.

ah - but now i discover the word mooth has already been used before

troubled with spam ? want to complain to the official body responsible for policing spam in the UK ?

if so, then you'll want to print off this massive form and post it to them.

like how long is that going to take ? good to see they've got the hang of this modern technology thing.

there were no cups in the drinks machine this morning so it wouldn't dispense. a very nice man came along and it turns out there were cups in there, but just not in the right place. these things happen occasionally apparently.

i complimented the man on his machine, because it's the first drinks machine i've found which dispenses drinks of hot water which actually tastes nice. Usually selecting 'hot water' is just a pipe cleaning option which ends up tasting like old tea/coffee.

"how so" ? i asked. "here so" he replied and pointed to the dedicated hot water pipe (the white one on the right)

pete has featured widely just recently. the reason, of course, is because he is so blog worthy. he also enjoys seeing himself on the internet (he's of that generation). hello pete !

i spotted him coming out the equipment room this morning wearing his blue house coat with pen in top pocket and a clip board. you don't get much better than that.

i'm hoping he'll get a pair of safety glasses for christmas to set the whole look off

yesterday was the shortest day. which is great if you are short. but why do we call it the shortest day ? it's because the 21st December is traditionally the coldest day of the year and, as we all know - heat expands, cold shrinks. doorways everwhere will have reduced in size favouring the smaller in stature.

here is santa in a moses basket. kezia believes that if you look after santa on the run up to christmas then he'll look after you on christmas day.

i got an email from Annie of the Going Underground Blog.

If you travel around london (or if you don't) then you might enjoy her site

here is a Venn Diagram explaining this:

where area A is those that travel around london and area B is those that don't travel around london.

i might have a new years' resolution to do more venn diagrams.

kezia (aged 1 and ten 12ths) decided she wanted to decorate her own little tree. whilst we got on doing the main tree she carefully selected and installed a small set of decorations on our cheapy tinsel tree. she was really concentrating and in her own little world. it was really very very sweet !

what a fantastic day !

we started off with an excellent service at church (we were playing and i don't think we stuffed up too much). there was a nice kids song to wig out to which is always handy for a bass player. there was also a massive party for the kids so they had a great time too (and one of our friend's children got baptised)

then we were invited round for lunch spontaneously at some friends house which was fantastic. the unplanned nature of it made it even better ! whilst there we saw some friends we see about twice a year who have just popped back to see their folks over christmas.

after that we came home, dropped off the music kit and went out to the Christingle service with some other friends. i was asked at the last minute to light a few christingles during the service and given a box of cooks matches. however, when my moment came i was trumped by a man with an automatic gas cooker lighter thing. he went whizzing up and down the church before i had even lit my first one. it was SO unfair !

after tea, coffee, cake, biscuits etc we headed off to some other friends from church's house for a party. this was really nice too. especially this table decoration which is a melting skull candle adjacent to a couple of butter knives ! very festive. they also have a knitted nativity.

finally it was back to our house to put some decorations up, kids to bed. jane's gone off to sing in another carol service and i'm about to tidy up the house !

today's been a great start to christmas, covering all the main themes. friends, family, church and melting skulls.

day twenty one of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a stocking i think

here is esther and kezia wearing their christmas stockings. they are actually bags for christmas presents, but i think that's about the same thing.

they are obviously not for wearing which makes wearing them all the more obvious (if you are a kid).

yet another photo for davescollections. we had a family outing to london today. we were very tired by the time we got to westminster, but i was keen we walked up whitehall to trafalgar square. it also meant we passed horseguard parade so i would get a photo of a horse for today's advent calendar picture.

Just next to horseguards parade, jane spotted the top of this bloke's head on a teeny piece of photo on the floor. we then spent the next five minutes on a family hunt for other bits of the photo. we only managed to find 3 pieces. I suspect they may actually belong to two seperate photos because the bottom two bits overlap slightly.

so how fantastic is that ! a family lost photo find. i would definately have walked past this one. esther was very pleased.

here is a sign of someone getting clonked by a stick. the photo didn't come out very well, so i will revisit it another day. this will do you for now.

we took esther and kezia to london today. we were going to do the george w bush memorial walk, but it was chucking it down with rain, so we went to the Tate Modern instead. After much fun there we walked down the south bank to trafalgar square via westminster (so esther could see big ben).

fun on the bakerloo line:

I've mentioned the installation before, but here are some new pictures:

sleepy kezia (and blanket) and esther

kezia looking at the ceiling and jane looking cute:

esther took this photo of me unhelped (not bad for a 4 year old):

on the way back we saw Big Ben:

day twenty of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a donkey

here is today's photo:

although the actual photo should be this one. if it hadn't been for the advent challenge we may not have found this find !

people have a lovely time at christmas. here some jolly types had, wait for it, drawn a smiley face on a transparent bag of waste paper and written 'mr snowman' at the bottom ! brilliant. i hope it made the bin men smile as much as it did me.

here we are at our office christmas party.

here is rather nice red juice stain from my sweet

day nineteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's another wise man

here is my photo. it's my company's CEO's mouth.

i was sitting next to him at our xmas lunch and he's obviously a very wise man. i say that not especially because he might be reading this. but he might be.

happy christmas (thanks to tony for sending me this)

christmas is all about shopping, chocolate and jesus.

the office cleaners have focussed on the chocolate element. here is a big box of chocolates they have given the office as a present to say thanks for all the mess we've left them to clean up over the last 12 months.

home made biscuit on a grafitti-ed telephone cabinet

and here is a lemon on a zebra crossing

following elton's comments on the found pound i've decide to combine the two concepts. i'll leave the money on the street, but donate my own equivalence to the needy, thus doubling the street value.

i saw very little sign of life this morning whilst walking to work. even the street cleaners were thinner on the ground (quite literally). but i did see some evidence of night-before partying.

here is an estate agents office. through the window i could see a bottle of champagne and a half empty glass on this person's desk. i assume this is from last night, but maybe it's a very bling-blingy hair-of-the-dog ?

and here is someone's bow tie. i'm sure there's a story behind it's removal. you'll have to make that up yourselves.

day eighteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's an angel

here is the day's photo. it's of the angel from our christmas tree which we didn't put away in the christmas decorations box in january. it's been up all year which has been nice.

hasn't she got the coolest hair and halo ?

what is this frosty item ? click to find out.

today was a good day for sunlight shining through things. here is a beam at paddington station and a beam in the wood in apsley (wherever that is).

jane has been as busy as a busy bee. i was a little busy, but only at the implimentation and printing stage. jane drove the concept, construction and dispatch phase.

"what am i on about ?" you ask. "christmas cards" i answer.

2003

i'm not going to reveal our 2003 christmas card just yet as some readers will be receiving their's by the method of her majesty's royal mail.

(others will have already seen it and are here to claim their money back guarantee).

update: you can see 2003's here

however, here are some ones of years gone by for your delight. it's interesting to see how things have progressed. my photo shop skills have improved for sure !

CLICK PHOTOS FOR BIGGER VERSIONS

2002
a paper nativity with movable characters. the first few photos are from the photo shoot. this was kezia's first appearance
.

the final card and commemorative top trump card (i went a bit photoshop mad last year):

2001
kezia hadn't been born and esther was an angel.

2000
esther as a toddler

1999
what was i thinking. it must have been the 6 months of sleepless nights with esther which made this such a poor entry. i can only apologise to anyone who received this card for the quality.

1998
this wasn't too bad - i stuck our heads on someone else's picture i think

1997
the earliest card on electronic record. we were married in 1996 and i don't think we did anything fancy card-wise that year (i don't think we even had a proper computer). but we did by 1997 and we went kerazee !

here is a photo i received on our internal post at work. last time i received such a photo it was a fake. therefore i can only assume the same here.

but i shall give the sender some pleasure by displaying the photo here anyway. i won't put it on davescollections as an official photo though !

so, you live in a first floor flat in the city, you've got no garden, but you've always hankered after a shed to keep your mower in.

so what do you do ? obviously, you put up a load of scaffolding and build your shed outside your window.

day seventeen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a candle

and here is my photo. finding a shop in london which sold forks (so i could take a picture of their handles) was quite a challenge. see this two ronnies sketch for an explanation

it was never like this on the 3rd floor. following the american example of 'whooping up the day', pete and i did brief spot of competitive juggling. needless to say, the multi-tasking master beat me hands down.

round the corner from the pop idol bus were these two bottles of baileys (empty). i thought they looked quite nice balanced on a pavement edge opposite a pub.

i get a number of visitors to this website who are looking for Pop Idol information. I come second in Google if you do a search for 'junior pop idol' for example.

this morning, i saw the pop idol bus asking us to 'Vote Mark'. If i'd thought about it i should have knocked on the door and said "is mark in", but i didn't.

who is mark ? should he win ? i dunno nothing.

update: about 4 hours later i saw the bus again and this time they were giving out bars of chocolate. still no sign of mark (still no idea who he is).

i often see money and i rarely pick it. i prefer to leave it for those who really need it. here is £1.

rather randomly i thought i saw battersea power station across hyde park this morning. it must have been there every day, but i've just never looked down the road at this angle before. you can just see it's four jutting jutters through the trees and beyond the mist.

day sixteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a teddy

here are the photos. it's paddington bear as seen as paddington station in london. i go through paddington station every day. paddingston station is of course named after paddington bear.

paddington station also named after a small welsh hamlet famous for producing fluffy cotton wool (a derivation of padding-town).

all of the facts above are false (and therefore a fictions).

here is paddington with his mysterious eyes. the photos were taken nearly 10 hours apart (on the way to work, and on way back again)

another passport photo. this time found by myself at Edgware Road tube station.

i wasn't going to get off at this station (as paddington station, where i was heading, was the next stop), but found myself unmistakenly drawn to get up and walk the 10 minutes to paddington.

as i walked up the stairs which lead to the exit i found this photo for my collection

being on top of the world from such spiritual guidance i walked boldly off to paddington station. on the way a police man stopped me and said "and why do you think you can walk down here sir ?".

It turned out there was a 'suspect package' in the street and they had closed the road (though tube trains were probably running just under the road !).

If i'd be quick of thought i would have answered "because i am impervious to explosives", but you never think of these things at the time. in the end my walk took me 20 minutes instead because of the diversion, but it was worth it to find the photo.

this is my first cut-out photo.

by the way, i'm planning on a proper makeover to the davescollection website which is why i haven't updated it for a while. this will be my christmas project, and my main present to my friends and family (apologies to those expecting CDs etc) ...

here is london's newest landmark - the gherkin. i took this photo as it looked nice, but it also shows a little man in a box dangling off a very thin stick, cleaning the windows.

it was a bit chilly this morning and i spotted this holly nicely frosted up.

pity i didn't spot it in similar conditions on Advent Day 5

here are some inflatable snowmen who felt like i did yesterday.

day fifteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a reindeer.

here are the photos:

tacky plastic reindeer in a shop window - note how they've kept the foam pieces in their plastic bags to prevent a mess

and here is my plastic reindeer barometer dressed in a crown, hair extensions and tie. on the right is a moose with a charles and diana biscuit tin balanced on its head

my new office has a nice view of BT Tower out the window. hoorah !

there is a modern trend to walk down the street with a cup of coffee on the way to or from work and meetings. of course people also talk on their mobiles whilst walking down the street.

so what do you do if your phone rings and you have a cup of coffee ? well you put the coffee down of course. but where ?

on a street coaster of course. here is one decorated with a cow in the middle of the road.

personally i think it's a little dangerous to walk in to the middle of the road to put your coffee down, but the risk assessment men with their complicated spreadsheets will probably have calculated that for this particular piece of road, the risk of burning your ear with coffee whilst answering your phone is greater

i felt considerably peaky this morning. if i knew i was ill i would have stayed in bed, but i don't know if it's just something i ate yesterday as i had some pudding with egg in and that makes me bad (incredible hulk style). if it's my own fault then my employer shouldn't have to suffer as a result. so i've come in anyway and will just feel like death on a plate for a while.

meanwhile there was a fantastic sun rise this morning. i watched it out of the train window. by the time i got to london the main bit was over, but there was still some dramatic sun-through-steam-on-buildings type things

update: i started feeling even more ill so went home. rest of the day in bed with laptop :-(

here is pete. he's the first aid bloke, and configures our telephone exchange. he's also the cleaning man.

there is a house not too far from us which has gone way overboardon the decorations. it's appeared in a few national papers because their neighbours aren't very happy. the house in question is down a very exclusive private driveway where most of the houses are valued at around £1million.

this one houseowner likes to decorate their house rather madly. the photos don't really do it justice. it's truely mad. completely.

and most of all, it's simply not british.

kezia loves the plastic santa. so much so that it has now become one of her inner circle of favourite toys. she calls it christmas (kind of in a cute way). here she is asleep with her little baby and christmas.

it was our church carol service this evening. i think it all went very well. the thing i got from the service was how christmas is all about life (ie jesus coming to earth as a baby), but is actually more about the important question of what happens when you die.

here is tony who made all the mulled wine. or was that the mule-ed wine. or the mull(et) wine ?

day forteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a christmas tree.

here are today's photos:

my guitar draped with coloured wires making it look like a christmas tree (thanks to esther the roadie for the wire draping)

broccoli - which everyone knows are just tiny trees (thanks to Tony Big-Eye for cooking these)

our home christmas tree which is as bad as it looks on the photo in real life. we'll put up our proper one next week, but for now this mini-monstrosity is enough to keep me and the children happy

inside the church christmas tree (i put my camera in to the foliage and hoped for the best)

day thirteen of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a cracker.

a tricky one today. if you say someone is 'crackers' in english it means you think they (or the idea they've just had) is completely mad.

we watched Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory this afternoon and that is completely crackers. Especially the Oompa Loompas.

here are the oompa loompas doing a little dance

and here are the final pictures of the day:

esther's home made cracker from her pre-school and an egg which fell on the floor (2 unrelated activities):

we finally have our own nativity

here is kezia playing with it:

she appears in this photo (in the same way as santa in this photo):

click for big version

here is esther in her new princess dress. the head dangling thing is from a birthday party and was a prize she won in the musical statues competition.

today we went to see my mum in her 'office'. she works for a company which sells Christmas decorations and they are busy setting up their showroom for Christmas 2004 which kicks off right at the beginning of January 2004 for those in the trade.

It's great going to her showroom - esther and kezia love it. it's decorated floor to ceiling in every type of decoration imaginable (and some not so imaginable).

here is esther helping my mum put out some decorations:

and here is esther, mum and kezia (kezia has her eye on some cakes to the left of the photo):

day twelve of the advent calendar picture challenge - from the shape of the plastic thing we can just about tell it was a christmas present. again, someone had stolen it before i got there ...

and here is the photo of a present:

these are my presents to my colleagues which i shall allow them to eat when i have my grand office opening at 4pm today. (i've catered for 6, which allows for a bag of crisps, a fruit drink and two clementines each. the red bull is for an emergency)

i've never had my own office before, and i suspect i won't have for much longer after this. they can take away my office but they can't take away the memories !

here it is from the inside:

and here is a from the outside.

opening party at 4pm. be there or be elsewhere ...

update:

walter getting ready and the main door opening ceremony:

the opening of my office and harry's office:

my nickname at university for no particular reason was 'spoon chicken'. therefore i was delighted to be able to go to a restaurant called Spoon+. I went along with a VIP type and it came recommended by 'the ladies of the office'. It is simply excellent, and definately worth a trip !

here is a picture of the table after we'd eaten our meal. i highly recommend the pigeon.

esther's wise words: "this table is as big as a table when it's been made"

laura was concerned that you might all still be worried about her thumb after the incident on wednesday.

the good news is she is still alive, the bad news is the thumb has turned a different colour

apparently laura went to the cinema last night and removed the plaster so she could enjoy an unimpeded cinematic experience. unfortunately this may have been a little premature and the open wound, in conjunction with a bag of salted popcorn proved a little painful.

she was very keen to point out that she does wash her hands and that the grit and grime on her thumb is probably gangreen or something.

pete , the first aid bloke, was unavailable for comment.

it's desk moving day today so it's good bye to my old desk:

and it's good bye to ash, sara and sally:

it's a day or so late, but here is a nativity picture i took at church this evening. can you spot my little friend hiding in the picture ? click on the photo to see a big version to see if you are right !

click for big version

day eleven of the advent calendar picture challenge - from the shape of the plastic thing we can just about tell it was wise man.

unfortunately someone stole the chocolate before i opened the door, so no chocolate picture today. unfortunately it's you the reader who loses out as a result of this jape (i'm not too bothered myself as the chocolate in the calendar doesn't taste too great !)

so, here are my wise men photos from today:

firstly, wise men from the church nativity set. they do a really funny thing in our church as the wise men slowly move round the church in the weeks up to christmas so they arrive at the stable just after Christmas. it must really freak out the kids, but i like to think of what the journey must be like for those little wise men. what an adventure they have !

it's also great that the guy at the front is kneeling down, so in fact he's shuffling along to meet the new born king.

We were at church this evening for a music practice for our Carol Service on Sunday night. Playing guitar is a chap called Mark. he's a doctor which means he was the wisest man there (i checked with the other blokes and they were in agreement, so hopefully i didn't upset anyone else).

just because he's a doctor doesn't make him wise of course. to prove his wisdom, he's standing in front of the 10 commandments playing a fender guitar through a marshall amp. you can't get wiser than that (unless you prefer gibsons).

what we british people do best is 'mad people'. this week whilst on my way to meetings i've seen lots of mad people. it used to be they would walk down the street quietly chatting to themselves, but now they shout out as loud as they can and wave their arms about so they don't get confused for hands free mobile phone users.

we do 'excentrics' quite well too. here is one particularly good one. Wilf Lunn. check out his inventions - you've got to love a man like this !

here is a cushion in the street. perhaps this is a 'fainting blackspot' and the council have taken protective action.

rarely a day goes by in the modern office without some minor disaster of some sort. despite insolating ourselves in cotton wool as per the health and safety rules and regulation we occasionally manage to injure ourselves.

today, it was the turn of receptionist Laura to become mangled by the paper shredder. upon hearing of her injury i instantly put the first aid procedure in to place and phoned our first aid warden called Pete.

He ran up the stairs, inspected the damage and then applied a plaster to the very small paper cut.

pete had a very good bedside manner and returned to check on laura 5 minutes later.

luckily everything turned out fine, but i shudder to think what could have happened if i hadn't been there to phone pete ...

i'm moving office on friday and today is the last day on the 3rd floor. on friday i descend to the 1st floor. i'll miss the height of the 3rd floor, but i'm sure the vertically challenged 1st floor has a lot to offer.

here is the current office - i sit in the far left hand corner.

here is a tape i found. i left it there in case it contained something bad. and i haven't got a video tape player (my betamax video player only plays analogue beta tapes).

here is a building people like to complain about. i think it's quite good. click the photo to see the whole thing. there's safety in monotony.

click for big version

day ten of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's father christmas aka santa claus aka saint nic.

and here are some more photos from last january when i had my plastic santa in london in the snow:

the bottom right hand photo is me with the santa outside the entrance to Downing Street. the sign says 'passes must be shown'.

i interpreted the sign as 'santas must be shown' and therefore was refused entry to this particular government building

here is a santa in the window of hamley's this morning. it's made out of funny plastic bits which aren't lego (the photos are a bit duff because of the reflection in the window):

there's a whole nother world underneath the streets of london. sometimes you catch a glimpse of it in every day life. the occasional open door at a train station revealing hidden passageways or funny funnel shaped buildings in random parts of the town acting as air vents for underground activities.

this evening i saw an open manhole cover with a little railing round it. i learnt over and took this photo down the hole. i zoomed in 3x and it still looked a long way down !

you can't quite see because of the scale of the photo, but just above the water level is a passeway leading left to right across the picture where the workman had obviously gone down.

i did think about going down and having a look, but wasn't sure if that was a great idea.

they do things differently south of the river. here we see a new type of street cleaner, which is really just a fun sized tractor with a fancy trailor.

i think the e-landlord might be doing some work on the server at the moment, so apologies for any temporary blog disruption which may have or continue to occur. how i missed it when it was gone.

it's just like the wispa bar, but i suspect they may be gone for good.

on the subject of old sweets, everyone must have seen this by now. Relive the sweets which made your teeth what they are today.

day nine of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a nativity scene

[would you allow me to put this photo for this on hold until saturday ? only, my mum is going to provide us with a lovely nativity when we visit her in her Christmas grotto (you'll see what i mean in due course)] ?

update: here is a photo of our church nativity with a mysterious visitor

on the long walk to work i occasionally see people checking their reflection in shop windows. someone's come up with the idea of a full length mirror in the street so people can simply check what they look like.

this mirror was particularly unwide suggesting it's targetted at the skinnier commuter

day eight of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a snowman

here are the photos. i took these last january when a massive snow cloud plopped its content on london. i was meeting a friend over in westminster and got these photos. the one on the left is a snow man in traffalgar square and the one on the right is a couple of snow-men wearing massive snow ball hats (which must have been incredibly heavy!)

i REALLY tried hard to find a snow man today but failed hence the old photos above

this is a sign outside a dentist near the old bailey. the old bailey is where your worst criminals in the UK get their trials. a convenient location for any dentist

here is a giant inflatable thing in the middle of London's business district. perhaps they are trying to encourage the economy to bounce back

here is one of the government's water-for-street-people-for-christmas street taps.

"it turns a bit cold and the country falls apart" is a common phrase in the UK. it's also a true one. my trains were broke this morning and the staion announcement said

"hello, we don't know what's going on i'm afraid. there might be a train every hour, but we don't know and we certainly can't tell you when the next one is due". Luckily at that moment a train arrived and we all squashed in.

now i'm here, i hope i can get home again ...

here's a photo i took before all the train palava. can you guess what it is ?

day seven of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a festive dog

so, here are the pictures:

here is esther's toy dog, recently adopted by kezia. i've put it in our plastic green teapot for comedy effect

and here is a robot dog i bought for 50pence outside a shop in Brick Lane, London. it was very cheap as it only has three legs. we've had much more fun attaching clothes pegs and small wheels to the third leg than we ever would have had if it had its full compliment of legs. buy broken stuff is my motto. (how our friends look forward to their christmas presents from me)

i was going to take a picture of a teeny weeny small plastic dog i used to play with as a kid with brother edd, and now esther and kezia play with it, but it was sadly not in the places i expected it to be in. if it turns up i'll let you know !

it was the office christmas party last night. my camera is a bit duff in low light so i didn't take too many shots, but here are a few:

jane and i (left), herve (right)

will, jane, me and herve (left) and Boy 34 (right)

i've made it my business to stalk boy 34 whenever i see him at an office do. jane told him off for ruining the website which was good of her ! Like any good employee he blamed his boss

glove at marylebone station last night:

glove temporarily abandoned by some loo police at the office christmas party

day six of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a star

here are my photos (from our henley trip)

the lift button in henley rowing museum and a broken fairy want with star on the floor at henley train station:

and here is Jeremy Paxman with his kids. He's a star of BBC TV and radio.

jane went riding this morning so i took the girls to henley

we had a good time, especially in the play park. we also went round the Henley Rowing Museum with jeremy paxman who was there with his kids at the same time as us (it's a small museum and kezia kept running up and pressing buttons on the interactive displays that he was looking at)

day five of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a leafy berry thing (or it might be a fir tree or fish bone)

here are my attempts. this was trickier than i imagined as there isn't much folliage in london. instead i found these whilst walking back from a Christmas street fair in the village with esther, kezia and jane. kezia and i (well me mostly as kezia was strapped in to her buggy) went in search of the berries whilst jane and esther came back through a short cut.

so here we have holly and a mega close up of some berries (twice actual size)

not my best photos ever ! here is a much better one i spotted a few days later

someone has chalked the words Arthur Beresford Pike 1855 - 1965 on the street outside the Middlesex Hospital near my office.

A quick google for such a fellow reveals he was an architect.

very strange someone would just randomly chalk his name on the street, and get the dates of birth/death wrong.

i love mysteries

we've just been to visit the fantastic Pollocks Toy Museum across the road from my office.

here are a few photos of some of the dolls:

and here are some dolls doing a comedy line-up (notice the mysterious floating head on the left hand side):

i can't recommend this highly enough (so i won't)

here's a good safety idea. it's a whistle left in the street. if anyone has any problems they can pick it up and blow it and the local constabulary will come and help them

last year i found a couple of christmas cards in the street and compiled my own lost christmas on a shelf in my office. i thought i was off to a terrifc start when i saw this envelope just off Harley Street. It's addressed to a Doctor and says "by hand". It wasn't actually opened and was lying in the road.

i decided i shouldn't just take it so left it on the nearest doorstep (not bread) and hoped that it would find its way to its intended recipient. i should have changed the 'by hand' to 'by hands'

a white glove this morning - taken without flash hence the shadeyness

i haven't been home much this week because of work stuff in the evenings and various meetings for other stuff. i got home around 9pm last night and jane greeted me with a potato which had been in the oven for 2 days. it was tuesday's tea i think. ooops.

day four of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a bird:

here are the entries:

dali winged person (part of a statue of a floppy clock outside the london eye)

searching for a bird picture i also went to trafalgar square which was once famous for its pigeons. however there were no pigeons there when i got there for three reasons:
1) it's now illegal to feed them
2) it was dark and pigeons go to bed early in winter
3) there was loads of activity because they were lighting the official christmas tree and they probably would have been scared away

so here is an arty shot of a don't feed the pigeon sign and the bloke on the stick. interesting the sign looks like a tomb stone, which i suppose it was in a way for the pigeons. perhaps john shuttleworth would be interested, writer of the famous song "pigeons in flight"

this is a mysterious sign at Embankment Tube station (for those who want to pay homage to this sign, it's near the steps which lead down to the Bakerloo Line if you arrive on the Circle/District Line travelling in an eastward direction).

here is ann widdecombe on whitehall.

these blokes are from Brazil and i bumped in to them twice on my walk down the South Bank. each time they asked me to take their photo with a famous landmark in the background. they must have heard i was an award winning photographer.

our old friend big ben

london eye (from an angle)

there are two sorts of sign writers - those who can finish their sentences and those who

no ft, no comment (thanks grahame !)

here are some more:

this last one is quite interesting and may reveal the sad truth behind this inadequate sign writing.

perhaps the sign writer wrote "look right" but then realised he'd stuffed up the word "right". So he over did the word "right" which meant he didn't have enough paint to do all the letters in the other sentences.

instead he ended up creating a sign which nearly says "look bright" which he obviously doesn't. he "ooks stupid".

my apologies yet again to purveyors of the english language. i know i've used ""s when i should have used ''s around my words.

there were no blue ones. so we requested them. then they were mostly blue. so we ate them and gave one to a man in a suit. modern life is far from rubbish

here is a comprehensive website on the blue smartie phenomenon

i found THREE seperate photos yesterday. all of them passport ones (my favourites). They were all in different bits of London and all totally random finds. someone was trying to tell me something ... but what ?

here is a nice idea. if you run out of office space or meeting rooms, simply order this van and off you go. you can even use it to avoid transport between meetings. for example if you have a meeting in the city at 1pm and a meeting in westminster at 4pm you could work in the mobile office between 2 and 4 and get them to drive across town during that period so you don't waste any travelling time.

fit it wifi and off you go.

update: looks like British Telecom have just stolen the concept ...

here is a random tent set up in the street. no reason as far as i could tell.

they probably set it up in the street as they weren't allowed to erect it in a royal park:

as we get closer to christmas, life gets busier. it was band practice last night. the electric guitar, piano and me (bass) are out of shot (but not out of hearing range)

top trumps. marvellous.

they've got a neat idea in london this year to project pictures on to buildings. even the queen's allowed buckingham palace to be projected on.

here is the cover of Do They Know It's Christmas on Wellington Arch (i think that's what it's called). It looked very nice.

there are a variety of things you aren't allowed to do in London's royal parks. including your washing it appears. people shouldn't be airing their dirty laundry in public in my opinion.

day three of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a sleigh:

and here are the photos:

here is a slay(er) of dragons ie a sword

and here is my sledge which is a sort of sleigh i suppose in the garage loft:

allegedly is a weasel word which is used as an excuse to say something which is quite likely true.
probably is a weasel word which is used as an excuse to say something which is quite likely not true.

whenever i see probably on a sign i feel they should add what the probability actually is.

in this case it's probably (less than 1% chance) that the best music in the world will be played there. unless they are talking about genres then it might be nearer 40%

day two of the advent calendar picture challenge - it's a bell:

on the left is All Souls Church Spire (which may contain a bell) and some people dancing on Oxford Street (playing bells and drums)

I go to All Souls whevener i'm free on a Thursday lunchtime. if you're in town, come along too ! it's the Christmas Carol service on the 18th december.

All Souls is next to the BBC building where i think they still do radio and TV broadcasts. I went in there for a meeting this afternoon but didn't see anyone famous

two fancy hover-sticks.

you'll be aware of my love of street cleaning machines. here is one refuelling.

people of the street have a lot of facilities made available to them by the council. here is a microwave and laser printer

i had a chocolate choir boy in my advent calendar today and was a bit stuck for a photo as per my photographic idea.

luckily i'm not alone in my challenge and the blogging community has come to my rescue. so, many thanks to Feisty Girl for sending me this:

it's an album sleeve of St Paul's Cathedral choir from 1996 (a good vintage).

it reminded me that i used to be a choir boy so i went in search of old photos in my old family photo albums. unforunately my history seems to have dissapeared as only jane's old albums are in the shelf in our dining room ! i'm sure my history hasn't been destroyed, it's just out of sight somewhere. a cold trip in to the loft proved unfruitful.

i'm sure my mother (another regular reader) will have a photo of me as a choir boy somewhere in her house. meanwhile i'll keep on searching for my past ...

i went off to get an advent calendar from the arty boutique called Paper Chase. I chose a nice one, but when i got back to the office and opened the door i found ... nothing.

(click picture for big version)

i took it back and got a refund and went looking in other shops. they only seem to sell chocolate ones now, but i wanted one with a picture in it. i even found one which was a countdown to newyear and had 32 windows !

so i went to Marks and Spencers and asked the security guard. he said "the hulk one is the one for you mate. Look at it, it's awesome". i took his advice and purchased this very festive item:

and here's what was behind door number 1:

it's a little choir boy. where on earth am i going to get a photo of one of them from (without being arrested) ?

i've been accused of offering a one dimensional blog service on account of my lack of audio and video content. i have occasionally branched out that way, but today i offer you a means of providing your own content

let them sing

people are starting to put their decorations up. i'm keen to get them up early (i have a santa that stays up all year and our Christmas Tree angel has been sitting on our telly for the whole year), but Jane likes to leave it until Christmas Eve. i think we'll compromise on the weekend before Christmas.

However, i did notice this amongst some bins this morning. Someone is obviously NOT doing Christmas this year.

it was very wet this morning. i became invincible and unafraid of anything by taking my glasses off and walking to work unable to see clearly. it was a bit weird to begin with, but i soon got to enjoy the freedom.

unfortunately, i did step in a lot of puddles and got splashed by lots of passing cars as i did spot these usual obstacles in advance.

here is the first thing you see when you leave paddington station on a wet morning. the whole of london glows red because of the steak house neon. there's probably some metaphor for blood and meat there but that would be too clever for me.