more snail stories - lynda also sent me this picture of snails eating a banana. she said she watched them for ages. apparently it was a complete banana when she put it on the ground ...

some of my favourite signs are ones that warn of falling material

this one was sent to me by our friend lynda. it's very good.

i imagine this poor chap will go home and his wife will say "what's that indentation on your head" ?

and he'll say "it's an exclamation mark".

lynda is very keen on accurate spelling and punctuation so maybe it's a home made sign giving me a gentle hint to get my english up betterlier.

it reminded me of this pre-blog picture of jane and a very little kezia. you probably haven't seen it, so here you go:

here are uri geller's front gates. they are made of metal. surely that's asking for trouble ?

it was sunny today so after the car boot sale and the county show we went back to look for more scarecrows in sonning.

sonning is a very pretty village on the Thames:

here are a couple more scarecrows:

we found this on the floor by our car this afternoon. i think the answer is quite bored. and seeing as it was a field used as a carpark for this day only, i'd probably also have been run over by a tractor.

sign and reality rarely match. the sign promised red deers. we got muntjacs

the southern county show is definately one for the country folk. you can buy guns and other scarey things that only country dwellers really need.

one of the less violent / pointless animal destructive things was this game of archery. the most vulnerable creature he was the woman working behind the counter when esther had her go.

she was quite good actually and the only real damage done was to my wallet.

county shows are great for random chatter. the announcers feel obliged to talk non-stop for hours on end. this man told us for 10 minutes how he was about to let his bird of prey fly off in to the crowd and added "I haven't got a clue what he'll do as he's not trained".

very reassuring.

after 10 minutes of talking up the beast he let it free. it flew straight at where i was standing with the girls, narrowly missing kezia who was standing on a hay bale. it then stayed the rest of the afternoon in a tree looking at the man.

the man said "i thought that might happen" and tried to tempt it down by swinging a bit of chicken round on a rope. it didn't work and he said "i didn't think that would work".

classic non-entertainment entertainment.

esther looked at me and said "i came here to see animals and entertainments, not people talking". "fairysnuff" i said.

esther and kezia looking for the bird:

at the show they got anyone with a dog to enter the ring and race them all in one go. there must have been about 40 i guess. it was quite amazing to watch. here are the front runners.

a pile of ducks:

a mussled dog:

after the car boot sale we went to the Southern Counties Game Fair. there were some fantastic characters there.

this bloke was watching his steam engines:

and this bloke was poking a pack of beagles with a stick:

we went to a traditional bank holiday monday car boots sale this morning. we made sure we were in by 8.45am to catch the early bargains.

on the way out we saw this children's car on top of a hedge. i recon it was bought at the car boot sale by an irate parent. when their kid didn't stop nagging they probably shouted "shut up, or we throw your plastic car away".

he didn't so they kicked it on to the hedge. a different type of car boot.

we knew we had a tight intinery today. i wasn't surprised that esther had set her favourite toys up to discuss a game-plan.

there was a fanstastic scarecrow hunt in a lovely thameside village called Sonning this afternoon. unfortunately it chucked it down with rain and i hadn't brought the girls' rain coats or wellies (i admit it, i'm hopeless). we met our friends there and they got wet too.

before it got too wet we managed to spot a fair few of the 70 scaregrows on display. here are a few photos.

it's on tomorrow so if you are in europe you could probably get there in time.

uri geller lives just off the main street in sonning so you could pop in to see him too.

update: more pictures from the next day here

in a skip in a posh village:

as you may know lots of Saatchi's art got accidentally burnt in a fire in a storage facility. Many of this was stuff by the YBA (young british artists).

the most famous of the YBAs is arguably damien hurst, famous for his shark in formaldehyde. esther thouht she'd have a go at that and produced a cat head in a little pot of water.

is this the first piece in the new 'even younger british artists' movement ?

today's mystery doorstep food stuff is a bit of bread. a doorstep when referred to bread is generally a massive thick slice, but this is a chunk of french stick i think.

classic british birthday BBQ this evening for jane's friend lynn. Untypically the food was excellent. here is the birthday girl and her cake (and husband and mother-in-law).

I took a few other photos with the flash which turned out better technically, but this one captured the mood more accurately.

we don't really do sport in our house. especially not football. which is probably why esther didn't really get the hang of the stickers for this football chap which appeared in her cereal box.

she's very pleased with the elaborate design. the chap looks more like a morris dancer (as seen as at the other May bank holiday - where the weather was also rubbish)

next door to the cat show was a soft play kids thing so we went there for 2 hours this afternoon. kezia is qute liable to get stuck in the middle of these things. she's driven by her determination which often takes her beyond her capabilities.

the end result is that i spent two hours following her up and down slides and ladders and all sorts and generally squashing down gaps which 5 years old find tricky to fit through.

but it's cheaper than gym membership.

we went to a very strange cat show this afternoon. it was siamese cats i think.

in this show everyone was a winner and by the time we got there most cats couldn't see out of their cages because of the amount of rosettes and trophies attached:

The cat-type is breed 32 which sounds like a government feline experiment to me. these strange felines were probably developed during the cold war. the rosettes are won by cats decrypting secret message produced using the most advanced algorithms.

It looks like an innocent cat show but is in fact a spooks convention ...

jane gave esther, kezia and myself a long shopping list and we spent a 'happy' few hours playing find-the-foodstuff round Asda.

here are kezia and esther having a telly-tubby style big supermarket hug

and here they are playing toilet brushes like trumpets.

if you think the blog entries today have been a bit tedious, then you haven't seen what my working day has been like ! it's all thanks to all the stuff published here yesterday. Yes, they are all as exciting as they sound. [actually some of them are quite exciting but you won't catch me admitting that in public]

but never mind. because it's now the bank holiday weekend. hoorah for 3 days of non-work (for me at least - jane's still marking exam papers).

it's a random roast potato on our doorstep. how bizarre.

great font. 'pub door sans serif' i think

this pub has a secret room that no-one can find an entrance to according the bar man. i said i didn't believe him. "there's always a hatch" i said. but apparently there isn't.

here is ian bowling. i think this photo is fantastic. the exposure time was just the right amount to keep his aura !

click for big

here are two people we've seen before. it's our old friend Big Eye and the lovely Sally.

it was bowling this evening. not entirely what i expected. bowling is all about cardboard shoes. but this was in a pub. so it should have been about throwing mishapen chunks of wood.

but this being the south of england it was about throwing small round balls (about the size of a baseball i think) at 9 sticks of wood. you have to put them back up yourself if someone knocks them down too.

anita organised it (very efficiently):

and here is everyone eating:

one of the great things about london is the mixing of people from amazingly diverse backgrounds.

i spotted these bollards just off the Edgware Road which is an appropriate place to see this multi-cultural bollard meeting.

i paid the gentleman holding this sign 30 pence for a photo of his sign. he said "30 pence isn't any good to me mate" which wasn't very greatful. i gave him the money anyway. just in case you know.

it was a job he wanted and not money apparently. and it was his first day homeless. a cause for celebration perhaps.

i'll go looking for him next week and see if he has incremented this sign or produced a new one. i may also get an update on how the 30 pence is going.

it's cold and i'm inappropriately dressed. so i went to the local charity shop and bought a long armed shirt for warmth (i have no meetings today so casual is ok).

john insisted on putting his hat on my head and taking this photo of me and my mug of hot water. i feel he may be making a mockery.

i know a lot of you like mysterious doors. my colleague harry pointed this out to me. i can see it from my desk out the window (why DO they put my desk out the window).

i've never seen anyone open it. perhaps i need a brick door webcam ?

ntoe the curving distortion of the bricks in this picture. hoorah for converging verticals (and horizontals). they used to be so uncool you know.

by request (via comments) here is a close up of the signage which only adds to the mystery:

i took our old telly back to Asda last night to exchange it for a new one. it was a bit weird wheeling it in on a trolley.

the new telly is a widescreen one so i can see what we were missing on the sides of the picture.

i assumed that all telly was broadcast widescreen these days. but it appears not.

i might fit some little curtains on either side of the screen like in the cinema for when the picture is not broadcast in widescreen.

look at this protruding screw. be careful not to scuff your shoe.

ho hum. raining and cold day today.

ideal conditions to spray water all over the street. note how the spray has created another Stars In Their Eyes moment.

i bumped in to Heinz Wolf this evening as i left a work meeting. he was heading south from Barbican station and i asked him if i could take his photo. he said "yes, if you can tell me where something or other square is"

i said yes, took his photo then we looked at his AtoZ and we both went on our ways.

i've mentioned before i'm a man of science and that's partly because of his influence when he did the Great Egg Race on telly when i was a nipper.

(by the way in the last week i've also stood next to Steve Wright (radio 2 DJ) in the street and Tim Burgess of the Charlatans in a record shop. I wasn't 100% sure they were who i thought they were at the time so i didn't take a photo, so sorry about that. i'm pretty sure they really were them though. ooops)

update: thanks to tony for pointing out that Heinz was on the BBC website today. great quote:

Heinz Wolff is a self-confessed boffin, and the affable professor is quite proud of it. When asked to define exactly what a boffin is, he pauses, and then says, "Well, I am one.

"It isn't a negative word," he says. "It is no more negative than egghead. It describes a person of some intellectual ability, who has unconventional ideas."

i'm loving the weather at the moment. it's great to have sunlight until after 9pm. today it's been a bit colder and cloudy and i've spent lots of time in the underground due to work meetings all over the place.

just as i got off the train this evening it chucked it down with rain and then suddenly stopped. everywhere looked and smelt so fresh and all the leaves were covered in perfect little rain drops.

this picture doesn't do it justice, but you get the idea.

we're not in to carrying weapons of personal destruction about in the UK. it's considered a bit 'off' to carry a real gun or mace for example.

however, are police advising cyclists to purchase electrified bike chains ?

if so the warning should be to the thieves not the bike owners.

i love paint dribbles on the street. i'm not sure which way up this one goes.

this one is great. there must have been some barrier or something up at one time and the paint seaped underneath giving this fantastic pattern !

now, i'm in no position to pick people up on punctionation and spellling, but i did wonder why "winner" was in inverted commas. I suspect it's because winning a hair and beauty contest isn't really winning at all.

or maybe the nice judge said to the losers "don't worry, we're all winners here tonight" and they took it literally ?

random sheep graving in the middle of london on a tiny strip of grass.

i forgot to tell you that the toy museum opposite my office which was going to shut down now isn't.

So there's good news for you.

If you are going to visit, drop me an email and i'll wave at you from my window.

where do you put all that stuff you want to throw in the bin, but might go off and stinky if it gets too warm ?

answer is the fridge bin.

there's still the problem of what to do with your half drunk half pint of beer (as seen here)

graffiti is notoriously difficult to comprehend. it's all tags and squiggles these days.

i was delighted to see that some people are still using plain old english sentences like "i am canadian" and "just whistle".

here is a burnt green door. it's well worn. i'm sure there's an interesting story behind it.

but i didn't knock ...

london is constantly under construction (insert tacky animated gif here). as a result new walls appear without warning.

here is one such wall. it has a pleasing line to it.

our telly died again so i got the old PC out and set it up in the living room. i think the scruffy office look works well in this room.

jane is less keen.

it's bagpuss on the telly in case you can't see it clearly

i'm working from home today in our dining room. i like to choose different seats around the table to sit at when i'm working and at this moment i'm sitting on jane's chair next to kezia's high chair.

from this angle i can see where kezia puts her feet. to my amazement there's a small man there. he looks quite stern and a little bit like a school teacher.

he can't talk (or at least he's refusing to speak to me right now) but if he could i bet he'd tell us a fantastic story of how he got there.

i walk past this building quite regularly so apologies if this is a repeat ! i really like this one though so click for largeness.

here's the houses of parliament through the side of a bridge.

more rats like the previous ones (note the link in the comments).

i was fooled for a little bit as i walked towards this wall which appeared to have two UK electric sockets on it. Of course it's just a very good sticker.

imagine how convenient it would be if we could install new electric sockets throughout the house with stickers. it could work for water taps too. it certainly works for holes in cartoons.

perhaps this is the way of providing electricity and even broadband Internet connectivity to inaccessible areas. it could solve the third world's problems.

i think we might be on to something here ...

kids love balloons. it seems that grown ups like them too. classically they are used in car show rooms to encourage people to part with many thousands of [appropriate local currency unit] for a new car.

who is it that impulse buys a car based on the fact the showroom has balloons hanging up ?

this pub has gone for a similar approach. oooh look. balloons. i think i need to buy myself a pint.

sing from st james' park

i spotted this outside Buckingham Palace this evening whilst walking back from some meetings at the House of Commons (just thought i'd drop that in !).

it's a stick but it looked like a beconing finger. very eeery.

i spy road pie.

my recommendation to you is to always carry a pie crust.

it's ideal for wrapping roadkill.

i've just received a letter in our internal mail with these two post-its randomly attached to the envelope. very mysterious.

update: interestingly the contents of the letter was from (and about) Wales. makes you think ...

walter is one of my colleagues. he's been on holiday for a week and now he'd back. he's still in the holiday mood and was pleased to model his new baseball hat.

more 'other side of the street' revelations. BT tower pops up all over the place.

here is a wall with numerous food related debris liberally abandoned. bags as far as the eye can see (when squinting in to the sun)

on the other side of the street this morning i spotted this little sign and a tiny hotel which i walk past every morning but have never seen before.

perhaps it doesn't really exist. But it did get an Egon mention back in 1994 (according to the sign on the door).

i walk past this church every morning and there are often homeless people on the steps waking up and doing their morning activities.

This morning (from the other side of the road) i noticed that the house next to it has a fire-escape which leads on to the church roof.

i didn't manage to fit that building in to the photo. i imagine there's a sign in that house which says "in emergency, go to church".

"if you've nothing to say, then say nothing".

How i've wished to shout these words at particularly boring characters in excruciatingly tedious meetings.

instead i scream at them in my mind.

i decided to walk my walk to work on the opposite side of the road today. my route is finely honed and the ocasional deliberate disruption can help see things in a different way. the pavement always looks greyer on the other side, but is it ?

i can report that it's more dangerous over there. i know the traffic light timings and zebra crossing etiquette on my normal side, but the other side of the road is a lot less predictable.

environmentally, the other side of the road is very similar to the normal side of the road. same weather conditions for most of the journey, although i did experience a lot more shade on this sunny morning (which was very welcome).

but oh the visual chaos over there. look at this collection of street frontages. black and white squares are popular but there's no uniformity of shape or size and there's random other flooring in there too. this mess carried on right up the street.

i suspect you could get hypnotised if you walked over this bit of street at the right speed.

a bet you've been wondering how far i've got with my walking. well the answer is 992km since i started at the beginning of February.

i read on michelle's blog that McDonalds are giving away free Pedometers (stepometers) to Americans with their happy meals (see press release). Other blogs have picked up on this (including this one which picks up on the fat stomach angle).

i've done 1,224,691 steps if you are interested since i strapped on and walked off.

Currently my new boots (which i started wearing at the same time as i bought the pedometer) have cost me 6 pence per kilometer travelled.

here is kezia's friend luke. he's party boy adam's brother and we were invited to their house for a secondary birthday experience.

Andy had set up a very elaborate obstacle course in the garden which esther and kezia (and luke) enjoyed hugely.

Adam chose to spend the party playing his new computer game inside which is fair enough. he is a boy after all.

it's a little bit chilly today. too cold for just a t-shirt. you're better off with a light jumper in my opinion.

certainly the place NOT to be is in the padling pool which is filled up with cold water !

esther spotted this glove on the fence next to our church. she was very excited at her spot which could only be seen out of her window !

esther and kezia went to their friend Adam's party this afternoon. it was at one of those massive soft play places. in this one people parents are allowed to go round with their little kids to help them.

i ended up going up slides and through rollers and ball pools with kezia whilst esther went off with the other party people.

it was most excellent and a very good way of tiring the kids out before their party tea (seen here). esther is sitting in the middle by the birthday boy !

here is esther dressed as a king. her hat is chained to the wall so no-one steals it. it was very heavy.

kezia and esther listen to sound archives

here is elvis. he's a famous local character in the town of reading. he's also a really nice chap (despite being convinced he's elvis). when i used to live in reading town i used to take him to nighclubs with my friend paul and we all had a fantastic time !

here he is doing an elvis pose for the website

what was i saying about the pixie people the other day (see comments) ? As soon as you believe they are there you start seeing them.

today was no exception. here is a pixie girl doing some shopping with a tin man in dungarees and a man in a skirt.

it's important to look right. if you don't look right, chances are you'll look wrong and it's times like that when you ought to take a long hard look at yourself and see yourself as others see you. see ?

i'm not sure if i like the font they are using here. I think it's RoadType Sans Serif.

this little corner of london often has some art stuck on it. it's proper stuff, not someone messing about.

but it always looks like a random load of rubbish. so the council have to stick signs on it saying "this is art not rubbish, please don't throw it away" (or words to that effect)

pete sent me this sign. he's done very well as it's a great sign. it would have been even better if they had spelt weekdays as 'weak days' to celebrate old people's frailty.

it was hot (because of the radiator) and now it's cold

i've just updated davescollections with my last found photo and i've just found a new one ! hoorah.

plant pot smashed. plants thrown over the pavement (there was another one down the gutter). what IS going on in London these days ?

3 custom minis and a postvan (and postbox)

look at these two snails 'making out'. i suspect they went for a romantic walk alongside the flowers and before you know it ...

just to reasure you, i have got standards. if they'd taken their shells off i wouldn't have taken their photo.

i'm ill today. achy, massive headache, hurty neck, voice like barry white. so i'm taking a rare sick day and spending it in bed. it's been brewing for a week so hopefully this is the climax of the movement. apologies for the lack of updates today.

UPDATE: thanks to my old friend coproxamol i'm feeling a little better and can at least think again. back to work tomorrow ...

here's what i promised earlier

or a bit more zoomediny:

i got a late train home this evening. i was hot and worn out from the walk from westminster so for the first time ever i bought a beer from the off license in Paddington to drink on the train like a common alcoholic. i also bought a nice bottle of cool water

however, when i got on the train and took a swig of the water it was in fact indian tonic water and disgusting.

the two people sitting next to me were having an interesting chat about belly button piercing in Leeds so i listened in to them for a bit. but then i noticed that the lady on my left had been talking for quite a while too, but there wasn't anyone sitting next to her.

i realised that she was in fact reading her newspaper out loud (just the first paragraphs of each story). at the end of each story she'd say something like "well, that's interesting" or "mmm. this is much better". She was very smartly dressed and middle aged and very well spoken.

she got off in maidenhead. i took this photo after she had gone. it was very dark so i used my negative mode (instead of flashing). it suited the mood too.

last time i saw all these flags out was when georgey boy came to visit. remember the commemorative walk ? i did it backwards today.

i went to a meeting this evening and the best thing was coming out of an adjacent building at 8pm to see big ben all lit up by a nice yellow evening sun.

there's nothing better than a nice barbeque in this barmy british weather. britain (unlike any man) is an island. so it's ideal to have your BBQ on an island.

these people chose a traffic island in trafalgar square for their barbeque. i would have spent a bit longer trying to get a nice angle so you could have seen the square behind them, but i was on my way for a meeting with some MPs and probably would have been late.

i found a photo for davescollections today. it was a real achievement as it was a face down job (so it looked like any old scrap of paper). hoorah.

i'll put it on the site tomorrow evening.

the yellow gloves had gone and in their place were these two red ones. VERY mysterious

actually. no banana tree. just the gloves

this man is selling peacock feathers in tottenham court road. he doesn't speak much but did allow me to take his photo for the website for 50p.

moments before i'd seen a business man wearing a black cloak and an eye patch looking very bizarre. the two people passed within a few centimetres of each other and i half expected them to explode and/or suddenly disappear.

but they didn't. which is lucky. otherwise i wouldn't have got this picture for you.

i've never been to primrose hill before. i decided to go this lunchtime on another hour long exploring expedition.

if you get the tube from Goodge Street to Chalk Hill you can walk to the viewpoint in primrose hill then along the canal to Camden Market and then back from Camden station in about an hour. but you have to walk fast and get your photos quick !

graffiti on the path to prepare you:

now with enhanced biggernizzzation

read the story from the person who wrote these words here

the view:

click for biggenisation

i took a few photos so may attempt a panarama stitch together thing sometime.

and the canal:

i shall return to explore in more detail some other sunny day when i don't have meetings ...

little children are very tricky when it comes to toilets. their response to needing the toilet is quite binary (they need it desperately or not at all). The waving the arms in the air thing is quite typical at the desperate stage.

this sign is very reflective of the moment:

and here is a drinking fountain which is lacking some ooomph. or perhaps the person needs to bend over a bit more:

it's always nice to have a project to work on. so how about this. let me know how you get on.

"find your niche and do something sensational"

an excellent way of avoiding the london congestion charge (and keeping your car mileage down) is to travel in to london in your car in the back of a lorry. like this chap. (there's another chap in a car still in the back of the lorry if you look carefully)

this massive pile of stinking slops was on the floor outside Paddington Station. jane said she thought it was mayonaise. she could have been right.

jane has a meeting in london today so we travelled in together which was excellent.

we've not had an odd-job-pete update for a while. so here he is mending his watch.

do you see he's got a needle and thread ? that's so he can do a stitch in time.

this bin cart is coloured in the same way as a police car. very mysterious.

maybe it's the metropolitan police cleaning up the street of crime and other misdemenours.

my colleague john just sent me this picture he took of me working at my desk viewed from his desk. he's such a cheeky chap.

i look deep in thought because i was.

the great british postal system - the royal mail - has been under lots of pressure recently because of its poor performance. letters have been slow to be delivered and they've abandoned second post deliveries.

how can the royal mail ever keep up with the almost instantenous communications possible by email and txt msging ?

the answer is obvious. upgrade your vehicles to more sporty numbers. deliveries will get there quicker and it has the added bonus of attracking new recruits.

the man in the postal van was sitting looking longingly at this rather nice car. sure his van hasn't got the speed and acceleration, but he can claim an advantage in height (i feel a game of top trumps coming on)

it's so hot in london that people are spending more time outside than they usually would. there's always those who want to make a statement and go one step further.

a few people have taken the phrase 'out doors' a little too literally.

mystery rubbish. it's all sticky out things and castors. i half expected it to ease itself out of the bin back and stand upright.

it's not completely out of use. it still makes a nice flag with writing on type thing.

i spotted this two exploded furnitures about 20 minutes apart on my walk to the station last night. a coincidence or something more sinister ?

here's a thing. it's a lucky dip in the litter bin. pay your money and put your hand in the bin. anything you pick out is yours to keep.

rumour is there's two £10 note in there. but you'll never win them as only the stall holder can.

he even admits that in writing: "only I win each".

look at the state of this double glazing. rubbish. i could have done better myself.

actually i probably couldn't.

6 years ago this was a horrible public toilet that i used to have to walk past on the way to work. i haven't been that way since then and was delighted to see it's been bricked up and painted orange (at least on the outside).

the smell has gone too.

strange things happen down the underground. in a willy wonka-esque dejuicing way, people who get squashed down the tube can be stretched back to their normal length.

if you are really shortened you have to use the 'plus' version.

here is lee preparing to preach on a tiny lecturn.

lynda hasn't got a camera. but she does have a husband. and he has got a camera. so he took this photo of a prison lighter which she found in the street.

these are probably fairly exclusive items available only to crims who've been banged up. alternatively, perhaps there's a prison gift shop where you can buy this kind of merchandise when you get discharged to remind you of your time in side ?

they probably also give you a carriage clock engraved with the words "I did my time between [insert dates here]".

here is an animal sign which isn't of a dog. it's from waltham st lawrence which is very posh and nice.

waltham st lawrence is the name of the place, not the person who sent it to me. she's called lynda.

the sign is written in words so as not to worry the chickens.

my mum generously got esther a watch when she visited last week. esther loves it.

yesterday we had time checks every 5 minutes.

jane: "when the long hand points to the number 10, that means it's 10 minutes to the hour"
esther: "that can't be right, otherwise the long hand would have to go backward to count down to the hour". (she's right you know)

my favourite was when she chose to be completely vague

me: "what time is it esther ?"
esther: "just past mid-morning"

here is another reconstructed deconstructed cellotaped unnatural natural thing.

matt's photo is now on davescollections right here

esther and i played shadows this afternoon. esther's shadows have mysterious properties and make her look like she's a tall skinny model (holding a small bean-filled lamb).

The picture on the left may in fact be a time-travel shadow of her in the future on her 18th birthday ?

i'm sure i've already mentioned that it's jane's exam-marking season which means for the next 6 weeks-ish she's busy - er - marking exams and i'm busy looking after the kids.

this afternoon they were happy to play in the garden which was great. after 3 hours i got bored and suggested we went to the local swing park.

esther and kezia took their baby-buggies which meant the 5 minute walk took nearly half an hour !

the park has recently been reopened following the installation of a new slide. it's nice and shiny:

guess what happened here ?

that's right. i was trying to kill a bug after midnight last night (this morning). the bug was on the stairs and I decided my best strategy was to keep throwing newspapers and magazines at it from the landing until i hit it.

In the end i stunned it by bashing it directly with a Swimsuit wearing 'celebrity' called Michelle (on the cover of Heat magazine).

I then trapped it under a glass so i could inspect it in the morning. notice the sugar bowl on top in case the beasty woke up and tried to push the glass out of the way.

here are a couple of photos of the beast

jane and i are proposing a 'bush tucker trial' for anyone interested

kezia loves chocolate ice-cream and makes sure every last drop is eaten.

(but first she checks to see if anyone is watching)

wellington country park

(click for big version)

this seat has been surrounded by stingy nettles. .

there was masses of pollen (or something) in the air today. it was settling big time and made this little lake look like it was frozen with frosty whiteness. quite amazing.

esther asked me why this duck had a big lump on its head. i didn't know, but i said you probably would. please help me solve another nature problem so i don't appear a completely useless dad !

we went on a little train thing this afternoon to entertain the kids (mostly).

i know some of the readers of this blog are 'between jobs' at the moment, so you may be interested in this:

(click for big version)

two bins next to each other. each with different signs. there's a real difference between these two recyclers. i relate more to the alien guy on the left rather than the speed freak on the right.

how do you recycle ?

here is our friend tony (regular commenter on this blog) and his daughters (who are esther and kezia's best friends). we had a lovely time at wellington country park.

it's always great to find a new hound sign - especially when they approach the subject from a completely different angle.

this one is more like a cloud than a dog. but then, so are some dogs.

remember the pallets i thought might be art because they said they were an art exhibition ? i sent an email to jeremy lim because his address was on the poster.

today he emailed me back and i popped in on the way to the station this evening.

the art was in fact downstairs next to the pallets (so it wasn't a street installation afterall). the show was on the theme of 'bags' and there were some really good exhibits by some students (a really nice bunch)

here is a photo of the make-shift gallery. not a great photo but i was intimidated by the proper artists there.

many thanks of jeremy to inviting me to the closing night of the show (and for the drink)

the malting continues

is this a hidden grandfather clock ? dunno. it was locked.

a sandwich. quite near where i found the toasted one a few months ago.

here is a very cool link sent to me by matt. If i had a cat i'd include it. but i haven't so i won't.

here is the lecture theatre i'm about to speak at !

it turns out my colleague john is a wire-worker. his chosen medium is the telephone wire.

the building next to my office has these two lovely signs attached. here they are for you to enjoy.

things were different in those days. today we have creams for acne. back then they would weld your pimples off.

london's hotting up again which is nice. the result is that the natives are shedding their winter coats. here is one example

the last few days have been a bit bonkers stats wise !

937 unique visitors on wednesday. it must have been the power of the blog meetup.

i passed this on the way to the station this evening. it's a load of pallets (you know the things you use to carry heavy things about on lorries) and was outside a non-descript building with seemingly no art establishment connection.

chances are it's just the packaging, but it could be the art itself. you never know these days.

here is the sign (click for big version to see why i was confused):

if it is the art then it's ironic because it's called "bagged" but is actually pallets. if it's not then it should be the art.

i'm going to email the email address on the sign and see if they can tell me. i'll let you know.

update: full story here

would suite man (or woman) with slightly weird hands

the london underground is so old that they've turned it in to a work museum. all the tube stations have been renamed 'museum' as have all the tube lines. it's confusing but a whole lot of nostaligic fun.

london is full of very thin pubs. this one is very very thin.

this is a mysterious thing i spotted opposite hte friendless friends sign. it's a piece of paper with tiny typed words on which has been cut up and stuck on the back of some sticky tape and stuck on the wall.

a friendless church is indeed a very sad thing. but if you are friendless and have a friend you are no longer friendless so you can't be in it and you are friendless again. and so on. probably

how often do you say these three small words to people you care for ? try it and see what happens.

i went with grahame (of dragoon) to a london bloggers meet this evening. here is grahame with the world famous annie mole (of going underground)

lots of the people were as you'd expect them to be - proud techno-nerds. but there were lots of jolly people there too. like these two:

poet and cake maker

we spotted the chalkers a little down the pavement. but they didn't want to be photoed.

the sign and sports injury clinic near london bridge

the once common site of london flute shops has sadly dissappeared from many a high street. these poor shops suffered most as a result of fickle londoner's change in taste away from the metalic wind instruments.

today they'd rather have a reed instrument such as a bassoon or core angerlay (why did i choose that word to spell ?).

cousin mike might be able to give us some more musical knowledge to explain the demise of the humble flute shop

random government minister Chris Smith spotted on the wobbly bridge

"freshly made especially for you". no it's not.

it's generic sloppy ice-cream pumped full of air dispensed from a tap.

perhaps they didn't have enough space on the van to write those words.

here is possibly the best chocolate related sign coincidence i've ever seen. if you are a reader of the Evening Standard you get a free kitkat. if you are an executioner you get a £6M bounty.

i don't like coconut so was very happy with the kitkat.

coming soon to davescollections.com.

Matt (the blog's landlord) found this last night. more details to follow !

update: now on davescollections

this cat lives under a hairdressers shop. here it is looking up at the street from the stairs that lead to its cellar flat. perhaps it was waiting for the baker to turn up with his slice of white.

look at this slice of bread delivered on a massive bread pallet.

"just one slice today please Mr Baker".

here is a chair down a street. you might not be able to see it properly because it is sofa(r) away.

coke can off the edgware road. it's definately a real coke can as it said coca-cola in normal writing on the other side.

here is an ironing board outside a guest house. ironing boards look so lost out in the street.

summer glove season is on and winter glove season is officially over.

we've been in that inbetweeny period where it's been too hot for winter gloves, but too cold for people to go outside and get their painting/DIY/medical gloves on.

our old (he's 50) friend Big Eye came round this evening and stood under our tree.

i think it worked well as an environmentally friendly hair piece (peace?).

what's the most bizarre thing you've ever worn on your head in public ? i'll tell you mine if you tell me yours.

here is henley viewed from the middle of the Henley Royal Regatta race course.

despite visiting henley hundreds of times, we've never been on a river cruise. today we did and it was a really nice relaxing way to spend an hour and a quarter !

here is a floating piece of flourescent rubbish in the thames at henley. from the angle we viewed it, it looked like an arrow. but in fact it was a flat piece of yellow wood and it was just an illusion !

here is kezia and my mum

i'm on holiday today so it's an official day of fun. esther's gone to school so my mum and i are taking kezia to toddler aerobics, then we'll pick esther up and head off for an afternoon of jollity in henley. then back for a fish and chips supper.

and the weather looks great too !

hoorah.

it's a working from home day today and i've got tomorrow off work, so i thought i'd try a 24 hours photo thing. me or a bit of me (eg finger) will appear in each photo and i'll take them around 5 minutes past the hour. i'll keep updating and moving this entry throughout the day.

jane was questioning why there aren't any truely awful pictures of me on the blog. so here's more than my quota's worth.

update: the day is done. i've taken my last photo (11.05). i'm tired and am going to bed.

here's my first photo of being awake this morning at 4am. for those that didn't see my commentary at the time i prepared my face by wiping my teeth dry and 'sticking' my lips in the horrible smiley configuration you see here.

so what have i learned ?

for the 24 hour thing i thought i'd take a picture of me putting the bins out. i got a bit sidetracked photo-ing a hedgehog (a sweet little chap).

i sat down in front of the bins and took this photo. unfortunately i missed my face and you can't see the bins. but other than that i'm pleased with it.

my mum and i took the girls to a maze this afternoon (hoorah for early work starts providing early work finishes !). it's a Saxon Maze which was built in 1991. £1.50 for adults and jolly good fun.

kezia enjoyed running off and playing hide and seek. a maze is very handy if you are the hider but less good if you are the seeker, so we kept having to catch her as she whizzed off round corners. unfortunately this just encouraged her more !

and here is my mum and esther and kezia in the maze:

testing for whether nanna loves butter (using the infallible buttercup reflection test):

and the girls having lollies:

here is my mum. she's staying for today and tomorrow. i was meant to be mending her computer but she forgot to bring it with her (d'oh !).

esther took this photo.

i got an excellent CD the other day. it's called Colors. if you've ever seen a color and wondered what it was then this is the CD for you.

i think it's categorised as spoken word jazz, but whatever it is it's mighty fine. follow the link to amazon to hear a few samples.

i'm working from home today. kezia just came in to the room where i'm working and sat on a chair opposite where i'm sitting and started doing her own work !

she was only there for about 2 minutes and went away again without saying anything (version with finger in the 24 hour photos)

sunday usually involves lots of time at church for us, especially if we are doing music. today we left the house at 8.15am and got back at 12.15 because we had two seperate practices for two future events.

esther and kezia are always fantastic at playing and just getting on with stuff, and today was no exception. so we offered them a treat. esther chose mcdonalds, so that's what we did.

this afternoon we went for what is becoming a traditional sunday afternoon bike ride (see here and here). on the way, our friend Gill popped her head out of a passing car window and invited us round to her house for a refreshing drink.

here is esther and adam playing whilst we refreshed ourselves with our hot beverages of choice.

i almost missed this black glove against the dark background. it appeared to be made of leather and was outside our local posh supermarket.

it's probably some chauffeur's driving glove

here is kezia playing sleeping bunnies. the bunny has just jumped up and ran around hopping. kezzy can't hope so she runs and screams instead.

last night when i was helping clear up the garden i stumbled across this scene. esther had been picking 'rabbit ears' and sticking them together to create art for the senses.

she had another one with some mint cellotaped together and the idea is that you stroke the rabbit ear leaves and sniff the mint and experience the various sensations.

i was very impressed

these boxes are obviously time and space portals taking anyone who walks in to them in to another dimension.

i thought it not worth risking going inside. so i didn't.

i thought the sign on this ambulance looked a bit weird. it's actually a magnetic sign stuck on to this rental van's bonet (hood).

the game was given away on the side of the van which said National Car Rental.

it's not a very big van, but probably has enough room in the back for a patient if you lie them down very flat and get them to tuck their legs in.

come to me if you are worn out, stressed and done in, and i'll give you some peace and rest (said jesus).

some churches have taken this literally. this church has a duvet stuck between the pillars outside its front door

here is a red apple on the floor outside a church.

the devil probably thought "they've fallen for this once, let's see if it works again".

oh, the shame of the fall.

(with space ship)

here is my colleague walter with drinks and foods.

here is a bike stuck halfway up a building. very impressive

i bought this DVD the other day. technically it's a bit tricky to navigate but content wise it's fantastic.

how stupid we were in the 1970s. good job we had people to tell us common sense.

but how scarey are some of the information films - over half of them end up in people being seriously injured on the road, in a factory etc. it's very scarey.

"old fridges can kill" is a particular favourite.

i was to young to remember the Protect and Survive thing, but the info films are really disturbing.

do you know what this is ? it's a 'casualty'. if they die in your safe room you need to poke them through the door after 2 days and label them up. after 5 days you can bury the body in the garden.

you can view some public information films on this excellent website

here's a thing of use from MSN. if you are a young'un or have young'uns and you want to use the interwebular safely then go there and see. or something.

hoorah. they swallowfield show website has been updated and the schedule has been published.

if you live in berkshire and its environs then you should consider entering one of the many craft exhibits (or at the least going along). The Sunday clashes with the Reading Festival, but you'll be free on Monday right ?

i was fortunate enough to win the photography prize last year.

their website is just superb. you really catch the carnival atmosphere (especially if you have your sound switched on).

another interesting puddle puzzle. i think it's a person spraying a can of coke all over the place. but i could be wrong.

meanwhile, i had a dream last night that a photo of mine had been published in the Independent newspaper (the full size version, not the new tabloid one). i took a note in my sleeping brain to try to remember what the picture was so my waking brain would know.

the picture was of a red car (from left) with a pile of scrapped cars (various colours) in the middle distance behind it. the pile was about 4 or 5 cars high at its peak. to the right of the picture was a big hedge and in the hedge at the front was an owl. the owl had its wings open like it was flying (but in fact it was dead).

therapy time over. goodbye.

here is the other lost london tube station. it's in down street and the design is just like Covent Garden (see here and here)

cheryl sent me this found portait. it's very good and has a nice message on the back:

thanks cheryl !

here are two tuppeny pieces stuck to the floor. they've obviously been there a while as they are well worn. it's nice to think of the generations of people who will have stooped to pick them up (and failed)

it's 100 days until the olympics. here is Beth Tweddle a UK olympic team person and she won some medal at the last olympics. (i know as much about sport as i do about flowers)

it can't be great being homeless. but you can choose a nice view to wake up to in the morning.

here is hannah (born 18 Apr 04):

here is olivia (born 20 Apr 04)

here is dougie (born 21 Apr04)

congratulations to all involved !

so, here's the results of the breakfast poll:

(click for big-an-isation)

this isn't a phrase i'm familiar with (despite walking past it for the last 6 months every evening and only noticing it for the first time today).

what are 'toilet requisites' ?

* are they things you eat and drink to produce toilet bound matter ?
* are they bladders and bowels ?
* are they running water and/or a chemical facility ?
* are they a newspaper and some privacy ?

kezia is potty training at the moment. she just decided it was time and we (quite literally) decided to go with the flow.

she's adopted her own language. instead of saying "i need a wee-wee" she says "i've done a poo".

we know what it means but she scared people in the creche at church last week because they didn't realise it was a request to be taken to the toilet rather than information on what hadn't happened.

just for your information she calls a poo a 'preecy-egg'. she also calls Easter Eggs 'preecy-eggs'. we had a very cheap easter this year ...

everyone knows that kids explode if they run faster than 6 miles per hour. there is a danger zone between 5 and 6 miles per hour when they could go off, but you can't be sure.

best to be careful just in case.

here is a bike with a basket on the back. people have generously put old pieces of mouldy fruit in it to give it a more organic look.

rotting fruit is something often missed in modern bike design.

i saw this today. can't remember where.

how DO you organise a drinking party at a brewery ? i'd phone them up and have an ask.

as we know, serious drinkers don't go to the pub, they go straight to the brewery and get tanked up there instead. some breweries even have areas where customers can get loaded with lager, such as here.

i was just passing.

i've decided it's national help point week. today, we've all got to help people point at things.

some peoples' arms aren't strong enough and you can help by giving them extra support whilst others have no fingers and it might be kindest to point for them (without being patronising of course).

i inadvertently started helping with pointing yesterday (as seen here)

or perhaps i've misread the sign. perhaps we should be all helping the humble full stop. i often neglect this small chap and leave my sentences pointless - preferring instead to use a line '-' or a colon ':'

you decide. let me know how you get on

funeral directors are funny old places (without the humour obviously). here is such a place off Brick Lane. It's nice how they have provided some reference clients so you can see what other people got.

it's also a nice idea because of the british weather. it's raining again today, but anyone who's buried in here will be nice and dry because the shop is fully glazed and has modern doors and everything.

esther and i found this hat. i asked her to point to it for a photo, but she said i should point to it and she'd take the photo. so we did.

by the way, i must say a thank you to PigPog for the tribute to the glove the collection

(by the way, i'm not sure what's happened to my face in this photo. it looks like i've got weird hair and missing lots of teeth. hoorah for jpg compression).

taking photos of flowers is a bit boring. but boring is what i do best. so here are some daisy things:

and here are some wet crokii:

click for big version

update: our friend lynda just emailed me to say that they aren't okey-crokiis, they are in fact turnips. highly unlikely in my opinion, but what do i know (very little probably, though i can't be sure).

here's your weekly (weakly?) god-stuff:

here's a little test to find the personality of your children - find a giant flower than looks like a hat and get them to stand underneath it. notice the different reactions !

note: no flowers or children were damaged or hurt in the process of obtaining these photos.

here is a classic british scene. it's morris men on a rainy may day bank holiday. they delighted us by doing their usual bell jingling stuff with the added protection of umbrellas.

this group of morris men had blackened up their faces and looked very scarey.

here are some bluebells in kew gardens

it's a public holiday in the UK today and of course it's raining. so we'll probably take the kids for a nice walk in the rain.

update: we went to Kew Gardens and got very wet:

last week we did a cycle ride. this week we did it again, only the other backwards. yes it was tricky.

at one point esther decided she wanted a break from sitting on the back of her tag-along bike so decided to sit on this fence instead.

here are some weird little flowers from our garden. esther spotted that they looked like little hearts. and so they do.

there was much excitement this afternoon when the girls found a big snail walking across the lawn. unfortunately it moved too fast for my camera skills to catch a photo of it.

but a little later this massive worm wiggled by our feet. it was above half a metre long at maximum stretch. (jane says it was around 20 centimetres - andy or mary-anne may wish to add their estimates as they too witnessed the monster).

whatever it was i didn't like it and will NEVER go in to my garden again.

we had our friends Andy, Mary-Anne, Jacob and Alice for lunch. we beefed it up with the traditional 'orkshire puddings.

summer decided to return so here we are in the garden:

and here are alice and kezia enjoying a drink and a cake:

i didn't realise that both of these things are dandelions until fairly recently. i've posted this picture so you'll know if you don't or be reminded if you do.

have you heard of the boobahs ? i bought a DVD of them for �2 last week and esther and kezia love them.

as a parent you usually have at least an idea of what is going on in a program, but the boobahs is just too random for words. it's fantastic. as is their website. Apparently it's educational.

i have a theory about this kind of program - the creators, producers and commissioners of this type of program are probably of the 60s generation who experimented with psychedlic drugs. they are now passing on their 'experiences' through the media of kids TV.

here are esther and kezia on the sofa (under a blanket) mesmerised:

here is dougie. he's 10 days old and is very cute. he belongs to paul and liz.

last week three of our bests friends had babies every 2 days (you know what i mean). Dougie is the youngest.

here is a profile view: