i love it when categories collide. how about this. it's a glove on a dog sign.

we approached it by walking up a slippery icey field and just as it came in to sight the clouds parted and it was illuminated by the sun. as soon as i'd finished taking the photos it went back to being dark and dismal again !

how can people believe there is no god ?

click on any of these to enjoy a desktop sized photo

click for big

one of the great things about country walks are the kissing gates. here are jane and esther awaiting their obligatory (obli-gate-ery) kisses

notice - no musical instruments, no dogs, no soiled clothing ?

i hadn't noticed actually so i was glad they pointed it out to me.

there's a lovely village in south Oxfordshire called Hambleden. it's where they filmed some of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and the Vicar of Dibley.

You can walk from this picturesque village down the valley to the River Thames. you should do it sometime.

click for big pic

i got an email yesterday from annie of www.lostglove.co.uk asking if she could link to my glove collection.

of course she can, and to thank her, you can go visit her collection too. whilst i go for the non-interventionist approach (ie capture them in their natural environment and leave them be), annie takes them home and cares for them (rather like i do when i find a passport photo).

As a result i don't think she's got many of the rather clinical medical ones i seem to spot round the back of hospitals !

www.lostglove.co.uk also links to other glove sites and this rather interesting article.

it's great weather for glove finding at the moment. here are a few i've found in the last few days:

click pic for big

here is liz reading 'the hungry caterpillar' to anna and kezia (who look slightly worried)

this is a drink, which isn't cola, on a wall, which isn't a railing.

there's a danger here i might start taking pictures of things which don't fit any categories and aren't even interesting

london is bidding for the 2012 olympics. here is part of an exhibition to celebrate the fact we're in with a chance.

it's a giant statue in trafalgar square. there's a person in the foreground in the picture which might give you some idea of the scale.

click pic for big

here was a pain au chocolat i had one morning last week. it's only got one seam of chocolate which was a real disappointment at the time.

not a lot of people know this, but 'pain au chocolat' literally translated means 'the pain of chocolate', which means 'chocolate window'.

we've been so close to having a decent bit of snow for the last week, but it didn't materialise. or happen.

this was as good as it got in central london. oh well.

catcusy thing:

daffodilly things:

click to inspect

we all know that london is a giant space ship, but the question i've always asked is 'where does the driver sit'.

then i discovered this. it's a street called 'cockpit steps' and is between Buckingham Palace and the Houses of Parliament. Highly suspicious

click for big

outside speakers are everywhere.

i've realised i've been taking a lot of photos of outside speakers and cameras so i've set up a dedicated category for them.

i'll retrofit old articles in due course, or later, whichever i get round to first.

click to inspect

did you know the queen employees servants who's job it is to move bollards round her palace ? here is a rare site of one outside of her grounds. he's got his flourescent red and yellow uniform on.

click to see if you can see him in the big picture:

this sign is missing a few words. those missing words are crucial to its meaning.

it was the annual awards for the uk internet industry last night. we won an award which was very exciting.

here is Jum modelling the award. does he look better with it or without it ?

and here's me looking smart (a rare occasion):

click for big

call me a glove snob, but i've never got in to taking pictures of socks. not sure why. i see quite a few about, but never felt compelled to photographise them.

but this one is a sparkling beauty. it won me over with its shineyness. how shallow am i ?

as the famous song goes "there's nothing you can drink that can't drink" (or something).

this poor little can is thirsty but is too small to reach the top of the pub bench. i'm sure someone will take pity on him. he's got such a smiley mouth !

these are new. and they are yellow.

so, what we have here, is something new and something yellow.

it's a yellow new thing.

"how do you catch wild bollards ?" i hear you ask (for this is a blog with ears).

with a bollard trap is my answer. as seen here. it's completely humane.

unfortunately, bollards aren't human so it does cause them some distress.

NO BILL POSTERS WILL BE PRIOCUTED

which is good news. i think.

(thanks to telco-john for sending me this)

click for big

this bridge has been stranded at paddington station for ages. it's become a folly for our times (at least until they mend it)

this chap looks like he's about to fall on a giant ice-cream cone.

the sign was in Smithfield Meat Market. it can be offally slippery in there.

this trolley was tied to some railings with a 'no bikes to be chained to these railings' sign.

it's a glove on a red train station bench.

click on the pic for desktop size picture

i only spotted the wealth of bins after i'd taken this photo:

what attracted me most was the hook:

i pass quite a few laundrettes in every day life. it's funny how laundrettes and petrol stations are invisible in town unless you really look for them.

one day i'll do a photo tour of them, but for now, here are some underpants (nearly) in the bin in a laundrette.

who put them there and why ? surely you'd throw them in your own bin if you decided they were too dirty to wash ?

here are esther and kezia playing ludo with their god mother ruth after a fantastic lunch. esther and kezia are wearing their ponchos.

unfortunately kezia has now stopped calling her's her 'puncture'. instead it's now her 'puntcho'.

i'm really pleased with this picture. it's all about colours and angles i think.

click for a desktop sized picture !

and here is Dan's desktop displaying the bollard (and his remote control):

very sensible that he's put newspaper down under his laptop.

it's another picture from jeremy, this time of a hat wearing a bollard.

i'm pleased to be able to put this photo in three categories - hats, bollards ...

... and chopped off heads:

here are a couple of gloves from my old university house mate jeremy.

i think these pictures are great as the colour of the glove matches the surroundings. gloves are so versatile.

jane and i went out for an anniversary-meal last night. it was very good and we did lots of laughing.

hoorah for lovely wives (please note, i've only got one wife. i wouldn't want you to get the impression i was supporting polygamy):

pudding:

esther's best friend catherine had an ice skating party which was a great thing to have.

we all had great fun and esther and catherine even managed to skate on their own !

oh, the fun you can have:

but tony didn't seem too impressed:

click for big

it was esther's last day of the half term holidays yesterday so jane and her came to london to do some touristy things (and some girly shopping in paperchase).

here they are in the British Museum doing an adventure pack thing which involved making a fancy hat with velcro. jane wore the hat whilst esther stuck all the stuff on.

another part involved making a small pot:

this isn't quite a mattress (though i've put it in the mattress category). it's actually some pilllows in a park in Athens sent from regular reader Alex (who i assume lives in Greece).

London is currently bidding for the Olympic Games in 2012, so perhaps this is a sign ...

jane and the girls went to nottingham earlier this week. as we learnt over christmas, nottingham is the centre for lost gloves and fancy dog signs (like this one).

it was therefore no surprise when they returned with these great dog signs:

and these gloves:

and here is kezia in Ikea with a glove:

here is an advert sent for spam and rice, which is apparently quite big in Honolulu. Dan sent it to me and it is a good one (although it's taken me about a month to share it with you !)

by the way, if you got spammed/virused big time from an email address which is associated with one of my domains then i can only apologise. it was absolutely nothing to do with me and i suspect it was just one of those nasty virus things which uses some random email address to hide its true origin. things like that are SO annoying.

anyway, i've now got a nice collection of angry return emails if anyone is interested. it's interesting how they vary in text and style.

it's name the london landmark time (clue in the title)

click for big

i remember hearing a talk in a church once about a child who kept shouting at his sofa at home, calling it a 'damn settee'. his mum told him off and asked him what he was doing.

"but we learnt it at church in a song. it went 'i am the lord of the damn settee'".

so here is a holy settee:

and here are its beautiful dangly tassels and a daisy:

click to inspect the unexpected beauty

so, it didn't work out with the monkey. people don't trust them you see. and what's a monkey got to do with an glasses and contact lenses anyway ?

"don't worry about last week's sales, i've got a much better plan"
"are you sure ? that monkey thing was rubbish"
"absolutely. trust me. this can't go wrong"
"ok, what you got for me ?"
"a rabbit dressed up as a rabbit"
"brilliant"

click to inspect his enthusiasm

do people know about this blanket prohibition ? the fuel consumption implications are horrendous. not to mention the noise. did i mention the noise ? no ? good.

the noise will be dreadful

it's jane and I's wedding anniversary and i stuffed up on the card front, so these flowers can be for my lovely wife of 9 years.

click to inspect

my heart lept when i saw these two this morning. love is in the air this week with valentines day (and wedding anniversaries).

what if it really were made of fairies. that would be a bit of scandal wouldn't it ?

the concierge of these luxuries housings came out and asked me why i'd taken this photo as i think he was a bit worried !

i explained i was taking pictures of trolleys for the website and it often appeared they were journeying on their own round town and generally having a good time.

"i hadn't thought of that", he said, "they are a bit like robots".

and so they are.

it's a diet and a regular coke on some church railings.

this year's christmas tree experiment was a great success. people were asked to put their christmas trees outside in the street about a week in to January and suddenly london looked like a pine forest.

all the trees are gone now, but i noticed this morning that a variety of plants in pots have appeared along my route to work. some are doing better than others.

when i was but a whipper-snapper i used to think that when people said they were 'ambidextrous' they were actually saying they were 'handed-extras'.

it was quite some time before i realised i was wrong. but my phrase seemed to fit better with the concept of being able to use either hand to equal effect.

anyway, i was intrigued by this mannequin which seemed to have no head, but did have hands.

the mannequin next to it may have hands, but we can't be sure as he had adopted a slightly more formal pose. or perhaps the one with dangly hands has tied the other ones hands behind his back as he was too fidgety.

fidgety mannequins would take attention away from the clothes they would wearing. like a newsreader who becomes a news story in their own right, that would spell the end for a mannequin.

as seen in an old book

i'm feeling quite grim at the moment. esther was off school all last week with a malady and i think it may have finally caught up with me.

this is the most painful part of my body right now:

as a precaution all today's entries were preloaded yesterday.

so if the world ends tomorrow morning and i don't comment on it, that's why.

it was a really reflecty day yesterday with patches of sunshine through fluffy brown rain clouds.

as a result there were a number of strange phenominum, such as this alien face:

there were some great reflections on the building next door too:

click left photo for big

it was all coming from this rather attractive building:

click photo for big

but i liked the alien best:

it's always great to see new dog signs. these were in a car window. the one on the left is advertising a dog groomers.

wouldn't it be great if we could see london in 3D ? well, now you can.

simply go down Fleet Street, climb up a ladder and look through these fancy dangling glasses. You'll then be able to see all the fancy buildings in glorious visual stereo.

the building just behind on the top photo is the Royal Courts of Justice, so you may even get to see a celebrity leaving a libel trial in glorious 3 dimensions too !

what a brilliant idea.

it was valentine's day yesterday and spring is on the way. traditionally Valentine's day is the day that birds chose their partners for the year, but we can see the animal kingdom pairing up wherever we look (particularly on a saturday night in british drinking towns).

i think the same might also apply to watering cans. we saw a couple going for a walk last week. and here is a couple in our church nesting behind the font.

charidee shops are great when it comes to fashion. i love how they organise their wears by colour and not style. browsing through the mauve rail you can find mauve garments from every decade in every style for every (and yet at the same time, no) occasion.

my local charity shop has gone beyond the call of duty with the manequin in the window though. just count the different things it's wearing !

click to inspect

esther and kezia held on to their bubbles and floated up to the ceiling

it's common wisdom that you seldom break two shoes laces at the same time, despite them being an identical pair and they should have identical wear (because most people do both laces up on their shoes)

anyway, here are two broken lace ends. thus disproving the theory

(unless they are the two ends of the same lace in which case the theory remains).

spring is springing. which is nice. it's good to see flowers flowering and sprouts sprouting.

i was delighted to see my first pork pie in a flowerbed on the way to work this morning. a sure sign that summer is not so far off.

we were invited round to some friends' house yesterday for a lovely lunch with a fantastic pudding.

esther couldn't eat all of her cheesecake so i had to finish it off which was a bit of a shame. people don't realise how tricky it is being a parent !

one of these two characters is make believe.

and the other is the star of children's TV program.

there's a great fairy exhibition going on in the Reading Museum at the moment. there's some fantastic dressing up stuff for kids, as demonstrated by kezia and esther here:

the kids dressing up were cute, but the funny part was watching the mums and dads who couldn't resist trying a few items on themselves.

i fell in to this category and esther insisted on taking a photo:

how many bin bags can you fit in a cleaning trolley ?

lots. that's how many.

kezia with a drink in a cafe

esther and kezia and a no bike sign. they are looking through the railings at their sheep puppets which were hanging up to dry in the window !

is it right i get my children to point at gloves on the street ? they do seem to enjoy it.

take this find for example. esther spotted it and practically threw herself at it to be in the photo !

no gloves or children were harmed in the making of this photo (and esther didn't touch it!)

jane was on a course yesterday so esther and kezia only had me to entertain yesterday. we decided to spend the day in Reading Town Hall where we went to the museum and the Jelly Leg'd Chicken Art Gallery.

esther and kezia spent a good hour and half making these sheepy puppets.

inside this monkey suit are a couple of chimps.

fruit needs a rest too

these two are the children of the green plastic watering can in that radiohead song. i know this because they told me.

this toilet may be automatic but it doesn't seem very private. it's just an open plan room with a curtain !

i suggest this is a direct result of Britain's involvement in the Europe. we're becoming more like mainland europe every day

click to inspect the loo

i'm a pedestrian. i think that makes me pretty low on the street hierarchy. cars, vans and cyclists seem not to care about us walkers.

and when was the last time you saw a 'foot path' rather than a 'cycle path'. oh. forget i said that last bit.

anyway, i was hearted to see this sign.

yet again, a mini slightly too far away to get it's number. i think it's 281 but i could be wrong

i spotted this blowing down the street. it's worth a read - but what's it all about ?

click to read big version

bollardy often requires a considerable amount of team work. so it's only right these little chaps have occasional outward-bound team building activities.

here's a mysterious well marked box !

click for big

this car was in a distance so i couldn't see its number. which was a shame.

it's amazing what you don't quite see when you walk through london parks at a very early hour.

this picture matched my eyes.

here are I and a robot. we am standing there. i finded him in the bins and he was taped together. aren't he lovely ?

clickety for bigness

mysterious street writing. and what are the erased word ?

i've mentioned about the early morning moving trees before. here's another one.

i'm not sure why this sign looks so fantastic. i think it has a timelessness about it.

tailoring is a fairly timeless tradition so it's only fair they haven't grasped modern technology and gone for a professionally produced sign.

that's not a bird (but that's the point)

i'm a bit behind on davescollections. i really must catch up.

children keep off scaffolding

click for big

click for big

it's mr robot !

these trollies must be early prototypes without an reverse functionality. they've ended up trapped against a wall. poor thing.

highly unseasonal

we all love a mystery. so how about this one, used with kind permission . see original here

a slightly sinister selection of cones sent from Grahame.

click for big

no wonder someone threw this shoe away. it's got a bird poo on it.

here are two chairs i saw this morning (in very different parts of london):

this is jane's old toy train set. i had exactly the same train set when i was a lad so it's nostaligic for both of us, but it lives at jane's parents so we don't see it much.

we borrowed it for kezia's party last week so kids who didn't want to play the party games could amuse themselves.

it kept me amused, especially when i discovered that jane kept the track and trains in seperate boxes. i suspect they used to be all kept in the same box until the toy railways were privatised and the ownership of the rolling stock and track were seperated.

look at this amazing toy which kezia got for her birthday. how cool would it be to convert this in to a mobile phone cover ?

click for big

and here's brother edd making a call

avoid wandering animals. but this pile of wool makes it look like a sheep has exploded.

i wonder if this is some natural phenomenum (doo do, d'dah dah)

nobody planned this. it just happened.

it was kezia's birthday party yesterday.

before:

during:

here is the party girl and anna:

part of the party involved craft activities (amateur millinery):

and then mad dancing to jiggle the food about:

here are some instructions from Hydra sent to me by andrew. it's wonky english at its best.

click to read

click for big

kezia, aged 2 and a lot, made a mini oil rig at her pre-school yesterday . how fantastic is that !

how's this for an extreme bike sign. it's outside Chelsea Barracks, and as i took it various soldiers were doing their marching and standing still thing.

click for wallpaper sized massiveness

and here was another one in the same railings:

no body has any time any more. i know i don't. i've taken from stealing time from myself which can only lead to disaster in the long run.

every day so far this week i've gone to bed around or after midnight (thanks to working late) and got up around 5am to start work (i was up at 4.30 this morning to finish a document). it's all been due to the busyness of work, but hopefully that should calm down a bit after today (well maybe).

anyway, food is a tricky thing when you are busy, which is why my local supermarket has started introducing pre-eaten foods. like this half eaten apple.

it saves you both time and money (as they are sold by weight). and also means you don't have to eat fruit.

so everyone's a winner (baby, that's the truth)

i spent nearly all of yesterday in the house of commons. it was quite amazing and there were so many photo opportunities. fantastic architecture, mad signage, crazy traditions, bizarre conversations and lots of famous politicians (lord hutton held the door open for me at one point !)

security is really tight in there now and there are quite a few signs saying 'no photography'.

so in the end i only sneaked this one, which is on the way up to the public gallery of the house of commons.

on the South Bank there is a publishing company which has its offices next to the public walkway. They have massive windows and no privacy !

last night as i walked past i saw that one of the offices, which used to contain some big-cheese from the looks of it, had been gutted. i drew the conclusion that the owner of the office must have left the company and his/her spoils were up for grabs.

it's a classic tale - we worklike mad for years thinking we're making a difference, but once we've left people are more interested in taking ownership of our deluxe stapler than for anything we contributed to the job.

cheery thursday morning thoughts. still, have a look at the stuff on offer !

click the pictures to view in more detail

it's a wooden man with a flourescent jacket. looks like he can be turned upsway down to get a negative version of himself.

very strange.

i was impressed by this painter's attention to detail. he's got both 'painting in progress' and 'wet paint' signs.

i suspect he may also have 'painting about to start' and 'don't worry the paint is now dry' signs too.

how does something like this end up on the street ?

did someone get annoyed with it as they walked along, pulled off their shoes, grabbed the insole and threw it in to the street ?

a fluffy red glove:


two plastic red gloves:

a glove picking things out the bin:

so where's does the modern man (or lady) go ogling ?

ogle street. that's where.

did you know that the moon is getting quite old these days and isn't working too well anymore ?

once it's going it's fine, but they have to lift it by crane in the evening to get it started.

it's another one of those parking ticket signs:

click for big

british people love queuing. here are a few standing in line by some bins.

i was disappointed to see this sign so i looked down the lift shaft to see what was going on:

i was glad i hadn't stepped in to the lift as there wasn't a floor:

so, it's one of those 'goods downwards quickly' lifts that we sometimes call 'a hole'.

it's not just superheroes who get changed in telephone boxes. here's an old jumper of non superhero quality.

can you believe someone's only got round to throwing their christmas tree out this morning.

i hope that they put this tree up in their house in early November.

i salute their dedication to the christmas spirit.

i suspect they've replaced it in the corner of their room with a giant easter egg.