this tourist was very happy for me to take a picture of him wearing two pairs of glasses. especially after i explained that i too often wear two pairs.

here's a teeny bit of the queue of people waiting to get a ticket to watch Live8 on the telly in Hyde Park.

well, the hassocks are flying in fast and furious. i've already got 40-odd lined up for you and i know of at least 3 more rich seams.

to pace myself i'll try and give you one per week.

it was hot this evening so i walked back from a work event in Westminster to Paddington Station. Unfortunately it took ages to cross Hyde Park as they've built a concert venue all over it.

today loads of great bands had been playing as part of the Wireless Festival. I went by around 9pm and Keene were about to play. i'm not too keen on them (clever ey?) but i do love the Secret Machines who were also playing. i would also liked to have seen Supergrass and the Bunnymen.

but this was all academic as i didn't go in. But i did walk past this spot on the perimeter where people were sitting watching the big screens on the side of the stage !

what IS going on with the british weather ? quite bonkers at the moment. even by our standards.

kezia has a little kaleidoscope type thing which can simulate the effect of halucinogenic drugs in a child friendly way.

i held it against my camera lense and came up with thes quick shots.

orange kezia:

sure you could probably do something fancier digitally, but i liked the randomness and speedyness of the process.

angel kezia:

esther made her easter eggs last so long that her last big egg has gone out of date. she decided not to eat it.

but i decided we couldn't throw it away and i ate it instead.

it was this blog post that made me do it !

here is a strange dog. it's legs don't look right to me. but then i know little about much.

on a related note, i got an email from Sergei, the chap that runs this website. it's another collection of dog signs and there's surprising little overlap between our two sites !

thanks

as theme parks go, shoe world was doomed to failure from the very start.

kids play grounds are marvellous. this one even has a swing for sumo wrestlers.

kezia said to jane "can i have a go on the pants swing". great minds think alike.

i obviously have the same outlook as a three year old.

a bollard:

in the depth of the thames:

here's some pictures of centre point i took yesterday on my way to buy a guitar lead.

freddie and centre point:

toilet:

from the back of tin pan alley:

this is the kind of thing you couldn't make-up (do you see what i did there ?)

here's a message on a post-it which you could use at almost any occasion.

when would you NOT use it ?

i've decided to start a new category which i hope you'll all enjoy. i don't normally 'big-up' a new category, but i'm hoping this will be a good one.

it's Hassocks. you know. those church kneeler things.

the best ones are those made by members of the church congregation (some of whom may be reading this so i need to be careful).

Hassocks combine many of my favourite things:

* resting/kneeling down (though i'd rather sit to be honest)
* 1980s computer graphics
* tenuous religious links
* home-made crafting (cross stitch and needlepoint)
* church building interiors
* chocolate

he's our first one, which has a dog on it. dog is an anagram of odg and ogd, but also God. which is why i assume it's on a Hassock.

great stuff.

here are two swivel chairs in the street. they were about 5 minutes walk from each other, so perhaps they were having a race.

i took this photo on request as kezia had forgotten what the queen's london house looked like. i thought you might be interested in case you had forgotten too.

i've got about 300 photos back logged ready for blogging sometime, but i should have a bit more timely with this, which is kezia's drawing for me for father's day last sunday.

i'm on the left and she's on the right. apparently she drew our heads then panicked as she didn't know how to draw bodies !

i just love how kids photos can be so expressive.

a variety of cherries from a variety of times

backlit cherry

dim day cherry

sunny day cherry

jane's been taking pictures of people we know in a fancy wig and sun glasses for a guess-who photo quiz. it proved very tricky despite most of the subjects being familiar to us.

i may post a few of the pictures as some of them are quite amusing.

here's matthew who is holding his wiggy photo. doesn't he look pleased (in both pictures) ?

[worth clicking if you want to see the smaller picture bigger]

here are two people who you'll know but won't. thanks to the power of the internet you'll have read Alan (on the left) and Rascle's comments (on the right) on funkypancake.

Alan is the nature expert and Rascle excells in the bad pun. Both excellent chaps.

well done. hoorah.

we had our annual summer party for people in any way associated with music at church this evening.

here is a pie we ate:

kezia and i stumbled across the reading waterfest. it was jolly good fun with lots of canal paraphenalia. Kez and i went on a canal boat ride which unfortunately crashed in to a bridge ! (luckily it didn't break anything or anyone and we carried on our way).

the finale of the festival was the duck race where loads of plastic ducks were set lose to float down the canal (think about that for a moment). once the excitement was over and the winner was anounced people went home. we stayed to watch this little boat catch the remaining plastic ducks.

i took the day off today so we could go to Marwell Zoo as a family day out. we had a good day despite the 2 massive thunderstorms.

on the first one we sheltered in the giraffe house and the second one we were near the rhinos.

animals in a storm are always interesting. unfortunately it was all a bit too gloomy to get a decent picture. so you can have this one of some chairs instead.

what happened to all these animals :

temporary as in "it died but we'll get a new one" ?

or temporary as in "it got away, but we hope to catch it soon"

i liked this one best. it's like the old "this page deliberately left blank" thing in a printed report.

zzos always have loads of little animals which look a bit like mice but aren't. he's a classic example. no idea what it is.

i overheard someone say to their frightened (and if i'm honest frightening) child "how many times do i have to tell you, that is NOT the bogeyman, it's Humpty Dumpty".

the sign said one thing:

but we've all seen the invisble man. we know their heads have actually disappeared

in my day you were lucky with a guidebook. these days you can hire a PDA whilst you wander round the zoo so you look like a business man on his day off.

i was tempted from a technology point of view to hire one, but then i noticed you needed to leave a £300 deposit !!!

how do you deal with hooligans and other brutes ? if you are in a train station you have them dragged away by tractor.

but even tractors have limits.

prince william graduated yesterday in scotland. so this journalist did a report outside buckingham palace.

he could have stood outside a newsagents shop with all the prince william post cards. but he didn't.

Hyde Park in london seems to be a very popular place for bands to perform. unfortunately it makes walking through the park a pain as you have to go round the massive cordoned off area.

here is where New Order will play on friday night. you can just see the stage over the barriers.

and there's some lost people pointing as well to add the amusement.

this is a very strange thing. an 8 legged horse. fancy that.

swan necks reflecting as hearts

bicycle chain as heart

with an island in the background

with a building in the background

vin sent me this pile of photos of grubs asking if i could help him identify them. he knew i wouldn't have a clue but wondered if you did.

He writes:

I wonder if you'd be kind enough to post these pics of a tiny grub I
found today in the hope that some knowledgeable reader can identify
it. I've had no luck so far on Google.

It was in this kind of discus-shaped sac-thing, just lying in a
flower -bed. It measured a quarter of an inch (6mm) across, and when
the grub wriggled (more like a convulsive jerk), the whole thing
moved. When I first saw the movement in the dirt, I had assumed an
ant was tugging at a leaf disc (as they do), but it wasn't really
going anywhere, just turning around and jerking about. Thanks Vin

i was very impressed by this abandoned telly.

not only had someone gone to the bother of taking it to a dustbin in the street on its trolley, but they had also taped the remote control AND the instruction book to the top of it !

how fantastic is that ???

interesting two dogs on the same sign of quite differing styles.

vin spotted this which is very good. wonky gifts a speciality.

poor old po. lost in brighton. still, he/she's being very sensible and sitting on a bench waiting for its owner to come back and rescue it.

keeping off groynes is generally a good idea. this smiley chap is throwing caution to the wind and i think he'll regret it.

math or maths ? i know what i say. whatever. do it.

i was quite pleased with this shot as it's one of those car stationary and in focus whilst the background is moving type ones.

the hot drink machine in my office has a mysterious handwritten note on enquiring whether tomato soup is available 'off list' as a secret number.

i like the idea of finding hidden 'cheat' codes in the drinks machine that can dispense exciting drinks.

i always choose 83 mild for my mug of hot water. perhaps i should start trying a few other numbers and see what comes out.

the handwritten message in more detail:

a classic british summer scene. click for desktop sized goodness

everyone in england is required to travel to the seaside on a sunny summer day. esther, kezia and i spent the day in brighton so we could meet jane when she'd finished her bike ride.

it was very hot and there were lots of people there:

this isn't always a great plan:

people as far as the lense can see:

jane and lynn completed the London to Brighton bike ride without any trouble

in reverse order - here they are coming round the final straight to the finish:

here they are setting off:

and here are the bikes loaded on the car:

it's political correctness gone mad. of course crabs know their habitat is slightly slippery. like, durrrr.

smart chap

the other one's nipped off to the loo

here are jane and kezia in marlow. a very nice place on a very nice (and hot) day. it was officially 42degC today (probably)

today (19th June) is jane and lynn's day for doing the london to brighton bike ride ! the support team is ready (with their buckets and spades) to meet her at the finish line.

details here

here is the view from the 5th floor on our brick lane office. i was based there for a year a while back but didn't have a window seat. i don't miss the commute either.

still, this view greeted me yesterday morning. you can clearly see the gherkin and natwest tower (as transversed earlier this week)

here's a scarey picture of three people all with strange red hair

it's potentially dangerous stuff this photography you know

isn't that just typcial, you go to a restaurant and everyone ends up wearing the same clothes. except they aren't quite the same are they readers.

can you put people in to pears ? can you put animals in oranges ? i don't think so.

not all churches are built on sound theology. i've no idea if this church is a good one or not, but i do like the idea of a religion based on the sole philosophy of smiling at people a lot.

that'd probably be quite superficial, but it would be fun for a few weeks !

i got to go to a meeting up Tower 42 this week (also known as the Natwest Tower)

the conference room is only half way up the tower and you can only look out one side, but it was still very impressive.

i took plenty of photos of course. click on the pictures below to get the full sized version (which are very big) and do your own exploring:

the thames, bank, tate modern, westminster in the background

st paul's, BT tower in the distance

barbican and a couple of other new tall buildings

another view of westminster

it was a rainy day anyway, but by the time we stopped the meeting for coffee it got very rainy

it kind of made me think about what london might have been like in the smog. without the london eye of course

looking down from the 24th floor (see the people below with umberellas)

Ed

Thanks v much - made my life possible. hope theatre was fun. parked as instructed !

Vin sent me this puzzle for you. it's a shadow, but of what ?
first person to guess correctly get all our respect !

once someone's guessed i'll put up the picture which proves it a bit later.

click for big if you want to study in detail (it's all clicking for bigness today isn't it ?)

answer here: View image

i saw this snail on a wall as i walked to get my train at ten to 6 this morning. it was really zooming along and i got a bit freaked out that it was going to climb up the camera lense.

so i took as many shots as i could then ran to get my train. which itself was a quite a slow thing.

i'm quite impressed by the detail on a snail's head. click the pic to inspect the big version.

ti's the bike which isn't quite moonbike again. i do my pictures bigger nowadays so it's worth showing you again !

you know how useless i am at flowers and stuff. well i do know something about these things. their flowers are actually ears and they are on of the few plants that can actually listen to their environment.

fact.

a whole mixture of signs here for you to enjoy

a dummy stuck down a classic waterway mk 2 drain cover.


close up:

this is a funny old picture. i don't know about you, but looking at the big version (click it boyo) makes me want to fall over.

best of all is the writing on the hat which says 'City of Westminster, Safe Streets'. They are obviously making the streets safer for pedestrians by giving them free construction hats.

andrew kindly sent me these photos of signs of south african hounds.

this one is very strict and informs us that you can't utilise the garden if you are a dog.

this one meanwhile warns that transgressors will be prosecuted.

note the floating dog owner (possibly having eaten some of those magic plants shown next to (which you also can't smoke according to the next one along).

what IS this meant to be ?

here are a couple of dog signs from france from reader Wayne who's from frankfurt, but from britain.

here's a classic french dog with the round head top.

wayne writes: this sign has been around the block; noteworthy for almost random geometric shapes for body parts

and here's some instructions on cleaning away its mess. the dog at the top looks good.

wayne writes: cleaning up after pooping; the pictures are worth 1000 words, which is just as well, cos I don't understand the words

and here's some skates he sent. i think the skateboard looks more like some menacing eyes.

wayne writes: stunningly accurate inline skate, and v basic skateboard, both banned. The sign is set in its own paving stone in the ground.

Vin sent me this photo of a sign on the gate of his local
gravestone maker's yard. it shows a spectacular lack of planning.

i hope their gravestones are done in the same style.

it's two coke cans sneaking up on the tower of london

i don't usually pick stuff up i find in the street, but i did move these cans round the corner to take this next photo. i think i could have made a better job of this, but time was sadly against me.

here's a strange thing. it's a bird poo. but it looks like a man in a hat sitting down whilst waving.

if it had been mother terresa it'd have been a worth a bob-or-two.

i'm always interested in new dogs signs, particularly when they offer a completely different graphical way of describing said quadropeded woof-ler.

this dog from Almeda has the strangest legs you've ever seen (and what a great background of windsurfers)

if you want to understand more about the detail (and why you can't drink coctails on the beach) you'll need to read the detail:

it's a giant ice-cream on someone's roof

i looked through this window and all i could see were doors and doors and more doors. the same at the next window too.

just in case you were wondering, i passed the 3,000 mile mark this week. this is the distance i've walked since records began (71 week ago).

hoorah for napster and quickly being able to find The End by the Doors whilst i write this post. obviously you can't hear it, but i can and that's great.

jane has said a few times she's seen debbie magee (husband of Paul Daniels) in our local supermarket. today was the first time i'd seen her myself.

she was busy at the checkout so i didn't feel i could ask her for a photo at that stage. we hung around a bit after but she was buying quite a bit of stuff and we needed to get back home so i didn't get a chance to ask her for a photo then either.

so you'll have to do with this one which is of esther, but if you look in the background you can unclearly see debbie (serves me right for having my macro mode on)

she looks like she's adjusting herself, but i think she's just checking her watch !

here is dougie. he came to visit for a few hours yesterday whilst his parents went off and had a posh time.

he's a very jolly sweet little chap as you can tell from this photo !

the cage is slightly worrying.

this can of pepsi is on its way to All Souls

i recently decided to stand by a roundabout and take a few pictures. here are a few of them featuring big vehicles

double decker

bendy

olympic bid

bin lorry

random books and CD in the street

yeah. my camera came back from the menders, all mended under warranty, in less than a week.

welcome back my friend. it's been ok using a different camera (and thanks to jane for lending it to me), but i do love this little chap and i certainly missed some of his features and performance.

this category has now extended to cover coke cans in all situations hasn't it. but that's ok with me.

you can tell summer is finally here.

what goes in the bin down but can't go out the bin up ?

i love sunny days. i spend most of them on the floor taking pictures of fruit and coke cans. but here's a malibu sunrise.

here's a couple of upside down - behind you photos from tower bridge many weekends back

here's one i took:

click for big

and here's one esther took (shortly before she dropped the camera on her head!):

click for big

some buildings in the docklands (taken whilst doing the marathon)

here's my college walter on the other side of my office window. reflected in the window are a load of satellite dishes on the other side of the road.

the picture is a blind picture in that it's a picture of a blind, but also you can't really see what it is.

tenuously linked is the fact that our talk in church on sunday morning was about Jesus giving sight to the blind from birth bloke. the miracle itself was cool, but what happened after is equally fascinating.

i recommend you read it here (via Dave Bish's website)

the great thing about t'internet is that people can search for things.

for example, someone might be going on holiday to the same place we stayed and want to know whether there were enough coat hooks or what colour the sitting room carpet was.

so. if you are planning on going to stay in the library at sedgeford hall near hunstanton and want to know more then let me know ! It was very good.

here's the swimming pool:

and here's the lounge (can you see why they call it the library ?)

smarties are great. little bits of chocolate, all those colours. the whole missing british blue smarty thing, and the allegedly addictive orange ones which turn you hyperactive.

i liked this marketing ploy which was to remove the colour altogether.

smarties are one of those food which work better the more shove in your mouth. it works for crisps too (especially pringles).

enjoyment = (total number of items shoved in to your mouth) squared.

this formula breaks down slightly before the point of choking. you have been warned.

here's a europe flag flying at our local village fete.

what better way can there be to spend your lunchtime than waiting in a queue to meet non other than Gene Wilder ? What a man !

here he is, wearing a hoody (i think hoodies are still legal wear if they are pastel coloured. his looked more like a pyjama top)

i had to borrow john's camera for the trip as mine is down the menders. as a result i managed to get very few actually in focus (and none of him looking normal).

the girl in front of my in the queue asked me to take her photo with him because her batteries had run out, but i didn't do a very good job of getting it in focus. so if she's reading this - many apologies. oooops.

here is me and him (taken by the bookshop lady). she couldn't work john's camera either. i was going to get him to do a little video for the blog but he looked way too tired.

alone ?

or with a friend ?

i bet the sqirrels are glad this bus lane stops before it reaches the branches

(note the upswaydown sticker graffiti on the box below the sign)

i'm sure there's a witty pun or comedy connection i'm missing here.

i don't smoke. but i certainly eat a lot of chocolate and drink a lot of hot water.

and it's good to see someone abiding by the government's colour coordinated car parking policy.

i lost my front tooth doing exactly this trick when i was aged 12.

perhaps this man thrives on danger. he's wearing dark glasses and the bags are full of dynamite. (i made the second of these two facts up)

i offered kezia the choice of a lolly or a bounce on a bouncy castle. she went for the lolly option.

instead of 3 minutes bouncing she had over 2 hours of stickiness. good choice kezzy !

our friend hannah has been adventuring and brought back these photos.

here's some great before and after signage of road kill (amended by the locals it seems):

here is a box on a stick marked vinegar:

and here is a drive thru bottle shop:

here's a pelican which probably belongs to the queen as it's in the park next to her house.

(the black blob on the picture is the reason i sent my camera to the menders)

i walked past these Turkish baths on the way to an art preview last week.

i love this sign. it's got a simple headline, and an equally explanatory sub heading.

then, for those who want to know, it explains in unexpected detail exactly why the Turkish bath is closed (click the picture for a readably sized one)

what's more it was produced by the local council !

i wasn't looking to have a Turkish bath, but i did feel refreshed by this sign.

libraries are great places to find lost photos. especially university ones as we all know what students are like.

here's a display of lost/found passport photos from the library window at UCL.

i'll add to www.davescollections.com at some point

we went to center parcs yesterday to visit some friends who were staying there. jane stayed at home to mark exam papers.

it's quite a long way to drive and we nearly spent as much time travelling as we did having fun when we got there.

still, nothing would stop anna and kezia fearlessly running round on tree-top climbing things.

kezia finally becomes gemma

any idea what this insect is ? it was in church last thursday evening and was about 5 cm long.

luckily (for us) it was deaded already.

i take a huge proportion of my floor-based pictures in Queen Anne Street in London. Here's another example.

It's a dummy. without any 6 year old's legs this time.

here is a paper recycling bin vomitting up it's content. luckily paper vomits are very slow so i had plenty of time to get this photo

have i got two identical wives ? is this a trick photo using a mirror or digital editing ?

no, it's jane and a portrait of her drawn by kezia.

the real jane is the one on the right

the fight against aliens is taking place on the streets of london:

any ideas what this vehicle is for ?

here is a taxi with the union jack reflected in the window and the BBC building behind it. very british.

here's another one (see the bonnet reflection for the recently refurbished outside of the BBC's broadcasting house)

if you run out of sponges you can always use bread rolls as seen in this picture.

i thought it might just be a temporary thing, but it appears the post office have moved away from their flesh coloured elastic bands to a more visible red variety.

they are all over the place but i rarely photo them. it's nice to keep some things for myself you know ?

i really like this picture. it works better big so clickaway my friends.

yesterday was a sad day. i'm rarely parted from my camera, so it was with very sad to have to send it off to the menders in an inflatable padded bag (a very neat invention).

i'm hoping it's just a dodgy CCD which will be covered by the warranty. meanwhile i'll be using jane's Casio Exilim EX-240 which she's kindly leant me.

i'll miss my W-12 terribly whilst it's gone though

i received this sign in a fancy text message to my phone. unfortunately i managed to delete the message that went with it so didn't spot who it was from or where it was from.

so if it's you, thank you and please let me know !

remember the london sign auction ? well it was a success apparently and they've only got three left:

Lot 247 COPTHALL CLOSE E. C. 2 - single
Lot 254 FENCHURCH AVENUE E. C. 3 - single
Lot 270 NUN COURT - pair

They are still available as an aftersale and are reasonably priced apparently.

If you want more info or are interested, let me know and i'll give forward you the mail i got from Christies', or you can phone Christies' on 0207 752 3278

(photo from the Christie's site)

what a good idea. rather than having drawers all stuck away in a pile, lay them out on the ground so you can see what's in them !

that'll save loads of time in the morning looking for that illusive pair of socks

here's a low down self portrait in a street mirror.

i'm a little ashamed to be caught wearing beige slacks and trainers ! whatever happened to my combat trousers and doc martens you ask ? well, i'm wearing them today, so not much !

kezia seems to be spending more of her time as her alter-ego 'gemma the dog'. she'll often refuse to talk and simply say 'woof' instead. she even wakes up at night in character.

last night we went for tea at our friends' house where kezia played with the real dog Gemma upon which she bases her other persona.

you asked me to investigate this car which i spotted a few days back. so that's what i did.

here's another photo. it turns out it's an electric car.

buy one or get more info at www.goingreen.co.uk

here's a hazy bollard picture i made for you and your desktop. do the click thing to get a big version.

here is a dog sign from the recently remotivated Dan. He says:

Found this near Berkeley yesterday on a USA non-bank holiday. Note the rare head-on profile, not the side profile usually found on these signs. And those ears! And the disembodied hand! Hope you enjoy it!

it looks a bit like someone is trying to hit it with a fly swat.

we're definitely moving in to summer gloves. rubber gloves are increasingly popular with people doing things with chemicals, like painting, staining and things with bunsen burners.

i love the understated anger in this sign.

... always allow for a border when you measure the size of your sign