remember this ? i thought they were photographers, but they were/are actually bird watchers. i attempted to take some photos but failed miserably:

there's a couple of peregrine falcons living up the Tate Modern tower and they've got their telescopes trained on them.

if you are in the vicinity of the South Bank you must go and have a look. they are quite fantastic

here are the two bird-men looking completely in the wrong direction

fantastically, i won best-in-show for my photo of a snail at the Swallowfield Show.

here i am proudly receiving the trophy

all of the other photos i entered have appeared on the blog at some point, but in case you are interested here is what else i entered (in each category):

a journey (1st):

portrait:

tranport:

texture (3rd):

skyscape (2nd):

my favourite place:

song title (1st):

4 seasons (3rd - best viewed bigger):

retro futurists in a bookstall at a village fair.

note the random disconnected space boot on the floor and the book on top called 'they died too young'.

teeny weeny snail on my finger tip (must have been a sign)

2 gloves

closeup here:

and here:

the spacehopper is enjoying a renaisance rather like scooting did a few years back. businessmen are taking advantage of the long dry british summer to commute to work on spacehoppers, sometimes travelling miles just to get to work.

what we see here is a lady's sports spacehopper. she's parked it up (rather badly i notice) and left her sunnies on the roof.

quiz of the day - male or female. vote now.

stranded camera man

it's the rival brands on opposite walls

merlin sent me this sign of saying watch out for speed bumps. positioning is everything with signs !

yesterday was olivia's dedication.

As i described in the comments here, a dedication is a bit like a baptism - it's a chance to say thank you to God for the child and to welcome them in to the wider church family.

Prayer parents are like god-parents and it's their duty to pray for the child and generally support them as they grow up.

when they are old enough they can then make their own decision about the Christian faith, which they believe is true.
richard and julia (below), and jane and i are olivia's prayer parents.

The prayer we said included this phrase "May we be patient and understanding, ready to guide and to forgive, so that through our love she may come to know your love, through Jesus Christ our Lord."

(can you spot esther and kezia in the picture above ?)

and all this because people weren't allowed to crowd surf.

it makes no sense.

i went with others' advice on my previous attempt and re-approached the song title thing. so, here's my new song title picture. i think i cropped a bit too tight on the right though. oh well.

do you know what it is yet ?

here i am with my festival hat shortly before i left. i only really saw Dinosaur Juniorand the Charlatans today before i ran out of energy and went home ! We've got other things planned for today so that's probably it for me and Reading 2005.

but you can watch some of the bands here for the next 30 days.

these things fired tiny bits of paper high in the air. good plan.

swallowfield show signage awaiting deployment. i'm looking forward to seeing where the 'fishing in the field' signs goes.

here is brother edd. i saw him at the Reading Festival today. i went and sat down near the stage and at the end of the band looked round me and there he was sitting but a few metres away. neither of us had spotted each other, and neither had we agreed to meet in that location.

how very strange.

here he is holding one of my funkypancake 'business cards' which i give to people who ask why i'm taking pictures of boring things.

here are two slightly seperate strange things in the same bin complex.

see how specialised these bins have become. this bin is only for Beans on Toast. which makes me think that the Beans on Toast people haven't had a good day

and then this chap appears to be in a bin, but he wasn't.

i thought this was a glove at first until i realised it had 7 fingers.

this family have brought buckets to sit on which is a good idea. perhaps they are using them as toilets to avoid the festival facilities ?

i wandered by the signing tent and noticed the queue was short so i joined it. only to meet elbow a few moments later.

how bizarre. their set was very good too. it included a big confetti explosion (as can be seen if you look carefully at the people sitting on the buckets photo)

these people had an inflatable sofa. good plan.

i took pictures of lots of the bands i saw today but they're all a bit small so i'm not going to bother posting any of them.

bands i saw today included Goldie Looking Chain (offensive, but very funny), The Wedding Present, Graham Coxon, Elbow, The Coral, Audio Bulleys (briefly), Queens of the Stone Age (an accident), Cooper Temple Clause, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club (their new stuff isn't much cop), Charlotte Hathersley (very excellent) and the Pixies (awesome!).

i think there were others as well.

i'm not sure if this works or not. it's an attempt to capture a song title in a photo for a competition i'm entering on sunday (tomorrow).

any ideas what it is or am i going to have to go back to the drawing board ?

between bands people sit around and chat, and drink, and set fire to things. but these people decided to do some acrobatics instead.

the chap on top is actually leap frogging 4 people who are standing up. it was quite impressive, and also very stupid.

i wouldn't recommend funkypancake readers try this between pictures.

here is one of those things you can put your head through and pretend you are on the cover of the NME. good fun you think ? well think again.

what about those poor Foo Fighter band members who've had their heads cut out so music fans can pose with mr grohl here ?

i think mr grohl was playing drums for the queens of the stone age today (i can't be 100% sure as i don't recognise all his tattoos and the video screens kept cutting to other people). but anyway, he does play with them quite regularly which must be a pain for the emergency spare drummer.

and we don't hear much about kurt cobain any more do we ?

i'm beginning to detect a pattern with mr grohl.

brandon flowers of the killers looking out from the signing tent

here is steve waiting by a petrol pump which ate his credit card. it turned out the petrol pump wasn't 'online' so a man came and pulled the power to reboot it. it still failed but steve got his credit card back.

our 20 minute midnight pit stop allowed me to take some trolley photos in the supermarket carpark though !

click for the big version to fully appreciate this one i think

the day before the music starts this is all very quiet

as i mentioned before, i won weekend tickets for the Reading festival thanks to having one of my photos featured in the programme. i went down this evening to get my wrist band.

it was quite muddy:

and i liked how people were queuing up at a little window for chunks of wood to burn:

and there were tents as far as the eye could see (and i rejoiced in not having to stay in any of them):

even action man was beaten by the elements:

this evening Pure Reason Revolution played a local gig so i went along. totally fantastic !

here are two of the support bands

wire jesus

my luminaries

and here are dave and em, fellow gigsters, and celebrity drummer andrew:

compare pure reason revolution's effects to julian cope's

abandoned deck chairs and bill bryson book randomly in the middle of hyde park on a wet windy morning.

it's been raining a lot recently.

nice use of sticky tape to keep this sign on a stick.

these chaps had 'oculars rather than cameras but they still looked great in their high viewings.

somehow i've managed to miss the fact that Series 2 of the Mighty Boosh is on BBC3 at the moment. luckily (if you are in the UK) you can watch a streamed version via their website. Note the language warnings

today our friend was a parrot. i didn't try to speak to him like last time though.

his boss probably greated him excitedly that morning and announced "what we've been missing is colour. today you're going to be a parrot".

this was taken in a shop window. most of what you see was behind me. click for a closer inspection.

my old house mate jeremy (who will soon appear on the blog) found this shoe on his travels. it's a nice sporty number. slightly retro feel.

selfridges on Oxford Street often have excellent window displays. here's what's on at the moment.

it's very doctor who isn't it ?

no idea what it's about. and i like that feeling

plenty to do over the next few weeks. it's bank holiday weekend in the UK and i'm planning on going to the Reading Festival at the weekend, and i'll also be entering a few photos in to the Swallowfield Show.

those who are prepared to travel further should consider this excellent fiesta in near Hamburg/Lübeck in Germany on the 16-18th September. It features loads of cosmic music including the legendary Faust (who are touring the UK in the autumn)

jane and i went for a drink in the fantastic danesfield hotel on saturday night. i was woefully underdressed which added to the fun. people thought i must be someone famous (i should have told them about my radio berkshire appearance !).

here's jane enjoying her pimms:

and here's the very strange crisps they brought us:

i tell you this because jane and the girls are off camping for a few nights.

most of my photos are taken on the way to or from meetings and other work activities. often i see things and simply don't have time to stick around and see how they pan out.

here's a good example. it's the set of an outside play called 'the hole job'

look at the fantastic sign in the background of this (you'll have to click to see properly):

here's the general set:

don't ask y(fronts):

the advert

they were as bad inside as out

here's is the world's longest pencil

here is another pencil with a fire extinguisher suitable for extinguishing pencil fires:

here's a new invention i'm not that keen on. it's a massage chair, available for public use in service stations. you pay £1 and get jiggled for 10 minutes.

all it does is shake you around and make your money fall out your pockets and down the back of the cushion.

and, honestly, who would strip off and sit in one of these chairs in the lobby of a service station.

(with the exclusion of saturday night british beer heads)

any ideas what this is ? i didn't work it out for ages.

motion blurred (because i was moving) sign warning of the danger of young pheasants. we only saw this photo after we'd cycled through about a hundred mad running pheasants on a road !

another one for davescollections

if your dog isn't a pet it's fine. sent by jewel

cycling seems to be our new hobby. today we went for a three hour cycle round Windsor park with us all cycling. here's my attempt at taking a photo whilst cycling.

and here's kezia cycling on her own last thursday

there was a village show today and i entered a few photos in the arts and craft section

i won one first prize which i was very pleased with. the category was 'through an arch"

this being a classic british village fete there were people dressed in funny clothes and people in funny hats and umbrellas in the sun::

and flower arrangements which fell down:

and vegetables which won prizes then got eaten by a caterpillar:

(the caterpillar was still around)

and where there are jars of home preserve and runner beans as far as the eye can see:

and where people check the winning items very closely:

it was also a place where everyone was really friendly and seemed to be having a brilliant time !

our whole family is now capable of cycling which opens up a whole range of exciting cycling trips. hoorah for wheeled mobility

jane and my mum were convinced this was the chap off Rogue Traders and/or watchdog or something similar. i don't really know who he is but i did get this photo.

wadyafink ?

update: jane found this link for us matt allwright

it's a comedy mirror in an optical illusion museum (which may not have actually existed)

my nightclubbing days are well behind me, but i was intrigued by what the inside of this place would be like. it's looks rather domestic from the outside !

how often do you walk down the street and see someone's telly is on and wish you could stop for a while and watch it ?

or perhaps you look through their window and think 'their life looks interesting, i wish i could hang around for a bit and see what happens next ?'

well, these people are happy for you to do either of the above as they've conveniently put a leather sofa in their front garden.

photo of me by jane and jane by me

when i was up bright and early taking pictures of the castlerigg stone circle i noticed a heard (pack?) of cows nearby.

as the sun rose they got more interested in what i was doing and started wandering up to the stones. this one in particular ran towards me quite fast:

so i ran behind one of the stones but it still found me (note how i continued to take the photos, thus nearly documenting my own death):

it was only on the second morning when i decided to take a closer picture of the cows that i realised it had no udders... and in fact it was a field full of bullocks.

i'm not very good at nature !

i wasn't sure whether this surgery was for people or ducks. either way, ducks breasts ? i ask you.

yesterday was the big funkypancake radio interview at BBC Radio Berkshire.

i walked from the local train station and arrived over an hour later so wanderoursly aimed through a local copse. unfortunately i was got a bit lost and had to ask a passing dog-walker for advice on how to find the main road again !

here is Phil Kennedy with Suzanne Courtney (new name) through the window

i was in the studio from 2.30-4pm (the end of the show) and had a really good time. the banter was good and people seemed genuinely interested in the site (if only for Soose's wedding photo which are here)

Phil noticed that i had visitors in my web stats from a country called Niue and there followed a few minutes of Niue facts as can be seen on the screen here:

i had a whale of a time and was made to feel very welcome. so thanks to Phil and the team for inviting me on !

it's nice to see some trollies in this picture, which was taken outside the BBC Radio Berkshire studios.

but what really appealed to me on this was the sign saying "despatch" with the grave stones in the background.

wheel 'em in. and bury them.

Look at this mad slippery floor sign. i saw it on the ladies' toilets at the BBC.

rather than slipping it looks like the person in question is having a nice dance. or deliberately stamping in it.

whatever, they are definately having a nice time which should be motto of the BBC

here is andy with his wheely bag and smart suite posing by a pepsi max can on a wall

listen in !

funkypancake radio debut at 2.30pm UK time today (calculate local time here).

this is a very strange sign. inspect in more detail and we see the cyclist has only one arm, no feet and is cycling up a river.

you can use this picture for your computer desktop if you like. it's the carpet from our holiday flat, which is the same as in my grandma's house when i was a nipper.

as always, click pics for big version. this one is desktop sized if you want it !

front

back

the sun hadn't risen by the time i left the house. a sure sign winter is on the way. getting to london early is great though as there's hardly anyone about.

one place i always see people is in this church entrance. outside-livers ('tramps' doesn't sound right) spend the night there and are often waking up to a new day as i walk past.

yesterday i noticed they'd even constructed a cardboard wall to create a private bed area. the white socks resting on the top particularly appealed.

earlier this week they had their newspapers delivered too i noticed. a pile of big issues turned up on a lorry for them to sell

i love trollies, especially when they are far from home. i hadn't realised there were just so many different types available.

here is a trolley menu for your parusal.

someone should invent trolley top-trumps. It could have categories such as cubic capacity, seating capacity, steerability, height and wheelchair attachability.

i suspect this is an imposter. i spent ages talking to it but it wouldn't even wink its lights.

here is a police lady parked up in the bus lane getting some money out of the bank.

which reminds me of my very first joke i ever made up:

why do they call policemen 'coppers' ? because the change is good as arrest

what a great time saving idea - this photo shop has a selection of pre-prepared photos in its window to save you having to wait !

see davescollections for more lost/found photos

(no digital trickery other than negativity)

remember the car with the shoe ? i said it was no place for a shoe, but commenter jokey disagreed.

i therefore give you this as further evidence. the shoe has now slipped down on to the bonnet.

cars just don't get it. they have wheels, not feet. it's no wonder things go wrong when they attempt tricks with shoes. it's just showing off. plain and simple.

here's a chrome fridge freezer ...

looking enviously at a BT phone box

if only terrorists would label their explosives as well as these people have. it would help everyone, especially the police.

the dressed up animal advertising is back outside the glasses shop on tottenham court road.

in the name of research i approach the animal (frog or dinosaur?) to ask if it was always the same person inside the array of animals we've seen in recent months.

a foreign voice said "speak slowerlier pleece"

i repeated myself slowerlier to pleece him.

he paused then said "sorry, i do not undertant".

i wonder if he understood what the job entailed when he took it ?

here is a bit of a passport photo, ideal for one of my other websites: www.davescollections.com (which i've recently updated by the way).

unfortunately all we got was the hair.

here is the last picture of lee on his last day at our church before he goes off to vicar factory.

here he is pulling his best vicar face

things are quite mad in funkypancake world at the moment.

in addition to this, the webstats show the site had nearly 43,000 unique visitors last month and around 2 million hits, with people coming from all around the world (August is shown as a part month so it's lower)

and by the end this week i'll have walked 3,500 miles since i started measuring on the 2nd February 2004.

Funkypancake along with 5 other blogs have been nominated as 'Great British Blogs' by the British Council in Japan !

I'm a regular reader of Annie Mole's (pictured here) from Going Underground but i didn't recognise any of the others listed. A quick whizz round them all revealed Hippy Shopper to be the 'website i'm most likely to keep an eye on' from the rest of the list.

here's the front cover for the magazine which is also available online here (in english)

also - i'm being interviewed on BBC Radio Berkshire on Thursday. Listen in from 2.30pm uk time here. This follows the celebrity wedding when i met soose's boss phil kennedy.

and finally, i found out today one of my photos is going to be printed in the Reading and Leeds Festival programme

i think it's probably this one - see more from within the crowd at Reading 2004 here

jolly times in funkypancake land. so thanks all you readers for the massive encouragement you give by leaving comments, sending emails and generally showing up in the webstats !

or doubly secure ?

how's this for a dog sign with a terific view of some mountains in the lake district ?

the sign itself is quite intriguing. a giant hand with short fingers, an equally large bag and a departing red dog.

i'm this is a dog-waste sign, rather than a dog catching sign ? i can't be sure though

it's a magic electric finger (not to be confused with my cousin chris' magic fingers art shops)

this was the reason we went to keswick when we did. most excellent.

occasionally you see piles of clothes on the streets of london. here's a good example of an emptied suitcase

what intrigued me most with this was the poor quality prince charles tea-towel.

slippery floors signs are one of my favouritist categories. i'm amazed we're still finding new versions and varieties, particularly in this type of mass-produced sign.

here we see a gender-unspecified cleaner with one club foor poking/drawing on the floor with a stick.

or perhaps it's actually a picture of someone weeing on the floor rather than the bucket behind them ? i do hope not.

i spent two early mornings (5am) up castelrigg taking photos of the sunrise when we were in keswick. the first morning i spent nearly three hours there and it was all cloudy so i didn't get many nice photos (these are the negative ones i've been posting) - but i enjoyed playing with my new camera as it was my birthday morning !

here's a red glow as you approach the stones from the road

the next morning was much better. totally amazing - everything was glowing red when i arrived and there was mist creeping down the valley. even the cows seemed in a better mood, but more about that another time ...

and here's the red glow up closer

here's benjamin using his camera on my tripod

and here's his brother joseph doing the same thing

here's a funny little car. what's funnier is it is wearing a shoe on its head

car's shouldn't be allowed to do this kind of thing in my opinion

view from castlehead, keswick

graffiti, random man with ice-cream and big ben.

i saw these glasses on a table in a restaurant through their window and took a photo not expecting it to come out.

but it did and looks quite arty i think. who'd a thought it ?

the new BBC building in Langham Place is coming along nicely. they've revealed the new glass hat thing in recent days. very ... nice.

perhaps they'll fill it full of champagne at licence fee payers' expense ?

big nose ugly guy sent me these excellent photos of the signs at the back of the British Museum. these signs have only been up for about a month and i was planning on searching them out myself. now i don't have to ! thanks big nose, and good luck with your emigration.

climbing on lions is never a good idea

for those new to funkypancake you may not know that i collect numbered posters. this started when i noticed that each poster in paddington train station had a page number on it.

i've never seen the book that these giant pages (about A0 size i think) come from, but we have seen a number 57 before, but it looked slightly different. Probably a different book.

and this one is page number 5 which is quite intriguing. must be a new book.

here is a dog sign has been graffiti'd and posted to fantastic website Pictures of Walls. this one is here

i found it via Russell's blog (Russell reads this blog i think, so "hello Russell" if you're passing).

look at all these things you can't do with chewing gum. you can't smoke it, eat it, drink it or drop it. at least not in this hall. thank you !

one afternoon we walked round Derwent Water with the girls. it took a while but was worth it.

i'm not great at landscape shots, but i took a few to practice. here's some flat water

as regular readers of funkypancake will know, i'm rubbish at sleeping and sitting still. on holiday i got up at 4.30 a couple of days and went to bed around midnight most nights. there's just so much to do in life isn't there ?

anyway, if my mornings were all about taking photos, my evenings were all about chewing the cud whilst supping the crud with john. we even found a secret passage which brought us out in to the basement of a pub !

crazy golf is our favourite family sport. it can be quite a dangerous one too of course.

here i am going for a hole in two watched by my ever-suffering daughters.

eventually it went in the hole

and then kezia grew incredibly big on the last hole

you probably wouldn't have guessed, but life in the funkypancake world has been quite busy

i had a week off work to play in the band at the holiday bible club

then we went up to Keswick in the Lake District for a week. i've got about 200 photos to post from that holiday (out of the 2000 i took). you can look forward to that !

somewhere along the way i had a birthday. i had two cakes - one was a candle shoved in 4 squares of chocolate, and the other was a candle shoved in a small ice-cream.

then we came back and went to the celebrity wedding

somewhere along the line esther got two guinea pigs

and jane got a new tent

and work became stupid busy because of this

so, that's why i might not have replied to your email. sorry about that.

i thought i already had a category for headless photos, but i can't seem to find it. anyway, this was a deliberate photo for that category which now exists.

the concept being that in the digital world there's no excuse for ever publishing a photo like this as you can bin it straight away. i like the idea of deliberately making them instead.

were cars ever actually shaped like this ? probably one for the older readers

i've no idea what flava dr pepper is. pepper i suppose. what a hideous drink idea.

it's no coincidence this one looks like an exclamation mark !

i took this photo at the beginning of june. since then unaccompanied rucksacks have become objects of suspicion in london. how i long for those innocent days.

a dies. the beginning of the end or the end of the beginning. alphabetically speaking

kindly sent by reader keith who spotted it in "the cut", waterloo

not a great one this as it was taken out of a car window as we speeded by. but if you look above the standard 'infinity dog sign' you can see a different sort of dog.

st katherine's dock was previously beyond my range of walking from paddington but since i've started getting in to paddington at 7am having already done an hours work i've allowed my morning trecks to extend. meaning i can get to a 9am meeting over there with time to spare.

if ever you visit the Tower of London, or Tower Bridge, you should make time for wander round the very pretty docks

i mentioned that there were other famous people at the wedding, and here they are.

Soose works for BBC Radio Berkshire and two of the presenters were there:

Andrew Peach:

Phil Kennedy

and then there was this lady who it turns out has the best most famous job of all. she's the voice of some of the UK's major banks' telephone announcements.

so when you've been left on hold and a disembodied voice says 'please accept our apologies for the long wait, we are aware of your call etc', it could be her voice !

i've deliberately not mentioned her name so she won't be found here via Google.

for all round fantastic futuristic architecture, you can't beat Lancaster (Forton) services (more here). shouldn't all buildings look like this by now ?

these photos were taken out of the window as we drove by

it gives the impression they cook using nuclear power

My all-time favourite service station, for all round loveliness is the Killington Lake one (southbound only, up by the lakes somewhere). It's got its own little lake and would make a nice destination in itself. i only took a picture of the sign this time though.

here is a pile of greasy breakfast fodder

but here's is my excellent sausage sandwich. note the heinz ketchup in the background. terric.

this establishment already looks dated. just a few years back it would have been cutting edge

as most of you will know, i rarely use the tube, preferring to walk wherever possible to optimise the chance of taking some blogable photos. which is also why i'm averaging 80km (50 miles) walking per week.

however, my life changed on 23 May 2005 (you can tell i've been working through my archives) when i bought an Oyster card. i love swiping so much it's nearly enough to tempt me back under the street.

of course that was before the recent badness, but even so it appears you are much more likely to get splatted above the ground as you are under it. you can see the splats stats here

anyway, here i am looking very excited to receive my new Oyster pass at Westminster tube one evening.

yesterday we were privileged enough to get to go to the wedding of top celebrities Soose and Anders.

here they are looking for confetti love hearts that the children had hidden in some plant pots for them

and here are shoes as worn by the groom and a best man:

and here are the bride's shoes:

Soose was one of the finalists on Pop Idol

Andrew is the drummer with Pure Reason Revolution

and finally the groom's parents who are also our daughters' prayer parents which makes them prayer sister-in-laws to soose i guess ?

there were a few more 'celebrities' there, including someone totally cool who'd you'd never guess, but i'll post them up tomorrow ... (now here)

so, it was a celebrity wedding, but it was also very definately a Christian wedding which is the most fantastic celebration of all !

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it's a tarantino version of this one.

this reminds me of one of those 'ages of man' evolution posters.

do children still want to grow up to be police-people ?

i think you can get round this sign by leaving a singular object. you can avoid having your items removed and disposed of by attaching them to the railings with anything other than chain.

this is like some fancy physics drawing. or a shape finding treasure map. or something else.

here's a badge by a drain. it's for popular beat combo The Killers. perhaps the government should make a law requiring all those intent on killing to wear one of these badges.

if you saw someone wearing the badge you could phone the police and have them dealt with.

someone will know what these people are called. they aren't beefeaters are they ? last time we looked there was only one, but there's two now (or at least when i took this photo back in may)

security was tight even before the recent badness. i took this photo in march of a sign saying beware of vehicle searches, which i thought was a strange thing to put on a sign.

the entrance in question must lead under this place so i can understand why they were being careful

how many categories can this fit in ? it's two slippery sign bollards on a trolley in front of the Shell building

random thing on a bollardy thing near Goodge Street station

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i should have gone up. but i didn't. sorry

click for big

click for big

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this happened over a period of days:

first a strange plinth appeared:

and the bollards moved in:

then a new taller parking meter appeared (this photo was taken at a different location up the street where the new one was put up on the other side):

the old was decommissioned:

then they took it away:

and converted the stump in to a rather handy coffee dispenser:

king sized:

click to inspect the protrusion

click for big

i wonder if this was the flashing neon of its day ?

click for big

suddenly the churches leapt up and started following each other through the streets of london.

33. that's a funny age. seems old if your young and young if you're old. so much already done, so much to do.

half my life ago i was 16 and a half. an interesting time.

here's a poster esther made for a party we had a few weeks back. i'm glad to see we are all looking very smart and smiley !

this was but a few millimeters long.

intruder light shining through a dust storm created by some car bourne hooligans skidding round a carpark. beauty in chaos.

posh posh posh