Skip to content

what’s in a name

i’ve just had an email from a chap called jaime, which is of course french for “i love”.
just for today, change your name to ILove. You could spell it ILv if you like.
see how you get on.

castor calamity

as you know, i’ve been looking for ways that people have been beating the congestion charge. in a lot of cases the method has involved castors on objects (or indeed just the castor itself).
here we see a pile of wheely-chairs next to BT tower in the usual dumping place.
but why ?
have they been confiscated ?
are they insurance write-offs ?
is it a badly run council chair-park ?
DSC06631.jpg
some mysteries are too deep to even bother fathoming.

odd socks

i have been accused of wearing odd socks. i am a bloke (fact) and both of my socks are black (originally) so they can’t be odd (in my opinion).
‘odd’ and ‘pair’ are relative terms with a sock continium between them. i believe today’s sock choice lies on towards the pair side of the line.
and it was dark when i put them on this morning.
DSC06629.jpg
my feet seem a little strange in this picture. for this i can only apologise.

hound excreta

i hate standing in dog hound poo. i stood in some this morning. i’m sure the extra weight of my laptop in my backpack which squashed me down in to it.
i was then faced with the dilema of stopping and scrapping (but with what) or taking a more grassy, puddly route to wipe it off as I went.
it was this second option i chose which involved dragging my feet down gutters (of the road, not houses) and standing in every puddle and pile of workman’s sand available.
however, all this really did was to increase the level of soilage on my shoe and make people think I was practicing for a role in the Hunchback of Notradam.
in the end i cleaned it off with toilet paper when i got to work.
apologies to anyone reading this whilst eating.

garden glove

i spotted this glove in someone’s front garden on the way home last night. unfortunately the owners of the house were unloading their car next to where the glove was lying.
so i said “can i take a picture of this glove for my website please”. they didn’t really just laughed politely but didn’t say anything, so i took the photo anyway.
people are so weird about talking to strangers.
DSC06628.jpg

baiting arjan

we’ve heard nothing from arjan (or lucy for that matter) for ages. all we have left is a stupid teddy and a picture of arjan.
sara constructed this beautiful montage to attract comments from them.
DSC06627.jpg
update: as weird as a weird thing, just as I was writing this Lucy phoned up to talk to sara. the world is indeed a strange and mysterious place. or is that plaice. a very strange and mysterious plaice which is in a fact a fish. fishworld.

cutting the cable

here is an electrical engineer cutting through a rather seriously big mains cable.
DSC06625.jpg
this is never a good idea. especially if you are just using a carving knife.
DSC06625b.jpg
i didn’t stick around to see what happened next …

beautiful voicemail

my work voicemails come to me by the magic of email. here is one i received whilst in berlin:
voicemail (30kb)
if it doesn’t play when you click it you need to right click, ‘save as’ on your machine and play it from there. or just not bother.

art attack

i’ve just heard that esther had an exciting morning at preschool today. she wanted to do some art and ‘needed some hair for her picture’ so she hacked a bit of her own off.
very enterprising. and at least she didn’t chop anyone else’s hair off (as far as i know).
i don’t know if we should tell her off or not. depends if the picture is any good.
pictorial evidence later i hope …

hyde park 1 mile

two signs for 1 mile. is that 2 miles ? or a consensus at 1 mile. was the second sign put there by a blind man who didn’t see the first sign.
what kind of crazy world do we live in where they let blind people put up traffic signs ? that could lead to all sorts of chaos. but would be very good for blog pictures.
DSC06622.jpg

bloody trains

this high speed train whizzed past my slow train this morning. i noticed there was a lot of blood on the front of it so searched it out when i arrived at Paddington. i suspected it would have been cleaned off by the time i got there, but it was still ‘attached’.
you can just about make out a piece of pigeon wing under the window-wipers so i suspect it was this that was splattered (or a fox with a pigeon in it’s mouth jumping from a bridge)
DSC06620.jpg

website fame

i was mentioned on radio6 this evening for bumping in to famous people. unfortunately i was listening via the internet and my machine crashed just as he said “we’ve also got an email from funkypancake who sent in a list of things and web addresses by …” machine froze. so i don’t know if this site was mentioned or not. and they don’t archive that particular show so i can’t listen back to it.
that’s modern technology for you. you can’t trust it. and you mustn’t either.

ulrika

when i got to heathrow last night i thought i would go looking for celebrities as there is no where for them to hide in the baggage reclaim area.
i went and stood at the side and there was ulrika ! she was just leaving so i grabbed my camera and caught this rear shot. i wasn’t sure if it was her as her hair looked a bit of a mess, but then she said something to her travelling companions and she had the voice of ulrika.
BA781 from stockholm:
DSC06616.jpg
DSC06615.jpg

picture of hounds

here is a picture of dogs on a door in a restaurant in tegel airport.
DSC06613.jpg
better photo of this exhibit here

tegel airport

here’s a nice idea. have a window between the blokes toilets and the ladies so you can wave at each other washing your hands
DSC06610.jpg

where’s the party

i was wondering why my part of berlin was so quiet. there didn’t seem to be many people about for sure. i thought berlin was meant to be party-central. i had a feeling something was going on somewhere else and i wasn’t invited (probably for my anti-freedom of speech leanings or something).
however, it was because they were all over in the old West side of the city having a street party and doing shopping and eating at brand named takeaway restaurants.
this is how they must have felt in east-berlin before the wall came down. but it was probably worse for them. i suspect.
DSC06584.jpg

fleas

i went to a flea market near the Tiergarten. it was full of fantastic things like thousands of rusty door handles
and boxes full of ceramic doll limbs
DSC06567.jpg
pictures of russian leaders
DSC06570.jpg
DSC06569.jpg
(where’s the birth mark)