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October 2003

eruption

despite being 30 miles away i am able to tell what is happening on the streets of london thanks to my network of spies. here is an interesting picture sent by telco-john. he spotted some pavement eruption.
maybe it’s caused by some prisoners who are digging an escape tunnel ? perhaps the villains are hiding in the bins ?
or maybe it’s something to do with Goodge Street station and the trouble on the Northern Line. They’ll be a lot of pressure building up underground at the moment, it’s only natural it should have to release itself.
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the best bit about this picture is that it shows that a couple of bins have wandered over to the eruption to investigate. bins care about the street – that’s why they are happy to accept all our rubbish.

generosity

as we approach the weekend, i advise you to be generous.
yesterday i overheard a man on the train say to his friend “i’m not shy about spending a bob or two”. hoorah for the nouveau rich i thought to myself.
what if you can’t afford to be generous financially ? well, why not start by filling everything up to the brim ?
(this was the 1000th funkypancake blog entry by the way !)

what a mess

i’m working from home today. i heard a lot of clonking in the room next to my office so i popped my head round the door and saw this scene of chaos.
esther had been sent under the bed and was extracting everything she could find. jane was happily receiving it, whilst kezia was spreading it around the room. i think they are sorting stuff out for the playgroup toy sale.
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i have retreated back to the safety, quiet and (relative) tidyness of my office

techies meet

a load of techies met up in our conference room yesterday. they brought a couple of switches and a load of yellow patch cables as techies love nothing more than wires, ethernet and IP.
they probably all sat there communicating with each other in total silence (except for the clickety-clickety of techy fingers) using protocols and applications we can only dream of. i suspect they didn’t even have computers – perhaps they’ve all got techy combover hair which when parted reveals a nice RJ45 socket.
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i used to be a techy. but now i’m just regulatory. (i still secretly loves wires)

christianity …

… is more than just being kind to spiders. don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

pavement food

here is some food found by my colleague rob.
i like how the turmoil of the apple situation of offset against the serenity of the wrapped cheeses. it screams the questions “how did it get there” and “why did rob take the photo”.
perhaps it was catapulted using the blue and black strands to the left of the picture ? i’m sure they are significant.

click for big version

solar flares

my trains were rubbish today and i got to work nearly an hour late. i’m not a bitter blogger, so won’t go on at length. but perhaps it was an intergalactic event which triggered all the points failures. i left home at 6.40am when it was all going on …

gloves

2 gloves on oxford street
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building by numbers

there is always building work going on round london. i spotted this near liverpool street. it’s a build it by numbers kit. probably colour coded too. possibly sponsored by sesame street
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glove

wet look glove
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cranberry spray

cranberries have just moved in to the UK. i’d never heard of them when i was a kid, but now they seem to be everywhere. i had ostrich and cranberry burger last week, and now here is a can of cranberry spray. it’s for spraying surface or space. worth remembering if you ever join nasa and want to iradicate intergalactic odours.
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wooden neck items

wondering about christmas presents or simply want to know where to buy a like wooden tie ? well here are two places on t’internet i found.
i can’t vouch for the authenticity/safety of buying from these two places over the Internet as i’ve never used them myself. however, you may enjoy just looking at the websites !
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noveltie for neckties
or how about:
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a wooden bowtie ?
i particularly like the idea of a limerick section on a wooden bow tie site.

street cleaner

i’ve noticed that a lot of the push along street cleaners now have seat attachments. here was one seemingly abandoned in the street. i looked at the dials to see if it had a maximum speed, but none of the dials showed velocity (only fuel and time !).
Maybe there is a distance measurer somewhere and the driver has to do his own velocity = distance/time calculations. Those guys who clean the street – they are all secret rocket scientists. perhaps.
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luxury street accomodation

you know trolley man ? well, there are some mattresses in the place where he usually parks up his trolleys. The mattresses are balanced on a bed base.
on closer inspection it appeared there was in fact someone sleeping on the bed ! I suspect it was trolley man, but i didn’t think it was a good idea to disturb him to check.
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whither the wispa

it’s official. no more wispas.
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i phoned Cadbury’s today to find out where the Wispas have gone. It turns out THEY HAVE STOPPED MAKING THEM ! the last ones were produced at the end of August 2003.
I was informed that they had been replaced by Dairy Milk Bubbly, which is nearly the same thing. Dairy Milk is Cadbury’s flag ship product and they have decided that the Wispa should be rolled in to that family.
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So no more ‘velvety textured milk chocolate’. instead it’s now just ‘bubbly’.
I went in search of the last remaining Wispas which are working their way through the newsagent shelves. i was prepared for a long search through the backstreets of london, but found my favourite local newsagents on charlotte street had a few in stock:
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The bubbly dairy milk hasn’t the same crunch as the old wispa. this is mostly due to its lack of girth (bubbly left, velvety right):
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i remember queuing up to get my wispas as a teenager from my old school tuckshop which intriguingly operated out of the science block windows
and so another part of history dies …