finesse
this week … finesse everything
October 2003
the streets of london are paved with … students
i popped out to get some chocolate a few minutes ago and got captured by students. these ones were canvasing the opinion on the great british public on the controversial issue of the congestion charge.
i am an expert of alternative transport methods and congestion charge avoidance, but i didn’t get a chance to explain because, all too quickly the interview was over.
here are the crew
and here they all together. they were very excited to find out they might be on this website. and so they should be !
good luck to them in their future media careers.
6 pints of milk and half a pint of beer
remember my alcohol delivering milkman discovery ? Well, he’s been out again, supplementing his regular milk round with beer delivery:
various transports
here is a street cleaning cart. this one is special because it is a convertible. ideal for those warm summer months (or crisp october mornings)
and here is a steam roller. i ran across the road in front of this one (it wasn’t moving very fast) but i did wonder what would happen if i tripped and fell in its path. i imagine they don’t do emergency stops very well.
notice how the steam roller is stopped at these traffic lights. if you are driving a steam roller you don’t need to stop anywhere.
and where’s the steam anyway. why do they keep messing with stuff
solo cycle
much excitement as esther managed to cycle her first without stabilisers. hoorah. she’s very pleased with herself, and so she should be
video kids
esther and I spent a happy hour video conferencing to each other around the house. esther had the wireless laptop and wandered round the house.
we were just getting bored when her best friend, catherine, logged on at her house, so they video conferenced each other instead.
it was fascinating watching two 4 year olds talk and video to each other over the Internet. It’s always funny when 4 year olds have a conversation anyway as they don’t do small talk – conversating over the Internet was even more funny.
strange dogs
here is a good picture of dog. is it a sign for dogs, about dogs or told by a dog ? can you trust a dog to tell you about strangers ? has the man in black got a dog’s head ? is he just a shadow ? are the children strangers (or do they know each other). the sign just contributes to confusion in my opinion.
whatever it means, it does contain a nice detailed picture of a dog:
ian and carolyn
today we went with lunch at our lovely friends ian and carolyn’s house. good food and lots of good fun.
we went to the local park. here is kezia and ian:
and here is esther and carolyn:
the afternoon ended with a disco. (i learnt some tips for next time i have an office disco)
burnt bit of paper
here is a burnt bit of paper i found. it makes mention of the fire brigade. how mysterious.
lost monkey
jane found this in the garden of some friends we visited today. is it yours ? we put it in the hedge so anyone going by can say “ooh luck, a monkey in a tree”
esther’s drawing
here is a drawing by esther of herself, catherine and kezia
it’s a blogging disaster
finger trouble by the techies running the site meant we lost all of funkypancake a few hours ago.
i’m hoping i can rebuild most of it, but i’m concerned i haven’t got archives of all the photos. i was trying to back up the blog this afternoon and left my work machine downloading the files this evening. i’ve no idea if it had finished or not. i guess i’ll find out on monday …
so what we (nearly) had here was a low bandwidth, photo free blog 🙁
update: i’ve managed to piece most of it together from my own backups and my Internet Explorer Cache. I’m still missing a few photos though. if you visited the site yesterday (friday) and saw my st paul photos can you drop me an email as the ‘missing’ photos might be on your computer !
me mending the site at 2.48am Saturday morning. i finally went to bed at 3.15 and got up at 7.45am to look after the kids whilst jane went shopping.
update 2: thanks to Tony, we now are back to a complete blog. hoorah.
drink-o-meter
here is a handy link to see how much you’ve spent on booze in your life and whether you are overdoing it. its a healthy comedy item
a surprise blogday party
also, the funkypancake blog is 6 months old next thursday (assuming it survives the journey). we should of course celebrate this fact in some appropriate way. but how ? suggestions please.
also, funkypancake will be down for part of tomorrow as the server it lives on is being physically moved to a different location. hopefully they’ll wrap it up nicely in some fluffy bubble wrap and treat it “real good”.
more dog signs
hey, someone else is collecting pictures of dogs !
here are some dog signs
(this site was discovered by swara when she was trying to find a random google which would get her back to the funkypancake site – i’m not responsible for the content of the site, some of which might not be family friendly)
spleening
‘spleening’ is a non obvious mispelling of the word ‘spelling’.
however, my recommendation for the weekend is to add the letter ‘w’ after ‘s’ if the word begins with an ‘s’ followed by a vowel (doesn’t apply to words beginning with an ‘s’ which don’t have a second letter as a vowel).
a couple of examples:
* my mother just swent me an email swaying how much fun she’s having.
* swomeday this will all make swense
* sweaty swedes swim swomewhere
if you can involve a squelchy mouth noise whilst speaking the ‘sw’ bit then that would be ideal. image in cross between a cough and a sniff and you are halfway there.
update: my colleagues swara and swally aren’t very impressed with this cunning plan. oops
The Iraq Church Service (featuring Tony Blair)
i had a meeting down ludgate hill today which is the road which approached St Pauls. I used to work on this road so know the area well.
today there was a bit of a ‘do’ on to remember those who had died in the iraq conflict. 51 british people died (out of how many in total …). but now isn’t the time for politics and discussions on the pointlessness of (this) war.
anyway … Prince Charles, the Queen, Tony Blair and other senior royals and government people were about, so there was high security.
we don’t get armed police in the UK much so when we see them it’s quite a shock. here is a picture to shock you (if you are from the UK):
To increase security further they had hidden St Paul’s cathedral. They had replaced it by a giant black and white drawing. that would have confused any terrorists …
Obviously the church service was going to be a sombre occasion. so to lighten things up, the police had brought along a bouncy castle:
(notice my colleague tamara in this photo. she was desperate to have a bounce. but it’s good she didn’t as all that was in the tent was … a vicar and a tressle table)