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December 2003

emergency – finger cut

rarely a day goes by in the modern office without some minor disaster of some sort. despite insolating ourselves in cotton wool as per the health and safety rules and regulation we occasionally manage to injure ourselves.
today, it was the turn of receptionist Laura to become mangled by the paper shredder. upon hearing of her injury i instantly put the first aid procedure in to place and phoned our first aid warden called Pete.
He ran up the stairs, inspected the damage and then applied a plaster to the very small paper cut.
pete had a very good bedside manner and returned to check on laura 5 minutes later.
luckily everything turned out fine, but i shudder to think what could have happened if i hadn’t been there to phone pete …
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office

i’m moving office on friday and today is the last day on the 3rd floor. on friday i descend to the 1st floor. i’ll miss the height of the 3rd floor, but i’m sure the vertically challenged 1st floor has a lot to offer.
here is the current office – i sit in the far left hand corner.
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digital beta tape

here is a tape i found. i left it there in case it contained something bad. and i haven’t got a video tape player (my betamax video player only plays analogue beta tapes).
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nice building

here is a building people like to complain about. i think it’s quite good. click the photo to see the whole thing. there’s safety in monotony.
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click for big version

advent day 10

day ten of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s father christmas aka santa claus aka saint nic.
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and here are some more photos from last january when i had my plastic santa in london in the snow:
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the bottom right hand photo is me with the santa outside the entrance to Downing Street. the sign says ‘passes must be shown’.
i interpreted the sign as ‘santas must be shown’ and therefore was refused entry to this particular government building
here is a santa in the window of hamley’s this morning. it’s made out of funny plastic bits which aren’t lego (the photos are a bit duff because of the reflection in the window):
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down the drain

there’s a whole nother world underneath the streets of london. sometimes you catch a glimpse of it in every day life. the occasional open door at a train station revealing hidden passageways or funny funnel shaped buildings in random parts of the town acting as air vents for underground activities.
this evening i saw an open manhole cover with a little railing round it. i learnt over and took this photo down the hole. i zoomed in 3x and it still looked a long way down !
you can’t quite see because of the scale of the photo, but just above the water level is a passeway leading left to right across the picture where the workman had obviously gone down.
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i did think about going down and having a look, but wasn’t sure if that was a great idea.

new streetcleaners

they do things differently south of the river. here we see a new type of street cleaner, which is really just a fun sized tractor with a fancy trailor.
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mysterious goings on

i think the e-landlord might be doing some work on the server at the moment, so apologies for any temporary blog disruption which may have or continue to occur. how i missed it when it was gone.
it’s just like the wispa bar, but i suspect they may be gone for good.
on the subject of old sweets, everyone must have seen this by now. Relive the sweets which made your teeth what they are today.

advent day 9

day nine of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a nativity scene
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[would you allow me to put this photo for this on hold until saturday ? only, my mum is going to provide us with a lovely nativity when we visit her in her Christmas grotto (you’ll see what i mean in due course)] ?
update: here is a photo of our church nativity with a mysterious visitor

self portrait

on the long walk to work i occasionally see people checking their reflection in shop windows. someone’s come up with the idea of a full length mirror in the street so people can simply check what they look like.
this mirror was particularly unwide suggesting it’s targetted at the skinnier commuter
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advent day 8

day eight of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a snowman
here are the photos. i took these last january when a massive snow cloud plopped its content on london. i was meeting a friend over in westminster and got these photos. the one on the left is a snow man in traffalgar square and the one on the right is a couple of snow-men wearing massive snow ball hats (which must have been incredibly heavy!)
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i REALLY tried hard to find a snow man today but failed hence the old photos above

danger, molars

this is a sign outside a dentist near the old bailey. the old bailey is where your worst criminals in the UK get their trials. a convenient location for any dentist
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inflationary bounces

here is a giant inflatable thing in the middle of London’s business district. perhaps they are trying to encourage the economy to bounce back
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street taps

here is one of the government’s water-for-street-people-for-christmas street taps.
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trains

“it turns a bit cold and the country falls apart” is a common phrase in the UK. it’s also a true one. my trains were broke this morning and the staion announcement said
“hello, we don’t know what’s going on i’m afraid. there might be a train every hour, but we don’t know and we certainly can’t tell you when the next one is due”. Luckily at that moment a train arrived and we all squashed in.
now i’m here, i hope i can get home again …
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here’s a photo i took before all the train palava. can you guess what it is ?

advent day 7

day seven of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a festive dog
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so, here are the pictures:
here is esther’s toy dog, recently adopted by kezia. i’ve put it in our plastic green teapot for comedy effect
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and here is a robot dog i bought for 50pence outside a shop in Brick Lane, London. it was very cheap as it only has three legs. we’ve had much more fun attaching clothes pegs and small wheels to the third leg than we ever would have had if it had its full compliment of legs. buy broken stuff is my motto. (how our friends look forward to their christmas presents from me)
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i was going to take a picture of a teeny weeny small plastic dog i used to play with as a kid with brother edd, and now esther and kezia play with it, but it was sadly not in the places i expected it to be in. if it turns up i’ll let you know !

the office party

it was the office christmas party last night. my camera is a bit duff in low light so i didn’t take too many shots, but here are a few:
jane and i (left), herve (right)
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will, jane, me and herve (left) and Boy 34 (right)
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i’ve made it my business to stalk boy 34 whenever i see him at an office do. jane told him off for ruining the website which was good of her ! Like any good employee he blamed his boss

gloves

glove at marylebone station last night:
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glove temporarily abandoned by some loo police at the office christmas party
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