January 2004
stop. go to church
i went to All Souls this lunchtime. The question was ‘How good do you have to be to get in to Heaven’.
The answer was that there’s nothing you can do morally or spiritually to make ourselves perfect enough to meet the entry requirements, so as human beings alone, we’re stuffed which is a shame. and that’s where Jesus fits in to the story.
You can listen to the services here. Life makes (more) sense when you’ve got an eye on the end game. otherwise, what’s the point ?
biscuit disco
here are two biscuits (one split) at a disco.
at night the glass things on the floor flash different colours in time to the music so the biscuits get the full boogie experience. it’s kind of like that michael jackson video. only more normal.
unfortunately, due to a lack of biscuit police, during the day digestives mill around and fight. here we see a chocolate digestive has beaten up a regular digestive.
i blame the parents.
charity shop junk
this pile of cack was on the street outside my favourite charity shop. i think it was from a split bin bag (bling bag ?) and was probably charity rejects. there’s a level of second hand junk that even charity shops don’t want.
including a Hayes V34+ analogue modem (with adapter) it seems.
fishbone
here is a residential tower block. there is beauty in 1970s concrete symmetry
wind(ow)
i got a different train this morning and walked to work a different way. i even bought a different type of confectionary. i was trying to see what it would be like to be someone else doing a different commute.
on the train the window wouldn’t shut. this resulted in much angry huffing from fellow passengers who variously tried to slam the window shut to get it to stay closed. each time someone succeeded the train would wobble and it would drop open again.
i was sitting next to the window so i got a steady icey blast from the outside which i quite enjoyed. it’s great being wrapped up in a warm coat and hat, with your feet gently warmed by the floor heating, whilst your face is being frozen off.
i might break all the window catches so i can experience this again (in winter)
subliminal strangeness
occasionally the display screens at my local train station don’t work. today was one such occasion (though it was working 7 hours earlier, at midnight, when i came home last night).
it was pulsating a nice wobbly pattern, reminiscent of an oscilloscope on a 1970s Open Univeristy program.
There was a man with wild hair and a big beard wearing a labcoat pointing at it with a wooden stick whilst chalking something on a blackboard besides him (i made this last bit up)
book review
i’m reading The Book of Matches by Nicholson Baker at the moment and it is most excellent. a regular reader recommended another book by this author which i couldn’t find in my local bookshop so i bought this instead.
excellent for not saying much about anything in a nicely detailed way. read it. marvellous.
oddject
this is an odd object (an oddject). it’s by a building site which used to be an abattoir. here it was a long time ago. it’s a long white cycliner with a hook at the end.
i suspect Pete might know
glove in a pub
i’ve been to some work do tonight. i’ve been out every night this week so far and will be tomorrow and have a music practice on friday night. this makes me very popular at home.
i found this glove on the floor in the pub next to The Barbican Centre in London. i went in there as i arrived at my meeting 30 mins early.
fun fair grabbers
you can make a job out of anything nowadays. what are you good at ? play to your strengths.
i’ve just spotted (and heard) this man outside my window at home. he’s unloading massive concrete blocks in front of a bungalow.
so far, his skills have included driving up and down our dead end street with his articulated lorry twice – once with an extra trailer, once without it (perhaps it fell off)
he then climbed up on to his little stool and using a mechanical grabber picked up and moved the concrete blocks.
it appears to me this man may have had his training in a fun fair.
driving skills courtesy of the dodgems and the lifting skills finely honed by playing those machines with little grabbers which never quite managed to lift the teddy bear/watch/£10 note/packet of cigs.
tedius
today is a day of reading regulatory documents, hence nothing exciting is likely to happen. which is a shame. but there we go. i’ll keep you posted.
first annual paper puddle boat race
the conditions were ideal, if a little windy, for a lunchtime race on Tottenham Court Road.
It was the first annual funkypancake paper puddle boat race.
There were four boats two from John (top and bottom), one from Pete (on the right) and one from myself (on the left).
look both ways
i try to look both ways as much as possible:
smart and casual
fat and thin
tall and small
bright and thick
it worried me to ask, but what opposites do you attract ?
girl 25
yeah, just found another photo:
read all about it on the davescollections website
slippy cucumber
this cucumber is on the street outside my office and represents a slip hazard. but is it as bad as a vol-eu-vent ? Popular classical songsmith Charlotte Churchslipped on a vol-eu-vent the other day whilst walking past an ex-boyfriend.
She probably could have complained in a french accent that she had been briefly stolen-by-the-wind. But it did make me think how slippy are vol-eu-vents.
my thoughts are that if it were upsway down, then standing on it would expel slippery sauce on to the floor, whilst the pastry mixed with a smaller amount of sauce would stick it to the shoe, thus creating ideal slippage conditions.
i may attach a couple to my shoes for everyday use when i need a little extra speed. we could have a few races.
on the subject of racing, i am proposing a different kind of race with my work colleagues for this lunchtime as the weather is perfect for paper boat on puddle racing. we have wind, big puddles and at the moment it’s not raining. we’ll haev to see how we are doing by lunchtime …
trolley
here is a man travelling by tea trolley down by Middlesex Hospital (congestion charge exempt). he’s pushing fast to build up speed and is about to jump on.
There has been a bit of a pedestrian backlash recently because train travellers soemtimes get drinks trolleys. This chap is a drinks trolley vigilante. i salute him for that. i also quietly applaud his lab coat.