October 2004
at the foot of regents street
this boot was at oxford street last night. you can see Regent Street and a bus going by. the bus is stationary. unlike regent street which is heading down towards the river. by now it will be flushed out to sea with a million other shopping streets.
probably.
duran duran
well, i don’t know about you, but i was working from home this morning and had to go in to the office for a meeting from 6-7.30pm. so i travelled the 2-hour journey and managed to arrive early.
about 2 days early.
it’s actually on wednesday. so i came back and on the way had a look in the paper and noticed that Duran Duran were signing their new record in HMV on Oxford Street. Aha ! i thought and negotiated the tube system to reach my destination with 15 minutes to spare before they were due to finish their signing.
unfortunately i went to the wrong HMV and ended up arriving at the proper one just after they had stopped letter people in to the queue. so instead i skulked around the barriered off bit and got the shots below (but actually the last load of people didn’t get anything signed so i was better off wandering around instead of being stuck in a queue)
once they had finished signing there was little interest in the signing table, suggesting it was Simon le Bon and his musican chums people were more interested in. except for this one lady who was inspecting the table for her own interest (probably):
so i left and saw them coming out the side door and climbing in to their cars:
afterwards i read in another london paper that Eddie Izzard and possibly joanna lumley were just down the road in virgin megastore. if i’d known that i would have popped in there too. oh well.
the wretch on the train
you know when they say “sorry, this train is delayed due to an aggressive passenger in one of the carriages. the transport police have been called” ? well that happened to me this evening. and the aggressive person was in my carriage.
it was actually a lady in her 50s who was stubonly refusing to pay her fine. she was more stroppy that aggressive but there was potential for passenger uprising when the ticket man tried to drag her off the station by pulling her handbag and at one point taking her luggage off the train !
then some of the other passengers shouted “oi, you can’t steal that woman’s bags” and another shouted “throw her off, i’m not subsidising non-payers”.
he then went and sat next to her and kept repeating “you are very annoying. get off the train” in a voice which was cross between a robot and monty python. eventually she paid her fine when the fuzz turned up.
so, not only was my journey to london pointless it was also filled with excitement like seeing duran duran and seeing a stroppy middle aged woman.
here she is walking down the platform when she finally got to her destination. i didn’t dare use the flash. but the picture sums up how most of the train was feeling.
erk. too many words in this post. sorry.
where the signs come from
dan sent me these pictures of a sign factory that he passes occasionally. click the pictures for closer inspection.
what if it’s not actually a factory. what if it’s someone’s collection and they’ve disguised it as a factory to stop the police suspecting ? we’ve rumbled them now though haven’t we.
everything must go (while stocks last)
i loved this sign, especially the unexpected last line.
aerobics
we went to our friends ian and carolyn’s this afternoon. here is ian giving the girls some flying lessons.
safety notice – no children were hurt in the taking of these photos. but ian did look a bit warned (and worn) out by the time they’d finished.
making do
after a rather excellent church service we had a kids band practice. scott is the drummist but due to transport difficulties hadn’t any drums or sticks.
he borrowed some drums and improvised with a pencil and a wooden spoon. the pencil was HB so his drumming was medium strength.
do kids today know anything about the pencil grading system ? i’d almost forgotten myself.
matt and joy
here are matt and joy. except joy doesn’t like her photo taken so she’s exited. but i think it looks good anyway.
and i could see joy with my eyes when i took the photo. so she’s there, but not quite in frame.
richard and julia
our most lovely friends richard and julia have come down from hull (with hannah) as revenge for us visiting them last week. here they are dancing in the proper style.
(i don’t know about you but i’m just loving the slow sync flash effect thing)
another party
we had to leave our friends’ dr who wedding reception a little early to get to another friend’s 40th birthday party. this too was fantastic with loads of friends from church.
sally has groovy dance lessons so lots of people were doing proper dancing. i prefer freestyle. so i did that in freestyle-corner.
i wore a patterned shirt with my velvet jacket (i had planned to wear my velvet dinner jacket but it had become too stinky thanks to being stored in the loft).
imagine my surprise when i noticed our friend anthony was also wearing a velvet jacket with a patterned shirt. i asked a friend what they thought it meant and she said “it means you are in sync with your local conservative councillor”. for that is what he is.
a fantastic wedding
matt, my colleague and website landlord, today was also a timelord as he married his fincy, nancy (also a work colleague) in a dr who theme’d wedding. it was a fantastic thing with great people, a great place and great dr who props. we really enjoyed ourselves.
there was a police box, a dalek and K9. and people dressed up as people.
the dalek (and K9) were remote controlled by a suspicious man who was running up and down outside the windows trying to see what was happening with his dalek which was joining in the boogying on the dancefloor.
update: see here for newspaper coverage !