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pop idol mark

i get a number of visitors to this website who are looking for Pop Idol information. I come second in Google if you do a search for ‘junior pop idol‘ for example.
this morning, i saw the pop idol bus asking us to ‘Vote Mark’. If i’d thought about it i should have knocked on the door and said “is mark in”, but i didn’t.
who is mark ? should he win ? i dunno nothing.
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update: about 4 hours later i saw the bus again and this time they were giving out bars of chocolate. still no sign of mark (still no idea who he is).
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£1

i often see money and i rarely pick it. i prefer to leave it for those who really need it. here is £1.
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seeing things

rather randomly i thought i saw battersea power station across hyde park this morning. it must have been there every day, but i’ve just never looked down the road at this angle before. you can just see it’s four jutting jutters through the trees and beyond the mist.
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advent day 16

day sixteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a teddy
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here are the photos. it’s paddington bear as seen as paddington station in london. i go through paddington station every day. paddingston station is of course named after paddington bear.
paddington station also named after a small welsh hamlet famous for producing fluffy cotton wool (a derivation of padding-town).
all of the facts above are false (and therefore a fictions).
here is paddington with his mysterious eyes. the photos were taken nearly 10 hours apart (on the way to work, and on way back again)
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passport photo

another passport photo. this time found by myself at Edgware Road tube station.
i wasn’t going to get off at this station (as paddington station, where i was heading, was the next stop), but found myself unmistakenly drawn to get up and walk the 10 minutes to paddington.
as i walked up the stairs which lead to the exit i found this photo for my collection
being on top of the world from such spiritual guidance i walked boldly off to paddington station. on the way a police man stopped me and said “and why do you think you can walk down here sir ?”.
It turned out there was a ‘suspect package’ in the street and they had closed the road (though tube trains were probably running just under the road !).
If i’d be quick of thought i would have answered “because i am impervious to explosives”, but you never think of these things at the time. in the end my walk took me 20 minutes instead because of the diversion, but it was worth it to find the photo.
this is my first cut-out photo.
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by the way, i’m planning on a proper makeover to the davescollection website which is why i haven’t updated it for a while. this will be my christmas project, and my main present to my friends and family (apologies to those expecting CDs etc) …

cleaning the gherkin

here is london’s newest landmark – the gherkin. i took this photo as it looked nice, but it also shows a little man in a box dangling off a very thin stick, cleaning the windows.
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chilly

it was a bit chilly this morning and i spotted this holly nicely frosted up.
pity i didn’t spot it in similar conditions on Advent Day 5
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snowman let down

here are some inflatable snowmen who felt like i did yesterday.
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advent day 15

day fifteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a reindeer.
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here are the photos:
tacky plastic reindeer in a shop window – note how they’ve kept the foam pieces in their plastic bags to prevent a mess
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and here is my plastic reindeer barometer dressed in a crown, hair extensions and tie. on the right is a moose with a charles and diana biscuit tin balanced on its head
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a room with a view

my new office has a nice view of BT Tower out the window. hoorah !
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coaster

there is a modern trend to walk down the street with a cup of coffee on the way to or from work and meetings. of course people also talk on their mobiles whilst walking down the street.
so what do you do if your phone rings and you have a cup of coffee ? well you put the coffee down of course. but where ?
on a street coaster of course. here is one decorated with a cow in the middle of the road.
personally i think it’s a little dangerous to walk in to the middle of the road to put your coffee down, but the risk assessment men with their complicated spreadsheets will probably have calculated that for this particular piece of road, the risk of burning your ear with coffee whilst answering your phone is greater
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morning is broken

i felt considerably peaky this morning. if i knew i was ill i would have stayed in bed, but i don’t know if it’s just something i ate yesterday as i had some pudding with egg in and that makes me bad (incredible hulk style). if it’s my own fault then my employer shouldn’t have to suffer as a result. so i’ve come in anyway and will just feel like death on a plate for a while.
meanwhile there was a fantastic sun rise this morning. i watched it out of the train window. by the time i got to london the main bit was over, but there was still some dramatic sun-through-steam-on-buildings type things
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update: i started feeling even more ill so went home. rest of the day in bed with laptop 🙁

odd job man

here is pete. he’s the first aid bloke, and configures our telephone exchange. he’s also the cleaning man.
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tasteful decorations

there is a house not too far from us which has gone way overboardon the decorations. it’s appeared in a few national papers because their neighbours aren’t very happy. the house in question is down a very exclusive private driveway where most of the houses are valued at around £1million.
this one houseowner likes to decorate their house rather madly. the photos don’t really do it justice. it’s truely mad. completely.
and most of all, it’s simply not british.
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kezia loves christmas

kezia loves the plastic santa. so much so that it has now become one of her inner circle of favourite toys. she calls it christmas (kind of in a cute way). here she is asleep with her little baby and christmas.
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carol service

it was our church carol service this evening. i think it all went very well. the thing i got from the service was how christmas is all about life (ie jesus coming to earth as a baby), but is actually more about the important question of what happens when you die.
here is tony who made all the mulled wine. or was that the mule-ed wine. or the mull(et) wine ?
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advent day 14

day forteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a christmas tree.
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here are today’s photos:
my guitar draped with coloured wires making it look like a christmas tree (thanks to esther the roadie for the wire draping)
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broccoli – which everyone knows are just tiny trees (thanks to Tony Big-Eye for cooking these)
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our home christmas tree which is as bad as it looks on the photo in real life. we’ll put up our proper one next week, but for now this mini-monstrosity is enough to keep me and the children happy
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inside the church christmas tree (i put my camera in to the foliage and hoped for the best)
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advent day 13

day thirteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a cracker.
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a tricky one today. if you say someone is ‘crackers’ in english it means you think they (or the idea they’ve just had) is completely mad.
we watched Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory this afternoon and that is completely crackers. Especially the Oompa Loompas.
here are the oompa loompas doing a little dance
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and here are the final pictures of the day:
esther’s home made cracker from her pre-school and an egg which fell on the floor (2 unrelated activities):
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