life

it took me ages to get jane to pose for this photo.

click for big version
here are the fantastic cards i got from my ladies:

but what did you expect for £10.95 ?

how often do you see something in a shop window and go inside to buy it only to end up leaving the shop with a watch nearly twice the price of the one in the window (but with more features).
this happened to me today. the watch in the window was £5.99. Admitedly it wasn’t all i wanted. once in the shop an extremely nice chap showed me a variety of watches and in the end i bought one for £10.95.
no compass – but i can always use an upturned plate if i want to draw a circle.

this shop is just off petticoat lane and is excellent. go there and buy a cheap modern digital watch.

cashback is a brilliant idea and much safer and more convenient than standing in the street taking money out of a cashpoint.
you buy something from a supermarket on your bank card and before you know it you’ve got your shopping a big wad of notes.
unless you go to the supermarket near my office. in there they haggle.
i asked for £40 cash back today. and they said “how about £20” ?
so i said “no, i’d like £40 please”
and she said “well, i’ve only got £20”
so i accepted her original offer and received £20 in £2 coins. i thanked her on behalf of my wallet manufacturer.

i’m looking to buy a watch, but no where seems to sell them these days. i went to Nowhere and even they had ceased selling them.
i went from door to door down tottenham court road saying “do you sell watches” with no success. next time i’ll actually go in to the shops.
i want a thermometer and compass on my watch and i only want to spend £20. i suspect my search may take some years.
meanwhile i can take my old watch to the clothes repairers where i saw this sign. they can apparently alter a 24 hour clock and turn it in to a more decimal 10 hour version. possibly.

it was dark when i left home this morning (as usual) but it was light by the time i arrived at paddington which is great. summer is on its way.
i was struck this morning by the gradual introduction of colour to the day. it started off black, then came the introduction of dark blue, then some reds were added and before you knew it, colour had stretched down from the sky and lighted up the world.

oh yes, i forgot to say. this photo is of the moon through the windows (some paneless) at my local train station

pound shops were so 1980s. inflation has taken it’s toll and nearly a quarter of a century later, we’re got £5 shops in the high street.

Mr Gilbert, the great wig man, has died. and so it goes.
and all his belonging have been thrown in to the street by a company which does that kind of thing.
he was one of the first people i (tried to) blog and it’s the end of an era. i liked walking past his shop door and looking in to see if i could see his bearded head.
i nearly went in last week to ask for a picture. i wish i had now. my last blog of him was in october
i’m blogging this from paddington station, so these photos are but 2 minutes old.
top tip: if you go up to the top floor in paddington station, there is a free wifi hotspot !

here’s a really exciting story for you. when we moved in to our house just over 2 years ago we were told we would have to pay £55 a month for our water.
quite a jump from the £16/month in our old house. so we said we wanted to go on a meter and we would jolly well show them how little water we used.
after waiting a couple of months for them to install the meter our bill dropped to £21/month ! And now, a year later, they’ve dropped the bill even lower to £13/month. hoorah.
so, the lesson to learn is: get a water meter and ban your family from using water. i suggest turning it off at the main as the ultimate deterent.

i get some great comments from people on the blog and i thank you all (except the spammers).
i occasionally get comments which should read “i’ve been given some homework by my teacher. can you do it for me please”.
one such appeared today here. Poor Nishan obviously just googled for “car show rooms” (i’m the second and third choice!).
So, if you are willing, could you all draw me a picture of a car, together with some random sports car facts and i’ll compile a dossier for him.
let’s harvest the power of the Internet together.
send them to the following email address homeworkhelp@funkypancake.com

update: results here

i have a new device to bore you with. not a drill (that would bore you in a more literal sense). no. i have a pedometer to so i can see how far i walk.
and so we learn that from my home door to my office door is 4.976 km (3 miles) and i walked at 5.34 km/hr (3.3 mph).
52 minutes of my journey this morning was spent walking and i took 6144 steps. (this obviously excludes the 50 minute train journey and time waiting for the train to turn up). Oh, and i may have burnt 232 Kcal, but i don’t know what that means (i need a measure in Mars Bars)
This is a walk i do twice a day. my new boots are still giving me blisters

but what about the science of walking speed ? try here.

i’m working from home, starting at 6am this morning so i can get stuff done before i go to something at 11am. It occured to me, sitting in a cold room, repeatedly trying to boot my poorly laptop that mornings are a difficult concept for most people.
i’m a morning person, but i don’t like getting up. So maybe there is a market for a Home Start option for people at home. You could phone someone up and they’d come round with a pre-warmed dressing gown, a warm beverage and some soothing words.
They could perhaps even offer breakdown cover in case you were heading for a breakdown by massages and (once again) soothing words.
The car breakdown people, AA, would be ideal people to offer this kind of service. I may email them to suggest it.

the wimpy burger is something very british. wimpy restaurants were the forerunners to McDonalds/Burger King in the UK and no town was without one.
their beauty was that they didn’t put gerkhins in their burgers and they had proper chips (not fries). Best of all though was that you got given a knife and fork to eat your burger.
wimpy’s still exist (looking at the wimp website there are still quite a few about) – mostly in motorway service stations, which is where we found one today.
service was dreadfully slow and totally lacking in interest. but i did manage to find a knife and fork and happily ate my not-too-pleasantly tasting burger in a peculiarly british way.
i left feeling strangely satisfied that the US influence has even now failed to reach some of our darkest corners.

not for the first time in my life i was following my own path

my local council are brilliant at mending street lights.
And not only that, but they send people round randomly to check lights even when they are working fine !
here is a man doing that very thing:

Read More »more light entertainment

spring has sprung very early this year. here are some actual daffodils. they’ll probably all die next week as we are promised sub zero temperatures (more normal for this time of year)

here is my stan boardman cup. i got it from a charity shop, but that still doesn’t make it right. i found it in the cupboard because we used all our normal mugs at the party last night
stan boardman belongs to a time and era (1970s?) when political correctness didn’t exist and mild racism was acceptable if you dressed it up as humour.
i bought this cup as it was ironic, but now i wonder if it’s just sad.
perhaps i should put it on ebay. perhaps i should just chuck it out.

stand boardman is currently available for ‘nearly any event’. he, and numerous other top british stars (and lookalikes) can be hired from entertainers

due to a combination of things i’ve had to start work early this morning so i can finish early. i was aiming for a 4am start, but this didn’t fit well with going to bed at midnight following my jaunts of last night.
my alarm clock woke me up at 4am and 5am. my brain was mostly awake but seemed to have lost the ability to control my body which was definately still asleep. instead i listened to the gales outside and watched the curtains suck in as if trying to escape from the window.
i’ve been up for half an hour working now and it’s 6am. it’s just me, my laptop, Radiohead (Amnesiac) and the magic soap cat …

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.