when i get better internet i’ll tell you about:
¤ the flight – eating, a book review, strange noises and bald heads
¤ the total quality hotel i’m staying in …
¤ the number of gloves i’ve already seen (3)
but you need pictures. it’s what we all want !
stockholm is very cold. it was a bit drizzly earlier but it’s now cleared up (that was for all you swedish weather watchers ¨ i know who you are !
swedish keyboards are good as they have extra letters like öäå
i shäll try ånd supplement wherev€r i cän.
cool hotel claimed the håve bröadbänd in the rööms. unfortunåtely i spent twö höurs when i årrived trying to måke it wörk. they even moved my rööm tö öne withöut åny windöws, but even the läck öf light didn’t make it wörk.
sö here i åm sitting in the hötel bår using their public mächin€.
i’ll try ägåin in a möment as nö rööm access, nö pictures and i’ve alreådy göt söme småshers
ooh, i just found a button whïch püts thöse fünny thïngs övër vöwëls. ï mïght gët öne öf th€s€ k€ÿböårds¨ät hömë.
and thêrês alsö thës€ chåräcters: ¤ ½§
off to sweden today. hopefully update later when i get there …
nicknames are funny things. i never had a nickname given to me at school so i had to make my own up. Getting them accepted by my peers required a choice of name which would capture their imagination.
At School:
Dishcloth Dave
a derivation of ‘Dishy Dave’ which i would never get away with in a single sex school
Torchon David
the french version said in a french accent
At University:
SpoonChicken
I had a pet wooden spoon and loved chickens
Mr ScragEnd
i used to hang out with tramps at soup kitchens etc – they were often better dressed than me
Goth phase (15-18yrs old):
Occasionally I did get third party nicknames such as little goth during my goth stage. but then you have to expect to be called silly names if you dress up in comedy cloths.
(click for big version – picture from when i was 15ish i think). what incredibly good skin i had back then
So there we are. i’m sure there were others nicknames i forgot and i’m sure Brother Edd will remember.
here is my mum on holiday. just so you know. blue ridge apparently. lucky thing. still, it’s nice and sunny in the uk too.
i like to drink hot water. at home this is no problem. when visiting companies often secretaries get it wrong and bring me cold water or worse, hot water in a spindly glass (asphesdos gloves to the ready).
in restaurants and hotels hot water can prove more complicated. ordering it can be difficult as the waiter often doesn’t listen properly or thinks you are mad. but the main area of variance is the charge.
i was just charged £1.75 for a small cup of hot water in Cafe Rouge on Tottenham Court Road. i was with someone who bought a Cappucino which costed £1.75 too. outrgeous ! i don’t mind paying something as they have to wash the cup, heat the place etc but £1.75 seems a little steep. oh well.
i’ve put this under the category ‘life’ but ‘death’ might be a better category. i was walking across a zebra crossing this morning (which in the UK gives you priority over traffic) and a car nearly ran me over. it came to a skidding halt and i only avoided getting run over by jumping backwards just in time.
the woman in the car looked a little alarmed and mouthed ‘sorry’ which was reasuring. usually you just get a rude jesture or the verbal equivalent.
however, she had to stop at the traffic lights a little bit further on so i took a photo of her car:
and here she is a bit closer up.
i’m alive and so is she, so no harm done !
we had a trip up to leicester today. it’s where i come from and my grandma, pam, and my father still live up there.
i found this trip up there more of a trip down memory lane than previous journeys. perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve got kids of our own now and showing them where i went to school has more meaning ? dunno.
here is pam and esther making our sandwiches
here they are in the garden throwing feeding the birds croutons and boiled egg (strange but true):
yeah. i had a new bike when i was 12. it was a racer. i fell off it just before my 13th birthday and knocked my front tooth out. i now where a falsey.
now i’m 31 i figured i’m old enough to have a new bike now. so i got one. and so did esther. and i even managed to fix the tagalong bike on to jane’s bike.
esther’s very excited (and nervous) about her new non-stablised bike i will update you on progress tomorrow …
jane inspecting my new bike
following jane, esther and kezia’s lift story i obviously felt i needed to compete.
i attended a meeting today and afterwards made my way out of the building. i wasn’t sure which way to go so was quite glad when i found the lifts. i climbed in and pressed G for Ground. The door closed and then straight away opened again. I pressed G again, but this time nothing happened.
it was at this point i realised that i was already on the ground floor and the main exit was just off to the right. d’oh. blame the drugs …
if you walk down Oxford Street in London (or many other shopping streets around the world) you can easily get dazzled and taken in by the lights. but i say to you “don’t be dazzled”.
instead, raise your gaze above the shop fronts, and, in london at least, you are rewarded with a hotchpotch of ancient and modern buildings. some are absolutely excellent (some 70s efforts are less so). the nice ones appear in sharp contrast to the ultra modern shop fronts below.
They’ve opened a new mcdonalds in oxford street (oh goody, we need more of those). i actually spotted the nice building first, then looked at what was in the basement.
it’s not even a nice looking mcdonalds (though they were giving out balloons which would surely cheer even the most hardened burger hater)
that nice olde london still exists. you’ve just got to look for it. my advice is to take a bus and sit upstairs.
we are all p[r]awns in a bigger game. we all know that.
and now so is my email address. if you have been sent a virus apparently from me, then it wasn’t. it was from someone else. so there.
very cold this morning. and dark. it was very cold and dark this morning. and a bit misty. it was very cold, dark and a bit misty this morning. getting up a 6 was too much of a struggle so i waited until 4 minutes past this morning to break myself in gently.
on the way in i saw a pair of trousers, a shoe and a tie. one day i may take a chance and leave the house in just my pants (which i am shall also refer to as ‘ass pants’ for the sake of our american readers).
i’ll then put on any item of clothing i find discarded on the way to work and see if anyone notices the difference.
i’ll put this thought on hold until next summer when it warms up. someone remind me …
Before i start. if you are interested in anything really megalothic, visit this site. if you live in the UK buy The Modern Antiquarian book. Visit Avebury and Silbury Hill rather than just Stonehenge.
meanwhile …
longleat is quite near stonehenge. i posted photos from the journey down previously.
on the way back, jane was driving do i got to take pictures as we whizzed by stonehenge
however, tony, tanya, catherine and anna, who we shared our chalet with in center parcs, went to visit stonehenge on their way home instead of going to longleat.
here is one of tony’s pictures:
this afternoon we’ve had cousin thomas to stay
we took him to a party where i mowed the lawn with kezia (photo by tony):
Longleat claims to have the world’s longest maze. when we went in I asked for some hints so we could get through it quickly (before the kids got bored). she said “allow an hour and … STICK TOGETHER”.
we started by letting esther lead the way down the narrow hedges. then we let kezia lead which was really funny. she kept whizzing off round hedges and we had to keep up so as not to loose her. then jane took control of the situation and finally I made a lucky choice of exit in a funny circle area and we found the centre.
it’s a fantastically difficult maze, but really good fun. best of all is that the hedges and thick enough and tall enough to make it impossible to cheat !
we got to the middle in 25 minutes which i think was good going.
kezia and esther loved the little train ride thing. we got to see the hippos swimming along the river which was good.
the safari is the main bit about going to Longleat, though after we were attacked by the monkeys it was the least enjoyable (at the time). once we were back in the carpark and realised there was no lasting damage to our car (other than a few claw holes in the plastic trimming) we decided we had enjoyed it afterall.
here are the sweet monkeys:
here are some tigers:
here is a wolf
we also went on a boat cruise in a tiny lake and saw a couple of hippos:
and a gorilla:
and everyone loves meercats:
the visitors can wait a few minutes – this is important stuff
here is the monkey who pulled the trimming off our car:
here is his hand on our window screen:
you can’t hear the scratching and ripping noises which accompanied it
we are back. a monkey ate our car at the safari park. this and other stories to follow. probably tomorrow now though as we’ve only been back an hour, just put the girls to bed and have some visitors staying overnight arriving any minute …