transport

here’s a nice idea. sick of paying expensive car parking fees at one of Londons 9 million (approximately) parking meters ? well, why not do as this person has. take your car apart and put it in a variety of plastic bags.

chairs with wheels work well as transport on land. less well in water though it seems.

if you had zoomed on the above photo with your bionic vision you would see this:

see, i’ve saved you some bionic vision exercisions which should help you in the long run.

a floating bin lorry

i took our old telly back to Asda last night to exchange it for a new one. it was a bit weird wheeling it in on a trolley.
the new telly is a widescreen one so i can see what we were missing on the sides of the picture.
i assumed that all telly was broadcast widescreen these days. but it appears not.
i might fit some little curtains on either side of the screen like in the cinema for when the picture is not broadcast in widescreen.

a bet you’ve been wondering how far i’ve got with my walking. well the answer is 992km since i started at the beginning of February.
i read on michelle’s blog that McDonalds are giving away free Pedometers (stepometers) to Americans with their happy meals (see press release). Other blogs have picked up on this (including this one which picks up on the fat stomach angle).
i’ve done 1,224,691 steps if you are interested since i strapped on and walked off.

Currently my new boots (which i started wearing at the same time as i bought the pedometer) have cost me 6 pence per kilometer travelled.

3 custom minis and a postvan (and postbox)

i got a late train home this evening. i was hot and worn out from the walk from westminster so for the first time ever i bought a beer from the off license in Paddington to drink on the train like a common alcoholic. i also bought a nice bottle of cool water
however, when i got on the train and took a swig of the water it was in fact indian tonic water and disgusting.
the two people sitting next to me were having an interesting chat about belly button piercing in Leeds so i listened in to them for a bit. but then i noticed that the lady on my left had been talking for quite a while too, but there wasn’t anyone sitting next to her.
i realised that she was in fact reading her newspaper out loud (just the first paragraphs of each story). at the end of each story she’d say something like “well, that’s interesting” or “mmm. this is much better”. She was very smartly dressed and middle aged and very well spoken.
she got off in maidenhead. i took this photo after she had gone. it was very dark so i used my negative mode (instead of flashing). it suited the mood too.

an excellent way of avoiding the london congestion charge (and keeping your car mileage down) is to travel in to london in your car in the back of a lorry. like this chap. (there’s another chap in a car still in the back of the lorry if you look carefully)

this bin cart is coloured in the same way as a police car. very mysterious.
maybe it’s the metropolitan police cleaning up the street of crime and other misdemenours.

the great british postal system – the royal mail – has been under lots of pressure recently because of its poor performance. letters have been slow to be delivered and they’ve abandoned second post deliveries.
how can the royal mail ever keep up with the almost instantenous communications possible by email and txt msging ?
the answer is obvious. upgrade your vehicles to more sporty numbers. deliveries will get there quicker and it has the added bonus of attracking new recruits.
the man in the postal van was sitting looking longingly at this rather nice car. sure his van hasn’t got the speed and acceleration, but he can claim an advantage in height (i feel a game of top trumps coming on)

mystery rubbish. it’s all sticky out things and castors. i half expected it to ease itself out of the bin back and stand upright.

we went on a little train thing this afternoon to entertain the kids (mostly).

i know some of the readers of this blog are ‘between jobs’ at the moment, so you may be interested in this:

(click for big version)

the london underground is so old that they’ve turned it in to a work museum. all the tube stations have been renamed ‘museum’ as have all the tube lines. it’s confusing but a whole lot of nostaligic fun.

i thought the sign on this ambulance looked a bit weird. it’s actually a magnetic sign stuck on to this rental van’s bonet (hood).
the game was given away on the side of the van which said National Car Rental.
it’s not a very big van, but probably has enough room in the back for a patient if you lie them down very flat and get them to tuck their legs in.

here is a bike stuck halfway up a building. very impressive

here is the other lost london tube station. it’s in down street and the design is just like Covent Garden (see here and here)