I Don't Normally...

...just republish other people's stuff. But today is different, this just made me laugh:

Astrophotography I

Had a go at photographing the moon last night. I think it turned out OK for a first try:

Lord of the Flies

If only. I had the distinctly unpleasant experience of being woken up at 5am by a mosquito dive-bombing my ear while staying at the supposedly-nice-but-actually-a-bit-dilapidated Bilderberg Parkhotel in Rotterdam. After 20 minutes of hunting, including going back to bed after convincing myself it was a dream only to be dive-bombed again, I eventually spotted and swatted the offending skeeter. I should have been a bit more suspicious after casually dispatching a one earlier on in the evening and given the room a more thorough search. But come on, it's November, all the skeeters should be... Well, wherever they go in the winter.

I was stunned therefore to find another four (at least, those are just the ones I saw) buzzing round when I got up and opened the curtain. Given all that I think I got away fairly lightly with only one bite, although oddly it didn't start itching until a full 36 hours after I left the hotel so might not have been anything to do with those ones at all. Needless to say, nobody else had any mosquitoes in their rooms, despite us all being on the same floor and within a few rooms of each other.

Naturally, I immediately suspected the people responsible for the plagues we suffered from a few years back but it's quite hard to pin anything definite on them. They're cunning that way.

The Dangerous Implications of a Smile

I was travelling on the Tube to City Airport, when I noticed the woman opposite me was smiling, as though, say, she'd just remembered a particularly amusing incident from a few years ago. I didn't think anything of it, in fact it was quite pleasant to see someone smiling on the tube for a change - after all, it's not somewhere that generally encourages happiness.

However, when I glanced back a few minutes later she was still smiling in exactly the same way. And again a few minutes after that. Now, as any fule kno, persistent and willful smiling in the face of a lengthy Tube journey is Not Right. The carriage was quite empty (most people had got off at Canary Wharf) and I started to feel more than a little paranoid. Was she laughing at me? Was she a complete nutter just waiting to launch a savage spoon and fork attack on me for looking at her in the wrong way*? Worse, was she a complete nutter waiting to catch my eye and then launch into a rambling exposition of her theory that the government was run by giant lizards?

It was completely unsettling, she smiled to herself in a completely suspicious way for three stops and then I got out. She could be smiling still for all I know.

Eventually it dawned on me, she was probably a tourist.

*This actually happened to a friend of mine, fortunately the mad person tried to stab him in the leg with a table fork rather than the carving knife she had in the other hand.

Art Imitates Life

I've been reading the fairly decent Rogue Angel series by Alex Archer lately. The main character is a bit like a female version of Indiana Jones although intriguingly she quite regularly doesn't win out in the end.

Anyway, in Book 9 the heroine of the story is in Tokyo. She's already established an expertise and interest in marial arts throughout the course of the series so accepts an offer to train at the dojo of a guy who is interesting in hiring her. It seems the dojo is a little outside of Tokyo. That's funny I thought, just like the Hombu Dojo where I trained and took my Godan test. A little later she arrives at the town and immediately notices the smell of soy sauce in the air, due to the presence of a large soy factory in the town. That's funny I thought, just like the soy factory in Noda near the Hombu... Hang on a minute! As I read on it became increasingly apparent that this fictional character was training in my real dojo. Nobody was named, but it was all there:

• Out of Tokyo location in a town with a giant soy sauce factory - check!
• Tiny dojo with more students (mainly foreign) than floor space - check!
• No changing facilities apart from a toilet - check!
• Shrine on the back wall of the dojo - check!
• Racks full of obscure training weapons on the wall - check!

Now, those things could apply to almost any dojo, but there was much more as I read on:

• Diminutive but smiley grandmaster who only says one English word: "Play!" - check!
• Strange bowing in process involving nine Japanese syllables, claps and double claps - check!
  
• Techniques never demonstrated the same way twice - check!
• Pinning people to the ground with arm locks rather than letting them get up - check!
• An Australian in the corner translating into English for everyone (Ed Lomax?) - check!

Again, this is all fairly circumstantial, except for maybe the first two, but then:

• Grandmaster administering Godan tests with a golden shinai - check!

Yup, no doubt at all, that's the Hombu in Noda all right. It was very weird to read about it in a fiction book. It also made me wonder if the author had actually been there, or just read about it. Not that it really matters much but it was very strange, a bit like when you see somewhere you know on TV.

The Only Lamp In the Village

A few days back there was a power cut across a large swath of Woking. But not in our house, oh no, because I have a UPS under the study desk. When it became apparent that the power wasn't coming on again any time soon (it was off for two hours altogether) I switched off the NAS and then started to think. I had a large battery attached to a bunch of sockets under the desk, which was just sitting there. It seemed a shame to waste it; so I went upstairs, grabbed a table lamp and plugged it in. And there was light.

It was a very strange feeling to look out of my bright study window and see no other lights shining back at me.

I wonder if I could set up a generator in the garage...

All I Can Say Is...

...Ouch!

Poor chap. Unfortunately, no matter how sympathetic I feel, it is also quite funny.

There Is Such A Thing As Too Much Crackling

That's something I never thought I'd say, but it's true. We've known for some time that our meat man gives away free crackling, so we ticked the box to get some with our last order. We popped it in the roasting tin with the pork and left it to cook. It was lovely, but there was a huge amount of it. Undaunted I munched away. And munched. And crunched. I managed to eat about a quarter of it before I called it a day. I wasn't ill, but my stomach was clearly telling me enough was enough. Unusually for me, I listened to it.

Giant Moles in Woking?

I've been hearing some, clearly fabricated, guff about a burst water main in Woking. It can be no coincidence though that this happened right outside the McLaren technology centre. Obviously they've been messing with forces they don't understand and have created some giant subterranean tunneling beasts. How many times have we heard that story?

Another Drinking Post

This, presumably, would come in very handy after working your way through the dictionary using the Cocktail Creating Typewriter from my last post. Imagine, in the fullness of time this could lead to drinking and driving becoming legal again.

Can You Spell Drink?

Every now and again you come across a drinking accessory that really takes your breath away, today was another of those days.

Imagine, you can say things like, "I wonder what Dogs taste like?" Then simply type it in and see. Marvelous.

Jazz Pointing

I had the (dubious) pleasure of spending an evening in the company of Jazz Oldie Chris Barber and his Big Chris Barber Band - it isn't something I'll be planning on repeating, although I will begrudgingly admit the band members were all excellent musicians and were clearly having a great time performing.

However, there was a welcome and unexpectedly entertaining distraction from the jazz itself in the form of what appeared to be a pointing competition. What on earth is that? You may be wondering. Well, allow me to elaborate. Essentially, Chris and his Big Band were constantly pointing at each other during the show, usually at someone who had performed a particularly twiddly twiddly bit, although at one point Chris himself did go round pointing at the entire band individually. Presumably it's to ensure the audience is aware of the twiddlyness and remind them to appreciate it fully, but given that the pointee had not two seconds before been standing at the front of the stage in a spotlight performing said twiddly bit, it seems a tad redundant.

Anyway, just thought you ought to know.

The Girl Who Could(n't) Fly

Poor little Phoebe is suffering at the moment, as are we (see previous post) and her tired, ill crabbiness combined with our tired, healthy crabbiness is causing more than a little friction in the Mungo household, especially around bed time.

The dual pronged crabbiness attack combined, forming a pincer movement if you will, in a rather tearful bath last night. As a result, I was rather grumpy even though in true toddler style she'd cheered up quite a bit by the time we got round to cleaning her teeth.

"Daddy, " she said, "can I go in the Pinky-Ponk to the bathroom?" The Pinky-Ponk, for those of you who aren't fans of In the Night Garden is a sort of airship that the characters fly about in sometimes. I replicate this by getting her to squat down and then picking her up with my hands under the backs of her legs as though she's sitting in a chair and then zooming her round the room. She loves it.

"No," I replied "you've been too naughty. If you want to fly in the Pinky-Ponk you'll have to do it on your own." And marched off to the bathroom. She didn't follow me. Then a little voice said "I can't, I'm too big." As I looked up, she duck-walked round the corner with her hands behind her knees, straining upwards with her arms. "I'm too big, I can't pick myself up."

Grumpiness was dispelled. Bless.

The Anti-Parent Disease

Sometimes you come across something that seems purposefully designed just to get you. Poor little Phoebe has (we think) got croup. It's quite an odd disease, it only affects children and the symptoms are worse at night. The indirect effects are much more sinister though.

Poor little Phoebe is very ill at night, restless, coughing, crying, temperature, the works. Needless to say we get some of the fallout from that and we don't get a very good nights sleep either. In the morning though, as we stumble zombie-like out of the bedroom she's feeling better and bouncing round like a huge great bouncing thing that wants to play. So we do, it's hard work. Then by mid afternoon she's feeling grotty again, turns into a huge great bouncing thing that's in a bad mood and wears us out even more, before finally going to bed and sleeping really badly. Then the cycle repeats.

So what we seem to have here is a kid's illness that appears specifically designed to grind parents down, essentially getting them at both ends of the day.

It just seems suspicious, that's all I'm saying.

Interesting Eavesdropping

I don't usually listen to other people's phone conversations on the train. Well OK, let's say I don't usually find other people's phone conversations interesting enough to remember. After all, short of sticking my fingers in my ears and singing "La, la, la, I'm not listening." there's little you can do to not hear someone sitting next to you talking.

However, the other day the woman sitting next to me said something that made me actually pay attention. She had just taken a call from someone, it was fairly innocuous stuff but then she said something like "I'll be there soon, I'm just about to get on the tube." Now, this was a blatant lie as she was sitting right next to me on the train. I did consider that she was going to get off the train (it was a bit earlier than the one I normally get so stopped a few more times) and then get the tube but she got off at Surbiton, which as we all know doesn't have a tube station.

So then I started to wonder why she'd lied. There are two obvious possibilities, and a few less obvious ones. The first is that she wanted to surprise the person who called by turning up unexpectedly early and the second is that she wanted to give herself a bit of time to do something without appearing to have taken too long to arrive. But let's think about this for a moment. Perhaps she knew someone else was listening in to her phone calls and was trying to throw them off a bit. Or perhaps she was trying to trick someone, such as a potential lodger, into thinking her house was nearer to central London than it really is.

I suppose as well that she could have said "tube" but meant to say "train".

...gehog News...Hedgehog News...Hed...

I've been a bit slack about reporting Hedgehog Activity this year. That's partly because I've just been a bit lazy but mainly because they're not quite so sociable this year as they were last. They've been coming in well after dark which makes it a lot harder to see them, unlike the previous one which turned up at dusk, which is of course the point of being nocturnal. We've still seen them occasionally in the corridor when we've popped outside to do the bins at night:


But more worryingly, we've seen a few of them out in the garden during the day. This, as it turns out, is a Very Bad Thing. Even a cursory Google is enough to know that if you see one in the day you should grab it (carefully, obviously) pop it in a box and take it straight to the nearest Hogspital. Needless to say, the good Mrs Mungo was terribly anxious upon learning this and today did exactly that:

Here's Sarah-Louise the Hedgehog (named by Phoebe) sitting on a towel covered hot water bottle, shortly before being whisked off to The Happy Hedgehog Rescue in Yateley. We do know that she's barely old enough to be out of the nest on her own and doesn't have any obvious ticks or signs of illness. I'll update you on her (or maybe his) progress as I get the info.

Serial Cold

I seem to be suffering from the strangest cold I've ever had. Normally of course a cold is accompanied by many unpleasant symptoms, feeling weak and tired, aching all over, sore throat, cough, runny nose, blocked nose, headaches, well, I'm sure you're as familiar with the list as I am.

Usually you experience most of these all at the same time, in parallel as it were. Not this one however, I've had all of those symptoms over the past few weeks or so, one at a time for around three days each, with maybe a day in between of feeling slightly better before the next one kicks in. I'm currently on the runny nose stage and I'm getting a bit fed up with the whole thing! I'm really hoping this will be the last one.

So of course I was excited to hear about the anti-viral drug announcement but sadly it seems it's a long way off from helping me at the moment, although it may have the potential to ease my future suffering.

Paranoia

I'm sure it's just a coincidence (or am I?) but over the past few days four different people who were sitting next to or opposite me on the train have for no apparent reason got up and moved to a different seat.

Tell 'em about the honey...

...mummy!

Is it me, or does the new Dragon, Hilary Devey bear an uncanny resemblance to the Honey Monster?

Hilary Devey

Honey Monster

Booooooringgggg!

I was devastated to discover that all the Vodka I've drunk in the past must have been boring. Fortunately I have now rectified that situation.

1066 Country

I've just spent the week in Camber Sands. It would have been delightful if the weather had been a little better and the roof a little less sea gully. Unfortunately you can't count on the weather in the UK and sea gulls are remarkably unmoved by reasoned debate. One thing that did annoy me, perhaps unreasonably, was the signage promoting the entire county of East Sussex as "1066 Country."

I could be missing the point, East Sussex, of course, encompasses both Battle and Hastings, which can be famously joined with an "of" to give us the name of the UK's most memorable historical event*. But come on, it's not like the rest of the country wasn't around in 1066 either (or the entire universe for that matter.) And Sussex isn't even a country anyway. I suppose as a slogan it's not quite as snappy as "Decisive Moment in the Norman Conquest County" but it would be considerably less irritating. I don't even know why I even found it irritating in the first place, it's not entirely inaccurate given the aforementioned existence of the universe in 1066, so I can't complain there, the country bit is still wrong of course but it is a commonly used turn of phrase so I'm hard pushed to really complain about that too.

OK, I admit, I do know why I found it irritating, it's because I hate stupid marketing nonsense. Oh all right, it's because I'm a grumpy whatsit.

It's not even as if that's the only odd thing, after all the so called Battle of Hastings wasn't in Hastings anyway, it was, of course, in Battle. So it should be called the Battle of Battle, but that would be weird. And yes, I know the place was named after the battle, not the other way around. So let's just call it the Battle of Senlac Hill and say no more about it.

*The Hastings of Battle

If Your Mansion House Needs Haunting...

Yes, that is the first line of the Rentaghost theme song. The reason I am referencing it is because clearly Mr Claypole paid us a visit at the weekend and locked us out of our study. OK, I admit it could have been some other mischievous spirit, Mr Davenport for example - it probably wasn't Fred Mumford because we'd have noticed him standing in the kitchen bin or something.

Anyway, it was a very strange situation we found ourselves in. Somehow one of the drawers in the cabinet next to the study door had opened during the night. The study door opens inwards. And yes, as a result of this the study door now only opened inwards about one centimetre before hitting the drawer, which after taking into account the door frame was just enough to see a tiny sliver of the room if you pushed really hard at the top of the door but not enough to get anything through. Or not anything that could be used to shut a cabinet drawer anyway.

How did this happen? It's not like the house is on a slope and it's not like a giant lifted up the front of the house and then put it back either. I'm sure I would have noticed that and there would have been large footprints in the front garden. There weren't, I checked. So the only rational explanation therefore is that Mr Clapole (or perhaps Mr Davenport) zapped into the study, opened the drawer and then zapped himself out.

But why? It wasn't April the 1st and I've not done anything to upset him that I know of. And more importantly, how was I going to get back in? I checked the phonebook and Rentaghost must be ex-directory, which isn't very sound management practice but perhaps they prefer to rely on word of mouth. I asked the person with the nearest mouth but she didn't know the number either.

In the end, after a lot of cursing and swearing I managed to shut the drawer by bending a metal metre rule in an "L" shape and sliding it under the door. It was a very close thing and I for one will be being more careful about which ghosts I upset in the future.

Parental Pride

Is it wrong of me to be filled with pride at the sight of my two year old daughter running towards her cousin shouting "I want to eat your brains Tom!" and then pretending to gnaw on the base of his skull?

Hey! Save Some Of That Urine For Me!

I have no idea why this popped into my head this morning, but I remembered that certain people like to drink reindeer wee in order to have a good time. It seems the reindeer like to eat the dangerous Fly Agaric toadstool (the red spotted mushroom famously associated with fairy rings) to get a bit trippy. They are able to metabolise the toxic compounds, but crucially not the hallucinogenic and psychotropic ones which are excreted intact in their urine. So by collecting, and yes, drinking the urine of stoned reindeer you can experience much the same thing without running the risk of dying from mushroom poisoning. In fact, it seems you can create a virtuous circle because we don't metabolise the magic compounds either, so the reindeer can gobble up a patch of yellow snow produced by a flying shaman and start the whole clycle over again.

There's a fairly large amount of info online showing how this all ties in with Father Christmas and his, ahem, flying reindeer but nobody seems interested in the most important question.
What on earth made someone decide to have a swig of reindeer wee in the first place?

Unusual Tattoos

I saw a guy on the train today who had a load of equations tattooed on his arm. Unfortunately I wasn't close enough to see what they all were, but at the top of his list was the daddy of them all E=MC^2

Exactly why someone would want a permanent reminder of these, admittedly important, equations is a little beyond me, but I suppose it might be a good way of cheating in an exam. After all, they can hardly forbid you from bringing in your own skin, can they?

It Shouldn't Make Me Laugh

We had one of our Dutch colleagues in the office today. He'd not been to the London office before and asked me "Ish there a plashe for me to shit in this offish?" At first I thought he was being blunt, but then I realised he was asking for a desk.

Unexpected Places To Find Good Coffee

I was pleasantly surprised by a lovely espresso at the New Vic Bar and Restaurant in Weymouth. It was far nicer than the food we'd eaten previously would have suggested. Not that I'm complaining about the food, but it was a fish fingers and chips on the seafront kind of a place and you don't expect to get good coffee in those kind of establishments as a rule. So well done NVB&R.

Rapture Update Update

Apparently the End of the World is now the 21st of October. This is good news because I will at least get a chance to open my birthday presents.

Rapture Update

We're all still here then...

Hope You've Got Nothing Important Planned For Next Week!

Because the world is going to END on Saturday! Hope you've remembered to make sure your pets are taken care of. Not that I'll be raptured of course, it's too late for me, but, save yourself now before it's too late...

I'm not sure how I'd feel if it did actually happen - on one hand, we'd finally be rid of all those intolerant nut bags but on the other, unfortunately, those nut bags would have been right. So my remaining time on the planet would presumably be better but then I would be burning in a lake of fire for all eternity thereafter. Spare a thought though for the poor Jews and Muslims (and all the rest) - they refused to eat all those delicious things, pointed themselves in the right direction at the right time of day, trimmed important bits from very sensitive areas and all for nothing. At least I would have enjoyed a few bacon butties and a got some decent lie ins before all hell (literally) broke loose. Fortunately, if it does, some people have been decent enough to tell you what to do, but it still sounds like we'd be in for a rough seven years or so.

I suppose it's a good job it's not going to happen then.

The Perils of Parenthood Part 1

Taking off your shoes after a hard day at the office and finding a Mummy Pig sticker on the bottom of your sock.

Celebration Ale, C'mon

As any fule kno, I am totally obsessed with the Royal Family and all their works.* So what could be more appropriate, on this the occasion of an extra bank holiday, than to celebrate the glorious extra day off work by cracking open a bottle of the soon-to-be-legendary Celebration Ale from the Old Shed Brewery. It's been quite a while since I last had some, and to be honest I had totally forgotten how it tasted, other than it was not bad for a beer-like drink, so I prepared myself to take a bit more note of what it was actually like this time. There's a definite chocolaty edge to it and although it does taste a bit beery it was mild enough that I was able to overlook this obvious drawback.

Or should that be strong enough? Because, although I'm not in any position to judge it certainly seems pretty damn strong to me. It's hard to say just how strong it is, but if I had to guess I would say "very". Seven hours later and I'm pondering the wisdom of my decision - yes, it is appropriate for celebration but to be honest so is a VRB and that wouldn't give me a nasty head. I may have to wait before sampling again until I have a willing co-consumer to share the pleasure and the pain.

*This is not true.

Fancy Giving Your Bathroom a Great New Look?

You need the Sink Skirt, it will "update your bathroom and add a fresh new look" apparently, and what's more it's self adhesive, so no need to buy any glue. I can't wait for my self adhesive Toilet Trousers!
Not since the Legendary Owl Lamp from the Frankin Mint (RRP £500, eBay price £14.99) have we had such enjoyment from a simple advertisement. So mucho respecto to the good Mrs Mungo for spotting that. She was laughing so much poor little Phoebe was looking quite worried.

UncleMungo Enjoys Entire F1 Race Shocker!

Yes it's true, I watched the entire Chinese Grand Prix without wanting to fast forward through any of it. The funky new tires certainly added a huge element of excitement as drivers with newer tires could literally just drive around their rivals on older rubber almost at will.

Of course, I can't help thinking that it isn't going to last. Unpredictable races like last weekend's are exactly what the teams work so hard to avoid so I imagine in a few months all the various combinations of strategy will soon be worked out and it will be back to business as usual. However, I intend to enjoy it while it lasts.

So Bad It Hurts

We had the dubious pleasure of watching a truly dreadful film on TV recently. It was called The Happening - that's 90 minutes of my life I'll never get back. Some bad films can be so bad that they come out the other side and become a thing of glory and wonder but this one is just plain old bad. Unfortunately we were sucked in by a quite good opening few minutes and an accidental glimpse of the only funny bit in the film where the main character tries to talk to a plastic plant.

But why was it so bad? It's difficult to know where to start, the bad acting? The bad dialogue? The bad plot? In fact these three elements combine to produce a synergistic badness that is much worse than the sum of the parts.

But still not bad enough to be good!

Post-It Pacman

After a few days out of the office I returned to find this on my screen, courtesy of the Inimitable Kevin:


Who wouldn't want to play that?

If 50 pounds you can afford...

...go ahead and pull the cord.
If 50 pounds you do not own
Leave the bloody thing alone.

Clearly someone on my train home a few days back had £50 to spare, although I imagine the fine is somewhat larger now than it was back when the communication cord was an actual cord hanging down from the vicinity of the ceiling. Our train came to a screeching halt somewhere outside Woking, which was later explained by the guard as being because someone had pulled the emergency lever in one of the carriages. We sat for quite a while and then carried on to the next station we were going to stop at anyway at which point the guard then had to go through all the carriages to find out which one it was - odd that they didn't already know. Fortunately that was my stop anyway, so I wasn't too late and annoyingly, it meant I didn't get to find out what had happened either.

Shame.

Mr Stinky

While shopping for goodies at the excellent Secretts we noticed they had some Stinking Bishop cheese (made famous for its previously little known ability to revive plasticine people from the dead) so naturally we had to try some.

It certainly lives up to the first part of its name! It's incredibly pungent, in fact I could still "smell" it for quite a while after I ate the first piece. Despite the smell though it doesn't taste like a strong cheese, which gives a very strange, but not unpleasant, gustatory experience. It's highly recommended - but only in small doses!

Jurassic Bowling Green

They're building one of the CrossRail stations behind my office, on or more correctly under, what used to be, apparently, the oldest bowling green in London. It's a bit of a shame because apparently it was a nice place to sit and have lunch of a summer's day. They have apparently promised to put it all back how it was, but who knows when that'll happen?

However, recently they've obviously been using pile drivers or something similar, which has allowed me to recreate the famous Jurassic Park shaking water cups moment several times from the comfort of my office chair, with no need to do all that messy genetic manipulation and being chased by dinosaurs. Clearly, this has more than makes up for the loss of a bowling green.

Trains Again

It seems I'm not the only person who's noticed that you can't actually fit three people on the three person bench seat provided by South West Trains. Admittedly she is an Evil Tory MP, but despite that, she does make some amusing points about elbows.

Incongruous News

...devastating Tsunami hits Japan...thousands dead...tens of thousands missing...enormous explosion at a nuclear reactor...radiation levels rising...danger of meltdown.

And now the sport.

Mmmm... Coffee

For no particular reason*, I thought I'd list three great places to get espresso near my office. They are, in order of preference (although I'd be happy to have coffee at any of them, the differences may just be down to the coffee blends they use) -

1. Nude Espresso near Spitalfields Market.
2. Dose near Smithfield Market.
3. Taylor St near Bank.

There may be more, indeed I hope there are, but these are the ones I've found so far.

I don't visit any of them frequently, partly because the first two are a 10-15 minute walk away but mainly because I don't want to get so used to really good coffee that either I stop appreciating it, or that I find I don't want to drink average coffee any more. Well, that and the fact that we have free coffee in the office, even if it does leave a little to be desired.

*In fact probably because you need at least three things to make a decent list.

Even More Commuting Dilemmas

I was on the way home a few nights back and somehow managed to get to the station in time for an earlier train than the one I normally get. This is good in some ways, since I would be home earlier, but bad in others because the train was already mostly full when I arrived. However, despite the fact that there were already people standing in the carriage entrance spaces there was still a dreaded middle seat free. Quite why these are so dreaded I'm not sure but some people definitely prefer to stand rather than risk sitting too close to someone - because let's face it, those seats aren't really wide enough for three people to sit comfortably. I on the other hand am very much not one of those sort of people, so immediately made a beeline for the seat.

One of the guys sitting there obviously wasn't expecting anyone to sit next to him because he'd put his bags on the empty seat whilst at the same time drinking both a can of soft drink and a coffee. Now, the problem wasn't that he was reluctant to move, it was that while attempting to gather his bags off the seat he, almost inevitably given that he was holding two drinks as well, slopped coffee all over his leg. Let's leave aside the facts that drinking coffee and lucozade at the same time is a little odd and doing so on a train, which is subject to sudden lurches, is asking for trouble somewhat. The problem was that I felt somehow responsible given that the only reason he had spilled his drink was because I'd made him move his stuff. I also had my headphones firmly screwed into my ears so I couldn't really talk to him properly.

In the end I decided to just pretend I hadn't noticed, after all it wasn't really my fault he'd spilled his drink.

The next night I saw the opposite. A rather large lady was squeezing her way through the train carriage holding a large coffee which she managed to slop all over the white shirted arm of an unfortunate chap sitting in an aisle seat. I should add that the train was stationary at the time and it was one of those cups with a lid, so she was being really careless. He was rather unimpressed as you can imagine. The lady lurched on as if nothing had happened leaving him to shout after her ineffectually. I don't know if she actually realised what had happened or was just hoping to get away.

In that circumstance I would definitely have stopped to apologise, just so you know.

Your Train Is Delayed Because...

...of an attempted fatality at Waterloo.

What? Another excellent announcement from South West Trains. What on earth is an attempted fatality? I've heard of attempted murder and near fatalities but never an attempted fatality.

Not So Smart Power Monitor

We received our "smartpower" monitor over the weekend and it was fairly interesting to see how much power various household appliances actually used. The kettle and the cooker being the obvious and totally expected headline offenders. The monitor also has a seemingly useful feature where you can programme in your electricity tariff and it will report current (NPI) usage in pence per hour with a total usage for the day. This was, for me, where things started to go a bit wrong.

I was constantly amazed at how little it costs to run our appliances. TV? A few pence per hour. Computer? A few more. Energy saving light bulbs? Apparently completely free*. I could go on. At the end of the day it turns out we've used a few pounds worth of electricity. This seems like a total bargain to me.

Now there's an obvious trap here, because over the course of a year a few pounds a day adds up to a fairly significant amount of money. It just doesn't seem like a lot when you think of it in the daily or hourly terms the meter is reporting, which is presumably why a lot of dubious adverts say things like "Costs only 67pence per minute!" instead of the more unappealing "Costs £352,152 per year..."**

I would suggest that they need to add a predicted quarterly charge or something to highlight the cost in easily comparable terms.

*Clearly they must use some electricity but it's obviously not a significant amount.

**Not that I'm suggesting anyone would call a premium rate number for an entire year, but it's amazing how much more expensive that sounds.

Attack of the Plastic People!

There are some interesting buildings round the harbour where I'm staying, such as:


Let's hope they're friendly.

My favourite is this one:


A wobbly steel encased building, fantastic!

But do we really need this kind of thing in our hotel room?


Let's all agree now, that we don't.

For Ned

Whilst enjoying a remarkbly nice burger at a German restaurant in Dusseldorf last night, I asked the waiter for a beer*, and he said "Sure." And then he brought me one.

How we laughed.

The end.

*this didn't actually happen.

Chicken Tonight?

From the excellent Damn You Autocorrect!

Refreshing Honesty

Whilst enjoying a remarkbly nice steak at an Argentinian restaurant in Dusseldorf last night, I asked the waiter for a Pisco Sour, which was on their menu and is something I'd never tried before. "No," he said, "it's too much work."

The honesty was almost enough to make up for the fact I didn't get the drink. Almost.