Looks like I may have o go and buy me a new kettle. I may only need a new power cord, but not sure if I can but one on its own. Never having bought a kettle, I’m not sure what to look for. The one I own was a present when I left for university 17 years ago. It’s had a good life.
On my recent plane trips, tbere were a couple of nice comments made by the stewards/hosts (or whatever I’m supposed to call them); one by accident, one on purpose.
On the way out, the announcer made an unfortunate anatomical mixup. Instead of asking us to tighten our seatbelts over out hips, we were supposed to contort ourselves and fasten them over our lips.
On the way back, the announcer was French, with a pronounced accent. In the regular plea to get the plane to actually listen to the safety announcement, he’d developed a tactic. “listen carefully, I shall say this only once”. The British onboard laughed… the rest of the plane looked at hte British and wondered what they were on, never having being subject to the cultural phenomenom that was ‘Allo ‘Allo
Whilst I was away, I missed one of the Geek Dinners; unfortunate, because it sounds interesting according to Ian. From Hugh, it appears there’s another organised in June (see here).
My week away is over. Spent a brilliant week in Barbados doing very little. It fulfilled the brief – diving, sleeping, eating, drinking. Little activity outside of the hotel. Which was probably a good idea since it rained every day except 2, and one of those was the day we came home. You can’t do too much sightseeing in torrential rain. I did get a few good photos and came back feeling refreshed.
Went to see this play last night at the Ambassadors’ theatre. Strong powerful script, great acting, leaving many with a tear in the eye. Definitely not for a light-hearted night out, with a subject matter of hostages being held in Beirut; however, there was a rich seam of wicked hunour running through it.
Today, I took a trip to Camden Market, seeing if I could find some clothes for holiday. In that I failed miserably (I hate clothes shopping) but did have a great time anyway. Walking round the stalls, many play completely different music, so everything clashes. A better amalgamation is from the many scents from the food stalls, all combining to make you very hungry.
Went along to another Geek Dinner last night at the same tapas bar as previously – food and sangria are still good. Around 10 people turned up, a few new faces again. Working out how people had heard of the event was interesting – the trails ran cold and there was a definite moment of “I can’t remember”. Like many things, it just gets wrapped into the general information flow.
After a day that involved me trying to explain RSS feeds to a cross-agency group and then having yet another talk about blogging to our Corporate Comms team as a way to increase internal conversations it was great to not have to explain things! Julian and I were dispairing a little about how many big corporations still do not communicate across sections and countries and do not use technology to unlock potential.
Here, combining wikis and blogs, for brand team communication and idea generation, storage and sharing of ideas would unlock so much. And that’s a whole different entry I need to go write.
In the meantime, Lee has some great ideas for the next 2 sessions, the first (May 5) involving a gadget session and the second a celebrity guest. Unfortunately, Andrew, the latter will not involve long boots and a leather skirt 😉
??????????? 30 minutes after the smoke and it’s still not leaked!
Ratzinger. For some reason the team decided he looked like a Senator from Star Wars
This is surreal…and funny. A man was driving along in Essex when a frozen sausage came through his window and broke his nose.
A unanmed spokesman said:
I feel very sorry for him – it must have been an incredibly lucky or unlucky shot to get the sausage through a moving car window. I have never seen or heard of anything like this before.
Hmmm..yes. You don’t get too many flying sausages these days.
With a lovely day, I decided to to take a drive and go visit some history. Wnet to Hampton Court Palace, somewhere I’ve only ever drowve past. Once I got over the extortionate prices (3.50 to park, 12 to go in) I had a really good few hours in the palace and in the gardens. Photos are over on Flickr, and here’s one just for the blog.
However, did learn that driving along with only a vague idea of my direction and no map is a great way to see new places, but not necessarily to get home in good time.
One of the regular events of spring is on today, the London Marathon. Over 30000 people get together to run 26+ miles. I’ll do my usual and watch it on TV, far less stressful.
The first fully commercial podcasting site I’ve seen.. and the BBC story. Intersting choice of presenters…Paul Gambuccini, Kenny Everett, Tony Blackburn. Wonder what their target audience is?
The images from Tiger Wood’s stunning shot over the weekend shows that sometimes things happen that even advertising agencies couldn’t script. An absolute perfect shot for Nike.
Take a look at Jaffe Juice for a creative look at the moment, in a commercial that Nike should put out.
This post from Boing Boing fianlly made the mainstream press over the weekend, with it being in the Telegraph yesterday and Metro today. The link to the homepage is now down. But would you have your favourite pet preserved and its fur made into a pillow cover?
But the reaction against it appears to be quite virulent – the animals are already dead, it’s not as though they were bred to be made into a fur cover.
I can understand the motivation behind people who would want to get their favourite animals stuffed so making a pillow cover is a far more practical option. But I’d just find it creepy..and have to ask why? The strawpoll around the office reflects this opinion…very creepy.
It had to happen, someone offer’s their penis for an advertising tattoo. The aution on ebay has been taken down, so we can only speculate on the size of real-estate on offer. However, I’m interested in how he was going to generate traffic to view the ad!
However, this flash animation for Hitachi perpendicular drives is fun, and catchy. Annoyingly catchy.
I love the site of the majority of the British Royal family clambering on a bus to get moved up the hill to the castle.
I found out what the workmen on the next building have started doing – they are going to be adding an extra floor to Debenhams.
I hate this shop display. It first came out last summer, when it was warm, and a fun water-squirting flower seemed a good idea. But it’s been there ever since, every single day; all through the winter and now back into the spring. And it’s suffered; it’s got weaker and weaker. At the start, the flower used to zip around, splashing al round the container. Now, it wavers, often not having the strength to raise its head; it flops flacidly around, still performing, but only just.
It needs to go.
For some reason I find the images of the embalmed(?) body of the pope very creepy..especially as it is obvious they’ve put him in new shoes
For Easter, I travelled to see the family. Sunday lunches are always fun, and this time we had 12 around the table. For some reason we got onto ghost stories: for a while my gradnparents have felt they have had a visting pair pf ghosts called George and Alice, so named following a visist from the loal medium who was asking whether they had relatives with such names. Presences are definitely felt, mainly just watching, and the dogs have seen something, refusing to go into rooms at times. However, the ghosts have been quiet lately; my Nan kept asking them what they wanted – I think they just got fed up of being hasselled by her!
Mom and Dad had their own story after that. Travelling back from a do late one evening they’d just turned a corner when a boy on a bike, with no lights, sped across the road immediately in front of them. Dad slammed the brakes on as the boy disappeared down a track to a farm. The spooky thing was the boy had appeared from the left side of the road, where there was nothing but a steep bank and a hedge, there being no way through, and there was no sight of him down the track when they got level. The farm was Yew Tree farm, where Carl Bridgewater, a newpaper boy on a bike was murdered in 1978. In the week the people who had been jailed for his murder started a successful appeal against their conviction, they’re convinced that Carl is whom they saw.
One thing about visiting is hearing the dialect I grew up with and heard on the buses (always pronounced with a z) and in the shops. It contains some nice mediaeval useages such a ‘bist’ for ‘are’, you can see the links to german/Dutch with these. More can be found on the BBC dialect sites