Fuddland

Entries concerning the daily goings-on in my own life.

This category also has the following subcategories [number of entries in brackets]:

• Crisis Open Christmas 2005 [5]
• Photographing bats [3]

Ever have one of those mornings where you wake up and realise you’re emigrating to China later that day?

Eep!

Although in general I’d really like it if all of my friends lived in one huge mansion and I could see them all at once all the time, there are benefits to having them scattered about the place—one of which is being invited up to Leicester for another long and very fun weekend of goodbye-ing, involving almost equal measures of alcohol and cheese in various guises.

Whilst not comprising quite so much the element of surprise as my other big send-off, this one did reveal that chillies soaked in vodka, filled with white chocolate and dipped in melted dark chocolate, are actually rather delicious, and that the residual vodka packs an unexpectedly warm kick. High on fondue and lovely company, Thursday night featured my first and last ever, never to be repeated, live guitar and vocal performance, of probably the only blues song to be written about a broken futon. China doesn’t know what it’s letting itself in for, does it?

You know you’ve made the right decision about leaving maths behind when you receive an email about an upcoming Group Theory conference, and you read it as Group Therapy.

Bit of a treat this weekend in the form of the worst-kept-secret-ever surprise leaving do, held by a group of my friends in honour of my impending departure for Chinese shores a week on Thursday [eek, is it that soon?]. My keen analytical mind figured out something was afoot when I was asked what dates I was free over the next few weeks “for no particular reason”, as well as me telling everyone that if I didn’t have a surprise party I’d be most upset, but nevertheless it was still very nice to see a large number of my close friends and be treated to drinks and a slap-up meal [at a Chinese restaurant in London’s Chinatown, natch].

There were still a couple of nice extra surprises—an old friend whom I’ve not seen in a good couple of years [but who, as I learnt, reads this site on an almost daily basis—hello Jon!], and the most surprising aspect of all: me managing to hold down my food as I was bought many a nasty drink, the culmination of which was some mysterious clear shot at the restaurant, described as “Chinese tequila”, that smelt like fish and took all the will in the world to bring the glass anywhere near my lips, let alone drink its contents. But down it I did, and I got a lovely pot of jasmine tea for my troubles from the sympathetic waitress [although this may have been insurance against having to clean up any mess I looked as though I was about to make all over the table before the colour of my face returned from off-green to its usual shade].

Other surprises during the evening:

• My friend finding £100 sticking out of a cash machine with no-one in the immediate vicinity [she says]

• Actually managing [eventually] to flag down a taxi on Oxford Street at one in the morning, and having an entertaining and intelligent conversation with the driver [at least, I think we did, I can’t actually recall what was said, except for some stuff about his hat not being anything to do with where he was originally from]

• I can dance around disturbingly competently in knee-length boots with four-inch heels

I do love my friends, and I think we’ll leave it at that.

The train manager on my journey up to Leicester yesterday raised a few smiles with his greeting as we set off from St. Pancras:

Good morning, I’d like to welcome you all onto the 10:55 fast service to Nottingham, calling at Leicester and Nottingham only. Coach A has been designated a Quiet Coach: use of mobile phones in this carriage will automatically trigger the ejector seats. Also please note this is a non-smoking train; all toilets have been fitted with smoke alarms and high-pressure water jets.

2005 was officially The Year I Got Into Photography, and I’ve been particularly pleased that [minor trumpet-blowing ahoy!] a few other people liked my efforts enough to mark them as “favourites” when posted on Flickr. So, prompted by the FlickrBlog post, I’ve assembled the twenty most favourited photos of 2005 into a Flickr set for posterity.

For the second year in a row I spent New Year’s Eve at my friend’s parent’s pub in Sussex, and it was every bit as good as last time: open bar, delicious nibbles, random music, a good mix of old friends and new people to talk to, and an impressive fireworks display to ring in the New Year. Have a good one, people.

I can’t possibly write about this now—I’ve been up for twenty-six hours straight, having gone straight to the pub at half past nine this morning after an eleven hour shift. Suffice to say: everyone’s my best mate, they are…

Volunteering for Crisis continues to be a terrific experience; even though I have only seen the night-shift in operation, when there are nothing like as many activities and events happening throughout the shelter, it is still impressive how things are coordinated so well. This was especially true of the Christmas Day night-shift, when we had forty fewer volunteers than expected, and were providing accommodation for more guests than any Christmas since 1992. Due to the need to do staggered rotations in assigned tasks, each duty was lasting about twice as long as normal, particularly tough on those who were outside the shelter watching over entrances and exits. But these long shifts gave me much greater opportunity to talk to the guests in more depth than I had managed up to now.

Read the rest of “Crisis Open Christmas nights two and three”…

The first night at Crisis was fantastic: lovely volunteer people, and genuinely grateful [for the most part] guests. I was really nervous to begin with, and for extra fun my first task [with my fun new pal Sarah—you’re always with at least one other volunteer on any given duty] was to shut down the TV area nearest the sleeping tents, pulling the plug on the telly and asking people if they wouldn’t mind awfully moving to the other side of the arena. As you might expect, and they had my sympathies entirely, this was met with a few protests, but eventually everyone complied.

Other duties throughout the night: being a “runner” for the toilet/shower areas, fetching supplies from the store cupboard [nice and relaxed: they hardly needed anything, so I spent most of the time folding clean towels into bags with the lovely Kelly]; guarding the volunteers’ entrance/exit [a bit cold but kept warm with foot-stamping and chatting to a very sweet girl called Gemma who was very pleased to have finally turned eighteen and been allowed to volunteer]; and finally, a general clean-up of the sleeping area: folding blankets, stacking beds etc.

Everyone was really friendly and, as we were told at the debriefing, the night passed without any major incidents—a few of the guests’ tempers got a bit frayed but I’m hoping that was just first-night jitters. I didn’t feel as tired as I thought I might do—plenty of tea at every given opportunity certainly helped that. In fact, the only low point was when I bit into a small pie thinking it was going to be a mince pie, only to discover it was apple. Very disappointing!

If I was ever in any doubt that the efforts of Crisis are futile, those were surely blown away by the guest who strolled up to me and two other volunteers, took our hands in turn and thanked us all for giving up our Christmases for him. Warm fuzzy feelings aplenty!

[Aside: plural of Christmas, anyone? Christmases? Christmasses? Christmi?]

I’ve had a bit of a sleep today, and am feeling okay for another night, but I’ve a feeling this one may be a bit longer than the first. And there’s the added of fun of no public transport tomorrow morning!

Merry Christmas everybody.

In preparation for my night-shift duties at the Crisis shelter, I’m staying up as late as I can manage tonight, to begin shifting my bodyclock towards the nocturnal mode of life. Having never done anything like this before, I’m unsure just how many of the traditional day-to-day activities can be simply shifted eleven-or-so hours without society cocking its collective head to one side and frowning disapprovingly.

For example, I suspect no-one will have a problem with me having my “breakfast”—tea and toast or cereal—at eight o’clock at night, but when I come home from a hard day’s work at around nine o’clock in the morning, would it be acceptable to crack open a few beers as I relax in front of the telly before heading to bed? [Perhaps the fact that I’d be watching daytime television talkshows is justification enough for hitting the bottle, night-shift or no night-shift?]

Over the Christmas week I’m volunteering for Crisis, the London-based charity for homeless people. Their work carries on year-round, but they are probably most famous for the Crisis Open Christmas scheme, started nearly forty years ago, which provides shelter, hot meals, showers, entertainment, health checks, advice, skills workshops, and simple companionship, all completely free of charge, to any of London’s homeless [and the so-called “hidden homeless”—people not neccessarily sleeping rough on the streets, but in hostels, on friends’ floors, in Bed & Breakfasts, who face the same problems with finding work and enough money to get by].

Yesterday I attended one of the several induction sessions Crisis run in the lead-up to the week, pleasantly surprised to see every seat filled. As a general volunteer I’ll be given a variety of tasks, including making tea, serving food, cleaning up, guarding no-go areas, and the thing that the coordinators have emphasised as the most important duty of all: talking to the guests. Designated to work at the main shelter [this year at the London Arena in Docklands] I was assigned my shifts a few days ago, and I’m on the night-shift, 10:15pm–8:30am, for five of the seven nights that COC runs.

Crisis can never have too many volunteers, and there is still time to offer your services [people with a skill or trade are particularly useful], so if you are interested in helping out, learn more from the Crisis website, or simply turn up at one of the remaining induction sessions:

Tuesday December 13th 2005 6.45pm–8.45pm

Abbey Community Centre, 34 Great Smith Street, London NW1P 3BU

(Nearest tube St James’ Park and Westminster)

Saturday 17th December 2005 10.30am–12:30pm

Park Crescent Conference Centre (international students house), 229 Great Portland Street, London W1

(Nearest tubes Gt. Portland Street and Regents Park)

Saturday 17th December 2005 2.00pm–4:00pm

Park Crescent Conference Centre (international students house), 229 Great Portland Street, London W1

(Nearest tubes Gt. Portland Street and Regents Park)

I was waiting for a friend outside Holborn tube station yesterday, my first venturing out into cold and dark London since I returned from my holiday. It was around half past five, so there were hundreds of people bustling past, banging into one another, being generally In a Hurry and all very Londony, and I was getting all geared up to really hate being back here amongst the seething masses instead of being much happier in the warm middle of nowhere, when one particular chap caught my attention.

He was a young office worker—quite short, smartly dressed in a suit—also waiting outside the tube station, chatting on his mobile ‘phone. But in the same hand that he was holding the mobile, he also carried a banana, in such a way that it concealed his ‘phone and thus he looked, at first- and second-glance to anyone else who happened to notice what he was doing, like he was talking into an almost-ripe, clearly real, banana, and he was completely oblivious to how silly he looked.

This cheered me up no end and I’m now a lot happier about being back in London. So well done Bananaman, another good deed.

Update: I forgot to add that the newly-restored warmth towards London was diminished slightly by the £4.40 we were charged per pint.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he must go on a month-long holiday to South America. For me, that time is now.

Hasta luego, gringos.

It’s that time of year again, when I defer my student loan repayments for another twelve months [hmm, is my gross income less than £2011 per month? Let’s see … £0 divided by 12 … yep, I think I qualify!], so I put in a call to request a deferment form.

First though, I popped over to the very useful Say No to 0870 site to get the geographical number of the Honours Student Loan company. I punched in the number and let it ring. And ring. And ring. Until it cut me off with no answer.

I dialled again. Same thing.

A thought struck me, and I dialled the official 0870 number, which charges up to ten pence per minute instead of the much cheaper rates you get for calling geographical numbers. They answered within two rings. Talk about squeezing every penny out of you!

[Of course the number on Say No to 0870 could be wrong, but I’m going to assume it’s not so I can go ahead and post this micro-rant.]

Happy birthday to me.

Now that I am twenty-nine I can do all those things that twenty-eight year olds can’t get away with: namely, fretting about turning thirty next year, and lamenting those carefree days when I wasn’t twenty-nine.

Or rather, I would do those things if I was at all bothered about it. As it is, I’m distinctly indifferent about the whole thing. Honest.

Now do excuse me, I need to go and pluck out my grey chest hairs.

I went for a few drinks yesterday with an old friend that I’ve not seen for ten years, choosing to sit in a rather unglamorous old pub in Islington—imagine a nice trendy bar, all crisp and clean and filled with poseurs and models, then think of the exact opposite of that, and you’ll get the idea. It was smokey and a bit dingy and, I was told, the taps in the ladies’ loo were in danger of falling off the wall; the ones in the gents’ were securely fitted, but you did have to turn them all the way, until they’d not turn any more, to get any water out. A nice place to sit and drink and chat, but not exactly the latest hot night spot in town.

Which is why it was rather sweet, I thought, to see four previous Big Brother contestants, including a series winner, sitting at a table and having a good natter. They weren’t seeking any attention by going to the latest movie premier or London’s top club, just sharing a bottle of wine and, it appeared, enjoying each other’s company. No one else in the pub seemed to care who they were enough to go and bother them for a photo—there was a brief wave of whispering and pointing that you could see sweep over the pub as people realised who was there—which might be why they chose to go there, until one of them started being chatted up by a rather-worse-for-wear bloke, pretty soon after which they left [sans drunk bloke, I should add].

And I thought I saw my old maths teacher in there too, but it turned out it wasn’t him after all.

“Excuse me,” said the middle-aged woman who approached me as I stared at the selection of beans in my local supermarket. “Sorry to bother you, but I was just wondering: are you spying on me?”
“Errrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr,” I said, as I processed this utterly unexpected question. “No.”
“It’s just because I saw you looking, earlier,”—I’ve never seen you before in my life, I thought, I was probably trying to see what was down the aisle that you happened to be in—“and I’m sure I’ve seen you in other places as well.”
“No, I’ve actually just moved back to London recently.”
“Okay. I think someone is trying to keep track of where I go, you see, so I thought you might be spying on me. But you’re definitely not?”
“No, I’m really not spying on you.”

Which is, of course, exactly what I’d say if I was spying on her.

It’ll take a few more days for my broadband connection to be transferred to my new address, so I’d been back in the dark ages of dial-up since I moved down—until today, when I discovered that some nice person in my neighbourhood has an unsecured wireless network available for me to use. Okay, so I have to be leaning out of my bedroom window with a metal coathanger in my teeth, but it’s still free!

It amazes me that these things are so common; if ever I get myself a wireless connection sorted, you can bet your bum it’ll have some form of protection from illicit usage; surely it can’t be that hard to set up?

[Oh, if you’re the person whose connection it is I’m using, then yes, it is very hard to make it secure. Nigh on impossible, in fact. I’d not even bother trying to find out how to do it. Really.]

After forking out fifty quid for my yellow fever vaccination, there’s a small part of me that’s slightly disappointed that I don’t seem to be suffering any of the advertised side effects; if I’d had any of the dizziness or gone slightly jaundiced, I might feel more like I’d gotten my money’s worth.

[Some might argue that not getting yellow fever for the next ten years counts as “getting one’s money’s worth”. I’m such a material boy.]

What is one supposed to do upon receiving an email that has the following gist?

Damn, you’ve already got the Gmail address I was hoping for, so I’ve signed up for one that differs from yours by one letter. In case any of my contacts are careless, I wanted you to have my address to be able to forward on to me any e-mail that looks like it wasn’t intended for you.

The last sentence is a verbatim quotation; note that he doesn’t ask if I mind forwarding his messages. Does one do his bidding? Ignore it? Or spend evenings composing numerous lurid or stomach-churningly pornographic messages, pseudo-forwarding them to him with a, “This one isn’t for me either, must be for you!” until he asks me to never forward anything to him ever again?

[Normally I’d probably just do it without a grumble, providing I don’t start receiving an unreasonable number of messages intended for him, but he made the cardinal mistake of addressing me as Dave, for which he must be punished.]

Right, I’m off to Argentina and Bolivia.

Read the rest of “Destinations”…

Frankly, I’m amazed that one can even shop for immunisations, let alone that is it is actually worth doing.

I’m off on holiday to somewhere quite exciting but also a bit dodgy infectious-disease-wise in November; I’ve not mentioned this yet because I haven’t had time to figure out precisely what ratios my levels of excitement and nervousness are in, but I will do soon enough. Suffice to say, it requires me to get a lot of jabs, and since I’m moving at the end of the month, I thought I’d sort them out before I have to transfer my medical records down South, so I popped into the local Health Centre.

It turns out I need protection from:

1. typhoid;
2. diphtheria;
3. tetanus;
4. yellow fever;
5. hepatitis B;
6. rabies.

The first three are free of charge and the nurse did them there and then. For the latter three, the total cost would come to £204.50; that’s £50 for yellow fever, three times £11.50 for hep B, and three lots of £40 for rabies [which is not really an inoculation—it gives you 48 hours to get help instead of the usual 24. I’m almost in two minds about whether this is worth doing].

Since the hep B and rabies jabs are given over a period of a month, the nurse suggested I check out clinics in London as it might not be worth me starting the courses in Leicester and having to come back up for doses two and three. My old surgery proved useless as they firstly wouldn’t tell me the prices unless I was registered with them, and secondly they don’t provide the yellow fever vaccination anyway. So I looked up the Travel Clinic at The Hospital for Tropical Diseases, and it appears I can get the same inoculations, but it would cost a total of £248.50.

Not that it was all that easy extracting the total cost from the HTD; the price list is not only incomplete but also misleading as it does not state that the prices are per dose [nor how many doses are required]. After several emails between myself and someone who works there, we arrived at the total above. I think I rather narked him off during the course of our exchange by wondering aloud why it costs rather more at their clinic than my local one, as he provided me with both the reason and a random promotional semi-rant.

It turns out that, because hepatitis B [and A] vaccinations are not travel-specific, GPs etc can administer these for the usual prescription costs, whereas the HTD has to pay the full price, which it is “obliged to pass on to the customer”. What’s more:

[The HTD is] as you will be aware from the website a world centre of excellence which provides a consultant led service for a wide range of travellers, including many who regularly appear on television. If you were going to have surgery would you go to a surgeon who performed one operation a year or would you go to one who was regarded as a leading light in his or her field. [sic]

I don’t know about you, but I always choose my medical team based on whether or not they’ve treated people who are on the telly.

It must be really exciting, buying a house. I’ve never done it myself, but—after all the trudging around, looking at different locations and properties—settling on the one you want more than any other, must be quite thrilling. And even before completion, any time you’re in the area, the temptation to drop by and have a look round your new home must be quite high. Perhaps even show it off to your friends and family, if they’re with you?

But, however great this urge is, please remember one thing—and, really, I’m talking to the woman buying my house, or rather, the father of the woman buying the house—it’s not your house yet, so if you want to use the toilet, you should ask the current tenant, or at the very least, put the bloody lid down in the position you found it after you’ve finished. And do you really need to look inside the wardrobes? It’s a wardrobe. You can see how big it is from the outside. The Chronicles of Narnia are fictional you moron. And opening draws? We keep stuff in them. Big surprise. Looking for ideas of what to keep in them once they’re your daughter’s, are you? How about The Big Book of Manners?

Some people are just so rude.

In order to both reduce the amount of packing I’ll need to do when I move house, and to raise some extra pocket money [my grant ran out in March and there’s no teaching over the summer], I’ve offered-up quite a number of old videos, CDs and DVDs for sale on Amazon Marketplace, ones I’ve rarely—or in some cases have never—watched. I was quite surprised to find that whilst the CDs and DVDs are shifting pretty rapidly, no one wants any of the videos, despite them being only a quid or so each. I suppose the general decline in VCR and video cassette sales means that only rare [i.e. unavailable on DVD] items would be sought after.

Also, people are really bad at leaving feedback ratings; of the twenty-two people who have purchased one of my items, only three have bothered to give me a Seller Rating. Happily, I received top marks from all three, but it’d be nice if every one of the twenty-two took a few minutes to show I’m a reliable Seller—I bet if they were unhappy with the products they’d be straight online to give me a negative rating.

Read the rest of “Things you don’t expect to be clearing up off your lawn [#574]”…

Read the rest of “My reasons for not watching War of the Worlds may be slightly different from yours”…

Read the rest of “Batter still”…

Read the rest of “How to baffle Davids”…

Read the rest of “Better bat”…

Read the rest of “How to baffle cold-callers”…

Read the rest of “Batty”…

Read the rest of “Moving in the right directions”…

Read the rest of “Nophoto”…

Read the rest of “Canvassing for Greenpeace”…

Read the rest of “Dial 1-800-MUGGER”…

Read the rest of “More human”…

Read the rest of “Statement”…

Read the rest of “Blow by blow”…

Read the rest of “Mugged”…

Read the rest of “Plum”…

Read the rest of “Quite the dinner party”…

Read the rest of “The eyes have it”…

Read the rest of “Fretting”…

Read the rest of “Face/Off”…

Read the rest of “Thanks”…

Read the rest of “Ramblin’ on my mind”…

Read the rest of “Stupid is as stupid does”…

Read the rest of “Choices”…

Read the rest of “The drinks are on me”…

Read the rest of ““I’m wearing odd shoes.””…

Read the rest of “Feeling one’s age”…

Read the rest of “01.01.05”…

Read the rest of “Kryptonite meteor shower update [amongst other things]”…

Read the rest of “Meteorology”…

Read the rest of “I’m on a flight to nowhere”…

Read the rest of “Where do I go from here?”…

Read the rest of “Swings and roundabouts”…

Read the rest of “Reading aloud”…

Read the rest of “Cold berries”…

Read the rest of “Distraction”…

Read the rest of “Will they, won’t they?”…

Read the rest of “Dim view”…

Read the rest of “Kick off”…

Read the rest of “Stone me”…

Read the rest of “Clubbed”…

Read the rest of “Shameless advertisement”…

Read the rest of “Manualbiography”…

Read the rest of “Home”…

Read the rest of “Gruff”…

Read the rest of “It’s my birthday and I’ll blog if I want to”…

Read the rest of “Now I’m really confused”…

Read the rest of “When moving house”…

Read the rest of “Swizz not whizz”…

Read the rest of “Box clever”…

Read the rest of “There’s David”…

Read the rest of “Not blogging, only working”…

Read the rest of “Durhammed”…

Read the rest of “This one time, at Maths Camp…”…

Read the rest of “Do you need a clay badger?”…

Read the rest of “A plane, some trains and a couple of automobiles”…

Read the rest of “Now I remember why I avoid coming to Ireland in the summer”…

Read the rest of “Fortuitous fluctuations”…

Read the rest of “Not the reason I’m going to Ireland in a couple of weeks, but a good enough one any other time”…

Read the rest of “2.0027378507871321013 today!”…

Read the rest of “Casualties of mower”…

Read the rest of “Good and bad ideas [garden-related]”…

Read the rest of “Most entertaining conversation of the day”…

Read the rest of “Happiness abound”…

Read the rest of “Post hoc, ergo propter hoc”…

Read the rest of “This space unintentionally left blank”…

Read the rest of “Making a point”…

Read the rest of “Wizardry”…

Read the rest of “Smoothie operator”…

Read the rest of “Running rings”…

Read the rest of “Old and new”…

Read the rest of “Bye bye Bob”…

Read the rest of “After midday”…

Read the rest of “The Aga Can”…

Read the rest of “…and we said, “Right-o””…

Read the rest of “Barriers”…

Read the rest of “Directionlessness”…

Read the rest of “Marvining”…

Read the rest of “Hammer and tongs”…

Read the rest of “Staying in”…

Read the rest of “Take a hike”…

Read the rest of “It’s a fair trade, guv’nor”…

Read the rest of “Reconnected”…

Read the rest of “Go dot, go!”…

Read the rest of “One day old today”…

Read the rest of “Disconnected”…

Read the rest of “Fuddmugs”…

Read the rest of “Saint Me’s Day”…

Read the rest of “Obligatory “tosser” joke goes here”…

Read the rest of “Bunch of flours”…

Read the rest of “Tea disaster 2004”…

Read the rest of “Blub”…

Read the rest of “Pop Stress”…

Read the rest of “My own doom”…

Read the rest of “Potatoes!”…

Read the rest of “Groced out”…

Read the rest of “Game over”…

Read the rest of “Achievements”…

Read the rest of “Balancing act”…

Read the rest of “No reason”…

Read the rest of “Sleepless”…

Read the rest of “Judgement call”…

Read the rest of “All alone”…

Read the rest of “It’s back”…

Read the rest of “Badged”…

Read the rest of “Swift riposte”…

Read the rest of “More on the intricacies of English”…

Read the rest of “Pow pow, rat-a-tat boom”…

Read the rest of “Back on track”…

Read the rest of “Katie bar the door”…

Read the rest of “Missing: 6 hours from today—have you seen them?”…

Read the rest of “Rubbing it in”…

Read the rest of “Brrr”…

Read the rest of “Snowy scenes”…

Read the rest of “Things to woot about”…

Read the rest of “As predicted”…

Read the rest of “01.01.04”…

Read the rest of “harping on”…

Read the rest of “portly”…

Read the rest of “respite”…

Read the rest of “few and far between”…

Read the rest of “sign language”…

Read the rest of “sad sac”…

Read the rest of “the weekend”…

Read the rest of “lardy”…

Read the rest of “cheers mate”…

Read the rest of “there is a doctor in the house”…

Read the rest of “all play and no training”…

Read the rest of “stand-up comics”…

Read the rest of “exhibitionism”…

Read the rest of “convalescing”…

Read the rest of “filling up the diary”…

Read the rest of “oblivious”…

Read the rest of “money for something”…

Read the rest of “lingering questions”…

Read the rest of “count myself lucky”…

Read the rest of “man down”…

Read the rest of “payback”…

Read the rest of “bottomless pit”…

Read the rest of “take a seat”…

Read the rest of “outfoxed”…

Read the rest of “do not adjust your url”…

Read the rest of “double take”…

Read the rest of “breaking the habit”…

Read the rest of “water, water, everywhere, but could i have a slice of lemon in mine please?”…

Read the rest of “send me a postcard”…

Read the rest of “can you help?”…

Read the rest of “it was twenty-seven years ago today”…

Read the rest of “useful to know”…

photos taken with mobile phone’s digital camera.

Read the rest of “tiny photos of wales”…

photos from a trip to wales for a spot of family history.

Read the rest of “road trip”…

Read the rest of “seasoned travellers”…

Read the rest of “sod’s law in action”…

Read the rest of “the best laid plans”…

Read the rest of “quick as thieves”…

Read the rest of “all packed up with no place to go”…

Read the rest of “best, and worst, spontaneous purchase of the day…”…

Read the rest of “overheard on the train back last night”…

Read the rest of “john d [1944–2003]”…

Read the rest of “at bloody last”…

Read the rest of “the inglorious thirteenth”…

Read the rest of “clarity begins at home”…

Read the rest of “uncommunicado”…

Read the rest of “goodbye john d”…

Read the rest of “just one more drag”…

Read the rest of “still not here”…

Read the rest of “moving on”…

Read the rest of “met and drank”…

Read the rest of “my inverse body clock”…

Read the rest of “from plugs to crap superheroes in three moves”…

Read the rest of “didn’t really think this one through too well”…

Read the rest of “coolness”…

Read the rest of “discoveries of the day”…

Read the rest of “would you me to wrap that?”…

Read the rest of “graduation day”…

Read the rest of “something fishy”…

Read the rest of “nowhere near as busy as a bee”…

Read the rest of “how do you make a sausage roll?”…

Read the rest of “butter me up”…

Read the rest of “thanks…”…

Read the rest of “comedy sign of the day”…

Read the rest of “upgrade schmupgrade”…

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