There will be more pictures here soon, it’s just not easy to edit them on a tablet with no functional keyboard. Currently at parents, back Sunday, have some nice views of the Severn Bridge from Sharpness at sunset, some snow landscapes, and may be a couple of flowers -who knows?
1) Don’t have lots of Red Bull and vodka for lunch.
2) Don’t get caught by the chief executive’s PA photographing the ‘lifeboat for ladybirds’ you’ve lovingly crafted from a pistachio shell, a staple, and the blu-tac that was holding the financial calendar to your desk. That’s not the way to get on in a recession, no.
I’ve let the cobwebs gather here a little. The last couple of weeks have been slightly hazy and any thought of doing anything beyond just existing has seemed pretty unrealistic. Everyone in England seems to be ill with some variation of colds or coughs at the moment and I’m no exception, my throat has been sore for two weeks now and nothing seems to shift it.
I did aim originally to have a photo a day up here, as I worked through the queue of stuff I have to process and edit, and also to go through the old negatives and slides that I’ve been mining for lost gems. That hasn’t happened quite yet, so I want to get back to it. Will be interesting to see if I’ve got the self discipline to make this a habit – I also have a sideline idea about trying to take something daily and upload it, now I’ve got web access wherever Vodafone deign to give me a signal (although there’s a twenty mile or so stretch of the railway between Woking and Basingstoke where the signal dies to about 1kps).
Vodafone. Yes, that’s tomorrow’s job. You bastards. I phoned them last Saturday to get them to lift content control on my mobile broadband and phone accounts, which they haven’t done. The STUPID, POINTLESS, INANE content barring they have in place blocks me from Flickr, The Onion, my Alamy account, Bebo, a blog about the daily mail… Coilhouse, I mean it’s not like I’m actually trying to access anything contentious – but on the other hand, they’re transmitting to me, through their network, on a number that I’ve given to about seven people, porn spam texts such as the one that landed on me in a meeting today – ‘BB’s Nikki Fresh F*cked Pussy’. Thanks a bloody bundle.
in holborn. Going nowhere. Nothing new.
But where to buy shaving cream? Not from a supermarket, not nowadays. Trying to buy simple, old fashioned shaving cream or soap appears not to be possible unless via the internetz or through a specialist retailer. No, clearly all of that stuff is for dinosaurs. Modern men need stuff that sounds like it’s a by-product of stealth-bomber ejector seat development, created by the CIA and tested by Navy Seals and the SAS in Afghanistan. So we get ‘Alpha Nexus Tech Lubri-Gel’, ‘Nutri-glide Magna Slip Ultimate Shave Technology’ and the like, and a multiplicity of three letter acronyms for various ‘technologies’ in use to create what amounts to slippery gunk. That’s not even considering the total idiocy of razor marketing, why the hell anyone needs battery vibrating neon crap is totally beyond my comprehension.
I gave in and bought what appeared to be the least offensive of the products. Even that made various ludicrous claims about itself. I feel slightly unclean.
Turned me into a right ball of hate today, that did.
This poor chap, one ’19 year old Max Gogarty’, managed to ignite the wrath of teh internetz with his Nathan Barley-esque inaugural blog about gap year travelling. On the one hand the vicious ridicule was actually quite funny – the original post was cringeworthily naive (perhaps intentionally if we’re being charitable); on the other hand the pack mentality and cruelty of the kicking the kid got was quite disturbing. Web 2.0 meets Lord of the Flies.
I also found the self-righteous indignation of many of the commenters pretty hilarious, the idea that being commissioned to write a lightweight weekly blog an obscure section of a website was somehow akin to being catapulted into a plum journalism job seems daft to me.
There’s also the lingering whiff that this could be a spoof, along the lines of the ‘Richard Geefe’ suicide diaries that the Observer published back in the nineties. Either that or it’s a marvellous lack of judgement on the part of the Grauniad’s website editors.
Livened up a dull Friday in February anyhow. Well weapon.