National knees-up

That's absolutely as far as I'm going to go with any royal wedding stuff. I had a whole day of watching it out of the corner of my eye on the TV screens at work (they even turned the sound on for some of it! Momentous times), and then got to help on production, which was wedding wedding wedding. The number of nuptial-nudging headlines and captions I have seen written today...

In other news, although I am very tired, I will also have to think of a new nickname soon, because one of my awesome university gang is coming to London tomorrow (finally!) to join me, Percy and Whizzkid for exciting times. Stay tuned!

Absolutely must go to bed now, I'm good for nothing but staring blankly at videos of cats.

Goodnight!

Politics!

It feels like Thursday today, which isn't good since I only started my working week yesterday! Too many things going on and not enough sunshine! After a week of heat, I'm starting to feel entitled (although the colder weather is proving a popular topic for conversations with strangers in Waitrose, for some reason. I'll put it down to making friends!). 

As a result, all I want to do right now is go to bed and not get up until half past ten! (My laziness standards have been radically scaled back since this getting-up-early-every-day thing started.) In the spirit of semiconscious blogging (rarer than you'd think!), I'll have a brief ramble about an inescapable topic at work this month: AV (no more free publicity for the royal wedding from me! (Oh, bother))

We get heaps of letters and emails (if emails can be heaped) about the AV referendum, most of them either vitriolic or confused. Last week, a man got so upset that we hadn't published his letter (despite it being right and everyone else's being wrong) that he phoned up for a rant, and when I told him I was afraid he couldn't demand we publish anything, he told me I was 'wholly unsatisfactory' and hung up. I wasn't upset - insults from readers are something of a badge of honour. 

The respective campaigns are rather bizarre, too - the NO campaign is apparently basing its strategy on the idea that voters are basically idiots who will do whatever you tell them as long as you make emotionally charged but unsupported statements while showing them pictures of babies (or, indeed, you tell them that labelling preferences 1-3 is complicated, unnecessary and Just Not Cricket (better journalists than me have already pointed out that unfavourably comparing AV to a sport which expresses scores in terms like 24 for 6 (or whatever - I don't claim to have ever wasted a second of my life trying to understand cricket) is more than a little preposterous), preferably using an advert that could quite easily be mistaken for a sketch from Mitchell and Webb). 

The YES campaign, by contrast, seemed to be appealing to people's better judgement by not really doing very much (possibly a riskier approach, but definitely cheaper). Even the web address is pathetic - yestofairervotes.org vs no2av.org, anyone? Then there was the Ralph's Story video, in which a veteran shows how excited he is at the chance of a more democratic Britain by staring out of a rain-spattered window while moody piano music plays in the background. I quite liked Ralph, actually (at the very least, it's good to know there's one pensioner out there not foaming at the mouth at the prospect of voting reform), but his suggestion that he might as well have died in a war rather than live with the FPTP system sounded like something the NO campaign might have come up with. 

I wish there was a YOU'RE ALL IDIOTS campaign. I'm tempted to start one... 

Right, off to bed.

Goodnight! 

P.S. In case you were wondering which side of the debate I fall on (if I've somehow managed to be vague about my raving liberal tendencies), I support AV, but only as a step towards a proper voting system (such as one where only responsible, balanced people like me are allowed to vote (ha ha etc, but it'd get rid of UKIP...)). 

Easter pictures

And nary a bunny among them! 

Actual Easter Sunday was mostly spent reading in the garden in Woking, and therefore not much documented, but the boyf and I visited Camden Lock again on Saturday, so I thought I'd finally bring you a few pictures!

There's a bit of a horse theme going on there, for whatever reason - loads of statues everywhere. Sadly, most of them have people constantly posing in front of them, which makes it very difficult for important people like me to get decent pictures!

The market is a lot of fun, but also huge and very easy to get lost in. This happened to be the one day I forgot my phone, so I had to stick close by the boyf in case I got lost while incommunicado. I did wander off at one point when distracted by a basket full of antlers, but on the whole I did pretty well at the not-getting-lost thing!

Camden lock not only boasts the highest concentration of vintage shops I've ever seen, it also has some sort of giant robot temple/techno shop which you have to queue up to get into (sadly you're not allowed to take pictures inside, which seems like a waste, as they employ platform dancers!), and a shop called Oddballs, which sells all sorts of juggling paraphernalia, which is quite exciting when your other half is well on his way to joining a circus (and I of course mean that in the nicest possible way). 

This picture is actually from Sunday night, but illustrates the whole juggling thing rather well, besides being the only decent juggling picture I've ever taken. It's mid-juggle, incidentally - the boyf is actually really good, he doesn't just fling balls about for photographic effect! 

Right, off to bed now as I'm about to doze off!

Goodnight!

Technoweirdness

I was going to go on about my very exciting sunny weekend, but blogger is being extremely weird at the moment, so I'm going to save it for when I have less IT angst. Which is annoying, because I remembered to take (some) pictures to share. Oh well, I guess I'll just have to wait until it sorts itself out.

I don't have any pictures from Friday, however, as I foolishly forgot to put my camera into my actual handbag (despite having remembered to pack it), so I suppose I can tell you about that!

I managed to get to Liverpool Street station to meet the boyf almost on time despite the best efforts of bank holidays, and en route back to the flat to drop off his suitcase, we went to Waitrose (the one outside my work! That's probably the closest I'm ever going to get to showing him what my Working Environment is like, thanks to all the security in the building) to buy some things for a picnic. We went slightly overboard, so when we eventually met Percy in Green Park we had quite a disgusting amount of food between the three of us (as Percy doesn't picnic by halves either). We sat in the shade, because we were sensible (along with most of the local populace, apparently - the only near-naked sunbathers I saw were Americans) and ate strawberries and watched Percy battle with his smartphone (not so smart now, eh?), and it was all in all a very excellent lunch.

When we were tired of the half-awed, half-disgusted glances of the passers-by who noticed our food mountain, we went for a wander into the more urban parts of town, via Buckingham Palace, ice cream and The Mall, which meant we accidentally took in quite a lot of the Royal Wedding Procession Route, as I only later noticed (sadly, I don't think they'll be stopping for ice cream). In the townier bits of town, we embarked on an epic search for a shop Percy's smartphone didn't want us to find, but we beat technology eventually, with some good, old-fashioned map reading.

I'm going to have to break off there and go to bed, as I had to get up unreasonably early this morning to see the boyf off and am thus shattered!

More anon (hopefully with pictures, if google can get its act together).

Goodnight!

Appropriate workwear

Today we have a teeny tiny picture of what would have been appropriate workwear today (temperature-wise if not office-wise). And I would probably have rolled the pyjama bottoms up. I can't wait to have some free time to be outside! Although I suspect I will still be skirted, legginged and booted, as is my wont.

I had a pretty good day at work. Everyone else was extremely busy, so I was just plugging away at the page by myself. I'm getting surprisingly good at coming up with ideas for things to see and do around the country in very little time. I just really want to get out and do some. There's an asparagus festival starting on Saturday that sounds amazing.

Off to pack now - staying in the flat tomorrow night so I can pick up the boyf from London Liverpool Street bright and early on Friday morning.

Goodnight!

Train temperature update

I got home quite late this evening for various TFL-being-useless-jobsworths reasons which also meant I got to ride on a lot more underground lines than usual. It's getting warmer in London (up to 26 tomorrow! I'm not sure whether to be scared or excited), so I've decided to bring you the current status of some of the tubes, in case you've got some whizzing around London to do, or are just bored.


District line: Tepid, with a nice cool breeze in carriages with open windows

Bakerloo line: Roughly as warm and sweaty as a rugby player's socks at half time

Overground: About the same as outside (warm enough), but rather airless

DLR: Crowded enough to get that centre-of-the-penguin-huddle warmth

Jubilee line: No idea, but I hope for the sake of the people trapped on it by today's power failure it wasn't too hot


I had quite a complicated journey! Also, on the train from Waterloo a very fat and apparently blind woman stepped on my foot. Luckily, I was wearing boots and have not had to have it amputated. I want to stay in bed tomorrow!

Speaking of which, goodnight!

Secrets of Woking

 Ever since I heard about it from Paul (who has visited Woking since I've been here (although he didn't have time to visit me, the reprobate)), I've wanted to find the War of the Worlds statue that apparently exists somewhere in Woking. And today, I did!

The local populace don't seem particularly impressed, though

I also came across this 3D-2D mural thing, which is pretty cool: 

I was going to try to get my hair cut today, but apparently few hairdressers can accommodate a spur-of-the-moment sort of customer these days (well, one could, but £50 for a trim rather put me off, for some reason) so I am going to have to remain fringe-blinded for a while longer.

Today was another warm one. I met Jumanji in London and we had a somewhat halfhearted, easily-distracted look for Suitable Summer Attire (she has to survive a trip to Italy without melting or angering nuns) but alas the highstreet is still rather silly. Apparently your basic choice of Looks is either lurid or lurid and 70s. 

We also visited a rather intriguing Italian restaurant, as Jumanji hadn't had lunch. They give you a card as you go in, and you scan it every time you buy a dish (prepared in front of you) and then pay the total on the way out. It was pretty cool, although the system did remind me of the canteen at work more than a little.

I was too distracted by pasta to get a good picture of the place, but you can just see it in the background of this OK picture of Jumanji:

I watched the first episode of Game of Thrones tonight. It's going to have to be a very long-running series if it's going to get to the end of all those plotlines! Still not 100% decided on it yet, though - I'll tell you after the next episode gets things rolling properly. 

Off to bed now, as I have work in the morning.

Goodnight!