If only to hear these pearls of wisdom from the staff (stolen from Cycling Plus)

Here is a list of actual announcements that London Tube train drivers have made to their passengers…
1) “Ladies and Gentlemen, I do apologize for the delay to your service.

I know you’re all dying to get home, unless, of course, you happen to be married to my ex-wife, in which case you’ll want to cross over to the Westbound and go in the opposite direction.”

2) “Your delay this evening is caused by the line controller suffering fromE & B syndrome: not knowing his elbow from his backside. I’ll let you know any further information as soon as I’m given any.”

3) “Do you want the good news first or the bad news?

The good news is that last Friday was my birthday and I hit the town and had a great time.
The bad news is that there is a points failure somewhere between Stratford and East Ham, which means we probably won’t reach our destination.”

Continue reading “Sometimes it’d be worth getting the tube.” →

Cyclogs has an interesting take on Internet willy waving. As you log daily mileage, your progress (or otherwise) is tracked on a leader board against other members. It’s free, simple to use and annoyingly addictive. As membership increases, your own personal standing falls so I’ve plummeted from the vertigo inducing heights of the top 15 to a more realistic mid 50s placing.

There were four riders within two miles of my total and we’re leapfrogging each other most days. One guy though has left the gravitational pull of our cluster and is accelerating outwards to the top 30s with suspicious velocity.

Surely he’s not cheating? I mean what is the point? Any shallower and people’d mistake him for a teaspoon. I adopted a lofty moral position stationed firmly on high ground for at least a couple of days before being driven to action.

I emailed the fella asking what his route was. Then I checked it with three mapping programs and “ in desperation “ some string and a ruler. Still convinced that his distances are mendacious works of fiction, I’m considering requesting an OS overfly. Some friends have told me this smacks of obsessive behaviour “ what’s wrong with these people? Everyone “ except me of course “ is so weird nowadays.

Oh and my London commuter singlespeed cross dressing jump bike has developed a creak somewhere in the transmission area. I’ve tried tightening up the cranks and ignoring it. But it’s getting worse. I’m wondering if completely catastrophic failure will soon insert itself painfully into my journey to work

For reasons best not discussed, we were debating classic song titles. I trumped the lot of them with “Drop Kick Me Jesus through the Goal Posts of Life”. I was summarily accused of telling a great big whopper of a lie and challenged to prove it.

A couple of seconds intensive googling brought up the required result.
The effect was like mainlining laughing gas. It’s a classic song and shows what can be done with some righteous beliefs and a rhyming words book

Full Lyrics Below
Continue reading “The Internet is a wonderful thing” →

The internet has been described as all things to all (wo)men. It’s been rather better described as an enormous repositry for Porn interspersed with the deluded ramblings of a million conspiracy theorists. The truth – as with most of these things – is somewhere in the middle and my own personal shining light is the BBC website.

Occasionally though, an otherwise dull siding way off the information highway throws out a real gem. I give you this snippet from “The Northern Light” a electronic version of Montana’s newspaper.

http://www.ttc-cmc.net/~nlight/2{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2}20news.htm

Please transport that donkey to the middle of my office and let it admister its’ savage justice.

Outstanding 🙂

Ebay pulled a couple of my listings yesterday. Their grounds for doing so were mildly amusing insomuch as it is a transparent policy to increase their listing fees. Buried somewhere in Ebay T&Cs is the entertaining precept that the seller may not charge the buyer for PayPal’s extortionate transaction fees because in some way this undermines trust in the seller?

How does that work then? As a seller, I offer the buyer many options to pay for the item. One of those attracts costs which I have no intention of paying. If the buyer feels the same way, fine “ send me a cheque, do a bank transfer, pay me in chickens, I care not. How can this in some way undermine trust in the seller? Beats me!

Continue reading “EBAY – a shoddy place to do business.” →

It’s the end of a long week “ pointless meetings punctuated by periods of intense activity, fitfully attempting to close the gap between glib promises and actual delivery. The house is full of shouting offspring annoying two generations of the Leigh family and ratcheting my stress levels ever higher. Haven’t these kids heard of Chiltern Railways and their mythical timetable? I’m considering publishing a book my life on a platform” “ it wouldn’t be interesting but it’d be cheaper than therapy.

The school quiz night awaits. This is one of these dreadful group hugs that raises about 50p and attempts to unite a rambling pantheon of disparate individuals to a common cause. The strategy is excellent but the tactics are dreadful. 90{45ac9c3234d371044e23e276755ef3a4dde8f1068375defba7d385ca3cd4deb2} of those who occupy the hall could stay at home unwittingly donating 50 quid so by trebling the evening’s revenue without actually attending. But hey, I really had nothing better to do. Well I did but since there was a cheap bar, I could do it just as well in a drafty hall with a smell than shot me back in time thirty years.

Continue reading “The dreaded school quiz night” →