The beast within

The World Cup starts today with the titanic clash of footballing super nations that is Germany v Costa Rica. The irony of this is, of course, that Costa Rica sounds more like a Brazilian player than a country. "Ronaldo, a short through ball to Ronaldhino, a beautiful cross, met by Rica and oh, he's scored a wonderful goal." Alternatively, it sounds like everybody's Dad making shit jokes about south american footballers. "Chelsea have signed a Brazilian have they? Eh? What's his name? Costa Lotta? Hahahaha..ha...ha....oh"

Picture perfect

Just a quick note to say that I'm not putting pictures on this blog, I was taking far too many of them and would've ended up taking up the whole infrequently-updated thing with them. So I'm posting them on Flickr - link on the right.

Action man bow ties

Went out to dinner last night at Per Luigi's, a pasta restaurant in Beckenham. It's 30 seconds from our flat, and the food is good but it obviously has to cater for the truly stupid people of South London. This is the back of the menu, it hasn't come out really, but you can just about see the Quality Street style map making sure prospective diners know what spaghetti looks like.

The Phantom Menace wasn't that bad...

Here in Harrow there are few landmarks of note. Up on the hill there is the school of course, but down here in the actual town there is nothing but Costa Coffees, Greggs, and Yates*. All very depressing until you look up above the normal street level. Next to the tube tracks there is a surprisingly large three-storey building that was once the Post Office. Now empty it stands as a testament to the boredom of office workers as this gem illustrates just what can be achieved with a simple pad of Post-It notes.

The question is, of course, who is Lucas? It's not a very common forename, so perhaps it's a surname. If so, it's very formal considering they're announcing his sexuality to the whole of passing Harrow.

The real genius is that fact that they've announced the Lucas is gay and then, just to make sure we're aware of what gay may mean, they've added the Post-It phallus. I particularly like the attention to detail that has led to cutting some notes into strips to form Post-It pubes. The testicles seem disproportionately small though considering the size of the cock.

And they're square.

If this really is an accurate depiction of Lucas' shrivelled angular winkie then I think Lucas should be found and given medical attention. A spokesperson for the Post Office was, however, unavailable for comment.

*Or Yates Wine Lodge as they used to be known. This is, of course, far too many letters for your average scouser to cope with so "Yateseys" was born, and Yateseys it shal remain hereafter

Name of the day...

And the winner is...Leigh Leather

Breakthrough

Unusually for me, it worked, look at that. There's going to be a whole raft of them now aren't there...

Picture perfect

In a probably vain attempt to see whether I can get pictures on this thing using Safari, here's an example of the kind of thing being preserved at the National Archives - a bald head with a pony tail. They've even got him on reception to let new visitors know the kind of thing that's available inside.

Name of the day...

And the winner is...Fanny Blanchelande

Name of the day...

And the winner is...Emma Twitchy

Sick of commuting

Is this really my first post in 2006? Shocking.

Anyway, I'll gloss over that and begin by saying that I'm sick. Or more precisely, I was literally sick a couple of days ago. Now I'm well aware that tales of other people's "I threw up everywhere" exploits are about as interesting as listening to detailed descriptions of their dreams but this is worth noting for the record.

It begins with M being sick on Saturday. We had been over to Kew in the morning so that she could buy some material and I could visit the National Archives*. We went into town and had a bit of lunch at a pub before going to see a film - Capote if you're interested, think Larry Grayson meets Dead Man Walking.

As the credits rolled I leaned over to M and asked "What did you think?" to which she succinctly replied "I think I'm going to be sick". Before I could say "I think that's a little harsh, perhaps Philip Seymour Hoffman's performance was a little theatrical but surely it captured the mood of the times..." she was up and running for the toilet.

She then proceeded to throw up a few more times before getting home, including into a plastic carrier bag on the train, mmm. It laid her out for the next couple of days and she only properly ate something yesterday (Wednesday). We put it down to the nachos she'd eaten at lunch time and resolved never to eat pub mince again**.

We couldn't have been more wrong though, after a work trip on Tuesday I was in the car back when I started to feel dodgy, and my innards starting grumbling like a pensioner in a post office queue. I was dropped off in Amersham and caught the train to Marylebone when I really felt like shit. By the time I had got to Victoria and got on the train to Beckenham my stomach was grumbling like an Israel-Palestine boundary negotiation.

As we approached West Dulwich, a good four stops before Beckenham it was all getting a bit faint. I thought that if I got up and stood by the door when it opened I could at least get some fresh air***. The train pulled into the platform, I leapt up and once everyone had got off I leant out of the door and sucked in a deep breath. All this managed to do was displace whatever was bubbling in my stomach and I jumped off knowing that I couldn't put it off. I managed to wait til everyone who'd just got off had filed past me and I walked quickly in the opposite direction down the platform away from the entrance.

The platform was long and lit with lamposts but at least it was now deserted, I got as far along as I could before my diaphragm spasmed and my mouth filled with vomit. I clamped my hand to my mouth to hold it in, took three more steps, turned to the fence and blew the lot onto the floor, via my shoes.

Just at that moment, the train I'd just got off pulled away. As I retched my breakfast and lunch into the floor, safe in the knowledge that the platform was deserted the crowd of people on the platform opposite got a full view of me hunched over, wiping sick from my nose and plucking my glasses out of the puddle of now steaming vomit on the concrete under a lampost.

I went and tried to get a cab but couldn't find one, the smell of sick was in my nose, and the stain of sick was on my shoes, suit and dignity. I had to hang around for twenty minutes before another Beckenham train came though. When I eventually got home I stripped off, got straight in the bath, got out, threw up again, got back in, got out, dried off and went to bed.

I took the next day off.


*Family tree stuff, I know, I know, a bit of a fad at the moment but I've been sucked in and it is annoyingly fascinating. Look at it this way, I'm vaguely related to a bigamistic fraudster and a family from Norwich called Whittle. They are not the same person.

**The fact that this says 'again' shows how slow on the uptake we are.

***No, it is quite fresh, it's Dulwich remember, not Crystal Palace.