funkypancake

i took my 10,000th photo with my Sony DSC-P71 camera this morning. Here it is. A self portrait of the camera. I bought the camera in September 2002, so that's 10,000 photos in 16 months.

i do love my camera - But i was a little disappointed to discover the numbering has now gone back to 1. which means i will get duplicate file names and may have trouble uploading things to the blog.

here is photo number 10,000 (also known as photo number 1)

here is photo number 9999

does anyone know anyone who know's someone who works for sony and could pursuade them to sponsor the blog and/or give me a new camera ?

Whilst we're talking about numbers, i've now posted over 1,500 entries and have around 1000 comments since april last year. this month we've had over 4,800 unique visitors and shifted 2.2GB of bandwidth !

what a bizarre thing bloggin is.

can butterflies read ? if they are hungry enough they can.

if you have a pet dog you take it for a walk. if you have a cat then it does it's own thing which usually involves wandering round the neighbourhood.

but what if you run a mini-rainforest ? how do you keep your captive fish happy ? obvious. you drag them round in their tank on a trolley !

here are some signs in the living rainforest.

here are two nice signs:

and is this any way to run a rainforest ? i blame global cooling or something

it's been a wet and windy day today, so we thought we'd go to our local rainforest. The place itself is quite small, but it's worth a trip.

Here's a rare picture of me and the girls next to a big pond thing:

here is kezia drinking her ornina (her name for ribena)

if you get a chance to see spiritualized then go ! Jane and I saw them at Reading University this evening and they were amazing.

this abandoned over night bag contained a shirt. i didn't venture any deeper in to it.

one piece found

i found a tube pass. it had a photo in it. But it also had about £250 of unused month's travel on it. so i handed it in at Goodge Street tube station.

tottenham court road is the street with a million shops selling all your modern electronical gadgetry. they have so much they have to throw some out in to the street and you often see keyboards and other peripherals 'growing wild' on bin day.

here is an HP scanner and an Epson printer.

here's a poignent (pungent?) thing. it's a tramp asleep in a door way on Oxford Street. There's a fair amount of them about in london so nothing new there.

but i was struck by the writing in the shop window. was it referring to his life expectancy which he's been daily reducing from 1 week only to last day.

has he read what his life expectancy is or is he carrying on regardless ?

furthermore, this person has got nothing except a sleeping bag. yet the sign above his feet says 'or less'.

i was thinking - imagine we all had little counters at home which showed how long we had to live. that would certainly focus my mind ...

it's not easy being a tea bag. you sit in the dark for ages and then you get thrown in to a pot or mug and have boiling water poured on you. then you get chucked in the bin.

this little tea bag is having a sit down on a bench and is nestling (pun intended) up to a kitkat wrapper.

it's quite common in big cities to see protective fences around and about to protect the celebrity classes from the paupers. This is particularly popular around places like leicester square where they have lots of film premiers.

Here is bench and a little tree protected from the public by barriers. this would be ideal for a celebrity if they were shopping in Selfridges and wanted to have a little sit down and watch the world go by.

i love chocolate. here is some new style galaxy on the floor by my local train station. i didn't eat it. instead i bought a sausage and chips which i ate whilst walking back down my icey street. they tasted great and i loved it.

until i dropped my sausage and became irrationally angry. i reminded myself of jonah when his fig tree died (6-9).

i had no right to be angry with God about my lost lunch.

train signs often seem to be broken. a row of monitors at paddington station had become inverted for no real reason.

good on 'em for daring to be different

here is a sign screwed to the top of a pub table so no one steals it. it's obviously very important.

it snowed, then it melted a bit and then it froze. the result is very icey.

in fact, walking to work this morning was very much like walking across an ice-rink. by which i mean there was a mighty pipe organ playing 70s disco tunes in the cheesiest of ways. possibly.

as if it wasn't slippy enough, i spotted a few discarded banana skins too:

some people were fighting back. here was a curly wurly (still in its wrapper). a curly wurly is an excellent anti-slipping device thanks to its elaborate design:

i've used the word bonnet a number of times recently. i'm glad about that.

this morning i noticed a number of cars with snow writing on their bonnets. here is one saying London.

the other says Arsenal which must be a satirical comment on the Hutton report making a statement on Sadam's supposed military arsenal.

there were a number of other cars around which also had writing on them. all of these contained offensive words (some were even spelt correctly) so i didn't take any photos.

after yesterday's sighting, it's obviously the right time of year for snuggling up and keeping warm.

look at this beauty ! click to inspect

here is a bit of photo i found. it was very dirty and there wasn't any other bits around. this one isn't even worthy of including in davescollections

i suspect there is a giant (king kong style) cat living somewhere in london. i shall search for evidence, but for starters here is a footprint in the snow on a phone box.

anything blaine-in-a-box can do, the queen can do better. he she is on a one pence piece encased between layers of ice.

and here is a towel nearby:

and a little further up the road, a mattress:

and finally, a cigar in very good condition:

when it snows people do strange things. skid mostly. but cars go at different speeds. some way too slow. some way too fast.

how can you indicate this in a sign ? how about this which is a direct replacement for a speed limit sign which was there this morning:

they tried the same at the train station too:

not for the first time in my life i was following my own path

it snowed this afternoon. i know this because it took me 2.5 hours to get home from work. but it was interesting as people broke the rules and spoke to each other.

when i found a train which was working i was dissapointed to find on my exit that the next carriage along had no working lights. i would have LOVED to have been in this spooky carriage. anyhow ...

this sign came hurtling along the road in front of me down Praed Street like it was on castors. it was a nice advertising techique as everyone turned to look at it. it also got stuck in the middle of the road so lots of car drivers looked at it too.

a man on the train said to me he loved the snow and when he grew up in Wales he used to go sledging using a Volkswagon Beatle bonnet. my reply to this random piece of information was "i didn't know they made hats". i don't think he understood, but then neither did I.

why were there so many VW Beatle bonnets in Wales ? I asked him and he said "I dunno, but they had loads. even the schools had some".

(American visitors will note that a 'bonnet' is a 'hood' - which is also a head covering so the joke still works).

here are some wires looking good in the snow:

here's a thing i often see and think is fantastic. is it an accident or deliberate ? either way, look out for it next time you walk up tottenham court road in the northerly direction.

this new building on Euston Road displays a ghostly reflection of BT Tower on the left hand side.

another moped. this time with stick

it's usual to leave your bike chained to something random in london, usually without the front wheel. the idea being that bike thieves are too stupid to think about doing a wheely as they steal your bike.

here, someone has gone for the opposite approach. they've chained their front wheel but taken the rest of their bike with them. i like that approach.

it's a bit like those car radios you can take out so they don't get stolen. people with those should leave the radio in the street and take the car inside. primarily because cars are worth more than the radio.

here is another broken BT multimedia payphone thing. the colours are fantastic. it may be broken, but it looks good. there aren't that many things/people you can say that about.

travelling by dog is a good way of avoiding the congestion charge. unfortunately you still have to pay to park your dog at a meter. i still remember when they called them inches.

all those nasa/european satellite/rover things have so far only found empty houses on mars) but they haven't found any people. that's because they've all come to earth and have disguised themselves as traffic cones.

they all stand in long lines along roads in a neat martian order. of course, a few of them are showing their true colours:

it's a comb. on the pavement. yes.

my local council are brilliant at mending street lights.

And not only that, but they send people round randomly to check lights even when they are working fine !

here is a man doing that very thing:

i was working from home today and to my surprise a man arrived at my window.

why was it a surprise you ask ? well, it's because my office at home is upstairs.

how can he hear my thoughts you ask again ? i cannot answer that question without revealing secrets, sorry

meanwhile, outside my house there was loud dance music and a familiar flashing orange light. i looked again and the man outside my window was in a basket.

"my Lord", i cried, (displaying a rare use of a capital letter) and ran outside with esther and kezia to show them the mobile disco which had pulled up outside our house. the exact same sort i had seen yesterday.

this picture, taken outside our front door, appeals to me from a gravitational pull point of view. the man (who is actually cleaning the street lights and checking the bulbs despite none of them being broken) is dangling over the pavement whilst his van is parked on the other side of the street. he's chosen to hover over some parked cars for dramatic effect.

i may tell you a bit more about street lightbulbs in a moment ... (and so i did)

again, not broken, but not very good either.

what's the most giving program on the telly ?

answer: ER

i'm interested (vaguely) whether this works in other versions of english.

it's another working from home day today. so much work, so little fun.

here is a link i got sent by a reader a while back but forgot to pass on. it's a kind of random camera photo-y thing.

It's called Streetmattress

here is harry looking mouse-like with his fan behind him.

here is a mysterious key hole on a Central Line platform (Bank i think). It's a door in the floor. but it's more than a door in the floor. it's also got a key hole.

it's obviously an entrance to another world. it's not a parallel world because the door is the wrong angle. perhaps it's a perpendicular world instead ?

here is a strange thing under a bridge. the first we saw of it was the flashing lights. and then the thumping music. it appeared to be some workmen chancers fixing a light with their van stereo on.

or was it a new mobile disco concept ? they drive round with cherry pickers with flashing lights on top and stop in dark places (like under a tunnel). For £5 they'll lift you up in the basket and play dance music at you for half an hour.

Ideal for the office worker who can't get out to discoteques in the evening because of commuting commitments but still would love to dance their funky stuff.

and also, since there is only space for one person in the basket, there's less likely to be any inappropriate flirtery.

random street item

nice to start the week with another lost glove. especially one as stripey as this.

Jane and I got married on 17th Feb 1996. I know this because we watched our our wedding video over the weekend with the kids and it had the date stamped on it !

we went out for a family walk this afternoon. after yesterday's walk we decided kezia needed some bigger boots. so we found these.

they are very fancy as they are sparkly and have a high heel. very fancy, but very impractical.

especially for walking through VERY muddy clay-y recently dug fields.

if you've been reading the blog for a long time you may remember this graffiteeed dog poo bin which i drew to your attention.

it caught my eye again today because it was full of dog poo sacks. there had been some unwritten agreement to dangle the handles of the bags out of the lid. it gave the impression that there was a colleciton of octopuses (octopies) in there trying to climb out.

our short walk today brought us in to contact with many interesting things. a cooker, an old shoe and an abandoned TV. The TV still had the mains plug attached, but there wasn't any power sockets in the park to see if it still worked.

it's been a good day for my collections. here are a load of playing cards. unfortunately most of these were too worn out to be identifiable. and i've also made a policy of only including single cards in my complete collection. multiple finds are interesting, but make it too easy to complete the deck

spring has sprung very early this year. here are some actual daffodils. they'll probably all die next week as we are promised sub zero temperatures (more normal for this time of year)

the other barb was prettier. but this one is rustier.

one walk, four gloves

esther and kezia helped us load in the guitars this morning.

it was also the debut of nu:generation, the young people's band. we had two singers, 3 blowy instruments (not sure what they were!), piano, guitar and drums. jane and i joined in on guitar and bass. they had style and volume. a great combination

jane cooked hagis for tea as it's rabbi burns night or something. just thought i'd share this delight with you.