funkypancake

this tourist was very happy for me to take a picture of him wearing two pairs of glasses. especially after i explained that i too often wear two pairs.

here's a teeny bit of the queue of people waiting to get a ticket to watch Live8 on the telly in Hyde Park.

well, the hassocks are flying in fast and furious. i've already got 40-odd lined up for you and i know of at least 3 more rich seams.

to pace myself i'll try and give you one per week.

it was hot this evening so i walked back from a work event in Westminster to Paddington Station. Unfortunately it took ages to cross Hyde Park as they've built a concert venue all over it.

today loads of great bands had been playing as part of the Wireless Festival. I went by around 9pm and Keene were about to play. i'm not too keen on them (clever ey?) but i do love the Secret Machines who were also playing. i would also liked to have seen Supergrass and the Bunnymen.

but this was all academic as i didn't go in. But i did walk past this spot on the perimeter where people were sitting watching the big screens on the side of the stage !

what IS going on with the british weather ? quite bonkers at the moment. even by our standards.

kezia has a little kaleidoscope type thing which can simulate the effect of halucinogenic drugs in a child friendly way.

i held it against my camera lense and came up with thes quick shots.

orange kezia:

sure you could probably do something fancier digitally, but i liked the randomness and speedyness of the process.

angel kezia:

esther made her easter eggs last so long that her last big egg has gone out of date. she decided not to eat it.

but i decided we couldn't throw it away and i ate it instead.

it was this blog post that made me do it !

here is a strange dog. it's legs don't look right to me. but then i know little about much.

on a related note, i got an email from Sergei, the chap that runs this website. it's another collection of dog signs and there's surprising little overlap between our two sites !

thanks

as theme parks go, shoe world was doomed to failure from the very start.

kids play grounds are marvellous. this one even has a swing for sumo wrestlers.

kezia said to jane "can i have a go on the pants swing". great minds think alike.

i obviously have the same outlook as a three year old.

a bollard:

in the depth of the thames:

here's some pictures of centre point i took yesterday on my way to buy a guitar lead.

freddie and centre point:

toilet:

from the back of tin pan alley:

this is the kind of thing you couldn't make-up (do you see what i did there ?)

here's a message on a post-it which you could use at almost any occasion.

when would you NOT use it ?

i've decided to start a new category which i hope you'll all enjoy. i don't normally 'big-up' a new category, but i'm hoping this will be a good one.

it's Hassocks. you know. those church kneeler things.

the best ones are those made by members of the church congregation (some of whom may be reading this so i need to be careful).

Hassocks combine many of my favourite things:

* resting/kneeling down (though i'd rather sit to be honest)
* 1980s computer graphics
* tenuous religious links
* home-made crafting (cross stitch and needlepoint)
* church building interiors
* chocolate

he's our first one, which has a dog on it. dog is an anagram of odg and ogd, but also God. which is why i assume it's on a Hassock.

great stuff.

here are two swivel chairs in the street. they were about 5 minutes walk from each other, so perhaps they were having a race.

i took this photo on request as kezia had forgotten what the queen's london house looked like. i thought you might be interested in case you had forgotten too.

i've got about 300 photos back logged ready for blogging sometime, but i should have a bit more timely with this, which is kezia's drawing for me for father's day last sunday.

i'm on the left and she's on the right. apparently she drew our heads then panicked as she didn't know how to draw bodies !

i just love how kids photos can be so expressive.

a variety of cherries from a variety of times

backlit cherry

dim day cherry

sunny day cherry

jane's been taking pictures of people we know in a fancy wig and sun glasses for a guess-who photo quiz. it proved very tricky despite most of the subjects being familiar to us.

i may post a few of the pictures as some of them are quite amusing.

here's matthew who is holding his wiggy photo. doesn't he look pleased (in both pictures) ?

[worth clicking if you want to see the smaller picture bigger]

here are two people who you'll know but won't. thanks to the power of the internet you'll have read Alan (on the left) and Rascle's comments (on the right) on funkypancake.

Alan is the nature expert and Rascle excells in the bad pun. Both excellent chaps.

well done. hoorah.

we had our annual summer party for people in any way associated with music at church this evening.

here is a pie we ate:

kezia and i stumbled across the reading waterfest. it was jolly good fun with lots of canal paraphenalia. Kez and i went on a canal boat ride which unfortunately crashed in to a bridge ! (luckily it didn't break anything or anyone and we carried on our way).

the finale of the festival was the duck race where loads of plastic ducks were set lose to float down the canal (think about that for a moment). once the excitement was over and the winner was anounced people went home. we stayed to watch this little boat catch the remaining plastic ducks.

i took the day off today so we could go to Marwell Zoo as a family day out. we had a good day despite the 2 massive thunderstorms.

on the first one we sheltered in the giraffe house and the second one we were near the rhinos.

animals in a storm are always interesting. unfortunately it was all a bit too gloomy to get a decent picture. so you can have this one of some chairs instead.

what happened to all these animals :

temporary as in "it died but we'll get a new one" ?

or temporary as in "it got away, but we hope to catch it soon"

i liked this one best. it's like the old "this page deliberately left blank" thing in a printed report.

zzos always have loads of little animals which look a bit like mice but aren't. he's a classic example. no idea what it is.

i overheard someone say to their frightened (and if i'm honest frightening) child "how many times do i have to tell you, that is NOT the bogeyman, it's Humpty Dumpty".

the sign said one thing:

but we've all seen the invisble man. we know their heads have actually disappeared

in my day you were lucky with a guidebook. these days you can hire a PDA whilst you wander round the zoo so you look like a business man on his day off.

i was tempted from a technology point of view to hire one, but then i noticed you needed to leave a £300 deposit !!!

how do you deal with hooligans and other brutes ? if you are in a train station you have them dragged away by tractor.

but even tractors have limits.

prince william graduated yesterday in scotland. so this journalist did a report outside buckingham palace.

he could have stood outside a newsagents shop with all the prince william post cards. but he didn't.

Hyde Park in london seems to be a very popular place for bands to perform. unfortunately it makes walking through the park a pain as you have to go round the massive cordoned off area.

here is where New Order will play on friday night. you can just see the stage over the barriers.

and there's some lost people pointing as well to add the amusement.

this is a very strange thing. an 8 legged horse. fancy that.

swan necks reflecting as hearts

bicycle chain as heart

with an island in the background

with a building in the background

vin sent me this pile of photos of grubs asking if i could help him identify them. he knew i wouldn't have a clue but wondered if you did.

He writes:

I wonder if you'd be kind enough to post these pics of a tiny grub I
found today in the hope that some knowledgeable reader can identify
it. I've had no luck so far on Google.

It was in this kind of discus-shaped sac-thing, just lying in a
flower -bed. It measured a quarter of an inch (6mm) across, and when
the grub wriggled (more like a convulsive jerk), the whole thing
moved. When I first saw the movement in the dirt, I had assumed an
ant was tugging at a leaf disc (as they do), but it wasn't really
going anywhere, just turning around and jerking about. Thanks Vin

i was very impressed by this abandoned telly.

not only had someone gone to the bother of taking it to a dustbin in the street on its trolley, but they had also taped the remote control AND the instruction book to the top of it !

how fantastic is that ???

interesting two dogs on the same sign of quite differing styles.

vin spotted this which is very good. wonky gifts a speciality.

poor old po. lost in brighton. still, he/she's being very sensible and sitting on a bench waiting for its owner to come back and rescue it.

keeping off groynes is generally a good idea. this smiley chap is throwing caution to the wind and i think he'll regret it.

math or maths ? i know what i say. whatever. do it.

i was quite pleased with this shot as it's one of those car stationary and in focus whilst the background is moving type ones.

the hot drink machine in my office has a mysterious handwritten note on enquiring whether tomato soup is available 'off list' as a secret number.

i like the idea of finding hidden 'cheat' codes in the drinks machine that can dispense exciting drinks.

i always choose 83 mild for my mug of hot water. perhaps i should start trying a few other numbers and see what comes out.

the handwritten message in more detail:

a classic british summer scene. click for desktop sized goodness