Oh dear

I sometimes ask my sister: 'why do you like Brighton so much?' Well, here is my answer: A naked bike protest. If this sort of thing goes on all the time, how could anyone ever get bored. I can't recall when I last saw a naked bike protest I have to say. I'm not sure what they're protesting about but presumably it has something to do with nakedness or cycling. Thanks R for the picture: you have put both me and S off our dinners.

Why Felicity we must have two...

Little Jasper and darling Victoria will need big stockings this Christmas.

This is decadence at its worst. I was enjoying my trip to Harrods with my girl the other day until I saw this. I don't know if you can make out the price but it's marked up at just under 15 grand. More than my car cost new.

A free foot massage and a half decent lunch helped me forget how angry things like this can make me. And, really, it's not because I resent the money of the rich gits that buy things like this- it's just that things like this so grotesquely emphasise the gap between rich and poor it makes me shudder. Maybe I'm doing them all a disservice: perhaps they walk past and mutter their own disgust- " You know what Felicity, that is disgraceful. I am so appalled I shall wire 15 thousand British pounds to some poor brown people in Africa upon our return to the estate. And some of those wonderful eclairs from the food halls."

ps. I have no idea if the small man's head is part of the windscreen design. It seems happy enough though

Motorway Pride

Motorway service stations are usually Godforsaken affairs full of overpriced, rank food. Of course this one was too, so from amongst the pseudo hygeinic toilets, burger wrappers and little pots of 'cream' the humour in the sign caught me by surprise. The person that comissioned this one must like the taste of their own cheek. I still haven't found out exactly how many coffee concepts there are in Europe: I so hope it's only 25.

Lickable

This is what the internet is for.
I made this without parental help or supervision at http://www.marmitesqueezy.com/ . They may be annoyed with me as it says you're not allowed to write rude stuff. Stupid marmite twats.

I am speaking to British Gas...

Right now. I really want to shout but I have resolved not to any more because it's not the fault of the person with the strong accent - God knows they're only trying to earn enough cash to get them through their basic English classes. I'm listening to a glorious muzak version of 'everybody wants to rule the world'. They're not so good at subliminal messages at BG. It's worse than the original by far and that was the biggest pile of atonal monkey gurgling. Ooh...am getting annoyed... Still waiting for the girl to get back to me. Ah ha...here she is, excuse me a moment.

Apparently I don't owe them any money after all. It's a shame they wasted those letters. All 11 of them.

Post script: they phoned me back! With a private number. i had to put the phone down on S who was asking me funny questions about my height and weight. The world's gone mad. They were wrong again: I do owe them money. I put her on hold while i spoke to my supervisor and i asked her to key in her 47 digit account number, date of birth, mother's maiden name, cup size and pin number but she put the phone down.

why am I so embarrassing?

My son is going on the year 8 trip today - four days camping in Cumbria. Of course I'm used to him preferring to leave the house just ahead of me with a muttered 'See ya later then' rather than with a father/ son bonhomie that would no doubt get him beaten up at school for being 'gay'. However, I was totally unprepared for his escape effort this morning: I had to take him to school because he had this big rucksack with clothes, sleeping stuff and crumbs in it. As I was pulling up at school he was saying 'see ya then' even before I'd stopped the car. I had to shout at him in order to explain that it was probably a bit dangerous to get out while the car was still moving. 'Don't park there,' he says....I look around for warning signs, sharp things or babies crawling across the road then notice the hazard: it's a girl from his class.

On that note, we went into a pub the other day for a bit of lunch and this young woman said hello to my boy. She looked late teens or early twenties so I wondered aloud who she was. 'She's in my class.'

high tech grandpa

I was very impressed the other day. At my grandad's place for a flying visit, my mum mentioned that she's able to keep up to date with what I'm doing by reading this.
'Oh yes,' says Grandad, 'I need you to sort that out for me... Can you put an icon...'
He's in his 80s, e mailing, using the web and getting on expertly with a whole bunch of assistive technoloigies and now he's throwing words like 'icon' around.
'...on my desktop...'
'Uh huh' I nod dumfounded by the ease with which he has been able to adapt. I have no doubt when (if) I hit 80 I won't know how to operate any of those new fangled hovver cars or operate my teleport machine.
'...so I can read your blob.'