Don't Look Down...

So, I was walking towards Hammersmith Bridge today, en route to a pub where my team-mates were having their Christmas lunch, when I heard a man's voice somewhere above me. I looked up to see three men in a cherry-picker, and one of them was shouting something to me. I stopped walking and stepped back, in case the man's cries were something along the lines of 'Look out below!'

"We're stuck!" he said. "Can you help us?"

Which was how I ended up clambering onto a crane and trying to open a hatch so I could press a button that would send power up to the cherry-picker's cabin and allow them to get down. Except, I couldn't open the hatch. So the men then shouted across to a man in another crane and asked if he had a screwdriver he could drop down to me. As he rummaged in his tools, I took a pic of the men in the cabin.



"Am I on camera?" I asked, and the men laughed.

With the newly acquired screwdriver, I was able to open the hatch and get to the big red button. Within a couple of minutes, the men were back down on the ground, visibly relieved not to be spending the rest of this bitterly cold afternoon aloft.


As I continued on my way to the pub, I could almost hear the sound of M People's 'Search for the Hero'. By God, Heather Small has a rotten voice...

Ink Spots

Sitting at the front of the bus this morning, I saw a young dad escorting his son onto the bus. As the boy climbed into his seat, his dad waved him off and blew him a little kiss, and I thought that was really sweet. The dad was quite handsome and I noticed he had a big gold ear-ring and tatoos.

And then I realised that this was perhaps an example of a social trend we're seeing more of in the last few years. The rise of ink on people's limbs seems to come from Robbie Williams, Amy Winehouse and Fred Durst developing an addiction to the needle. Everyone seems not only to be getting tatoos, but simultaneously not knowing when enough is enough.

I remember little Christina Ricci describing Winona Rider's makeup in 'Mermaids': 'It looks like someone drew on you'.

Are we sliding back to fashions from past ages? Perhaps. I'm sure it has something to do with news stories like this one. Maybe it also has something to do with the fact that we're all criminals now, thanks to online filesharing.

It's not just me being squeamish though. I just think the dad this morning would have looked better if he hadn't have let little Wayne loose on his arms with felt tips...

More Tardis

Think I've almost finished the model Tardis now, so here are a couple of pictures.




And in this one, you can see the fault locator wall.



[Updated 18 Aug 2009)
And now with the floor plate in place:

Please, Sir - Can We Have Some Sperm?

I've not really discussed the Jacko thing - it's been overdone by everyone else and all I could think is that for a man who's been vilified as having an useasy relationship with young boys for over a decade, dying was possibly the best, sanest career move he could have made. That's not to undermine his achievements as a performer and artist, but with all of the various operations he'd submitted himself (way more than the two he admitted to), plus the possibility that even just a tenth of the health-obsessive rumours about him might be true, he can't have been in the best of health for a long time anyway. He was a virtual recluse whose list of 'friends' appear to be the kind of people that, individually, you'd worry about, but as a collective they sturck me as being a particularly destabilising influence on aman whose mildest actions earned him the monicker 'Wacko'.

But now, The News of the Screws reports that former child star Mark Lester has stepped forward to identify himself as the possible father of one of Jackson's children.

Oliver Twist fathered Jackson's fair-skinned, blue-eyed daughter, Paris?

This story surely can't get any weirder without the help of Santa Claus, Spider-Man and Gary 'Whatchoo talking' 'bout, Willis?' Coleman's involement. Though I'm not sure Gary Coleman's real, so I won't hold my breath for that.

Birdies!

Back in June I was woken up by the sound of something outside my bedroom window. I'm one storey up, but we've been broken into before so I leapt out of bed and opened the curtains - to be confronted by the sight of a pair of magpies picking through the ivy on the roof below me.

So I grabbed my phone and recorded them.

Lazy Bar Steward

Haven't blogged for two months. That's what happens when work lets me manage a twitter account.

Chasing a punch-line has become a full-time occupation. Still, I'm spending my spare time productively, making a model Tardis control room, as seen in the Hartnell era...



Still a work in progress - have to work out how to do the innards of the central column for one thing - but I'm also having a go at doing custom figures of Ian and Barbara. Trying hard not to lose a finger while using a scalpel to carve an existing figure down to size.

Shut Up, Just Shut Up, Shut Up!

With an hour's travel every morning, and another on the way home each evening, I tend to get a lot of reading done while on the move. I also listen to podcasts and documentaries (partly work-related). All this means that when I'm on the tube and the train driver or platform staff make an announcement, I have to unplug my earphones to make sure it's not something important. And when it isn't, my frustration levels begin to rise.

It might not sound much to people who live outside of London and have to wait for trains for up to half an hour at a time, but London's a busy, angry city. The tube trains should run at regular intervals of a minute or two apart, or else the platforms become dangerously congested. It's a situation that isn't helped by stupid people with no spacial awareness, who stop dead in the middle of a platform and then glare at anyone who tries to pass them to stand further up the platform where there's room and where they won't be blocking the entrance. Or people with prams. At rush hour.

See - congestion makes people intolerant. Anyone who stops you getting to somewhere where there's enough room for you to be more than six inches away from someone else's armpit is preferable. People don't talk on the tube, unless they have mental health issues, are drunk or are annoying. We're an anti-social breed in London, and we like it that way. So, when we've got a book so we can avoid eye contact, and earphones so we can block out needless communications, or the screech of the train as it speeds along the tunnels, the last thing we really want is to hear announcements, because they invariably mean our uncomfortable journey is likely to take a) twice as long as it should and b) about three times as long as we can bare. Speak to a Londoner after they've had a long journey on the tube and count the facial ticks.

Which is why I greeted this piece from BBC News with dismay. Any announcement that isn't essential to the decisions I make while travelling are a needless distraction. It's audio spam - noise for the sake of trying to convince me they're doing a better job than I'm willing to accept. If they're doing a good job, I'll know. If they're doing a bad job, I'll know - and the only things I might want to hear are explanations, apologies and alternative routes.

I don't want some platitude from Gandhi!