I bought some new earphones. They are incredibly complicated, which is why it’s a good job they came with instructions (in 11 languages no less)…

New underpants required, I think.

So, this place offers:

1) do-it-yourself deep fat frying.

along with…

2) all-you-can-drink beer and cocktails.

Can anyone see the potential risk?

H says she’ll charge me a pound next time.

I reckon that’s still pretty good value.

So… this chap walked into the pub last night. Went to the bar. Ordered his pint. Lit up. Drank his pint and smoked his cigarette like any normal person would.

Except it’s been illegal for 359 days now!

On his error being politely pointed out by the barman, he exclaimed “Oh bum, I forgot” and went outside with it.

This begs the question… has he not been to a pub in the last almost-year? Does he have a local where they cheekily break the law? Does he make this error regularly? Who knows.

What I do know is that I really appreciate the smoking ban. Dirty horrible things.

“Hey… I bet you 10p I can make your boobs jiggle without touching them.”

“Ok”

[grope grope]

“Ah well… here’s your 10p.”

I rode my pushbike to work this afternoon - my first ride on it since passing my motorbike test. Some observations:

1. Twitchiness - you only have to twitch your arms or hands and it steers. It can be disconcerting at first, but it does lead to excellent manouvreability.

2. No Mirrors - you actually have to look behind you to see if there’s anything there. A glance above your left or right handlebar yields no useful results.

3. Cycle Lanes - after keeping out of them for the first half of the journey, I suddenly realised that not only am I allowed in them, but it’s probably also a little safer. (Unless, of course, you meet one of the lanes on this site)

4. Vulnerability - cars treat bicycles like crap. At least with the motorbike, the command of the road means that they generally give you enough room. Of course, it’s unlikely that a car will ever pass me on a motorbike, so it’s not a fair comparison.

5. Fuel Economy - The motorbike’s already excellent fuel economy is vastly improved on the push bike.

6. Clothes - While the motorbike has an amount of clothing which is required, and it tedious to put on, the pushbike has a similar amount of time taken up changing, swabbing down, deodorising etc.

The push bike has to be healthier. And the slow pace makes the view even better.

I’ve sort-of half decided to make August cycle-to-work month. We’ll see… no reason why it shouldn’t work.

TOWER!

This is the Fairview Goat Tower in South Africa.

Thanks to Simon G for the link.

Mount Fuji, with Ben Nevis superimposed (poorly) in the foreground at scale height.

Ben Nevis really was just a little warm-up.

When gleefully shutting down all the programs on your computer to turn it off at the end of a long day and get yourself off to the pub for pub and curry night…

…make sure you are looking at your own machine, and not at a remote desktop session on one of the company’s very important servers.

Um… might be a bit late to the pub, guys…