Just a quick bit of morning incredulousness today – whilst half-listening to the radio (Five Live, for reasons to be explained separately) an ad came on featuring a made-up scene where one man is describing to his friend the benefits of owning the new Volkswagen Transporter.  One of the supposed benefits of the new model, the man explains, is that it has a lower maintenance cost than the previous model and, by implication, other vehicles in its class.
Leaving aside for now the question of why anyone would be influenced in …

Instead of looking around at the immediate outdoor environment and seeing such magnificent t-shirt conducive stuff as this:
you instead peep out of your front door to be greeted with something more akin to this:
For extra added bonus points, there’s also the option of checking the forecast on the BBC website.  Chances are, if you’re not in Australia any more then it might look something like this:

The other fun thing about snow is that it’s one of those ninja weather conditions.  Whereas with rain, you know that it’s going on out …

Barely had a spare second to scratch myself – let alone write blog entries – this week.  Tomorrow morning’s departure to Adelaide is presently very much on my mind, and my primary interest is not sleeping through my 05:00 alarm in order to be able to take off from Heathrow at 09:20 (yeah… 4+ hour lead time – don’t those wacky airlines just make it more fun than you can possibly stand?!).
So there’s no chance of hearing in detail about our Friday night festive awesomeness at The Gunmakers (including Jeffrey …

Supposing you were to be speaking on the phone to your bank, and they said “Would you like to upgrade your account from type X to type Y?”.  You establish that there’s nothing to be done other than that they make a change on one of their screens and your monthly fee goes up slightly in exchange for a raft of services.
Several days later, you log on to your internet bank and go to make a bill payment.  Your bank has recently sent out a security keypad thing, where you …

The great air-movement debacle continues (as expected), but following some A-class verbal punishment by Cath, the building folk agreed to provide us with a proper portable air conditioner (rather than the indoor sprinkler they’d previously furnished us with).  They couldn’t promise when it would arrive – perhaps the next day, or the day after that (I’m thinking “within the next 6 months, tops”), but wonder of wonders – it turned up this morning!
It’s one of those ones which you connect a ducting hose to in order to expel the hot …

Just got a call from Housemate James with some routine stuff, including following up on his question yesterday of why there hadn’t been any post for him.  Apparently he’s ordered about 18 things, and was expecting them over the weekend.  The worst-case scenario is of course to get one of the red “while you were out” cards, which then means you’ve got to wait 48 hours, then go to the fairly awkwardly located parcel depot to collect.  James has had an ongoing suspicion that the postman has been just filling …

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!
After several days of failed attempts to psyche myself up to ask Mystery Sandwich Girl out for a drink, I decided that today was going to be the day, dammit.  A real “GO BACK IN THERE, ARTHUR PEWTEY” moment.  All week something’s been not quite right, like there was a big queue of people standing behind me, or the other sandwich shop lady was standing there next to her.  Today it was not going to happen.  I had a plan.  Not quite on par with The Italian Job, but still …

I know what this is for. Admittedly, it’s not quite what everybody thinks it’s for. However I refuse to believe that the situation is shrouded in so much mystery that people can misinterpret what is going on.
Yes, it’s a button (and it’s found inside carriages on the London Underground, handily adjacent to the doors), and as long as you don’t put up an “improper use” notice people will happily push buttons just for the sheer joy of it (as previously reported, this is known as “frobnicating”).  Some people seem to …

My Google Reader account has 360 newsfeeds in it.  As such, I’ve totally stopped reading the freesheet newspapers that are provided around the London Underground – the Metro, the London Lite, and The London Paper.  Y’know… reading them hardly seems relevant when they’re largely an amalgamation of stories that have been harvested off everyone else’s newsfeeds.
For some reason, however (I suspect it was because I was entering a competition) I get The London Paper’s daily midday emailout.  Advantages of this over any other means of transmission are that I can …

Incredible: 10 minutes of sunshine on a Friday and this is what you get.
It’s impossible to tell whether there’s been a fire drill, or if people have just bunked off early for a pint.
Good job I’m still beavering away in the office in a dedicated way. At blogging, I guess.