Posts Tagged ‘west norwood’

Saturday morning moans

Posted on in Blogs, Books, Doctor Who, Miniatures, My Life, RPGs.

Well, a little bit moany, by comparison with some people[1] I’ve really got nothing to complain about, and what I have is largely self inflicted.

There ought to be a law against it.

I’m waiting for a furniture delivery. It’s coming sometime between 7 and 6 today. Getting dressed before 7 on a Saturday? When you have no plans to go further than the local shops[2] today? It’s just not right.

Seeing as I haven’t posted all week…

Happy New Year

I have foolishly gone and made a bunch of resolutions, and told people what they are (so I can’t conveniently forget all about them), so I might as well post them here:

  1. Give up alcohol for seven weeks. An odd length of time, but it means I can start drinking again just in time for Lettice’s 30th.
  2. Give up soft drinks, sweets and crisps. Yikes! All in one go.
  3. If I buy breakfast on the way to work then I must buy a cheap lunch. Kind of vague this one, but I know what I mean.
  4. Pay at least £100 into my savings account every month. Standing order now set up to transfer the money the day after I get paid, so I don’t need to do anything else for this one.
  5. Limit my wargames/role playing games spending. I did a little experiment a while back and the results were a bit scary. I’m aiming for a lower figure this year – £500 total, so I have a limit of £100 per quarter and an extra floating £100 for magazine subscriptions and similar costs.
  6. Get a hair cut at least every two months. Lettice may want me to go for “the full Tom Baker” but there were some very frightening photos of me taken at the Christmas party and I think short is better.

Five days into the year and I haven’t broken any of them. Though the fact that alcohol free lager tastes even more revolting than regular lager and that alcohol free bitter doesn’t seem to exist, may be my undoing.

[1] Lawrence Miles has dumped his diary/blog for November and December online in one big splurge. It’s not easy reading. This guy is one of the most talented writers to ever touch Doctor Who but he’s got some serious issues – I really don’t want to say anything trite like “tortured genius” because that turns a person into a cliché.

[2] More importantly to the Farmer’s Market – West Norwood is moving up in the world!

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Waaaah! Don’t wanna go back to work!

Posted on in Doctor Who, Films, My Life, The World, Work.

Had a fantastic long weekend, four days of relaxing and enjoying ourselves.

Thursday night, left work and headed down to Croydon where ate at Wagamama’s (the Salmon Ramen is very good) before going to see Mitchell and Webb at the Fairfield Halls. I think this is the third time I’ve been to that particular venue – the first was to see Victor Borge some twenty years ago, and the second was to see the Rocky Horror Show about eight years ago. Anyway, Mitchell and Webb were just as good live as on the telly – some familiar sketches (taken to new extremes in a few cases) and some I didn’t recognise from the TV series.

Friday, we went up to the British Museum to see The Past from Above exhibition. Really breath taking stuff that really brought home just how vast the extent of human history is. Most parts of the world have see who knows how many lifetimes lived, with not a single line in the history that most of us know.

Also at the BM, was a (relatively) recently reopened gallery dedicated to the Enlightenment and hence the birth of the museum itself. It does a very good job of emulating what the BM is like in our secret thoughts – all book lined walls and eclectic displays.

Saturday, [info]pink_weasel went to play at the Tate whilst I stayed home and read comics. But I did find time to visit West Norwood’s first ever farmer’s market (it’s going to be a regular event every two weeks) where I picked up some cheese and some welsh dragon sausages (pork and leek and chili). In the evening I left a very knackered Lettice in bed and went to Giroscope‘s birthday bash in fitzrovia – Duke of York, for beer Palms of Goa for curry; and finally The Fitzroy Tavern, for more beer.

Sunday was a quiet day at home – my dad brought the second of two leather chairs, Lettice poured dye all over a book (on purpose) and we started watching Doctor Who – The Invasion (with the missing episodes filled in by animation). Though not the best animation in the world it captured the likenesses of the main characters well and was, of course, cleaner and smoother than the surviving ’60s live action episodes.

Today, we lay around in bed and then went to Croydon again to see Casino Royale. Possible the best Bond film ever. Certainly the best since the ’60s. Having a actor who can actually act certainly helps. It will be interesting to see what they do next time, now that they’ve done the whole “how Bond becomes Bond” bit, will they find something suitably interesting for Craig to get his teeth into for the sequel?

Phew. Back to work tomorrow where with any luck I’ll be holding second interviews for my assistant. With luck we’ll be able to make someone an offer at the end of the week and have them start very early in the new year. Which will mean that I should be able to take more than two days off next time.

Very True Mood: (satisfied) satisfied
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Making history

Posted on in Computer Games, Magazines, Memes, My Life, TV, Work, WWW.

As we’re all blogging for history, here’s a bit about my day.

Alarm went off at 7:00. Lettice got up. I didn’t. Whoops. Staggered out of bed at 8:00 and between checking e-mail, showering, eating breakfast and faffing about managed to get into work around about 9:45. No meetings this morning so not a problem. Check work e-mail and calendar and tell the project manager that I love her because she’s worked out that in our incredibly tight schedule for the site (www.visitlondon.com) redesign I actually have no tasks allocated to me between the end of November and the sometim in February so I can take some holiday after all. But then I groan as I realise that Friday is booked up with meetings from 10-12 and then 12:30-16:00. Ouch.

Spent most of the day working on a project for our kids’ site (www.kidslovelondon.com). Nothing terribly exciting – a bit of CSS, bit of XSLT, bit of JavaScript (enforcing my own recently written coding standards to avoid document.write and use appendChild() etc.). Minor panic regarding the half term edition of the kids’ newsletter but it got sent out on time and everyone seems very happy with the new style.

Went to lunch with Lettice – she’s working at VL for a few weeks. And after that it was time for today’s round of meetings about the redesign project. Time and money versus ambition. Same as every project I’ve ever worked on. We actually have a very good team (and soon to be a much bigger team, an ad will be appear in this week’s New Media Age for six positions within the web team at VL) and doing most of the work in house will cut down on some of the headaches.

Ended up working until 18:30 which makes up for the late start, though a fair chunk of the last hour was spent playing Bang! Howdy (www.banghowdy.com) whilst waiting for other people to go through the designs of the Christmas pages with me. We need to have some pages up very soon in order to cover the switching on of the Christmas Lights.

London Bridge was busy and I just missed the 18:39. I bought this week’s New Scientist (suckered in by the ‘what would happen to Earth if humans vanished cover story) and this month’s .net (a couple of articles that I can quote mine for a brainstorm in one of Friday’s endless meetings). Ran into Séverine and we caught the 18:51 to Tulse Hill and then walked up to West Norwood together.

Home, sausages for dinner, then watched CSI: Miami with Lettice before sitting down to write this.

So there you are, not my usual sort of post and probably not of any great historical interest.

Very True Mood: (thoughtful) thoughtful
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Saturday morning shopping

Posted on in My Life.

… in lovely West Norwood. The new assistant in Woolies needed a bit of help in getting the right DVD off the shelf – useful hint for everyone: if you’re looking for a ‘D’ and it isn’t at the end of the top shelf, the start of the second shelf is a good place to check.

The gaggle of young women in the doorway of the hairdressers prompted the following exchange:
[info]pink_weasel: “Is there anything more frightening that teenage girls giggling?”
Me: “When they stop giggling.”
PW: [laughs] “Yes. This is about that time you didn’t pick up that My Little Pony from the gutter?”

Bought an old computer game for £1.50 in the charity shop, the manual had a post-it note stuck to one of the pages.

We get a good class of loon round here
Very True Mood: (cheerful) cheerful
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Bit chilly for that

Posted on in My Life.

Just heard a disturbance outside, looked out the window and saw a woman walking down the middle of the road shouting angrily at the world. She crossed the road to kick the door of the empty shop opposite and the continued her march towards the station.

She was naked except for knickers and a headscarf.

Very True Mood: (confused) confused
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Stop it! Now!

Posted on in My Life.

Whoever is cooking bacon, and allowing the aroma to waft in through my windows. Please stop. It’s driving me crazy.

Very True Mood: (hungry) hungry
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Sleep through anything, I will.

Posted on in My Life.

At some point last night someone drove into the bookmaker’s next door. No idea whether it was an accident or a robbery. Didn’t wake either of us up. This morning the front of the shop was caved in and a Group 4 car was parked outside. Maybe Lettice will pop out later and take some photos.

The impact must have knocked the gate across the front of the passageway between our place and the bookies because I couldn’t unlock it this morning and had to walk the long way round. :-(

Very True Mood: (shocked) shocked
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Want the council election results? Don’t look on the council web site.

Posted on in The World, WWW.

So the Lambeth Borough web site is apparantly “one of the UK’s best”. So why is it so difficult to find out who was elected councillor in my ward yesterday?

From the home page I click on the link Borough Council election results that tells me who now controls the council (Labour, so I’ll expect a Counciil Tax rise next year) and then, For more information visit the elections page where in turn I can follow another link to Local election results 2006. Here I see the same information as two pages ago, plus For more details on the election download the document below which is a bloomin’ PDF containing scans of the paper copies of the returning officers’ declarations for each ward.

So full marks for making copies of the official historical documentation of the election available, but zero marks for enabling me to quickly find out who is actually representing me on the council.

Looking at the results for my ward I see that it went entirely by party lines. Three Labour councillors elected, then three Lib Dems, then the solitary Green knocking the three Tories into last place.

Very True Mood: (annoyed) annoyed
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Come to Norwood!

Posted on in Uncategorized.

Got an interesting bit of junk mail this morning (okay, not really interesting, but the only thing in the letter box of any sort). And after checking the small print to make sure it wasn’t sponsored by anyone I work for…

Discover Norwood

Norwood is one of South London’s better kept secrets. It is a pleasant blend of the leafy ease of Dulwich to the east and the multi-cultural vibrancy of Brixton to the north, yet with its own very distinctive character

This being a Lambeth Council production Norwood really means West Norwood (and Tulse Hill) ‘cos most of Upper Norwood (aka Crystal Palace) and all of South Norwood (aka a dump) are part of Croydon not Lambeth.

Best bit for me is this write up –

We are the newest ‘IT Thing’ thing to hit London. Included in our first London outlet is the ‘Internet Hub’. As well as this, we sell and service all manner of IT and computing products.

Um, no you don’t, ‘cos you still haven’t finished refitting the shop downstairs (for yes, these are our neighbours) and actually opened for business yet.

Ah, poor old West Norwood, I love you really but I just can’t stop taking the piss.

Very True Mood: (cynical) cynical
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Open House

Posted on in Games, My Life.

A reminder for people who know us in real life (and for nice people whom would like to know us in real life) tomorrow Lettice and I are having a bit of a delayed house warming day at our new(-ish) flat.

Come and marvel at views over south east London, gasp as the floor trembles when lorries drive past, ponder on how two people can generate so much mess.

There will be drink, food, dinosaurs and knitting. And lots and lots of wedding / honeymoon photos.

Saturday October 1st. 12 noon onwards, come early or late, come and go as you like, bring kids, bring booze, if the weather’s good bring maybe bring deckchairs.

E-mail one of us if you need directions.

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