I thought that I was eating more than usual lately, though now that I think about it, I'm not sure how I reached that conclusion. Anyway, I decided to step on the scales and see if I am approaching normality, and was surprised to see that I'd actually lost a couple of kilos. All things considered, I realise I'm actually eating about the same amount as ever, and I'm also getting a lot more exercise, so I guess that is why.

If you want me, I will be standing behind this hat stand. You may not notice me at first.

Paper Cranes

I recently taught myself to fold paper cranes.


Not everyone is impressed.

Sun

It is very sunny all of a sudden. I haven't even seen a cloud all week.

But rain is always lurking around the corner. Or, more likely, hiding beneath shady bridges, thinking about when best to surprise you.

Of all the more recently conceived art forms, I think writing on the side of dirty white vans has to be among the most promising.

My personal favourite so far has to be the prison van with, 'No prisoners kept in this vehicle overnight' scrawled in the filth on its rear doors.

Another Totally Not an April Fool's Post

I am afraid that this is actually the real end of Space Cat Rocket Ship - unlike that time exactly a year ago, which turned out to be a storm in a teacup. Last night, Elvis descended in his mothership and abducted me, my cat and several innocent bystanders. As I understand it, we are all being shipped to trans-Neptunian orbit where we will engage in Holy War against the mothmen and their Comet of Doom.

I am sending this post by modulating the electromagnetic field of a disco light, however, as the mothership arcs away, the appreciable magnetic flux from the lamp, as measured on the surface of the Earth, will drop proportional to the inverse square of my distance, until you are no longer able to receive my transmissions.

Well, we've all been there at some point in our lives, haven't we? At least I know that as I travel to my inevitable death in the cold depths of space, I take all of your best wishes with me.

On Having Lots of Ideas

Sometimes I worry that I won't be able to get all the ideas in my head out into the world. They're conceived a hell of a lot more quickly than they're born.

If you know what I mean.

I'd Flutter By

Image source

I wonder what it's like to be a butterfly. Wouldn't we be surprised if it turned out to be not all that different from being a human?

Divine Manifestation

I just saw Coyote's face in the clouds, lit ferocious orange by the sunset. I'm not sure if he was looking down with voyeuristic curiosity or mischievous trickery in mind. Might be an idea to be careful, all the same.

The Accountant's Kitchen

I was in an accountant's kitchen on Friday. It was the size of my house.

The Piper's Basket

I was just about to drop a coin in the wicker basket next to the Latin American fellow with the pan pipes, when I noticed it was completely empty. It was too late to back out, so I dropped it in anyway, but as I walked away, I wondered if maybe he wasn't actually busking. Maybe that was just his lucky basket, or maybe that's what he carries the pan pipes around in. It's not like I could ask him, as he was busy piping away.

If he really was a busker, surely he knows you should always put a little change into your pot at the start of the day?

Weekend Limerick

Image source with more information
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

There once was a space cat near Io,
Who said, with a sinister smile:
"You can comment on this post,
But I'd like it the most
If you'd do so in the limerick style."

Image: Io, as seen by Voyager 2 in the 70s.

Canary Eye Gherkin

Image credit: Keith Marshall
Some rights reserved

Went travelling right to the other side of London yesterday, by train and tube. The first landmark I notice is always Canary Wharf, with the most prominent ones in the city centre being the gherkin (pictured above) and the London Eye.

I did actually see Tower Bridge at one point, from a train window, but I will continue to think poorly of any films that actually take the pains to put it in shot.

Gravity

After watching Jamie Oliver's last show about diet, including that mortician in the hat cutting up dead fat people, I decided I should probably stand on the scales and discover that now that I am well and truly an adult I am putting on weight. Instead, I discovered that I weigh pretty much the same as I did last year, perhaps even a little less.

It is the genes, I think.

Happiness

Primeval, series 2.

House

I always wonder why I don't watch House.

"I should watch House!" I think to myself.

And then, after five minutes of watching House, I feel faint. Some guy has worms in his heart and it is freaking me out.

And that is why I don't watch House.

1905

Mutiny!

Squirrels I Have Known

Image Credit: EAPhotography
Some rights reserved

Found on Flickr, I swear this is the same squirrel that once harassed me as I sat in that very park reading a paper and eating lunch. He came and stood on my shoe at one point, and then followed close after me when I fled in terror.

If pigeons are rats with wings, squirrels are wingless pigeons.

Second

It now seems certain that England is the second best nation in the world. Yes, second after South Africa and Finland. At this point I think it's important to remember all the other, rubbish countries there are out there, who shall remain nameless, but basically consist of everyone except England, South Africa, Finland and, to a lesser extent, Grenada.

Couple O' Quotes

[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Isaac Asimov, in this essay.

All our ideas may be wrong. But some are definitely more wrong than others. (Via Phil.)

I have a dream. Someday, I really want to doodle on a dog.
Can I draw on whiskers?
Can I make him look like a panda?
I've asked many times to draw on the pets of my friends, but nobody ever lets me. “Get your own dog to draw on,” they say. Are they crazy?
I wouldn't want a weird-looking dog like that.

Eiichiro Oda

From the foreword to this book.

Town of the Day: Thaxted

Image credit: Splodgy Pig
Some rights reserved.

I spent much of yesterday traipsing through the agricultural wastelands of Essex, where gun-toting farmers patrol the narrow, winding roads in their slow-moving haulage machines and the rows of identical, robotically tended fields - bereft of the creatures that once roamed there freely - are somehow supposed to be more stirring than the hubbub of the town.

One question I can now officially answer: where is England's wildlife disappearing to? It's not, in fact, disappearing at all, but is lying dead and dismembered on country lanes, unnoticed by the motorists passing over it in their adrenalin-fuelled speed-trances.

Town of the day, by the way, is Thaxted, which reminds me a lot of Sandford in Hot Fuzz, except that the police station is on the high street. Nearby Saffron Walden does have a police station in a red-brick house with a little garden, though, so we will have to get them to swap.

One of the most obvious things to notice about Thaxted is that it is directly under the flight path for Stansted airport, and low flying jet liners pass overhead at a rate of about one every five minutes. The locals live in terror of these 'metal dragons' and sacrifice 1 in 50 of each new generation in a pagan ceremony intended to summon great winds to dash them down onto neighbouring Wimbish. Heathen screeds have also been plastered around the town, whose mystical runes carry such hexes as "Say No to expansion at Stansted!" and "Cheap flights cost the Earth!"

Of interest in Thaxted is a dark and crooked old house, on a steep cobbled lane, that is labelled, 'Dick Turpin's Cottage'. This is almost certainly not Dick Turpin's actual cottage, as if it was, why isn't there a blue plaque on it saying so? Unless they don't give out blue plaques to brutal murderers - but if that's the case, why does a house a short distance away bear a blue plaque stating that Gustav Holst lived there? He was a monster!

Speaking of Holst, it seems that one of the little ditties he wrote was called 'Thaxted' in honour of the little English town he loved so much - a tune now more correctly known as 'the music from that old Hovis ad (you know, the one directed by a young Ridley Scott)'.

This concludes the latest instalment of Town of the Day. Morris Men of Thaxted, we salute you. Long may you shake your hankies in defence of our fertility!

Be sure to check back tomorrow for something completely different.