The thrill of it all

A new working week today. A new month tomorrow. The insane glamour that is my life.

Lord Rogers calls for Las Ramblas in ... Wimbledon

Sod all having happened with the Colliers Wood boulevard (see Icons passim) over the last twenty months I take SW19's Ramblas with several pinchos of salt.

Coffee in the Wood

Ben and I will be along later.

Photo of the year

Read the story. It is humbling.

Why Fart Egg?

BBC Wales

People in Varteg in Torfaen fear they will be open to ridicule if proposals to use the Welsh language name 'Y Farteg' are adopted.

Many road signs in Wales show place names in both Welsh and English, and Torfaen council is consulting on which forms should be used on signs and maps.

The Welsh Language Commissioner supports the use of Y Farteg.
Torfaen councillor Giles Davies said: "You can just imagine people taking photos and putting them on Facebook."

Mr Davies said there was strong opposition from villagers, who have collected a protest petition with 150 names so far.

The commissioner has told Torfaen council that Y Farteg is the name backed by the standard reference work, A Gazetteer of Welsh Place Names, and its recommendation should not be changed "without good reason".

For phonetic reasons the Welsh language 'f' is sometimes anglicised to the English 'v', something which has apparently happened to Varteg over many years.

If Y Farteg was adopted it would not replace Varteg, and both names would be shown on local signs.

But Mr Davies said: "Varteg is actually a Welsh name so we can't understand why people want to change it.BBC Wales

Shades of Johnny Fartypants, "there's always a commotion going on in his underwear."

Stranger than

It used to be that I would finished reading a book and lend it to someone so I could bend their ear about it.

No such luck with the kindle, so when I got to the end of Sounds Like London: 100 Years of Black Music in the Capital on the it yesterday I logged on to Amazon to buy a physical copy for Frankie so I could bore her to death about it. "This title will be released on August 7, 2014" was the notice on the paperback page and I can't seem to find a hardback. That is nearly a year away. It will be 101 Years of Black Music in the Capital by then, Surely an ebook can't be released twelve whole months before the paper edition.

Looking through my wishlist for something to tackle next, I picked up Miss Shirley Bassey. It only covers the first thirty years of her life and, as she is pretty much a contemporary of my parents, I thought it would interesting to read about her upbringing in Cardiff.

Kindle price 98p. Strange days indeed for the book industry.

Hide my lunch and call me hungry

Julian has released a track with David McAlmont on vocals. Gosh. Didn't see that one coming. This may well send me back to the second McAlmont and Butler album, a favoute I haven't listened to in a while.

Kill-sin Pimple

Under the influence of the Puritans, the practice arose of baptising children with scriptural or pious phrases annexed to their last name. Hence there are church records of such names as Preserved Fish, Thankful Thorpe, Repentance Water, Kill-sin Pimple, and Humiliation Hinde. Conversely, other surnames of the period offer unflinchingly pithy descriptions of the condition of the bearer, including Blackinthemouth, Blubber, Mad, Measle, Peckcheese, and Hatechrist.

Many such examples would have begun as nicknames, a significant category in the origin of surnames. Gyldenbollockes was a popular name on the streets of medieval England, centuries before David Beckham ...

Once I had read the Spectacularlyboring's review of What's in a Surname?: A Journey from Abercrombie to Zwicker, adding it to my Amazon Wishlist with the no-brainer work of but a moment.

The ravelled sleeve of care

I had a nap this afternoon. I never sleep in they day. I guess yesterday's exertions at Delta Force took more out of a body in its sixth decade than I thought.

Prodnose: They must have thought you were some far-out old man humping it over that course. I did it when I was 19 and it damn near wasted me.

Late on parade

Just back from paint balling.

Not a dry Thai in the house

This tear jerking advert is a remarkable piece of work. Take a look at the irritated shrug by the little girl about 28 seconds in; a detail of genius in my humble o.

What rhymes with hug me?

It would seem that Robin Thicke really didn't get down and dirty with the due diligence on his Blurred Lines lyrics.

Adense on HTTPS

Google: Today, we're happy to announce that AdSense publishers can begin monetizing their HTTPS pages. Many websites, like e-commerce sites and social networking sites, use the HTTPS protocol to protect their users' sensitive data. If you have a HTTPS website you’ll be pleased with how easy it is to monetize using AdSense.

Myself: I don't even know what this is! This sort of thing ain't my bag, baby.

Prodnose: One book, "Adense on HTTPS And Me: This Sort of Thing Is My Bag Baby", by Nick Browne.

It's all very British

We went to the quiz at the Antelope last night as reigning champions with our handsome £50 prize available at the bar and in exactly the same position (winners and fifty quid to the good) at the Gorringe Park from the night before.

It all started well, we were winning at the interval, but then it seemed to fall apart as we ended up third with no prize at all; rank amateurs. I am bemused as we played the music round as on a stringed instrument and that is two points per question (artist and track).

Could it all have gone wrong in the film round? Dark forces may be at work but mustn't grumble, wouldn't want to cause a scene, people worse off than me, only if its no trouble, oh um fine thanks, keep your chin up, worse things happen at sea, make the best of it  ..... 

New week; new motto

We believe in: rough consensus and running code.

Wise words from David D. Clark

Non Standard

Yesterday I watched Non Stanford being crowned 2013 world triathlon champion after winning the Grand Final in Hyde Park. She did this in a season in which she broke her arm and won Saturday's race despite being handed a 15 second time penalty after failing to put her wetsuit in the box. (Does that sound as petty to you as it does to me?)

We have a new Welsh Born Icon. (Best of luck to Yorkshire's Brownlees today.)

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes

Why did police chiefs keep quiet about arrest of their chief executive?
Civilian employee was accused of stealing a desk diary from Whitehall office
Tom Flaherty accused of stealing diary of Acpo president Sir Hugh Orde
54-year-old civilian employee remains suspended on 112,000-a-year pay
Case shines a rare light on the divisions and infighting within Acpo

This is all very intriguing. I still address the invoices I send them to Tom Flaherty and they still get paid, touch wood.

3am: bike rack fixed by group on night out

A group of revellers in a Lincolnshire town were caught by CCTV cameras as they fixed a bike rack on a night out.

The five men had been outside a takeaway in Boston when they noticed a damaged metal bike rack.

Footage shows the group spending almost 13 minutes straightening the metal hook at 03:00 BST.

Boston Borough Council said it was surprised by their actions and called it "public spirited".

The metal rack had been damaged when a car reversed into it. It had been left unrepaired for several weeks.

Watch the video here. It does my heart good. What does my heart less good is the Daily Mail's grudging and entirely predictable "Thugs vandalising a town centre? No, these drunken men on their way home from a night out at 3am are FIXING a damaged bike rack". At a glance - thugs, vandals, drunks. What a rag it is.

Bündchen trend

In which Gisele covers the Kinks and makes a surprisingly decent fist of it. Who knew and what next? Ray Davies on the catwalk perhaps.

When only Pelham Grenville will do

It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.

Genius.

Alcohol is a misunderstood vitamin.