Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 30/06/06

Hurrah, it's FFFFPFF time again! And in what seems a rather sporty time, in addition to the World Cup, Wimbledon has started, and they've even managed to fit in some tennis between the rain.

So, seeing as there's always fun to be had with a tennis ball, this week I would appreciate your captions for this:


I will be judging your lines. New balls with every ace entry. Extra points if you build your own umpire, make a racket, get highly-strung, or get court in some love match that's not your fault but the net result is it's going to be deuce difficult to get out of.

Mystified Musings No.478

Oh, South West Trains, why when you publish a departure time in your timetable do you let your trains leave before that time has arrived? It rather makes a nonsense of calling it a departure time.

Twunt Driving Habits No.23

Driving into parking spaces in car parks when you can't reverse out for toffee

The Wikipedia entry on car-parking is here and is a useful reference for this post.

Okay, part of the blame for this goes to the twunts who design car parks. A long time ago somebody invented angle parking. This became very popular and is actually a selling point for many shops - it's very common in the USA I believe - pointing out that not only can one drive to the shop instead of getting up off arse and walking or getting the bus, one can actually park quickly and easily when arriving.

Now, unless we own a VW Beetle, or similar, with the storage under the bonnet, most shopping seems to go in the boot of a car. I understand that - and so I understand why people want to get at the back of the car when they park. Most car parks here, mainly for saving a little bit of space and probably money (what price sanity?) have perpendicular parking, i.e. the spaces are at 90 degrees to the road and normally have two rows back to back, or are against a wall, meaning if the car park is busy you can often only guarantee getting to the back of your car, with a trolley for example, by driving into a space and leaving the arse end available.

I understand this, however reversing out of a space is always going to be more difficult than reversing in. Also, as far as I can see, 90% of the time driving into these spaces also leads to what one might call 'creative angle parking' or 'space drift' (ooh, I like that!) whereby people cannot be arsed to straighten up their car after driving in and so the back end hangs over, or as near as damn it, the next space along. This irritates me.

So, short of converting every car park to angle parking, which would make everything simple, the only answer is for people to learn how to park. Simple isn't it?

I used to get annoyed with people parking badly, but then I printed out some flyers to put under the wipers of offending vehicles and the whole thing is more therapeutic.

You may like to try this too. Just create a flyer-sized document in your word-processor, add in some crappy clip-art of a car perhaps and then add a message like...

"DRIVING DIFFICULT? PARKING A CHALLENGE? CALL [insert the number of a local driving school here]"

Here's one I prepared earlier:



Tee hee! Now, I thought of the idea for this post a while ago and hadn't got around it, however I was reminded of the fact that many people are unable to reverse out of a parking space, as described above, by the woman who twatted my car in the Tesco car park in Poole yesterday, who thoughtfully got out to confirm she had indeed driven into my car quite hard before pissing off and not leaving me a note. Fortunately another altogether more pleasant and helpful lady saw the whole thing and did leave me a note.

So, if you were the driver of the offending Honda Accord, registration V411 GFX, I will possibly be letting the Police know exactly what kind of twunt you are after my garage have done a reccy.

If I'd seen her do it she could at least have had one of my flyers...

Mystified Musings No.156

Fridge-freezer, thou art a useful device. Sitting there doing your chilly and extra chilly thing, you are the epitome of cool. But, why, pray tell do I need a light to see what is in the fridge, but apparently don't need one to see what is in the freezer?

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 23/06/06

Vegetables have been much on my mind lately and therefore what could be more fitting for the subject of this week's FFFFPFF than this wonderful picture courtesy of the Nutrition Council of Greater Cincinnati? Captions if you please. A year's supply of tomato juice for the winner - bring your own vodka.

Too much cheese? Or too much football?

I often listen to people recounting the dreams they have had, however I am one of these people who can hardly ever remember what has happened in my dreams. This means I am probably missing out on vast tracts of entertaining and enlightening things from my sub-conscious. I often know when I've had a good one, just not what it was all about.

Apart from a couple of days ago, for example. I awoke and had to check I still had all my bits and pieces after the most amazing dream that played out like one of those horror flicks where people get picked off one at a time and meet terribly grizzly and blatantly gory deaths.

I was trapped with a group of people in some kind of building - annoyingly now I can't even remember it properly - and there was a strange over-seeing evil-doer at work - catching us one by one and creatively torturing and killing people in a disquietingly calm and methodical manner like Hannibal Lecter on a mission.

And who was this sadistic monster? None other than Sven-Goran Eriksson, manager of the English football team. I am not mad.

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 16/06/06

Tee hee! I hope you are all having a lovely week. I am about to do my second FFFFPFF in a row, owing much more to my general busy-ness, I swear, rather than my lack of something interesting to say.

Anyhoo, the football is still on in Germany and do you find it this funny or not? A large sausage and a jar of sauerkraut for every caption.

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 09/06/06

It's kick-off time for a FFFFPFF! The World Cup has begun today and supermarkets and other retailers across the globe have been cashing in like never before.

If you haven't had time to buy up enough beer and crisps for a small country or couldn't afford that 50 inch plasma screen, do not fret! Enter some captions for today's photo and you could have all this and more - plus as many plastic flags and other St George's Cross paraphernalia as you can carry, courtesy of some nice people in China.

Mad Dogs and Englishmen...

Okay, a proper garden update at last! This week has mostly involved me planting out all the lovely things I've been growing from seed since I bought them at the end of last year.

I have tried to grow things organically for a while now and this year is the biggest and most strict year yet. I used red clover as a green manure over the winter and dug that in several weeks back now - and I have been preparing various other things since, mainly lots of landscaping work which has taken up most of my garden time.

It has been in the mid 20s Celsius or 70s Fahrenheit for most of this week and the garden has been rather dry and dusty. Consequently, after I have slapped some factor 25 on as I have been out in it all day, I have ended up absolutely filthy, but it's all good fun.

Here are a few pictures showing what I've been up to...


This is a photo of some of my seedlings, I've been growing all sorts of things to eat - broccoli, sweetcorn, peppers (both hot and sweet ones), different types of tomato, cucumbers, courgettes, pumpkins, squashes, onions, the list goes on and on. In fact I was wondering if I was going to find room to put everything, although we're just about there I think.

Next is a close-up of one of my pepper plants, I'm really looking forward to these. I haven't grown sweet peppers outside here before so it's a bit of an experiment this year.


Marigolds for companion planting with my tomatoes, along with basil too...


This is a slow worm - a legless lizard in fact (really legless, not tipsy!). There are lots of them around here and whilst the done thing is to try not to disturb them, we often cross paths when doing a bit of work - so I just try to cause them as little disruption as possible. This one looks fairly old and seems to be about to shed some of its skin fairly soon.


I am experimenting with comfrey this year too - I am stewing it up in order to make a liquid feed for the plants. Bees love it too!


Last but not least, here's a lovely purple iris that's flowering now. Lots of flowers and colours are finally appearing.


After a very busy week, the vast majority of things are planted out now - I'll post some more pics once things are a bit more established. It's been very hard work, but there's something very satisfying about producing your own food. I'm looking forward to having just the maintenance to do now and of course the harvesting!

Summer seems to have come out of nowhere, what with all the stops and starts and cold weather we've had through spring. It has been proper 'blazing June' this week and no mistake. I even had my first strawberry on Monday - warm straight from the plant - food just doesn't get a lot better tasting than that.

Please set your clocks to Standard Dandelion Time

Here is another from the 'flora' category from my recent French trip. Which is kind of apt, because the dandelion's name is one of those brilliant Anglo-corruptions of imported French, seemingly post 1066.

We have derived the word dandelion from the Old French name dent-de-lion meaning tooth-of-lion - or more properly, lion's tooth, seemingly so-named because of the shape of the petals on the flower.

Similarly to the buttercup from a few days ago, I remember, as a child, telling the time and other things with dandelion 'clocks'.

Fank Fun it's Friday Fantastic Photo Foolery Fest - 02/06/06

I'm sure the irony of Blair's 'New Labour - Old Power Still Corrupts' shenanigans is not entirely lost on a disenchanted voting public.

John Prescott, the UK Deputy Prime Minister, or Two Jags, or Two Shags, or whatever name applies to the position-abusing twat this week, has finally given up one of his grace and favour homes after copping loads of flack for slacking off. I don't know how many properties that leaves Prescott with, but I'll wager it's more than two.

So, captions for this pic of the UK Government chief idiot please, taking the heat on purpose for Tony Blair, allegedly, like the 'New Labour' crap actually meant something and wasn't flushed down the shitter in favour of Tory style sleaze as soon as they got into their own stately homes...

Do you like butter?

Or perhaps I should say 'Aimez-vous le beurre?'

This is a lovely little buttercup from my recent French excursion. I remember, when I was a child, sticking these under people's chins to look for that yellow glow and really believing it worked.

"Do you like butter?"

"No."

"Yes you do!"

You just can't argue with that kind of logic...