Month: September 2003

Right. Own up. Which one of you failed to tell me about this?

Hot-smoked dill salmon, miniature mixed game pie, Old Peculier and Blue Swaledale cheeses, sundried tomato-stuffed green olives, baked-today chunky bread, Earl Grey/Green Tea mustard, entertainingly rough South African Shiraz.

Fan-ruddy-tastic, I tell you. Bought at… wait for it… Tebay Service Station on the M6.

It’s the only privately-owned motorway services in the UK. It’s like all the other services, only with ducks, friendly staff who care, and one of the best delis around. Yes, the latter is a bit unexpected, but it turns out to be well worth the trip. It’s one of the few things I’ll miss about zipping up and down between Leeds and Glasgow.

…but possibly as late as Q5 or Q6.

I like the thinking here: redefine the environment so the problem disappears. It’s the ‘Green’s Function’ solution to scheduling.

Chris Heilman has (a.) added me to his blogroll, which surprises and flatters me and should by rights catapult this site if not into the A-list, at least into the D-list (though my Technorati rating still seems to be ‘Level 1 Novice -3’, harrumph), and – much more importantly – (b.) posted some delightful pictures of rocks. Click through, you’ll see.

This just in, from the department of terrific headlines.

I was actually looking for an article about Kennedy flagging up $2bn/month missing from the millitary budget in Iraq, linked by Vinay, but this is both more fun and possibly more accurate reporting.

It’s surprisingly hard to find a photogenic orange. Seriously, next time you’re at the market, cast a critical eye over the citrus fruit; which would you pick to represent That Which Is Orangeness? Oranges are round and… uh… orange, right? Hardly, they’re mostly a bit squiffy around the edges, and more-or-less yellowish. Big ones tend to be a little mottled, have surface blemishes, and the crown (or whatever the end is call) has often split, which isn’t very attractive.

In my own admittedly limited sample, I found large satsumas to look much more like oranges than the oranges did. Smaller satsumas aren’t really up to scratch, though, and they’re usually somewhat oblate to boot.

As for why I seek orangelike oranges – it’s Proposals time. Which means we’re pitching for business. And… well, if you were writing a pitch for a quarter-million quids’-worth of business, you’d want a decent orange too, right?

Or maybe my life is a little weird. Sometimes it’s hard to tell.

…by an English television producer, the theory that one can jumble letters up and still make sense of the words is (a.) featuring all over the web, suddenly, and (b.) cobblers.

See, the thing is, about a year ago there was a similar run of articles about how we don’t read the letters of words, bur rather the overall shape of the word itself. That is: replace a bunch of words with just the outline transcribed by the ascenders and descenders, and you can still read the word – or at least, the sentence, if you have a run of such block outlines.

And both theories can’t be right, can they? Couple with the fact that nobody seems able to pin down the ‘rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy,’ and I claim urban myth. Sorry. Nice idea, not taken in by it.

There’s something slightly bizarre about doing the Last Night of the Proms as a link-up from the Albert Hall to Swansea, Belfast and Glasgow. Surely, all those sea shanties, waved crosses of St. George, and Union Flag boaters would incite riots around the nations and regions?

Nah, through a cunning ruse it seems each prom was a cavalcade of appropriate nationalist fervour; while London was bathing in Elgar, up in Glasgow we had a bit of a ceilidh. By the time Jerusalem was builded, the Scots were singing with the best of them. Which, as an Englishman, was pretty bizarre to be in the middle of.

Thus, a fun time had by all. Bravo BBC for turning an event that’s always dangerously close to both jingoism and loony panto into something of a (genuinely national) party. Perhaps by next year the howl-round will be sorted, and the Glasgow promenaders will be able to hear the orchestra, hmm?

I guess it’s true, then?

Blimey.