Let's call this the comeback

Alright, it's been a while etc. etc. Happy autumn. What better way than returning with some cheap innuendo?

I've recently come to the opinion that I work in the smuttiest place in the country. May I draw your attention to Exhibit A:



















Blimey. Maybe it interferes with the equipment or something.

And Exhibit B:



















I'll leave that one to you.


No further questions, your Honour.


It's good to be back :)

Taste the difference

Insects and beasties dwelling inside a peach might be enchanting when read in a children's book. But when you cut into your freshly bought supermarket produce (Taste the Difference? I nearly did), it's not quite as appealing.

World, the time has come to...

...push the button

















That's a real life TV quiz show buzzer.

Monday 15th Sep, BBc4, 8.30pm.

Papa's got a brand new camera

and - oh my - it does nifty things!

You're twisting my melons man....

Time for a belated garden update!

Is it Harvest Festival time soon?

Well there's no need to dig out a mouldy old tin from the back of the cupboard, because we'll be able to contribute some of our homegrown bounty.

After abandoning the growbag of death (it killed virtually everything that was planted in it), new runner beans were planted in pots and have been as successful as last year. Hurrah!

Our first potato crop wasn't quite the success I was hoping for, but we did get a few out of it and still have another two bags to dig up. Also in the potato bag was this scary clump of alien eggs.

Peppers are growing, just very slowly.

The time? Tomatoes o'clock.

But my attention has mainly been on melons. Write your own joke. After a few started sprouting from the wormery (more on that another day, probably), I tried growing them properly in home-made plastic milk bottle pots. To my surprise and delight, two out of three are doing really well and flowering. CP refuses to believe that I can actually get an edible melon from it but I'm optimistic! The third one would have been doing fine too if it hadn't been chomped at by a slug. It was probably looking for cigarettes, eh Moon?

A bad hair cut, your gut feels like you've eaten much too much

Getting your barnet chopped can be a really traumatic experience, I feel more nervous sat in that chair than I do in any dental surgery. My current choice of barbers is "Mr Topper's", mainly because it's cheap and I'd got sick of paying £25 to an over-chatty cockney near London Bridge. There are loads of them in central London, with 4 on or just off Tottenham Court Road alone. The titular Mr Toppers is of course a nattily attired frog. His shops have red and white tadpoles outside them. I made that one up myself. Pictured is one of the many branches on Tottenham Court Road, right next door to where Moon hawks her mucky wares.

I'm pretty unadventurous when it comes to coiffeury. Choosing between the #4 or the #5 razor is about as exciting as it gets. One time in Leeds I was given a half-price voucher to get my hair done in a proper swish studio. Ok, I thought, let's go for something different here. If I'm ever going to get a trendy 'do' then this is surely the time to do it. These people must really know what they're doing. It was a bizarre and awkward experience. The main man was called Andreas. Check out that card! [I found this the other day when rooting through yet another box of jumbled crap that I've accumulated over the years].














Look at him! Is he plucking out hairs one by one? He looks like he's in panto. The sculpted facial hair! And what is an 'artist hair technician'? Or is it supposed to be 'artist', 'technician', and, er, 'hair'? British hairdressing team member! London 2012 here they come. Why the apostrophe after the name?

To be honest I don't think I really tested his artist hair technician skills to the max. He zoomed around behind me on his stool (which was a bit like a space hopper on wheels. I wanted to have a go), looking at my head from different angles, lifting bits of hair up, tilting his head a bit....no doubt considering a massive array of different stylish cuts. Occasionally he would pause to snap at one of his young female assistants. His opening gambit: "Ok, I'm thinking we shave it really short from the front, and work back leaving it longer as we go". "Hmm....," my face wrinkled up, indicating that I wasn't totally enthused by that option. Andreas sensed my apathy and considered some more, probably stroking his immaculate beardy bits. "Right...something asymmetrical, I think that could look good. Short on the left side, but leaving it long on the right, down over your face." Increasingly uncomfortable, I mumbled, "ermm...I'm not sure...don't think so....". I think Andreas began to sense that I wasn't really the kind of customer he wanted or required as his muse. "Ok, do you have any ideas?"

"Erm...I was thinking more short back and sides."

I got a functional, smart cut (£25! half price!). He must have been disgusted! To him it must have felt like getting Elle McPherson to model a burkha. At least we parted on a positive note: "After I've cut your hair a couple of times I'll have a real feel for it and know more about how your hair works. Then we can do something really good." "Cool, that sounds good."

Six years on, I am yet to return.

Only Regret

Fancy an exclusive sneak preview of BBC 4's autumn season....

This is going out to a very small number of people

I was thinking over the weekend that if, say, Mark Hopkins lived in a chip shop and was trying to sell the place, then he would have to put together one of those new Home Information Packs. And that would be called

Hip Hop's Chip Shop HIPS


Splendid.

Where in the world, CP world

Tombolablog is proud to introduce a new game, and one that you can play at home!

In the classic style of 'Where's Wally?', your task is to find CP. This time she is somewhere in the Markt, Bruges. Have fun!


Also try to find:

- A group of Hari Krishnas

- An abandoned pushchair

- An odd looking bike


[Note to self: if this is going to ever appear again, you must take more pictures from up towers while CP hangs about at the bottom]

There's a whole lot of good in those little owls

As I said below, I'm trying to focus on more wholesome pursuits on here at the moment. So how about an exceedingly poor* nature photo? Believe it or not, that dot on the branch is a Little Owl, and I was very excited to have spotted it. And that's a Little Owl as in the species, not just a little owl. Which it also is.

I then tried to improvise a makeshift telephoto lens, using my busted binoculars.


Not really worth the effort, was it?


*my mock Maths GCSE paper was returned with the words 'many exceedingly poor answers'. While I was a bit downhearted and fired up to do better in the real thing, I still couldn't help chuckling at the thought of Mr Kipling frowning at my appalling use of trigonometry.

Kicking television

Apologies for that chocolate-based nastiness. Time for more wholesome things on here I think.

First, some exciting news! Those who enjoyed Tombola's appearance on Eggheads last year will no doubt be delighted to learn that another TV quiz appearance is on the cards. Here's an exclusive behind the scenes reminder of what the last one looked like:

and as we appeared in the nation's living rooms:


Filming of the BRAND NEW! show takes place in Cardiff next week. Watch this space.....

Free Tibet (with 10 ring pulls)

Tombolablog's hopes were raised and rapidly dashed by Freecycle this week. An email dropped into the inbox with the title:

"Freecycle: offered Hardcore"

Apparently, hardcore can also be the term used to describe a clay-based substance that you could use for laying a path.

:(


I'll stop talking about Freecycle soon I promise, but this message from last night was another highlight:

Hi All,

I am in desperate need of a small car that i can drive from A to B with my energetic two year old son. MOT and Roadtax can be paid, if you have any car you do not need any more please let me know.

Yeah. Good luck with that.


Anyway, back to hardcore....

Tombolablog went to Bruges and all he got me was this lousy confectionary biff

Tombolablog recently went on a weekend Eurostar jaunt to the lovely Belgian city of Bruges. I could write here about the many picturesque canals, the vast array of exotically named and headbangingly potent beers, or the stunning medieval architecture. And at some point I might actually do that. I could even recount the sickening anecdote about being spat on [that'll be what they mean by Flemish]* but I'm not sure I want to ever think of that again. Never. However, I'm sure you won't be surprised to learn that I'll kick off this travelogue (should I say travelblog, hem hem) with something puerile.

Here is the shop front from one of the many chocolate & gift shops on one of the main shopping streets of Bruges:















Ay caramba! Let's take a closer look at that shall we?











Oh my! I like the way the rabbit on the right is staring so intently at that. I don't know what 'Zoete Kutjes' means but it might be fun to find out.



Who made the mould for that?






That'll be the chocolate money shot! Eh? EH?














No wonder CP looks so appalled.








* sorry Robson, there was no way I was letting that one go!

Free Barry Bulsara (with 10 ring pulls)

Tombolablog is a recent convert to the sharing world of Freecycle. I signed up as I was about to bin an old wheelie trolley bag but instead of chucking it in the canal or something*, I offered it on Freecycle and someone else found a home for it. I've been amazed by just how much is on offer though: had I needed to, I could have kitted out a house within a month. Seriously, among loads of other things, in my local area alone has been offered: beds (single, double, futon), cookers, fridge freezers, shelving units, DVD players, videos, books, clothes, vacuum cleaners...someone recently asked if anyone had a geopathic stress neutraliser going spare. Well, anyone? I'm still trying to get my hands on a lolly making set - somebody must have beaten me to that. You'd never need buy anything again. The highlight so far though, has to be this offer of boy's underpants:

"They are in very good condition as my son was actually too big for them and only wore them a few times. They are clean (no skid marks) and have been washed."

Aren't similar items available from Japanese vending machines?

* of course not

How do you like them apples?

Peppers!









Potatoes!









Tomatoes!







Runner beans!

Bird's dead revisited

Tombolablog was in the Notting Hill area of town at the weekend and decided to make a short detour to the site of a rather macabre and gruesome event from last year: the bizarre, and, to this day, unresolved hanging of a pigeon in a churchyard. If you wish, you can read the original posts here and here.

This is how the site looked on Saturday. Not surprisingly there was no sign of a skeleton still swinging from the bough.




















Yeah, alright. This is a far from interesting entry, but I was proud of the title, ok?

Ah...so you're a waffle man!

In these days of ever-increasing types and varieties of foods, eating out can be a tricky business. Foccacia, rye, soda, ciabatta, baguette.... even something as seemingly simple as selecting an accompaniment for your soup can now become a nerve-shredding, anxiety-inducing dilemma.

Hats off, then, to the Yorkshire restaurant that harks back to less complex times:

If there's a sadder sight in the world than this, I'm yet to see it

May I recommend the rather smashing dumplings?

Fnarr fnarr!

Would you care for a piece of breast, sir?

[Spotted in Derry]

Whose Who's Who?

How exciting! I've been approached to appear in Who's Who!


















I can't make that any bigger unfortunately so assuming you don't have microscopic sight, click on it to see it more legibly.

Quite impressive eh? They're keen too - I have received two of these now. I wonder which of my many feats and individual achievments are being recognised here? Perhaps taking 2 years to knit a scarf? Or maybe the peak reached last weekend when I somehow shut the fridge door on my own head. Nah, CP said she wouldn't tell anyone about that. Maybe it's just for services to blogging.

I like the disclaimer at the end though: 'Madison Who's Who is not associated or affiliated with Marquis Who's Who or any other Who's Who'. Glad they cleared that up.

Whatever you are doing on Saturday, cancel it

...and get down to Brixton Academy. Unless of course, you have already got your ticket for this:


DAVID ICKE: EXPOSING THE DREAMWORLD WE BELIEVE TO BE REAL - THE BRIXTON ACADEMY, MAY 24TH

David will be presenting his information in a seven-hour talk at the Brixton Academy in London on Saturday, May 24th. It will involve hundreds of illustrations and supporting material and include his latest information and insights into the world the public never see.

Two years ago this event sold out in advance and interest in David's work has soared since then.

****

Awesome. Seven hours! For more details, why not pop over to Mr Icke's website.

Looks like it's sold out sadly. I missed out last time he was in Brixton too, back in May 2006, which I also got excited about here. Next time....

Why the long face? Because you're a tw@t

Earlier in the year I got a bit hot under the collar about an irritating, hateful advert plastered across the Underground click this and scroll down a bit to read the original item + my slightly embarrassing cop out chat with one of the advertising bods responsible. I did wimp out of really venting myself for paranoid fear of getting in some kind of legal difficulties. However, one man who really really didn't hold back at all is Richard Herring. His no-holds barred, splenetic view of the advert is here. Tombolablog on the pulse, as always. Herring wrote that in February.


Happily, I've not seen the ad for quite some time.

Parker planted a purple pepper

I know what you've been thinking:

'Hey Tombola, after the success of your gardening adventures last summer, what will you be trying this year?'

Funny you should ask! We've been busy recently starting work on some new home grown veg. While not having as much room as we did in Brixton, our new place does have a small garden and we've been able to get a few things going. There doesn't seem anywhere obvious to get record-breaking sunflowers going this time around. My attempt to wrest the title from Ak may have to wait.

A couple of weeks ago we got things underway indoors, planting tomatoes, peppers (new for 2008!), and, excitingly, some of the runner beans that were kept from last year's crop. The circle of life indeed.



Our bathroom windowsill, last week.






At the weekend I got creative with another growbag, this time putting together a cane / twine trellis combo that I'm rather proud of.







I also took some precautionary anti-pest measures, involving some pretty unpleasant wire reclaimed from a disposable BBQ (shredding my fingers in the process). Slugs will need to be Steve McQueen on a motorbike to get past that.



Look out for more thrilling horticulture hi-jinks over the coming weeks, vegetable fans!

Come on, cops....

Haven't you got anything better to do? You know, like stopping people stabbing each other or something?

Anyone?

Hi, I'm Ed Winchester...

While perusing the latest issue of Viz earlier, I suddenly remembered something from my recent trip to Ireland*. On the flight from Heathrow - Dublin, I had a flick through the in-flight magazine and out of it fell a slip of paper. The slip of paper looked like this:
















and on the other side it looked like this:
















How intriguing! Who is this mystery lady? And why does she want to know where I was going?

I love things like this! Flashmobs, Join Me, secret gigs... At the time I remember being quite excited and comparing it to Charlie Bucket finding a golden ticket, or perhaps some kind of global treasure hunt/mystery. Then I had the idea of leaving an invite to Tombolablog's forthcoming nuptials (thanks) in a similar place and seeing if a mystery guest showed up on the day. CP was less keen on this idea. Rightly so, some might say.

I'll email the address now and report any further developments...


* I remembered it because I had a copy of Viz with me on the flight and put the paper in there for safe-keeping.


EDIT (12/5/08)
The email address written on that paper doesn't work - it bounced straight back. So I tried hotmail.co.uk instead. That didn't bounce, but I haven't heard anything back either. Ho hum.

Yeah I traded laughs/in for chartsengrafs

The Tombolablog weekend

Feathers fall around you, and show you the way to go

It was a warm, sunny Spring day on Monday so I went for a wander at lunchtime and explored Lambeth Cemetery, which is just behind where I work. It was bigger than I had expected and a pleasant area of calm away from the fairly manic streets of Tooting and Colliers Wood. While there I spotted three jays, a squirrel, and a couple of parakeets, as well as hearing the call of a green woodpecker. I also got to hear some gospel music from a sizeable funeral taking place at the other side of the cemetery.

On returning to the office I told two colleagues I'd been for a walk and mentioned seeing two parakeets.
"What?".
"Parakeets?".
They looked at me like I was speaking a foreign language. "You know, green, noisy...parrots!"
"What, like escaped pets?"*
"No, there's loads of them all over the place."
They continued to stare, disbelievingly, at me, one asking if I'd maybe seen a tiger as well. It was only when I got on the internet and showed them a story from the BBC about London's booming parakeet population that they realised I wasn't a mental. I know that I have often gone out of my way to look for birds, but I was still genuinely surprised that they were completely unaware that these creatures existed in such close proximity to them. They're bright green! They're noisy! There are 30,000 of them in London! Of course not every one is going to be interested in them and other wildlife, but to have no idea that they existed really did stun me.

I guess that this is a piece about keeping your eyes/ears open really. Just looking around - there's loads of amazing stuff, even in the city (I saw a kingfisher not far from South Wimbledon at the weekend). I'd like to take this opportunity to link to the site of my friend David Lindo, the Urban Birder. Last year, David generously introduced me to Kensal Green cemetery and showed me where to spot green woodpeckers. Since then I've seen/heard them at three more locations around the city. The Urban Birding mantra is spot on: anything can turn up anywhere, anytime.

_____

I originally wrote this on Monday but just hadn't got around to posting it. As a post script, this lunchtime I ended up leading a bit of an expedition (four workmates) to Lambeth cemetery to spot parakeets (probably cementing my status among my colleagues as a geek). Predictably, they were not to be seen, so they probably still think I'm making it up. We did see a few jays and a green woodpecker though, which for me was more exciting.



*There are various stories about how the parakeets got to London, with my favourite being that, back in the 60s, Jimi Hendrix released a couple of them on Carnaby Street and the rest have descended from there.

Pink eye for the old guy

Tombolablog's recent N.Ireland break included a very enjoyable stopover in Carlingford. We ended up taking part in a village quiz, raising funds for the local community. CP and I were all set to enter as a 2-man team, when we were approached by an elderly gentleman who was in need of a team. We were happy to welcome him aboard (figuring that he could fill in the massive gaps in our knowledge of Ulster current affairs). We didn't win (despite full marks in the music round, get in!) and our hopes of having the Irish bases covered didn't come to fruition either (it was me, not our Irish teammate, that spotted Bertie Aherne in the picture round). However, we had a brilliant time chatting with our new friend, Paddy Small. He was great! He told us lots of stories about the village, his life, his family, and the history of the old watchtower that he lives in, and he very kindly invited us to take a look the following morning. We took him up on the offer and it was a pretty amazing place: several hundred years old with super thick stone walls containing slots for firing arrows.

Here's to Paddy. Sláinte!


Eagle-eyed readers might spot that Brer Smalls is an albino. He specifically asked that I switch off the red-eye reduction when taking that photo, as using it would make him go blind.

Ha ha this a-way

While enjoying my lunch I noticed that my tasty Blackcurrant yoghourt looked very much like the character Squidgy Bog from Paul Daniels' 80s children's TV vehicle, Wizbit.



After much searching, I only managed to find one picture to allow a comparison. Perhaps I shouldn't have bothered.


What I did find during my searching though, is that Wizbit is making a comeback as an animated TV series. Bizarrely, here's the all-new Squidgy Bog talking gibberish.

Gaz usually likes this sort of thing

Had to stop and take a pic of this hair cuttery I spotted in Bushmills, N. Ireland:

















If at the end they offer you any 'product' for your hair, just say no.

Things that make you go hmm

Just a couple of questions to ponder over the weekend:

1. How come all pizza delivery people are Learner drivers?

2. This one frightens me: how do TV news presenters always know where I am? I thought I must have beaten them last week, being in the outer reaches of Ulster. But no, George Alagiah came out with the usual line, 'Now, the news from where you are' and they bloody got me again! It's Big Brother!

What's new, pussycat?

I was saddened to realise yesterday that March 2008 was the first month with no new entries since Tombolablog was conceived. I'll have to make amends in April.

So what better possible way to return, than with a video of a rabbit pooning a kitten?




The cameraman on that intrepid piece of nature reportage? Yours truly, while on hols in Ireland last week. When we looked out of our chalet and saw the two animals approaching each other we wondered if they might have a fight or something. The result was truly unexpected. Gonna give you some sweet lordosis, baby.

The holiday was great and, just like that big, eager rabbit, I fully enjoyed the craic!

Pip pip!

PS
If you can hear the sound on that clip you my have noticed what appears to be a cheeky parp a few seconds in. I honestly don't know if it is me trumping or not. It could well be the sound of the door as an appalled CP goes back inside.