Neil Hopcroft

Its not every day that I wake up and think “I must go to Andover”. Having now been I think that is probably a good thing. It got off to a bad start when someone aspiring to be an Essex boy tried to scam me for his parking money – the walk from the car park to the town centre didn’t improve my level of hope, the bus station seemed to be full of bus drivers being utterly incompetant at driving around each other.

Its an odd town, full of Wilkinsons and Job Centres at one end of the spectrum with multitudes of estate agents at the other, and nothing in between selling the kinds of things that normal people need on an everyday basis.

After I had exhausted the town centre (the highlight was a man standing on a step ladder in a river – its not often you see someone in waders cleaning third floor windows) I headed out to the ring road where I discovered a bunch of out-of-town shops clustered around a roundabout. As is typical with these things its nearly impossible to get from one to another on foot, this though was one of the worst examples I’ve seen. My total score circumnavigating the roundabout was two fences (one with mesh on it to stop people climbing over), three hedges, two significant puddles, two pedestrian crossings, one DVD player and one phone charger

Trying to escape the town was interesting too, they seem to have taken the idea that towns have ring roads without understanding either that it should be a ring or that it should go around the town centre.

With thanks to Marcus Kuhn for his Unicode FAQ….without which I would be even more confused than I am now.

Who in their right mind books a dentist appointment on Monday morning?

I can’t be the only one who wants to add an ‘L’ to that bumper sticker, can I? Could be worse, could be a jag with ‘curse control’.

I ate too much chilli. Well, maybe it was just too hot, my face is on fire and I had to sit motionless for a few minutes before I could stand up.

Last night to Nils and Alexs birthday party, but I had to run away to catch my train, too sleepy to drive the car to central London, which makes me non-sociable and having to leave early. Wish I was less befuddled by social situations where I’m meeting people I haven’t seen for a long long time, making me look underenthusiastic about things that are actually quite appealling….contact details here (friendlocked, drop me mail if you can’t read them and you want to).

Last week was tiring, next week promises not to be quite so bad. Or maybe thats just me hoping.

16 ways to add cheese (worksafe but potentially not earsafe…especially for those of a non-metal disposition)

Little Miss Sunshine: what a fabulous film, dysfunctional family, road movie, darkly hilarious.

I can’t explain, just go watch it.

The machine is us, we are web 2.0

2110 – Nokian housebrick advert

Cat learns to flush

Life, condensed, visualised

And now i’m amusing myself by taking pictures out of the train window… I need a longer exposure setting.

Hugs to charliemouse. Hope it turns out to be a good night…Just sad i couldn’t stay for the music later. One day we meet when you don’t have to juggle arranging everybodies evening.