winter time

Weird Things On The Side Of The Road

Highbury Islington 291005



Amsterdam ??1005

Funny Old World - Private Eye Magazine

“Yes, we all know what our town’s name means in English,” Mayor Siegfried Hauppl told reporters in his Austrian village near Salzburg, “but we didn’t give it a second thought until tourists started stealing the road signs. So many signs have been stolen recently that we even had a vote last year on whether to rename the town, but eventually decided to keep it as it is. After all, Fucking has existed for 800 years, and will probably exist for another 800, but only if British tourists stop stealing our Fucking signs.”

“The village probably got its name in the twelfth century, when a Mr Fuck or the Fuck family moved into the area, and the ‘ing’ was added as a word for settlement. We have a butcher called Herr Fuck working here to this day. Residents first found out about the English meaning of the word at the end of World War II, when British and American soldiers were stationed in the area, and at first we didn’t mind the jokes. A lot of tourists come here to pose for photos in front of the signs, and if they spend some money in the area, we’re happy to see them. But we’re fed up with having to replace the signs again and again, because thoughtless people keep ripping them down and taking them home as souvenirs.”

Franz Duernsteiner, an expert on Austrian village names, added that “the residents of Fucking are actually very conservative people. Most of them can speak English, and when someone asks them where they come from, they are often a little ashamed to pronounce the word. Residents of two other Austrian communities, Windpassing and Wank on the Lake, suffer a similar reluctance.” (Cape Argus, 19/8/05. Spotter: Tim Minogue)

http://www.private-eye.co.uk/content/showitem.cfm/issue.1144/section.fow

turner

so ben says
i wanna go to the turner museum
i say
wot the turner prize
he says
no the turner musuem
i say
those cloudy pictures with the sunset, you like them?
he laughs, says
yeah thats it.

Soon to be extinct

Today is the second last day of the old school crappy london buses. After friday, the iconic form of transport will be replaced with bendy buses...

Exit stage left

yesterdays post, today.

Central St Martins

Charing X Rd

purpose

have finally worked out a protocol for this here blog. A mission statement if you will. Everyday a photo of something. One part of my day. Im also allowed the indulgence of a drunken or cafine fueled rant....
it begins proper.

now.

microsoft word zen

Sad Clown on Liverpool St

yanowhadimean

When drunk on a night time 55 on the long way home, never count the amount of times the person next to you says. yanowhadimean in a conversation. whilst it may make a horrible over crowded journey slightly less painful, you get stuck. I ended up discovering patterns in her conversation. The peaks the valleys. Things i don't need in my head.
For a start with some, yanowhadimeans it followed immediately with another yanowhadimean then silence for a whole four paragraphs before she uttered the word again...
I couldn't work out if this bus ride conversation counted for a deep and meaningful between two friends or if the conversation was so full of theatrical, predictable "no you said the right thing" utterances that it could have been written by a script writer for Home and Away, leaving an observer with the feeling of 2 people not that close.
As i counted the times she said it, not looking, staring anywhere else, but my ear tight with anticipation at the mention of the yanowhadimean, I felt sad.
Is conversation really as droll as this?. Is this the vocabulary that i have to communicate me sincerest deepest thoughts, is it reduced to yanowhadimean?


She said it 35 times in total from Clerkenwell to Hackney on the N55.

yanowhadimean?

Lost Dog

Found this in Redfern. Every other telegraph pole on Abercrombie street was covered in em...

Amalfi Coast

You know, i was told by a northerner that the southern part of Italy is meant to be a no go zone. I disagree.

flickr words

Some absolute genius has created a word generator using photos of vernacular type from flickr photo sets. Pretty easy to use. Just follow the link and type in what you want to read.

http://metaatem.net/words