St Sebastian pin-cushion etc.

Yes it's the time of year for the Ship of Fools bad taste Christmas presents - cartoons by Taffy - not for all of them alas - maybe he's too busy Rural Deaning

Ahhh!

Kitty p0rn

It is reality that is at fault

Grin - thanks to Geoff for this - I should really add Jesus and Mo to my daily cartoon check but it is just getting too long...

Not the pony club

Boggle, amazing what you find as a result of reading Ship of Fools - beware the linked material is probably not suitable for young persons!

Golden Wedding

Golden Wedding
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Lunch today with my parents-in-law to celebrate their Golden Wedding at the Wizard at Alderley Edge
. Their website has too much information as MSWord docs for my taste(!) but the meal was good. See here for the Flickr set of photos.

Priceless!

Read this if you don't follow the register, the auction has - of course - now been removed

The train now leaving...

is two years late. From
this BBC travel page
last updated 27th Nov 2005 - I really was looking for train news when I found this via google!

Two musical obituaries

In nearly adjacent days last week, first William Waterhouse bassoon player and then Sebastian Bell flautist and co founder of the London Sinfonietta. Two artists whose work I greatly admired.
On Bell the obit says

..when faced with an uncharacteristic bout of performance nerves, he took up powerboat racing which, he said, scared him witless, thereby increasing his understanding of fear and nerves and his control of them. In 1983 he came fourth in the national marine power boat championship series.

Grin!

Go, see

Off by one

Looks like lastfm can't count..

though it seems to have now rectified itself - maybe it only happens the first time you go over five? Note the 'see my 0 other groups' in the left hand panel.

squire and horse

squire and horse
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

To Sussex over the weekend and dinner at the Squire and Horse at Bury. I thought I blogged about my last visit there, but at the moment I can't find it... A very nice cassoulet and I thought the pub was quieter than it deserved to me. Bit tricky negotiating wheelchairs outside in the dark though!
Some of the staff were making plans for a night out in Worthing for Sunday (Worthing???), I hope Worthing survived!

Biscuits

And while we're on the subject of food advertising, Geoff Coupe points me to this Biscuit of the week - especially for my Serbian readers!

Penguin!

Pingouin
Originally uploaded by fflparis

After a link here, was directed to this picture. There are longer and more outrageous versions of the ad findable from the comments on the first daily motion version.

Cold morning

phot0847
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Looking over the car park on my way down to the station. Later saw a bright mock sun from the train - but getting a photo is a little more tricky!

.. probably the Devils of Loudun..?

N.C. Baptists set to cast out Charlotte church and there was I getting my hopes up and it's church politics

I swallowed a dictionary...

Following from Geoff Coupe's pointer

That's extremely alarming, must be my somewhat gnomic (oops!) utterances (oops again!)

Toad!

I'm tempted to submit this error to Worse than Failure

you'll see that I've clicked the 'details' button for extra information, if I don't click that I get something pretty similar!

Someone is 50!

From a recent BATS meeting

Yummm!

Spotted in Sainsbury's this afternoon

unfortunately the boxes look as if they've been printed correctly!

Bizarre!

Vienna thief snatches hundreds of obscure avant-garde music CDs

A thief single-mindedly stole between 800 and 1,000 CDs by the Italian avant-garde composer Luigi Nono (1924-1990) from the warehouse of a Vienna music distributor, police said Thursday

I looked around Manchester's HMV for some Nono CD's yesterday without success - maybe this explains it (but I doubt it)

Where is that squirrel?

There's a grey squirrel in one of these gardens

gave us a great deal of amusement over Sunday lunch - unfortunately(? it was grey) they didn't quite catch it.

Don't ask me to employ you

I scored 3/10 at this (via Niles) - or rather don't ask me to screen applicants! My son scored 9/10...

Arrrgh's

This appeared in my email

and was nearly enough to persuade me not to use them again... (edited for grammar :-))

Halloween

A bit late now, but do read this, still trying to find an English version of this on a news site - though there are plenty of German links to the tale!

Rodalquilar

One of the buildings at the deserted gold-mine at Rodalquilar had an English label on it.

I assume this happened when the mine was part of a set of a film, this site leads me to expect it might be The Reckoning but looking at the plot (set in 1300's England) I somehow doubt the presence of Guard Blocks! Can anyone identify this?
Also in Rodalquilar the one food shop - Lola's - was frequently closed during normal opening hours whenever the elderly proprietress found something more interesting to do. The owner of Jardín de los Sueños - a German - said without blinking - just go into Rodalquilar and ask for Lola.