A true cross walk

For months now they have been working on this fancy cross walk at Oxford Street and Regent Street (corner of shopping and more shopping).  It is inspired by a Japanese design and is meant to move more people across the street faster…me I see it as a fancy death trap or a strange orchestrated pedestrian dance (video below).

I am going to have to wander down there at lunch one and see the £5million refurbishment for myself  but until then I can’t stop watching this video….I am particularly amused by the  group of confused people that get stuck in the centre of the crosswalk that almost look like they are going to lock arms and ’swing their partner round and round’  then as the light starts to change I watch anxiously at the stragglers run for their life – I can’t imagine it will be long before some doddler gets a bus bumper in the a**.

I can’t embed this video but you can  click here to watch the BBC Video

or here for one from the Guardian – not sure if non UK viewer can see them but let me know as I am sure more videos will be added in the coming days.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/video/2009/nov/02/oxford-street-diagonal-crossing

 

 

Thanks to DKB for sending this to me

Spring ahead fall behind

Today we set our clocks back an hour and when discussing it with some Brits on Saturday night I recited the ’spring ahead fall behind’ rhyme to them as they were saying they could never remember which way the clocks went…I was met with blank stares as they dont call this season Fall here so falling behind didnt seem to make much sense.

Fall is something that leaves do off of trees or drunk people do to the tracks on the tube every so often (often enough that they have posters in the tube warning you of the dangers of falling on the tracks)   The season here is called Autumn which sounds more posh than fall – the more I think about it, fall is a bit of a weird word to use to describe a season. ‘Its a nice fall day’  – to those used to using the word autumn sound more like a pleasant day to hurt yourself versus a day to jump in a pile of leaves.

Above and beyond the use of Autumn for the season I have also heard the word autumnal (ah-tom-null) used more than I ever thought I would hear a word which means autumn like or has characteristics of autumn. This dish is made of autumnal vegetables  or the weather feels very autumnal.  When I needed something to explain fall characteristics I would just say fall-like ie ‘its a fall like day out there today’.  Which admittedly sounds like I am a teenager who over uses the word ‘like’ um like its cold and like fall-like outside.

Regardless, I successfully changed my clocks back and enjoyed a very autumnal day – although it was gorgeous and sunny here and warm enough to be out without a coat which felt more spring-like or springtumnal.

Still doubling up on the hand sanitizer

Thought you would want a little update on the swine flu situation.
1) The neighbour is alive and fully recovered from his bout with swine flu and the bonus is that he has given up smoking so now I can sit on the couch in my PJ’s and not have him watching me from his balcony while going out for various smoke breaks.
2) Sneezy swine flu man is popping up everywhere.  This was my favourite as it popped on the a cash machine screen. It actually grossed me me out as I pictured his sneeze drips all over the keypad…thankfully I had my hand sanitizer with me and doused myself with it afterwards

3) The sneezing person image seems to be international as I presume this is the Spanish version of a public service announcement about swine flu (although I am not sure I would want to catch something called  Gripe A – it sounds pretty serious)

4) How’s this for irony? The main actor dude in the swine flu ad caught swine flu!  Thankfully he wasn’t hired to teach us how to cross safely at train tracks or he might be in a whole lot more trouble.

….and the loo award goes to

So we had my bother in law, sister in law and nieces for a visit this weekend.  We enjoy having visitors but if they are coming from Canada they are asked to pay for room and board in the form of boxes of Kraft Dinner and marshmallows.  They obliged and arrived with said necessities.

While they were here, we did quite a few touristy things which I always enjoy as I get to find out some neat bits about the city and got to witness first hand the highway robbery that tourism….as you can see by some of these gift shop goodies and other bits and bobs

1) King Henry’s blog….seriously, if they wrote history like this when I was a kid I would understand it much better

See, all the cool people blog...it's a historical fact

2) King Henry/Anne Boleyn pants (or underwear for the Canadians)…nothing says”I’m a history ‘buff’” like the King’s face on your a**.

3) Fancy a drink at Harrods?  It will cost ya.  £3.50 will give you the chance to drink out of a Harrods branded paper cup – it did come with unlimited refills but even still it would take quite a few trips to the machine to get your £3.50’s worth.  A 2L bottle of Coke goes for £1.25 here so you would need about 3 bottles to equal the cost of one Harrods cup.  If each Harrods cup was 250ml (which it was about) then that would be about 24 trips….and about 15 trips larger than my bladder could hold (I love shopping maths… if it was explained to me in terms of cups of Coke, I would have done much better in school).

4) Loo of the year award?  I am obviously happy to use award winning facilities but seriously, a) who came up with the idea of loo of the year awards b) who the hell wants to have a job judging them?  Spa awards, luxury hotel awards, cup cake tasting awards sure, sign me up but loo awards?  no thanks. (Although I do love that they have a website – Loo Awards)

Lifestyles of the rich and hairy

So we stopped by Harrods the other day as they had their annual sale on with lots of things 70%off and let’s face it, normal people can only afford Harrods stuff at 70-99%off.  We didn’t’ find anything exciting (read: cheap enough) but as we were about to leave I saw a sign for ‘Pet Kingdom’ and, like a kid in a toy store, I was off.

It was absolutely unbelievable (okay to be fair it should have been believable as Harrods sells a real life monopoly game with real British pounds as cash so a few fancy pet beds should be believable).   They had everything from dog beer to beds to fancy dress costumes to jewel studded leashes because seriously, if your owners are shopping in Harrods they obviously have some extra cash to quench your thirst for a brewski and understand your need for a little bling when out in the dog park.  Observe:

I did almost have one of those moments when you lie on the floor and kick your hands and feet and cry until your parents hubby buys you what you want because when I walked up to the live puppy area I saw that they had a Border Terrier for sale.  I immediately ran at the glass and pressed my nose up against it looking for my new bundle of cuteness only to find out it had been sold and that the area only contained hyper active daschunds..the hubby was lucky this time. Although, after seeing what Harrods was charging for them I think we might have to look for a second hand or irregular Border Terrier to fit within our budget.

Here piggy piggy piggy

Recently, the government changed their policy on swine flu from containment to treatment  – basically they have stopped physically testing for swine flu so if you think you have it, you stay home and call the NHS (National Health Service) versus going in to see someone.  Once you describe your symptoms, the advisor will decide whether or not it sounds like you have swine flu  (or if you are just a massive hypochondriac) and will arrange for a prescription of Tamiflu be sent to a ‘pre-determined pickup area’ (sounds so technical)  and recommend you stay within your flat for 7-10 days.

The government is also advising that  you appoint a ‘flu friend’ aka personal biatch who can go and pick up the prescriptions for you and  do errands so you aren’t out infecting the rest of the nation.

So far, we have had relatively small interaction with the disease (mainly cause we have had relatively small interaction with the outside world as a whole lately) with only one friend coming down with it (thankfully). That was until this afternoon when I heard someone talking very loudly in our hallway….when I got close to the door to eavesdrop investigate, I found out that our next door neighbour has indeed come down with swine flu.  His flu buddy was in the hallway talking to him on her mobile whilst he stood inside his flat on the other side of the door.   She dropped off some Tortellini for him but apparently couldn’t find the ‘yoghurt thingies’ he had also requested. He is apparently confined to his flat for 2 weeks! Thankfully, we are very anti-social in our block of flats and basically have no interaction with our neighbours – I will however be sure to bathe in anti bacterial hand gel after touching anything in the hall area.

As the terribly named disease moves closer to home, I am going to draw up a shortlist of my  possible ‘flu friends’ and might start stockpiling food in the flat just in case.  Hey, maybe I can piggyback (pardon the swine reference) on the neighbours flu buddy and get her to do shopping for me…or better still,  I could get a job as a professional ‘flu friend’ and go find those ‘yogart thingies that his incompetent ‘flu buddy’ couldn’t find and get paid for it.

PS  How great (read gross) is the NHS sneezing flu man, if that doesn’t convince you to have a full body shower in bleach every time you return from the outside world, I don’t know what will.

Britain’s Got People (standing on a plinth)

Britain has always been pretty keen on the reality TV shows but this sort of brings it to a new level. A British comedian, Charlie Brooker, twittered about and called “Britain’s Got People” (instead of Britain’s Got Talent, get it, see, I told you he was a comedian).

Essentially, it is an art installation occupying a plinth in Trafalgar Square and every hour for 100 days, a real live person will get hoisted on top of it to do whatever they want. From what I understand, the places are allocated randomly with no audition process, so anything goes. Best part is that it is streamed live 24 hours a day so you don’t have to even get off the couch to see it  (that being said I think if I am in the area I might have to take a peek as you can’t be too sure if what you see on the intraweb is true).
I discovered it last night when I couldn’t sleep and think that if nothing else, it does give insomniacs something to watch. Although, at that time of the morning, I got stuck watching a dude play the accordion so I could only take it for a few minutes then traipsed back to bed (which is probably a good thing).

It is an intriguing concept and am sure I will find myself widdling away the hours watching.  I do think the whole thing could be improved by making it more interactive and allowing viewers to vote the people off the plinth or better still, rig up a giant slingshot full of water balloons or chocolate pudding which we can aim then shoot at the people via the website…now THAT would be fun to watch, I mean artistic, as intended.

One & Other

Canned air conditioning

So today is bloody hot, one of those days where you sweat when sitting and doing nothing.  I don’t have a thermometer but I have to guess its about 200 degrees out with no sign of a breeze.  In the past I really haven’t been that bothered by the lack of air conditioning but today I would give my (sweaty) left arm for a 5 minute stint in a very cold room.

I do however have some relief in the form of an instant cooling body spray called Magicool (yes, I know, brilliantly stupid name). I bought it last year for some unknown reason as it wasn’t that hot but I remember it was on sale and it is kind of like a gadget so I liked it.  I actually forgot I had it until I saw the hubby trying to cool off by spraying himself with the canned air you clean your computer keyboard with.

My favourite bit is their absolutely horrendous, low budget, badly dubbed commercial…I think though because it was so bad that is why I remembered it and eventually bought it….today, I am happy I did. It’s cheaper than air conditioning and seems to do the job….however I fear I might go through the entire can today, should be okay though as they are calling for rain tomorrow.

Click here to see the horrible amazing advert

Tropic of London

Enjoying a bit of a heat wave in London this week (helping add to my unemployment tan) with the temperature today going up to 32, which I thoroughly enjoyed. The one surprising thing is the lack of air conditioning here. Neither of the offices I have worked at nor our flat has the added luxury and more surprisingly,  quite a few retail stores don’t either….including the post office.  I stood in line this morning for 15 minutes behind a man who was sweating so much the brim of his baseball cap was dripping sweat leaving a sweaty trail of water through the Disney land-esque zig zagging line….it is a bit of a health hazard if you ask me.  Surprisingly I am surviving (with three fans on in our room at night) and actually don’t mind that every shop or office doesn’t feel like a walk in freezer.

This has nothing to do with anything, but ever wondered what you could do with a bunch of sun glasses and an oven cooker?  Yeah well there is an empty office building around the corner from my flat which came up with an idea as to what to do with them… (honestly it creeps me out as I am pretty sure we had centipedes that big in our basement growing up).

Wimbledon ticket queue

So we are through week 1 of Wimbledon and last week, the hubby and I figured that since we still have enormous amounts of time on our hands that we should captialise on a sunny day and go watch some tennis.  Last year we entered the ticket raffle and were lucky enough to get centre court tickets but this year we did the ‘queue’ thing.

Basically, Wimbledon allows 40,000 people in the grounds each day.  There are a few thousand tickets that are not allocated each day and sold to those who queue up.  On top of the tickets that are available they have a one in one one out system throughout the day so when people leave the grounds, they let the queued up people in. Apparently about 13,000 to 16,000 queued up people get in on a regular day (although Saturday when Andy Murray played, they were at capacity first thing in the morning and figured there would be no more room for the rest of the day).

Anyhoo not knowing what to expect, we headed to Wimbledon to get our spot in the queue.  We arrived at the main gates but were told to walk ‘10 minutes down the road’ to the start of the queue…we walked and walked and walked until we found a parking lot where it started.  When we joined the end of the queue we were given a queue card with a sequential number.  This meant that we could have left the queue and came back a few hours later and re-joined.  Having not known anyone in the area and the fact it was a sunny day we waited, and waited and waited.

It was the most organised queue that I could imagine.  The entire route was marked out with plastic panels so we weren’t ruining any grass or having to get our shoes dirty and along the whole queue were various food stalls which ranged from ice cream to coffee to burgers.  There were garbage and recycling bins everywhere, toilets en route and quiz questions and a hall of fame toward  the end of the queue to keep us from dying of boredom.  We finally reached security then headed across the street to the main gates (3 hours after we had passed them originally) to buy our tickets.

Once in the grounds it radiated with patriotism for Andy Murray and the champagne and strawberry poshness that I can’t get enough of.  The grounds are perfectly manicured and my favourite ball boys and girls looking as stoic and efficient as usual.

We were fortunate enough to catch Andy Murray playing from the public viewing area called “Henman Hill”, (after English Tennis player Tim Henman), which they are trying to change to Murray Mound in honour of the new favourite.  We then wandered to some of the outer courts where there were ladies singles and doubles playing.   It’s quite amazing as you get so close and really get to see how fit the players really have to be.

Despite how it sounds, the 3 hour wait wasn’t that bad as it was a beautiful sunny day and to be fair, we didn’t have much else to do.  It was well worth it because Wimbledon is quite an event and is fairly hard to describe unless you’ve been there (despite this terribly wordy post where I am trying to do just that).  I would recommend it to anyone and am hoping to go back next year….although fingers crossed we will have to take a holiday day to go versus still being ‘between jobs’.