What Lies Beneath

Ah, the vicissitudes of fickle fashion.

Peel off the smooth mediæval stone face of the columns in Norwich Cathedral …

… and reveal the glory of the original Norman masonry.

I know which I prefer. A pox on Puritanical conformity!

Throw off your dull robes and shine, in all your peculiar splendour.

Get Real

I had a long, hot and ickily-stickily humid meeting with a lot of sweaty people this morning, so to cool off I took an early lunch and hied my merry way to my favourite coffee shop to sit under the air conditioner for a bit.
All was well; sitting re-reading the arse end of Ulysses left over from Bloomsday, sipping espresso and chilled water and looking achingly at a table of pretty girls who it appears had come out today with naught but a handkerchief to share between them as clothes.

Then two guys in their twenties in sweaty cheap suits plonked themselves down between me and the girls and started yapping loudly in that annoying way that cuts through your thoughts like a dog barking.

"So what are your goals?" yelled one, slapping on to the table a school exercise book and a biro (classy).
"Well, I'm aiming to be banking 250K a year in two years time and living in one of those big Victorian houses down by the river."
"What's your business plan?"
"I'm thinking of selling medical equipment; you know: scanners and stuff. How about you?"
"Well I'm going to own my own business, probably in marketing and my goal is to collect high-end sports cars."
Honestly: this was as close to verbatim as I can recall but it was definitely the gist of what they were saying.

I soon discovered that gaping like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel and occasionally snorting with derision wasn't going to shut them up so I reluctantly put down my book and leaned across.
"I can put you in touch with a couple of companies supplying specialist medical equipment if you'd like."
They looked at me like a pair of rabbits trapped in headlights. They were scared shitless. The "scanners and stuff" guy actually gibbered, which is something you don't see every day.
I bit back a smirk and carried on. It only took a minute to discover that they were "management graduates" who knew shit about nothing - let alone medical equipment, were "currently unemployed" (and in my view unemployable) and were very likely to be serving me coffee in a few months time should they be smart enough to shut their mouths during a job interview.

Just what is it in today's educational system that gives imbeciles like that the kind of unachievable expectations they were drooling over? I am totally at a loss to understand it.
I asked the sports car collector what he drove and he "doesn't have a car yet." I wonder how he'll find the money for his fleet of Ferraris and Porsches on £65 a week Jobseekers' Allowance.

The scary thing is that I know a lot of people like these two who have actually found jobs in management and are - the thought is too horrible for words - in charge of real working people's lives.

These people are truly worthless parasites. Who's with me on starting a campaign to have every person in "management training" taken outside and summarily de-bagged, pointed to and laughed at for their own good?

Just a thought …

Anyhoo … Back to REAL work. Some of us have bills to pay and realistic expectations (well, mostly realistic … I still sometimes fantasise about getting a girlfriend, but at least I don't yell across coffee shops that "my goal" is to be sleeping with Buffy the Vampire Slayer within eighteen months … Sheesh).
Get real guys.

- Written on my Macbook Pro in the coffee shop just now while my two companions were jealously asking how much one of those costs.

Tom Browne Ponders The Price Of Posterity

So anyhoo: I was meandering past Sir Thomas Browne (the Headache Man) yesterday lunchtime when I spotted a pigeon nestled in his outstretched hand.
As I reached for my camera, however, the idiot bird flew off, but I managed to just catch the thing as it launched.

Click on the photo and blow it up and you'll probably be as startled as I was to discover that pigeons take off backwards!
This bird is definitely taking off and not landing. It's rather helicopter-like, with a bit of vertical take off and reversing before sticking its wings in forward gear.
So what was going to be a photo of Sir Tom pondering a handful of pigeon droppings and the ignominy of becoming an avian toilet, instead demonstrated to me that I can indeed learn something new every day (yesterday I also learned about beet and chocolate muffins - yay).

Henri's Back

You gotta love that last "merde" during the fade-out.

What To Do With Those Old Christmas Sweaters

WTF Monday - Reject Ticket

Don't forget that all-important reject ticket,

otherwise you're gonna to get your reject explosive product shoved right back at ya.

Stained Glass Sunday

Check out our spears, laydees.

Wednesday Window - This Horse Totally Rocks

Treble, Middle and Bass

This one's from my temporary job as Cathedral Tour Guide during last Friday's team building day.

What's the interweb for if not for posting photos of … er … mighty organs?

The bass pipes up on the balcony sound awesome; they reach right into your intestines and rearrange your breakfast.

WTF Monday - Chickenpig

Sunday Sacrifice

When I got back from taking my tour group of London and Cambridge staff around the Cathedral during Friday's Team Building Day we found Dale and Stuart on the office terrace sacrificing animals in front of the Temple.

Meet my boss. Being … er … bossy.

And yes, the animal sacrifice worked. After months of non-stop rain (including torrential downpours that very morning while we toured Phil's Magical Kingdom), the weather gods accepted the offering of burnt meat and veggies (falafel and spinach quarter-pounders according to the box in the photo) and parted the clouds for us.
Yay!

More from the Team Building Day later.

Happy Sunday, y'all.

PS:

Read this. It's beautiful.

Bacon Belle

Is it just me, or is everyone else also a little bit in love with their favourite barista?

I've got a couple of long term favourites, both of whom I'm a little in love with, but of course in different ways as one of them is a guy … ahem. I'm talking about Chris and Louisa from Saturday Breakfast Club.
Chris, because he's a hairily handsome bastard and impossibly cheerful in the face of bickering families with screaming kids, but mostly because he proudly sports the most extensive and expensive collection of traditional and beautifully coloured yakuza-style koi tattoos ever seen on a white guy.
You can't beat the classics, and Chris makes all of those token tat guys with 'trendy' Maori, tribal or Celtic tattoos look a little bit pathetic. Yay him for doing it properly.

And Louisa, because … well … because she's Louisa. Tall, willowy, ponytailed and perky and always ready to chat and laugh with a creepy old guy like me while she serves the rest of the queue. And yes, she's pretty and yes, she has a butt I could cup in one hand and yadda, yadda, yadda … So yeah, you can chalk this one up with all of my 500 Words stories that come under the tag: "My Apparent Waitress Fixation."

Anyhoo: on to the real point of this excruciating ramble: this morning at breakfast whilst chatting away to Louisa I learned of the existence of THE MOST WONDERFUL THING IN THE WORLD™ and I WAAAAANT one!

We were discussing the difference between an Italian latte and the version Louisa serves with her Norwich accent: 'the larrrr 'ee', when the implausibly slender and lissome Polish girl, Anita, poked her head round the kitchen door and yelled across to Lou, "I've rung the bell for bacon!"

And the world stopped spinning and we all fell off …

"I have GOT to get myself one of those!" I said.
"One of what?" asked Louisa.
"A bell you can ring for bacon."
At which her eyes opened wide and she started moaning with unfulfilled desire.
"Baaaaay-con. Oooooh, a bell that brings baaaay-con. Yes, Yes, YES!"
"That's going to torment me all weekend." I said, and we both moaned some more, and there may have been some drooling going on there, too, for a bit.

Admittedly, my own moan of desperate longing was not just for the bell that brings bacon - wonderful though that is - but inevitably involved the impossible dream of practicing another pork-related activity with the pony-tailed princess of the foamy milk jug. But for a minute there we enjoyed a Meg Ryan gasping and moaning episode together, which will indeed torment me for the rest of the weekend but I've learned to be happy with what I can get.

So if anybody ever wonders what to get me for birthdays or Christmas, start searching now for THE MOST WONDERFUL THING IN THE WORLD™: A bell I can ring for bacon! I want one of those so much!
Or if you can't get that, I'll settle for Louisa, nicely packaged in a little waitress outfit and delivered to my door. And don't forget to poke air holes in the box; we don't want a repeat of the time Knudsen shipped me that Japanese girl and forgot the air holes (see posts passim). Sheesh, that was not nice.

So fess up: who's your favourite barista?

Team Building

Today is team building day.
The London and Cambridge offices are heading to Norwich where we'll be spending the day … er … team building.
Hence the photo of … well … a team, building. These merry village people are busy turning an old wartime airfield into the National Construction College and I go out there and shout at them a lot.

But back to today.
First up, we're taking the London and Cambridge people on a visit to Phil's Magical Kingdom, where they can ooh and aah at pretty cars (we're rebuilding the factory for them).
Then, after lunch, I've been volunteered (older blogpals will know why) to be the tour guide and show them all around the Cathedral. On the way I'll be teaching them Old Dive's Alternative History of Norwich, which many of you know so well. Then we're having a barbie on the big terrace overlooking the river. Yay!

If I survive without being fired I'll let you know how it all goes.

Happy Friday, peeps!

Gross Out Thursday

Hokay, so I know it's not Monday and this really should be a WTF Monday post, but Speedway just posted what passes for ramen in her part of the world and it shocked me to the core.

Ramen is freshly made noodles - hot in the winter; chilled buckwheat in the summer - with fresh ingredients and it is a wonderful experience to sit in a Soho noodle bar and suck it up in as slurpily noisy and shirt-stainingly messy a manner as possible.  Ramen is not shrink-wrapped plastic condoms stuffed with dried industrial noodles and a sachet of salt, MSG and powdered crap.

Really. Trust me on this.

I'm used to fresh seafood, fresh noodles, cotton tofu made that very morning and sushi made for me by a real sushi chef where I get to pick out the wriggly tentacles and stuff I like from the fresh fish counter. The thrill of heating dried, factory-made crap and water in a microwave is not for me.

But then I thought of all the equally disgusting things people eat over here and so here - for the amusement of the Colonials - is a "Great British Classic" … something totally gross that I found on my last trip to a supermarket and which had me gaping like Cletus the slack-jawed yokel.

I had to ask the nearest shelf-stacker if it was real or some kind of spoof, but he assured me people buy it and in all possibility actually spread it on bread and EAT this shit.

I don't often say this, but "What the fuck?"

More Government Cuts

Webster Goes Bust

"Boobleage."

"Boobelage."

"Boobage."

My last photopost - concerning the innocent pastime of gift wrapping - brought in its wake three contrasting spellings of a word I had not previously encountered.
There it is, up at the top of the post.

All of the relevant comments came from the flower of American womanhood and made me wonder if American women think about boobs as much as English men do.

We on the civilised side of the Pond use "cleavage" for the amount of boob on display, but I must confess a sneaking admiration for this Colonial neologism, particularly that "L" in the middle that hints at the word "wobble."

Strangely, my spellchecker (regrettably based on Webster's gibberish rather than the English language as she is spoke) only picks up the middle one as a misspelling.

So, laydees … tell me more about boobs.

WTF Monday on a Sunday - Giftwrapping Aptitude Test

Body parts, underwear and chains: three things that are always nicer to receive giftwrapped.

Headache

One of these years I'll actually take a look at the plinth when I walk past this guy and discover who he really was.

Occasionally seen with a traffic cone, football or other random object in his outstretched hand I've always known him as "guy with headache."

Knits

Faience

It was sunny for about an hour on Saturday morning.

Suddenly the city was no longer the dull, grey miasma of bruised misery it's been all year.

The clouds soon returned, though.

Sigh …

Ducks

"Quack"

Howdy

Don't ask, because I really don't know.