Blowin In The Wind

I saw a Jewish man on the train the other day, with his Kippah (skullcap) held on by a sort of hair clip. So how do bald Jewish men keep their skull caps on?

I Should Be So Lucky

Working in central London you tend to get accosted by all sorts of people - chuggers (from 'charity' and 'muggers') asking for your hard earned money, Eastern Europeans enticing you to lay £20 down in their version of three-card lucky lady, and occasionally gypsies.

These gypsy women (or at least women dressed as gypsies) hold out a piece of heather with the stalk wrapped in tinfoil and offer it to you, seemingly for free, as you walk past. "For luck", they say. How very kind, you think to yourself. However, if you are naiive enough to take a piece of 'lucky' heather, you are then asked to 'donate' some money - normally a couple of quid. To save the embarrassment of returning the heather to them, many people pay up.

My question is this: if the heather is so lucky, then why are these gypsies - who obviously have an abundance of the stuff - on the streets selling it to make a living? If I had a truck load of genuinely 'lucky' heather: a) I'd keep it all for myself, and b) I wouldn't have to sell it as I would have won the lottery several times over. Of course.

Automatic For The People

Saw a sign on a door the other day, and had to do a comedy double take.

"Automatic door. Push button to open."

??

Going Down

After a telling a lame gag or giving someone bad news, you might hear the expression "Well, that went down like a lead balloon", i.e. not very well. But surely a lead balloon, due to its weight, would go down better than most things, i.e. well.

It should be said after a nice meal or hearing the best gag of all time. But it isn't, and I'm confused as to why that is.

Big fat book

I was in a shop the other day and I noticed a bored teenager trailing round after his parents, holding this soft-back book. As I only caught a fleeting glance of it, I thought it was titled 'Lard Lass'.

Much better than the actual title I think you'll agree.

And the world goes round

Revolving doors. I have little enough time on this planet as it is - the last thing I want to be doing is pushing these things around, in and out of every building.

The manual ones are bad enough, but there's one at IKEA which is automatic. It allows about 20 people in each section, but stops when it catches up with the people, meaning we all have to shuffle along like sheep until it deems us well behaved enough to let us out.

Some chap recently had the idea that he could power all the lights in the reception area of his office building using the power generated from us revolving-door-pushers. At least that would provide some use for the bloody things.

A wee bit of etiquette

There's rules that men should follow in the gents' room, and not everyone adheres to them.

1. Assuming there are three urinals, and I am at the end one - you will not stand at the middle one.
2. Similarly, even if there is no-one in the gents', you will not use the middle urinal - this forces me to stand beside you when I come in.
3. The middle urinal is only to be used if the outer urinals are already in use.
4. You will not engage in any chit chat more than a cursory "Alright?" - even just a nod of the head is enough. Talking may commence only if both gentlemen are at the handwashing stage.
5. Especially as I'm just entering one of the traps - I don't want to stand on the threshold forcing a conversation about what you're doing at the weekend. Save that for your hairdresser.
6. Flush anything which needs flushing.

That's all for now.

Chip and Pin

Great thing, chip and pin. Just one gripe - it makes shop assistants think I'm stupid.

The thing is, I know how to work a chip and pin machine thingy. I know which way my card goes in, I know how to type in my pin number, and I know to when to take my card out. After all it's not difficult, and there's handy instructions on the little screen. Having said that, I'm still probably in the minority.

The problem is that the shop assistant sees those instructions on their screen a second before I do. So, just before I see the instruction to 'Insert Card' the shop assistant says "Insert your card", with a hint of impatience. A split second before I see 'Enter Pin', the shop assistant tells me to enter my pin. And not wanting to remove my card before the machine has finished with it, I wait for the screen to tell me to 'Remove Card', by which time of course, the shop assistant has already told me to remove it as if I was an imbecile just staring at the screen waiting for a doughnut to pop out.

Now, I understand that this, along with most of my rants, probably doesn't register on your radar. But I've just been to B&Q for the fourth weekend in a row and I just had to get it off my chest.

All I'm asking here is for one second to prove my technological superiority over the other 75% of the population. Is that too much to ask?

Just In Case

If I were an iPod designer I would be furious. Imagine - I've spent countless hours working on the perfect curves, the space-aged look, the miniature dimensions, the ideal materials. And what do you do? You stick it in a tacky rubber case. Grrrr.

Now, I know why you have a case for your iPod. Sure - it makes it bigger, bulkier, harder to operate and it looks awful. But hey, in three years' time when it finally gives up the ghost, at least it will be in pristine condition when you throw it in the bin.

You're the equivalent of the old lady who keeps the plastic covers on her sofa.

Cutty What?

So the Cutty Sark was set on fire and now 'needs' another £18 million spent on it. The original bill for restoration was a whopping £25million. Can we really not think of anything better to spend £43 million on?

Before I go on, I know all the usual counter arguments - it's our heritage, it brings in the tourists, it's a unique part of our history. Hmmm,...well, yes to an extent - but £43 million? When finished, the Cutty Sark will probably only be about 10% original - so why not just build a replica? Or why bother at all?

A few years ago I visited Angkor Wat in Cambodia - a huge network of temples nearly a thousand years old. They were, of course, 'restoring' some of them, the result being awkward brand new blocks of stone laid among the beautifully aged ones. It looked awful.

Conversely, the smaller temples in the jungle have had no such restoration, and there are trees and vines climbing all over and through them, pushing the stones out of place and slowly destroying these centuries-old monuments. These temples looked fantastic - hundreds of years of decay right before my eyes.

Ok, so these temples and the Cutty Sark will disappear for ever if we don't save them - but the cost of restoring them, and the ridiculously fake result of doing so, is proof that we should just leave them be.

I await the day that one of the rocks at Stonehenge finally falls over, and we rush in with a gleaming block of sandstone to replace it to 'preserve' it for future generations.