Saturday, June 30, 2007, 11:55 PM
And a small entry.Our wedding was a dream. You know you're having a good time when it's your wedding day and it's raining and you don't even notice.
I'm going to keep this entry short, because to attempt to do it justice in a few pictures will simply not work. Eveyrthing was perfect!
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Tuesday, June 26, 2007, 12:50 AM
Has anyone noticed how skull motifs seem to be creeping in to every element of high street fashion these days? I realised it was catching when I was shopping for baby clothes. Babygrows, bibs, sweet little hats - all with a smiling symbol of death. I think that nine months is a little early to introduce someone to the concept of mortality - one hasn't even been potty-trained yet.
What is to blame for this sudden surge of scary, bony faces? Is it a pirate-by-proxy syndrome brought on by Pirates of the Caribbean, or perhaps nothing more than a desire to look a bit 'edgy'. Problem is, with socks like these now available, a skull motif now looks about as edgy as Jordan and Peter.
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Thursday, June 21, 2007, 12:25 AM
A Camden electricity substation, circa 2007.
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Wednesday, June 20, 2007, 12:46 AM
One of the thrills of my day is that I have a choice of two short walks to work from the train stop. The usual route is down shabby College Street, past a brothel, chicken joint, disused pub and a gun shop - the perfect ingredients for a civilised family night out. The second street, Camden Street, appears to be much less blighted by the toxins of modern society - it is elegant Regency architecture on a wide avenue leading into central London. Yet the following picture illustrates how the world was just as deranged back then as it is now.
Here we have a roomy, beautiful townhouse that has had its eyes poked out by a nasty, short-sighted piece of legislation that lived over a hundred and fifty years, and defined the architecture that we live with today. Window tax was introduced by sensitive souls who did not want the taxman to have knowledge of their earnings, and instead thought it would be much better to base the tax rate on the number of windows in one's house. It follows that the more well-off you are, the more windows you'll need - a fine bit of thinking if ever there was one. Naturally, tax evasion is not a modern concept, and back in the day, houseowners merely bricked up their windows and smiled contentedly at the idea that they had just saved themselves a fortune. Admittedly, you'd probably need candles in order to see each other smile, but there's no doubting that you'd be rich enough to afford them.
Possibly more ill-thought-out than Thatcher's Poll Tax, window tax nonetheless lasted until 1851, by which time people had probably noticed that British humans had begun to develop disproportionately large eyes, like nocturnal marsupials, and decided to put an end to the nonsense.
What is nonetheless remarkable is that modern-day planning regulations do not allow homeowners to put the wrong right, and knock out the 'dead' windows in their buildings. Instead they are encouraged to retain their blocked-up windows as a monument to the country's daft past.
Now how about satellite dish tax?
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Monday, June 18, 2007, 12:29 AM
Going a bit wordy here:An adjective functions like a table sauce in the fridge of vocabulary - you add it to slightly bland-tasting nouns in order to give them a certain flavour. Writing or speaking without adjectives is a pretty challenging business - just try it and you'll see what I mean.
Whilst stuck on a Heathrow train today, it occurred to me today that there were a few adjectives that only ever tended to be associated with one noun - (if you insist on me maintaining the fridge analogy, it's a bit like mint sauce, which is only usable on lamb). These can be called one-noun adjectives. Take 'intrepid' for example - can it be used with any other word than 'explorer'?
Then, you could have 'raving'. which is only routinely found parked next to 'lunatic'.
My friend Steve pointed out that the word 'mint' is only ever used with the word 'condition'. And so on...
Because there are many more, I am going to return to this entry and update it with more. In the meantime, if you have any of your own, please feel free to enrich this site with your own single-noun adjectives:
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