Phase 1 of the plan is working…
A lot of people need to find out about good socks so I’ve optimised this post to indicate that I am an influential sock specialist, which is not true.
Why would I do that? To increase traffic so I can monetize the site, sell it and then retire to wherever it is Tiger Woods met all of those hotties, that’s why.
- Size 7 – 9 Marks and Spencers generic black sports socks (10 pairs)
- Bridgedale hiking socks (3 pairs) – great underneath slippers
- My two-tone, professional edition, Next mid-length socks, made for men who want to take risks
- Nike running shoe ankle socks (4 pairs) – stops me looking like a German when I go for one of my frequent high intensity jogs
- Oversize red football socks (4 pairs) – useful for keeping shinpads in place
Tweets welcomed – http://tinyurl.com/y9sl43q
Masterpiece, it says.
Some, on purpose not very interesting, Portuguese man (sorry, poet) writes a number of little arty-farty, non-narratively interlinked pieces of prose about how existing is, like, a bit hard to understand, a la any navel-gazing teenage boy who would quite like to be in a band, and then some latter day ponce collects them all together and turns them into a book.
No.
*UPDATE*
I’ve just read the review from the Guardian.
Pseuds Corner, I have a late entry:
He is a man magnificently at home in nature, a virtuoso of pre-Christian innocence, almost a Portuguese teacher of Zen
The fragmentary, the incomplete is of the essence of Pessoa’s spirit. The very kaleidoscope of voices within him, the breadth of his culture, the catholicity of his ironic sympathies
Over and over, Pessoa asks of himself and of the living mirrors which he has created, ‘Who am I?’, ‘What makes me write?’, ‘To whom shall I turn?’
Throughout, Pessoa is aware of the price he pays for his heteronomity. ‘To create, I’ve destroyed myself… ‘
Good grief.
I am very excited in anticipation of going to watch 22 men kick a ball around a field, perform swan dives and swear their heads off.
Chelsea will be playing Everton on 12th December. The wife and I will be watching from the ‘Bronze’ level hospitality suite, thanks to an unexpected but gratefully received turn of events at work.
Just as the sun goes down one Sunday night in February 2004, Chris arrives at Hurley.
I’ve been cycling to work across central London for almost exactly twelve months. I’m not yet dead. This makes me an expert on staying alive on a bike, in central London, either side of a working day (if on nothing else).
Here are my learnings:
1. Assertion is the thing that’s much better than utter bastard arrogance and please-run-me-over timidity
2. Flouro jackets make the fashion police feel sad but are otherwise good
3. Have a bike that doesn’t fall to bits around your ankles when you need to pedal your way out of trouble
4. Red bus drivers and black cabs, mostly good – every other vehicle, totally unpredictable, apart from in their intention to make your screaming self decorate their windscreen
5. Just because you’ve jumped a particular set of lights a hundred times, don’t ever stop thinking about what you’re doing (aka. keep your brain switched on)
6. Pedestrians are not figments of your imagination
7. Better to ignore the highway code and live, than be squashed to death by a lorry
If the above information safely was tucked into every cyclist’s head, the capital’s steaming red jelly incidents would likely fall close to zero.
There’s a first time for everything.
My hand writing is terrible. Writing a letter of condolence to the mother of a child that I had sent to his death would not be something I entered into lightly. Burdened by a scrawl to make a doctor blush would, for me, as I guess for Gordon, make the task even more draining.
Brown seems to have significant intrinsic issues connecting with people. Having a pop at him for trying to do the right thing and inevitably messing it up, on such an occassion as the writing of that letter, seems to be taking political vendetta to a level of meanness that doesn’t sit well.
Having said that, his staff should have checked the letter before it was sent. Maybe they were to scared to point out his error.
The wife and I went on a RYA Day Skipper course in Falmouth last week.
We also had a sail about in one of these (Cornish Shrimper):
Note: sunny weather in October.
About two years ago I went to a CIPR event in which Carter Ruck, the well known libel lawyers, told us how they could stop a story breaking out through various legal procedures. I remember thinking, ‘ …gossip will out.’
Some oil firm, Trafugira, may have dumped some toxic waste off the coast of West Africa and poisoned some locals, perhaps even to death. The Guardian tried to report on the questions a MP asked in Parliament on the subject. Trafugira called in Carter Ruck to stop the Guardian’s article from being published.
Bad news for Trafugira and Carter Ruck, the story leaked out onto ‘The Internet’ and rapidly spread. Carter Ruck retreated, to whit see the Guardian’s front page story and, more amusingly, The Daily Mash’s take on Carter Ruck’s approach.
Trafugira’s reputation may have taken a blow, though I’m not sure how many people will be shocked by anything an oil firm does. Carter Ruck’s business model, on the other hand, is surely damaged. What’s the point in stopping up one hole in a dyke with a legal finger, if a hundred other holes immediately appear that are out of arms reach?
We don’t know what we don’t know, so it could be that Carter Ruck is very effective in getting rid of inconvenient stories. However, I suspect that, due to the Internet, using legal tools to stop stories is a hiding to not very much (while continuing to be massively expensive) . The best that can be said, is that Carter Ruck can slow the pace of gossip, to give perpetrators/victims just enough time to prepare what they are going to have to say or do. We found out about Harry in Afghanistan – thanks to Drudge. There are plenty of other things we found out, quickly or eventually, that we ‘weren’t supposed to’. Parties to those stories end up having to deal with them at some point. They could save themselves some money by dealing with them sooner rather than later.
If Carter Ruck is the loser, PR is the winner. First, PR is closely linked to CSR, which Trafugira could have used a bit of before they allegedly started tipping buckets of toxic sludge overboard. Secondly, PR can prepare companies for unanticipated issues so they at least have their chains of command and processes sorted out. Lastly, PR is good at understanding a company’s relationship with the public (the clue is in the name) and can recommend what it should do to make the best of perhaps a not too brilliant situation.
I wonder if Carter Ruck is tracking itself online and sends me a shirty letter about this?
The loudest and most embarassing bike ever created
I bought this bike in November 2008, just before starting a new job in London. Over the last ten months it’s developed an array of noises, any one of which could be mistaken for a death rattle.
It was immediately apparent that there was an issue with the seating arrangement, as it creaked every time I placed my finely chiselled buttocks on the saddle. I tightened and loosened the saddle fixings, but that wasn’t the issue. After a couple of weeks, I got cheesed off with it and had a better look. By putting pressure through the seat post, I replicated the noise. If I tightened up the quick release the noise got worse. If I loosened it, the noise went but the seat post slid all over the place. I lightly greased the seat post and tightened it up: the noise stayed pretty much the same and the seat post slid all over the place – wonderful.
Then the headset/handlebar area started to groan. I got the headset professionally serviced and that got rid of enough of the noises to be able to pinpoint the worst. The handlebars were the seat of the groaning. I tightened it all up, but it didn’t really work. Cycling along, I sound like a a galleon beating to windward in a gale.
Then the pedals started making little clicking noises (that problem on top of them acting like greased ballbearings underfoot anytime they got wet). I couldn’t really be bothered to try to fix that one.
The last noise for which I’ve positively identified the source is a rattling/banging noise made by the chain arm/back end locking lever bar everytime I cycle over the least little bump.
And the front brake caliper seizes up everytime the bike is folded. And the seat post gets my hands and work shirt dirty because the grease that I couldn’t fully clean off has gone skanky.
I believe most of these noises are due to the slightly futuristic geometry of the frame, i.e. it’s fundamentally a bad bike. If I could turn back time I would buy a Dahon or a Brompton.
