yen_powell

I was knocking out some parking signs on KeySIGN software and had to use the Sign and Sub plate function which lets you choose the upper sign, gives a choice of lower plates and that you can put on a backing board for neatness. Saw this upper sign as I was scrolling down and realised you can edit the lower part.

Con men have always been with us. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2022/01/11/billy-charleys-shadwell-shams-o/

I have got blue eyes, although I once had one blue eye and one black eye when a tyre lever decided it wanted to ping back and crack me one. Note the contact lens sitting off centre, my right eye always does that.

Just had my lunch and this is what I have to look at, the foot of a welsh hobbit.

This is how we convinced Charlie to get into this damp patch. He was a bit miffed when we didn't join him and went round another way. Legal byway that is!

I don't know why you were worried, you were going to wash the bike anyway when you got home. Now in my case I would have been cautious exactly the same as you were, but mainly because I would have to live with the resulting muck on the bike till the next decent rain shower cleaned it off.

I like his chicken.

I have re-read Excession by Iain M Banks for about the zillionth time last week. His 'Culture' sci fi books make me really wistful for a future I will never live to see. As far as I can tell, there are no two culture books about the same person or place. It's a crying shame he died so young a few years ago so there are no new books to read. Excession is my favourite book of his, followed by Consider Phlebas, Surface Detail and Matter and then the others who's name I can't remember. I live in fear that someone will make a film or tv series of one of the books and pox it all up. Edit, ship names in Culture books are something else. They choose their own (being AI entities) My favourite was the warships called 'I Said I've Got a Big Stick' , 'Lapsed Pacifist' and another called 'Frank Exchange of Views'. From wikipedia The asteroid 5099 Iainbanks was named after him shortly after his death.[58] On 23 January 2015, SpaceX's CEO Elon Musk named two of the firm's autonomous spaceport drone ships Just Read The Instructions and Of Course I Still Love You, after ships in Banks's novel The Player of Games.[59] Another, A Shortfall of Gravitas, began construction in 2018. This refers to the ship Experiencing A Significant Gravitas Shortfall, first mentioned in Look to Windward.

Yeah, but it was the way he posted it that made it funnier.

I don't know why, but I found myself singing YMCA in a welsh accent under my breath just now.

I had a bright yellow and blue jacket on with the council's name stamped all over it. The park visitors just assumed I was taking pictures for official purposes. The work pictures are boring. the only excitement today was when a Romanian road worker on a nearby colleague's site came and told me the sun was in his eyes and he had driven his digger into a cast iron lamp column and it had snapped off flush with the ground and was now laying on the floor. I arranged for an emergency disconnection with our street lighting bloke, told my colleague by phone what the twat had done. Then I told the upset Romanian he was in luck, I would pay for two new lamp columns, one of which he had just skilfully removed, so he wouldn't have to tell his boss what he had done and fill out reams of insurance forms.

https://mainlandlondon.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-chinese-pagoda-victoria-park.html Zee Germans got it, swines.

That's the Regents Canal, but the rough end. It runs through to Limehouse Basin and then the Thames via a lock gate.

I drove to work this morning. Usually when I get in a car whole swathes of the UK come to a grinding halt due to traffic gridlock, me, four wheels and the rest of the UK don't get on. But this morning, I managed to get the whole way in and the whole way back without too much of a hold up. Naturally this was too much good luck, so to balls it up, the work gang didn't turn up on time so I had 45 minutes to kill and I was next to Victoria Park. The sun was low and evil to drive into, but I like taking pictures when it is like that. There was even a girl sketching one of the views I photographed. I took a picture of her whilst she was being creative. https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/dogs-of-alcibiades-south

The one I hate is the one in the belly to stop clotting. Stings like a very stingy thing.

You need something bigger than a Lenor bottle unless you have mad skillz.

We fitta all five gears and all five neutrals! Wet myself watching this.

It's called the Dengie Peninsula and this bit is the Dengie Marsh. According to the plan of the Roman Fort, the church is at the location of the main gate and the walls were half on the current dry land area and half in the marsh area behind the church. Some land must have been lost and the marsh is slowly putting it back again. Looking at the side and rear wall of the church you can see an old arch and possibly the mark of the wall, I wonder if they literally remodelled the gateway and tower to build the church.

I had taken a flask of coffee with me and guzzled most of it near the church. On the way home I stopped to take a discreet waz behind a convenient hedge. This thing was hanging in the branches right in front of my face. I'm assuming some sort of firework, perhaps someone here can identify it. Edit, now I look at the picture properly I can see the bird scarer label.

I knew there was a memorial to the abandoned air force base nearby so I rode about till I found it. It's on the road leading to the old nuclear power station. I took a picture of the bike in front of it, then remembered the top box opinions on here so took that off for a second to compare shots without it. Not much in it if you ask me. The plane looks like a Mosquito, the plane built as a bomber by furniture makers due to its wooden construction, but so fast many were used as fighters. The base seems to have been used by quite a few nationalities, so I took pictures of the names on the memorial in case anyone recognises a surname, you never know do you. There are Poles, Czechs Kiwis and Canadians shown as well as RAF and RAF Auxiliary. The remnants of some of the perimeter roads are still about. Driving schools use some for emergency stops and 3 point turn practice. My girlfriend of the caravan days gave me driving lessons when we were were down that way.

I had a short stroll to the marshy shore. There were two WW2 concrete pill boxes in the fields. I was taught that there are usually a minimum of three, all placed so that anyone trying to lob a grenade in through a window slit are under fire from the other two. I couldn't find the 3rd, maybe it was demolished by the farmer. They all got money at the end of the war for that purpose, but most just ploughed around the boxes and kept the cash instead. What a place to sit and wait for German tourists to turn up on your door step.

I usually have this place to myself, but there were people everywhere today, maybe they are getting out before they go back to work or the weather becomes more wintery. There were a few people sitting in silence in the church, so I joined them for a little while. I didn't like to take a picture whilst in there as I didn't want to disturb them, so I took one from the doorway after first turning off the flash.

I went past my old caravan site (Lucky Heather any one?) and stopped briefly at the adjacent slipway into the Blackwater. One of my caravan neighbours used to keep an old WW2 pink painted jeep (with no bonnet) at his place and would use it to tow his boat to the slipway when he was down. He came back without it in a panic one day and I and other neighbours helped him to smash up an abandoned wooden shed to make duck boards and then we helped him recover the old vehicle from the mud it had got stuck in on the foreshore. I stopped and took a picture of the approach tarmac road to the church, that's a Roman road that is. The one connecting the old fort to Chelmsford. I parked as close as you're allowed to the church and walked the last few hundred metres. I think the real Roman road over this last section is in the field to the right. It doesn't show in the pictures, but there is a definite bow in the grass like a road camber which follows the alignment to the church which used to be the gateway in to the fort. Note the adder warning signs. I tucked my trousers into my boots, like a docker who's scared of rats in a ship's hold.

The roads started to get drier the further I got from home. Along the way I suddenly found a lane full of parked cars, the reason became apparent when I came round a corner to find it was some sort of canal lock with a small cafe. Then I found a road sign with an unusual name.