yen_powell

They are Satan's Testicles!

The ones I saw were on for someone special, we are not talking standard British issue. I forgot to mention I hung on and copped a second eyeful when she left, purely for confirmation you understand.

They look like grapes that have gone off but taste like meat to me. I'm alone in this, everyone else I know loves the things.

Stuff I can't pull open easily any more, plastic covered items etc. More and more I have to go looking for scissors after a fruitless few attempts. People who are so busy faffing about in their cars doing other stuff they miss a green light and go at the last minute just as the red comes back on. Things you have to do at work that you know are just a box ticking exercise and makes no difference what so ever but take up your time anyway. Police cars obeying speed limits in front of you when you are in a hurry and there is no alternative route. Olives. Prawns, they look at you. Noncey tea.

No he'd been gone a while before it occurred to me to search them for a proof photo. I suppose I could try our local archive place.

Yup. There were a few nicknames, like:- Hoxton Tom (google that one) Dracula The Judge (young bloke, summer job after his law degree) BTC (Bog Trotting C*nt) a nasty Irishman I took a dislike to. His girlfriend had her face removed in the film SEVEN just before she dumped him in real life which cheered me up no end. Daffy (not to her face) Otis (not to her face) cos of being caught shagging in a lift at the GLC (RIP) Normsboy (cos his last name was Tebbett) Hacker (for his footballing atrocities) Lord Welk (RIP) Len of Bow or Groutie as mentioned earlier Hooker (cos he was called TJ, short for Telampule Jaganathan, a Tamil Sri-Lankan) Rabid Abed (as mentioned earlier) The Body (Cos it was lovely and curved in all the right places) The Sperm Whale also known as The Rottweiler. Stanley Mean Time (because he only came in when he liked) Fug (because he liked West Ham, now very senior, who still calls me Motor) Cookie (RIP) Muzzy (never sure why) Muck Von (cos his first two initials were MV and he was a racist) Jod (caught wanking in the toilet, cockney rhyming slang for that is Jodrell Bank) Renais (cos he said everything twice, I know that's should be Michelle of the Resistance, but you know how it is)

I used to know the council photographer until he retired, we competed for the single motorbike space in the work car park in my early days, but he had an Italian bike so was usually broken down on the way to work leaving me to park my CX500 there instead. One of the things he did for me was give me a log on i.d. for all the council photographs stored on our server in case I wanted to use them for any work purposes. I have looked so hard for a picture of her with that shovel but couldn't find one. If I could put the shovel with the picture..... Last I heard the photographer was enjoying his retirement by riding a horse on some prairie in Canada and he had a heart attack and was very lucky to survive it due to his remoteness when it struck.

Things Seen out of an office window:- For quite a few years (probably 89-95) I was based on the 2nd floor of a small mini town hall that faced on to Roman Road in east London. In those days we were allowed our own desk and I plonked mine right next to the window along with my drawing board and wheeled cabinet with all my pens, pencils, stencils, set squares, compasses, and all the other paraphernalia that a successful international draughtsman and man of mystery surrounds himself with. I also had a normal desk chair and best of all, a tall swivel chair which I could spin myself on till I felt sick, any time I wanted to. I have grabbed a GSV view of the building as it is now and put an arrow pointing at my window. They managed to get it clean after I moved out, although the carpet was a write off. (That tree wasn't there back then) Anyway, in between producing works of fine art and drinking tea I would occasionally gaze out of my window, usually until my boss would shout, 'Oi Motorhead, get on with your work you lazy twat.” I have been called Motorhead at work since 1986 when I turned up on my first day with long hair and a leather jacket knocking the potted plants over with my crash helmet. That scruffbag looks like Motorhead someone joked and it stuck. Variations were used such as, “Oi M. Head, Oi Motor, Oi Monsier Head, Oi Mr Head”, you get the idea….Gradually less and less people know me as that now, the older generation has retired, moved or popped their clogs, although at one time, our chief exec was going to allow me to have 'motor.head' as the first part of my work email address. The I.T. department nipped that in the bud. It still occasionally gets shouted across a noisy street by people old enough to remember. I saw many things out of my window, I will now list some:- 1/ Diana, Princess of Wales' underwear. She was visiting the building for some reason, the police had been in hours before she got there to look for bombs and assassins and our small car park at the rear was full of coppers on BMW K75s. We had been told that we could stand on the stairwell to see her as she went up them, but I wasn't a big royal fan so I decided to spin around on my tall chair whilst the governor was away. Anyway, a crowd had gathered and I heard a cheer and looked out of the window. A large black car pulled up and the rear passenger door was right under my window. Someone opened the door from the outside and first to emerge was a lady in waiting who gave a classic example of how a lady should get out of a car in a short skirt, nothing was put out there for general viewing. Then the Princess of Wales showed the incorrect way to get out. It was done that poorly I could read the labels. I'll say no more on the subject in case MI5 come for me. On a seperate note, a bloke came in just after another occasion when she was planting a tree in the borough. He had a lovely shiny shovel she had used for the photos and perhaps a gentle dab or two at the soil around the tree. He was in a rush to get to the reception and apparently thought turning up with a shovel would look uncouth. He asked me to put it in my locker for safe keeping. He then retired or rather was bullied out for various reasons and it is now in my garage with crusted bits of concrete on it when I used to to mix up a shed base. 2/ Bootsie, I often saw an old woman with snowy white hair and shoes with large flaps sticking out at the front of the toe and the back of the heel. She would rush along with these slapping at the pavement and sometimes local children would run along mocking her. I asked a lady working with us at the time what she thought they were. She laughed and said that they were the pieces you bought to resole shoes and that you were then supposed to trim the excess off which the old lady hadn't done. I saw her often, sometimes shouting at people, sometimes looking frightened and nervous. I found out years later she was well known locally as Bootsie and was a concentration camp survivor with mental issues. 3/ Reggie Kray. Ronnie Kray had died whilst incarcerated in Broadmoor Hospital and the cortege was leave from a small funeral directors in Bethnal Green Road. This leads onto Roman Road and the streets were heaving with people who wanted to watch it go by as Reggie was to be allowed to attend the funeral on day release from prison. There were more barriers put up along the foot ways than for the London Marathon, it was a very big deal locally. Colleagues in Bethnal Green had even lowered some evil shaped traffic calming measures for the hearse so the deceased wouldn't get bruised when it went over it. You could hear constant cries of “They loved their Mum”, or “They bought very pensioner a colour telly you know!”, or even, “They only mutilated and murdered their own, bless them, we wouldn't have no trouble now if they were about still carrying out their protection rackets and shooting people.” When the procession finally went past I saw the main car behind the hearse with the back windows down. It was proceeded and followed by the roughest looking bunch of ne'r do wells I have ever seen, I was glad I was up a few floors, they were even scary from a distance. Bald heads and sunglasses abounded, I recall one black man with dread locks all the way down the back of his knee length leather coat. We used to joke that if you went on a 2 week holiday then the borough would look different when you came back. A new road, or something demolished, or a new tower block etc. You could see Reggie Kray's face looking out the window at all the people and also at all the buildings. I got the impression he couldn't believe how much had changed since 1969, he looked a bit sad and lonely and of course, old, still recognisable though. I wasn't in the building for the second funeral when he passed away, but colleagues who were there said there was hardly anyone in the street to watch it pass by, it was suspected that they only came to the first one to see a live Kray pass by. 4/ The Moroccan murder attempts and my day in court as a witness. To be continued.

I'm even more impressed with putting a big bike on the centre stand in flip flops!

What was the middle choice again??

Heard this for the first time last night as well

Wack the volume up, probably put this here already, but heard it last night and it deserves an airing again. If only I could find the video of the first time I heard it on a tv music show. Couple of female ballet dancers just danced the whole thing, was brilliant, never found it since.

Have you thought about retraining, it's never too late?

Another link from my favourites folder, this bloke cracks me up.

That pairing of James Bond and Han Solo makes that film one of my favourites ever.

Dartford, if anyone even just looks at the bridge or tunnels in a funny way then the whole area comes to a grinding halt. I was supposed to drive to Aveley last week just north of the bridge and just before I was due to leave I checked google maps for the traffic situation. Everywhere around there was black with standstill traffic (might have been dark red, but colour blind and all that). I had to grab all my stuff out of the car and start strapping it to my bike at the last minute.

yes, you got one right. The one who blew his hat off.

Farm's still going, do a nice set of market stalls on a Saturday now. I had to resurface the whole length of Stepney Way a few years ago and I offered to sort out their puddle filled crossover at the same time but they said they couldn't close it any day of the week to let me do the work so it got left. My resurface of Stepney Way was a second attempt due to snow a few weeks earlier. I didn't actually have a legal road closure the second time round but told everyone I did and got away with it. When I turned up on the morning before closing off the road what do I find? A car wrapped around a lamp post, a boy driver in custody and a ring of police vehicles at jaunty angles after a high speed chase. I asked the rozzer in charge if he was going to measure any skid marks because they wouldn't exist in an hour or so.

Three Mills. This is actually a few feet away from a massive Tesco car park and about 50 yards from the A12 Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road. Lots of artistic types running about outside as there is a film/tv studio attached. Lovely building on the river Lea. https://spitalfieldslife.com/2021/08/26/at-the-house-mill-o/ Streetview so you can look around at the not so pretty surroundings. https://goo.gl/maps/chiGNHdbhiofyPoV7

Tidying up my favourites folder last night and found this one. I knew I kept it for a reason, cracks me up. Guess my favourite two people out of the whole collection.

I didn't even know they had Butlins in Spain??

We set off along the dark steamy tunnel. I was doing my duck like shuffle. My hands were held to each side pushed hard against the old brickwork in a desperate attempt to ensure perfect balance, thank god they'd given me gloves. No way was I going to fall forward or backwards. At least there wasn't any room to fall side ways! The water came up to just below my crouched down backside. It had turds and toilet paper floating on top and underneath the water was a thick bed of sludge. I was warned to not kick the 'silt' too much, but rather to tread on it gently otherwise I would be releasing possibly dangerous gases. The bloke at the top proved correct, there seemed to be no horrible smell now I was down here. There were no rats either, although I saw a few bait holders screwed to walls in some of the manholes. I was told that they would know we were down here and usually went into hiding till we'd gone again. As we moved along we occasionally came into slightly wider parts where there was a manhole above our heads. This allowed a brief moment to stand upright before ducking down to waddle again. In one we saw a sewer worker slightly up some of the rungs, doing some pointing work, the lid open above him at one of the vented manholes. I was told that some men even took their sandwiches down with them if working at lunch time, I took that to be a joke, but you never know. After about 10 sections between manholes the sludge started to get higher and higher until it finally blocked our way forward. The lead man called it a day and said we all had to go back to the next open manhole to exit the sewer. This was easier said than done. By the time I had managed to turn 180 degrees, desperate not to stumble forward, I think my waders were still facing the original direction and the seat of my fetching yellow rubber suit seemed to be in front of my bollocks now, cutting off my testicular blood supply somewhat. We made it to the next open manhole and climbed the rungs up to the road. After struggling to get myself and my battery pack through the lid again, I gratefully stood up in the cool air and crossed the road to a waiting man who had connected a stand pipe to a hydrant. He hosed us all down and gave us black sacks to put our gear in. For some reason they didn't want my suit, boots or gloves back, so I kept them in my locker for many years until I lent them to a friend to clear a castle moat with. He never gave them back, every time I asked about them he'd purse his lips and say, “Ooooh, don't mention the waders”, wink and walk away. I googled some pictures to show you what sort of thing we had gone down, the black and white picture looks like a slightly bigger diameter, but otherwise is pretty accurate. The colour picture is the usual view I got when going through the video surveys, only with a fatburg instead of shite.