Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Friday 24 February 2012

Walkies...

 Spent this morning at the off site, not very busy which gave me a good chance to do the end of month checks and to write out a list of things that need stocking up. 


 On Wednesday I had worked out a route for a walk, but it was raining when I came out at lunchtime. Well today the sun was shining so with my pack on my back I walked in the opposite direction to the one I would take if I was going directly back to work and with the map on my trusty iPhone to follow off I went. First hurdle was the on-going construction works at the beginning of Westferry Road, but from then on was plain sailing, or should I say walking.  I had looked on Google earth and discovered that even though there wasn’t a vehicular way through, there was a walkway that I could and did take to head back towards Canary wharf. Some of the gardens I passed are cute. One house decorated the wall under its front window with white and blue patterned plates. I passed modern looking tower blocks, which makes a nice change from the new ones built in the old style . Tucked in the middle of it all are small convenience stores. Then I was out walking along the waterside of what would have been in my grandfather’s day a bustling dock. Now along here is a modern idea, an office block about three stores high that is floating on the water. It is moored and well secured, but it defiantly was floating.  Turning left past a busy building site,then right and there ahead of me is the footbridge I had been aiming at that leads across the water to the opposite side of the building that I had started from. A short walk across the front to the tube station and I am just about back at work. A good three quarters of an hour walk.



Money lending and ‘payday’ loans are big over here and one particularly obnoxious add on the box is for a a company called wonga, which is according to good old Wikipedia…
English Romany word for money. Originally means burning embers and in other european Romani dialects 'angaar' still has that meaning. In 18th and 19th century English 'coal' also meant money. Wonga is a borrowed Romany word.

Anyway the thing that really annoyed me  today was their latest add which  appears on the side  of the double decker buses, it says that ‘Everything will be spelt out’ Now when I went to school things that were like that were spelled out. OK they will probably say that it is an advertising gimic, I say that it is just bad grammar. I’ll get off my soapbox now.







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