snail trails...

An unusual day for me. Why so I hear you ask, well I would if you asked it. So why was it usual for me. Ill tell you. I spent the day by myself ‘cos The Man went to work today. Got up at 0450 and had a coffee with him before he left to get the night bus into he city. No trains running from our station at that time of the morning. Back to bed to read and then snooze for a while. It is a pity that he had to go to work ‘cos it has been a nice sunny day. A bit windy, but not cold.  

I checked up on the family via Facebook and saw a picture and a comment that someone had posted about slugs coming inside. It so reminded me of the huge critters that used to invade the kitchen of daughter number two. Well I say huge, by sluggy standards I think they were. Must have been all of five centimetres. Then  The Man and I move house and wouldn’t you know it there on the kitchen floor in the mornings were the silvery slimy trails of the very same critters. I have to admit I didn’t think too much about it until one night when I went into the kitchen and before I could turn on the light I felt a very nasty cold slimy squishy sensation under my toes. Yerk! You guessed it I had trodden on one. Pretty soon after that we tracked the trails back to a small gap in the floor behind the cooker which The Man plugged up and not more snails.

Have you ever thought about the way some things change into other things all by themselves. Well I did this morning. As I said I had a coffee with The Man before he left for work. When I got up later I prepared and ate a bowl of muesli, and afterwards put the jug on for a coffee. When I poured the milk in it curdled. Funny that I thought, because it didn’t do that earlier. Repeat the process and same result. Hmm. Smells Ok. And obviously tasted OK too. So I forewent the coffee.  Forgetful me I left the milk  bottle on the bench, and when I realised this an hour or so later I went to put it back in the fridge but …hello something had happened to it, it was all gluggy and was defiantly not going into the fridge, but down the loo.  And the use by date on the bottle? Well that was tomorrow.

Looking around...

It’s amazing how fast the face of CW changes. Yesterday evening there was a triathlon, this morning, all trace of it had gone. Stands, street barriers, flags the lot, all packed up and gone. Talk about quick change artist. This morning as I came up the escalators at CW there were girls handing out long stemmed yellow roses. Some sort of promotion for a letting agent. Pity that they weren’t scented otherwise I would have been tempted to keep them, as it was I gave them to the cheery girl who greets me most mornings at Buckys.

At lunch time I had an appointment to get my eyes tested for new specs. I’ve been struggling with them for a while. Looking at cervixes and down people’s ear canals has become something more of a challenge. Not to mention reading in dim light. The examination was very thorough and the best thing about it was that it was free, funded by the NHS. Not so with the lenses that cost £440, considering I have had my current pair since 2007 I don’t really have much to grumble about. They cost about £1000, so by comparison the overall cost is much the same.

Has been quite a windy day today, a bit like being at home. But here has been a fair amount of surface flooding in some places and I heard on the news this morning that a chap was even swept way to his death.

 Technology is such a wonderful thing, well I think it is Skype and Facebook and phone text massaging allows me to keep up with what the family back home are doing. Much easier than when we lived in PNG and had to rely on plain old snail mail. Starbucks is great too with their free Wi-Fi, that’s where I spend the first three-quarter of an hour of my day chatting to whichever family member is online. Some more often than others.  

Taken for a ride

It is amazing how things pop up or change at CW. On my normal route through the mall to Starbucks I usually pass a little bookshop. We yesterday it was a small bookshop, this morning the windows were all covered and the advertising banners proclaimed that a new bigger better shoe store will be opening soon.  I wonder if it will teak as long to fit=-out as Starbucks did. Across the road a small travel agent has gone and it is unusual to see and empty store on the wharf

All along the road that I walk towards my place of work temporary barrens have been erected, getting in the way of fast moving pedestrians like my. They are to keep the crowds in check for tights triathlon. Well I certainly wouldn’t be too keen to have swim in the local river. Even if ail the reports on it say it is the cleanest it has been for many years.

When I’m in Buckys in the mornings one of the things I do is check out the family’s Facebook pages. Of course, well would be silly not to wouldn’t it. This morning I saw on a granddaughter’s page a clip of the time setting for the DeLorian in back to the future, the date for the first jump into the future was yesterday.  But when I checked it this afternoon because I wanted to post a picture here I discovered that I had, along with a whole lot of other people been taken in by a hoax. The actual date Doc sets the DeLorean to go to is in 2015. Why would someone do that . Check it out for yourself.

http://mashable.com/2012/06/27/back-to-the-future-hoax/

And another thing...

Didn’t get to go for my walk at lunchtime, had a haircut instead. Not as much of an exercise as the walk but much more costly. Around the Wharf the signs that the Olympics are nearly upon us are  beginning to appear. Large posters with direction arrows have appeared, though I don’t know why large circular stickers have been applied to platforms. After all the crowds will prevent them form being seen. No one I’ve spoken to is looking forward to the disruptions that will be caused. And as for the posters around the station suggesting passengers find an alternative way to work, or work different hours,  or even that walking between stations might be quicker, well that’s a laugh.

I’m a bit of a stickler for good grammar. I like a ‘an’ before words beginning with an ‘H’.  A hotel sounds totally wrong.  An hotel is more, and sound better too well to my ears anyway. I’ve just heard an add for a company that recycles old phones. It asks both verbally and in writing ‘are you bored of you old phone. Shouldn’t that be bored with? On the train on the way home overheard conversations make me cringe, and not just for the content either. 

A walk by the river

Not  lot to write about today, but I’m hooked on this now and just don’t feel right unless I get some words down on the screen Pretty warm again today and I had a very nice walk at lunchtime along the walkway along the edge of the Thames. The river always looks muddy no matter who the tide. It is supposed to be cleaner now than it has been in many many years Saw lots of runners and almost go run over by the odd one. Don’t totally agree with running in this heat. But lots do seem to do it. Earlier in the season I spotted a couple of pair of grebes that had laid an egg or two. I spotted one of them turning their eggs one day which proved that at least on of the pair were sitting on eggs. Since then I’ve spotted an adult pair with two chicks. The reason I write is that today I saw what I thought was a courting pair so I stopped to watch, hopeful to see the wonderful mating dance. I soon realised that I was looking at a disgruntled par of grebes. As one paddled toward the other, the other backpedalled away. I’ve never seen a bird do that before and it looked quite funny. I could see its webbed feet working furiously. Then suddenly with a flurry and splash they were gone underwater and away under the reed beds. I never saw them come up though.

What's in a name...

The other day when we discovered the Cheapside Fayre and had a tour of St Mary le Bow church, I meant to write about other things too. We sat in a small garden outside what had originally been the Royal Exchange, and though the outside remains virtually unchanged, not so the inside. Now it is a very smart eatery. As we ate we heard snatches of music, which came from we realised when we walked up the steps a string quartet doing their thing. On the front porch we also spotted a butterfly decorated phone box. It was I read in the paper today a part of a London wide display of decorated booths in aid of a children’s charity.

In front of the seat where we had lunch was a plinth with an outline of the notable building in the area and there to jog my memory it was. The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street.  No not a homeless person, the nickname of the Bank of England. It is years since I have heard of it. I do remember my Mum telling me about it.

The nickname the "The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street" first appeared in print as the caption "Political Ravishment or The Old Lady of Threadneedle Street in danger" to a cartoon published in 1797 by James Gillray. It depicts William Pitt the Younger, the Prime Minister of the day, pretending to woo the Bank, which is personified by an elderly lady wearing a dress of £1 notes seated on a chest of gold.

So that had me wondering about two things, the origin of the word ‘nickname’ did it have anything to do with the devil or ‘old nick’? No such thing I found out when I googled it. It originated as an Anglo-Saxon word: ekename. In the Anglo-Saxon tongue, "eke" meant "also" or "added." The term seemed just a bit awkward to pronounce; so, it became slurred, converting ekename to nekename and finally to become nickname. So there you go.

And if you’re old enough to remember pounds shillings and pence, and like me pondered over the symbols for the same £,s,d.

The £ sign developed over the years from the letter 'L', the initial letter of the Latin word libra meaning a pound of money. It is generally agreed that the letters 's' for shilling and 'd' for penny stand for the Latin words "solidus" and "denarius" respectively. These were originally Roman coins of considerably greater value than the shilling and the penny.