These things take time.

I’ve been playing about with Google earth for a couple of days; I downloaded it months ago but then promptly forgot about it. The program is still new and loads of bits of the country aren’t as clear as the cities. You can’t see our house, but I can see the car parked outside my dad’s house. What struck me was that I was using a brand new piece of technology for purely nostalgic purposes. I was looking at places we had been, and houses we used to live in. Even places where we’ve been on holiday. Then, within a couple of minutes, I was checking directions for next Saturday. I found that, although on a road map junction 3 of the M60 looks like it has an exit onto the A34, it actually doesn’t. In fact if you want to get onto Kingsway from the motorway you have to go via fucking Birmingham almost. So Google earth has two distinct and opposite uses. A little like an exercise bike, workout and coat hanger. Any more ?

I may have mentioned eating at the Toby carvery in Carlisle. We were there yesterday after a whirlwind trip round Gretna outlet village. If the definition of a village is a group of shops next to a huge car park then it’s a village, but I suspect someone has to actually live there for it to be an official village. If it depends on the appearance of an idiot, then yeah, it is one. Anyway, back to the Toby carvery. They have prompts sellotaped to the till, presumably to ensure the waitresses don’t forget to ask things. Apart from the usual lack of punctuation and the odd missing apostrophe, there was a glaring spelling mistake. When I pointed it out to the waitress she looked at me like I was complete freak. I know I’ve said this before, but I am going to start photographing these things. These lazy fuckers need to be named and shamed.

And another thing, spurious statistics in adverts are getting worse. A new tooth brush makes your mouth “five times cleaner” Than what ? It’s also been mentioned on another blog (I forget which one) the ads that use the new flavour-of-the-month strap line “you do the …., we’ll do the ….” Fuck off ! Nescafe are doing it now with a Roland Rivron voice over. Fucking whore. How can these ad’ agencies get it so wrong ? Whichever agency does the Honda ad’s is the only one with any originality at the moment, the one with the choir is ace.