A Bit of Everything

Time this baby was updated! It's been a crazy month - besides the normal study I've been preparing for a couple of Icelandic exams (the annoying thing being that I've chosen to take them), but things are going well. So what's going on?

Well, a while ago I mentioned a concert I was doing and that I'd put some videos up once I could. They've still not been sorted out yet, so I thought I'd put a couple of audio clips up. Why not? The first one is a great song called 'Breath of Heaven'. The second one is a little (read: lot) more tongue in cheek. Some of it's in Icelandic and my friend Johanna (from Iceland) wanted to hear it...

Those of you who travel round in London regularly will be familiar with the various free papers that get handed out as you walk around (I say 'handed out' - the LondonPaper guy actually chased me when it looked like I was going to walk past - and I was. The ink comes off on your hands). Anyway, my personal favourite is the London Lite. Every day they have a photo of someone in London reading the Lite, and if that person sees themselves in the paper, they can win £50. You won't believe the number of times I've hung around in various hotspots holding my Lite and trying to look nonchalant, but they've not got me yet.

But is this not Ken Livingstone?!If the polls are to be believed, he might wanna pick up that £50.

Two final things:
1. Some friends of mine (and maybe of yours) are doing sponsored events to raise money for great causes. Andy and his wife Verity, are doing a fat bike ride round Essex to pick up funds for the Little Havens Children's Hospice (had to think about my apostrophe there) while Stacey and Hayley are running for Cancer Research. Click on their names to view the pages.

2. I made up a joke! And I think I did make it up (sometimes it's a tough call, isn't it? I SWEAR I made up 'cool beans!' but no-one believes me. It had to come from somewhere.).

Anyway:

Why was the Jehovah's Witness late?
Because he had to go round the houses.

I thought that was quite good. I may need to tweak the wording slightly, and I want to run it by one of my Jehovah's Witness friends...

Take care.

Chavs and Celebs

This is a cab, innit?

1. I recently read this story in the Metro newspaper and thought it really deserved sharing.
This is what happens when a 19-year-old chavette thinks it would be a good idea to use Cockney rhyming slang when phoning directory enquiries to book a cab from her home in London to Bristol Airport.

Operator: Hello, Directory Enquiries.
Chavette: Hi. I wanna Joe Baxi.
Operator: Er... (checks) ... I’m afraid I can’t find anyone by that name.
Chavette: (irritated) It ain’t a person, it’s a cab, innit.

The operator duly gives her what she asks for and puts her through to the nearest supplier of cabinets, Displaysense.

The sales advisor at Displaysense seemed equally confused.

Chavette: (fuming) Look love, how hard is it? All I want is your cheapest cab, innit. I need it for 10am. How much is it?

The sales advisor tells her £180. The stroppy teenager gives her address before hanging up.

The next morning, rather than being picked up by a cab, the young woman had the cabinet dropped off.

Priceless.

2. One of the interesting things about being in London is that you occasionally see ‘famous’ people while walking around (I usually just see people from Big Brother, who generally hang around Oxford Circus – although I recently saw Connie Fisher and Dave Gorman too.*)

Have any of you seen the new Kit Kat advert with Girls Aloud? Where Sarah Harding’s walking down the steps in front of all the photographers, before she stops to have a break, have a Kit Kat. That advert was filmed on the steps of UCL. As I walk to the station, I generally walk around the front or around the back of UCL, depending on how I feel at the time – it makes no difference. However, on this night it did make a difference, because if I’d walked around the front, I would have seen this: Instead I walked around the back and saw this: Not that I’m the biggest Girls Aloud fan in the world, but it would have been interesting, and would have perhaps provided a slightly better photo for the mitchenstein365 page.

*Not together, I should add. He seemed to be wearing a t-shirt that said ‘I’m Not a Celebrity’ which threw me off at first. Just like when Girls Aloud did a French version of Can’t Speak French. My mind can’t deal with that.