Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Snow lies in Helsinki.
[/Graham Greene park bench in Vienna espionage voice].

No really, it does. See here. Guess who was playing round on Flickr. Guess who ought to be doing something else.

Other worthwhiles:
A woman with a fetish for circles [even if she doesn't always know what they are. Packaging? It's a vegetable steamer, or at least pretending to be]. It turns out she's not the only one. I of course have taken far too long to figure out why the circles are squared.
Someone who I suspect tweaks the saturation levels in his images. Not that that is bad, it's just I wondered how he got pictures like that, and then realised reality might have had some help. The first I saw is almost like a Hopper.
A physicist who likes playing with light.
In part it's the photography and manipulation, and in part it's the subject itself.
And if you thought the others played with their photography, try this one.

I need to get better at photography. I would also like to point out that a heck of a lot of my images on Flickr were taken with a really cheap point-and-click camera. And of course the most recently uploaded set are the worst. I think I assumed that because there was something interesting in the picture that the picture would be. Giraffes in the far-distance do not have quite enough impact for that to be true.

But as I am currently rejigging the sets to reflect the good, the bad, and "what was I thinking?", I'm...where was I going with this sentence? Anyway, I think there are some good images in there, but now I'm feeling guilty about the dross. Although the rejiggeriness might have to wait as Flickr appears to be having problems (well it's liable to be my computer, but it's best not to tempt fate).

Moving on to the invariably amusing or mildly interesting search engine hits. I'll carefully gloss over the numerous people searching for something like "violin insect pawn", as I'd prefer not to know, although quite a few of these search originate from computers in Kentucky.

To whoever was searching for Panhagglety, Google helpfully links to a page where I mention the word in passing, and not to the page with the Panhagglety recipe.

To the many seeking: venice francesco da mosto soundtrack. Um, the Amazon page for the book is only plugging books on Venice, which suggests there isn't one to buy [yet]. Watch the BBC's site, as no doubt they'll mention if there is to be a soundtrack or DVD, or series of brightly coloured washable toys [36 months and up], or American version, or radio version, or spin-off, or lucrative internet tie-in, or magazine, or holiday package. Well, I suppose they have to have some way of funding the internet streaming broadcasts of Question Time. And now I find there is no BBC site for Venice the series. Oh well.

And what is it about this blog that attracts searchs such as "accidental nudity" [how?] and "cottaging derivation"? By the way, does anyone know where that version of the word came from? I'm taking it to mean engaging in [probably homo]sexual acts [predominantly oral sex] within a public toilet [or a public space]. As you can tell I'm not exactly au fait with it (but as my most informative source on it has been the excellent Monkey Dust... Look, it took me years to realise why the southbound lay-by on the sliproad onto the A3 from the M25 was always so busy. Yes, that many single men can have realised they wanted the junction after junction 10, and there's more light to read maps by in the woods).

Although, where does the term cottaging come from? My hefty Collins is no help sticking with the orthodox view that a cottager is someone who inhabits a cottage. Checking some of the other results [most of which are SEOd junk], and I find one informative page, which clarifies the definition, but still does not help explain what the term is derived from. It also explains about using armpits in achieving male orgasm (sorry for the prudish tone, but would that be sex or masturbation? Presumably it needs more than one person, unless very supple, so it's not the latter; but sex implies penetration rather than envelopment. Or is that just me being too Clintonian? What do you expect from someone who had to have some of the questions in a purity test explained to him?).

Other sources - I am rather surprised to find one of the results is a gov.uk site. Is there something we should know? Ah, it is the rather unfortunate term "tele-cottaging". Which sounds like they've stuck CCTV in the bogs. Presumably the speaker was thinking of something along the lines of weekenders.

All of which doesn't actually answer the question: what is ther derivation of the verb "cottage"? As it seems the original use is related to blowjobs in public lavatories, what is the connection to a small rural house? The only thing I can think of, is that somewhere there are some loos in a building that looks like a cottage. Which given the Victorian penchant for tweeing things up a bit, and so sticking thatched half-timbered huts in assorted squares and parks, I think might be the reason. I'm now trying to remember if there is a building in the middle of Soho Square, and whether or not it has such a public convenience. I think there is some mock-tudor thing, but I've no idea of the use, and I'm not too sure I've got the right square. There's certainly a cottagey building in the place with the bowling green, but I'm fairly sure that's not Soho.

Anyone care to correct me? Incidentally, apparently Americans have Tea Rooms not cottages, hence the dearth of sites mentioning cottaging. Is anyone else suddenly having odd thoughts about the National Trust? Bagsy not the chocolate fudge cake.

And while we're at it: piping hot. Why "piping"? The dictionary doesn't say anything about it, other than noting it is "extremely hot". Most of the entries for piping are about pipes or thin things. One entry mentions piping as a shrill noise, such as whistling. We know that when things are heated, they usually contain hot air or steam, which often whistles or hisses out. So does "piping hot" mean an object which is hot enough to have air or steam noisily escaping?

Or maybe it means the object has jets of steam visibly escaping, as a pressurised visible fluid would do from the end of a pipe?

The two sources that appear via Google both suggest it is food noisy with heat.

And having completely forgotten what it was that I was going to write about, I'll give up.

Anyhoo,