Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Typical.

Just as my stats go on hiatus, sorry, server maintenance, which ensures that whilst the status messages informs me everything is being logged normally, the actual stats, when they reappear, will tell me that I achieved an all time high of two visitors on Saturday, and nothing since then. Oh, hang on, the beginning of that sentence rather suggests there ought to be a different ending, so here goes, The Man from Uckle (who's probably too young to get that reference, even though he's not that much younger than me, but somehow my brain has convinced itself that it's the other side of my birthday already, this is a long sentence isn't it, maybe it comes of being old, or of thinking I'm older than I am, and I did find myself putting the butter in the cupboard and the Marmite in the fridge the other day, having made toast around a banana plant, which I was only doing because I'd run out of milk, and do you think I'm mad yet, or should I go on a bit longer) posted in response to my post yesterday on taking photographers of complete strangers.

Upon seeing this, I thought I'd post comment in reply on his blog, only then realised that if the comment is longer than the original post, it probably ceases to be a comment and becomes an armada of landing craft crunching into the shore.

So, the comment as it was:

Amusing and entertaining? You must really be trying to avoid using "interesting". And all I thought I was doing was ranting, in a poorly edited, were-not-where way.

You think it's great that I have to go and do these things? You would; you don't have to.

And I've still got two films to go by the 25th, and they're both real sods to get done.

So am I supposed to now demand that you do indeed take 36 pictures of people you don't know? Well, I'm not going to, because you've got other things to be getting on with.

And now for the traditional wait a week while the film is developed, then at least another week while I'm too lazy to upload them to Flickr (but it's not my scanner, so...), before finally unleashing them on the unsuspecting, er, two people who bother to look at them. I know they're usually a bit dire, but still occasionally there are reasonable ones.

BTW was your use of "relatively regular" a subtle hint for me to stop forgetting to post for a week, and then launch the week's half-finished drafts once hastily patched up? But I'm so busy, I have, er, various unfinished emails to people, including Mr pre-InAcFa (I'm doing it, but you only sent half an email so I wasn't sure if that was it or not, and why can't you use over or out? And by "doing" I mean "have read").

And rather obviously, not all the last paragraph would have appeared in the comment.

Hmm, and now Dan's comments elsewhere on overused words has made me start to wonder about those I overuse (yet again). Hmm is one of them, as is well, oh, er, hang on, and any other silly "this is speech really, not proper grown up writing, because I don't want to be a grown up" techniques. So are fiendishly, cunning, drat, damn, sod, bugger, arse [Doctor Freud will see you now] and, so, then, yet, but, slightly, somewhat, a bit, rather, obvious, just, only, whilst, although, though, and according to MS Word which. And those are simply the words I am aware of overusing.

But I often have periodic purges (otherwise they wouldn't be periodic, not unless it was a very long period) of words I worry I overuse. Which is probably why I don't worry about using interesting, because I know I killed it off years ago, and it never recurs now. Oh, and sorry, if I'm speaking (and these lists illustrating words as examples really could do with some font trickery to distinguish, malarkey, them from the words forming the sentences, but that would require ra... sli... somewh... quite a lot of inserting tags, which I don't feel like doing. I am of course, and of course is another one, quite safe in using quite having completely vanquished it from my vocabulary years ago. Assez is a damn handy word).

Basically (that too, along with admittedly and apparently), to a certain extent I give up caring as long as I can steer clear of nice and lovely.

Moving on:
Somewhere on Danny boy's page (he probably gets that a lot, and so it probably annoys him, but hey ho a nonny nonny. I'm sorry, I appear to have lapsed into Shakespearian song) is a link which lead me to City of Sound (I'm not sure if I meant to go there, but it appeared in one of the "open in a new window while I carry on reading the post" windows), which had as part of the Flickr badge in the sidebar this image. Which now means in my head I have the voice of Rabbi Lionel Blue announcing "Mind the gap".

And with that thought for the day I'll stop.

Except to say why does the weather vex me so? If it's not blowing a hoolie [insert crude comment here] it's trying to freeze at nights. Which means I'm doing the hokey-cokey with a banana plant, in a big heavy pot, with big leaves which catch on everything (but it's easier now, and week of being between the washing machine and dishwasher has insured that most of those leaves which had not succumbed to the wind, have succumbed to Hotpoint hinges.

Oh, and Buzz, it's not just you it happens to. My brother spent the weekend agonising over whether to claim on his insurance. He came out on Saturday morning to find his car parked on the pavement, with wonky looking wheels, and well sculpted driver's side doors and wing. It would appear someone hadn't quite figured out the line of houses barring the way might suggest the long straight road is about to come to an end. So being him, he was upset, he panicked, he sat down and thought things through, he worked out whether it would be worth the loss of no-claims to claim on the insurance. He had just about made his mind up when he remembered the insurance broker had seemed convinced he lived in Brixton and so adjusted the fully-comp rates accordingly, and so the car was on third party fire and theft. There goes potential scrounging off him in the future.

Anyhoo,