Anyhoo (yes "anyway" was already taken).

Yet another appeal for help.

I need to pick a watch.

I was supposed to get one for my brother's wedding but that didn't quite happen (apparently my Velcro-strapped digital thing which gains time wouldn't have gone with the flowers).

Then I got told that apparently it's going to be a present for being best man (I like this idea. Not great if one thinks about the stress-payback ratio, but still I think I may need to encourage my brother to marry more often).

And then I got an email from the place we nearly bought a watch from with a code for 10% off for the next week: use "Dad10" during when paying at Christopher Ward. Valid until 17th inst.

Except, you know that whole decision thing? Um yeah.

Last time I got as far as steel bracelet, dark face, chronograph. But I have really skinny wrists which makes me wary of anything that will make me walk with a list. And I do mean skinny; I can make the distal phalanx of my thumb completely cover that of my middle finger with my wrist in the hole. Hence sticking to the smaller end of the range (and the first person to suggest a ladies watch will get glared at. Anyway, they're all pink and diamonds).

Which I think leaves me with round or square.

Square is a bit Mac and a bit my-father-ish. Round is a bit fifties aircraft factory.

So which would you suggest? Or do you think I should consider something else? Answers not on a postcard please.

Anyhoo,

I think I've just found the flaw in quirky urbanesque* photography; it doesn't make good birthday cards.

* See a long, long time ago in blog not exactly very, very far away.

Even the things that aren't QU aren't quite right.

So I'm going to outsource my taste. Or crowdsource it or some such. Basically if any of you can think of something I've taken that would make a good card, tell me. Either comment below, email or tag it yourself with "moothis" if you can.

And yes, this is my first ever attempt (except a dissertation, sundry coursework and one birthday card that was actually made from white A4 so doesn't count) at printing out digital stuff. Yes, I know it has been some while since I stopped using film, and so stopped being forced to print things out, and that I have just a few digital images, but printing things means deciding what to print. And it turns out you can't just tell a printer "Oh, whatever you're having".

Anyway, thanks to the wonders of how-long's-it-done-that-technology I can now show you what I've tended to go for (in no particular, which is actually reverse chronological, order).



But I'm not sure all will get printed because of the whole having to work out who to send them to thing.

And guess who keeps finding himself gravitating towards the photographic cards in shops and has eventually twigged that I can do roughly equivalent things which cost less, save the running round shops trying to find one decent card (it's all kitsch or kittens, ribbons or ribald) and might even stretch to some very minor ego boosting (if I can get past the pride-is-a-sin neuroses).

Anyway, if you have alternative suggestions then please let me know.

And all this is nothing to do with Sunday, which entailed the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition to which I inducted GA (variable yet good as ever, even with the one that's my GSCE art coursework minus the ambulance my art teacher made me put in. And am I meant to be getting less wowed by but more prone to trying to work how I can nick ideas from the photography room?), her then buying a card there despite my protestations (it had cat on it. Not even a kitten. A cat in a French wine box. OMD) and then trundling off to a party with a swimming pool on the roof where I discovered that apparently Wii Bowling is easier than normal bowling (I got a strike. On the last go. When I'd given up caring. I wasn't even watching having gutterballed about a third. Turns out the limper the wrists the better the bowler), failed to recognise the female Adrian Chiles and associated dancer with courageous highlights, and so diverted myself by playing with my camera (I only got told off by the staff about four times), and so can now proudly claim to have provided the Facebook profile picture of the Xty-Xth most influential gay man in Britain two-thousand-and-something (he didn't ask, but no one seems to).

Which almost makes up for him asking me to purge an untagged shot of him. Admittedly he is in his pants, but then he jumped in a swimming pool in his pants and praised the other shots of him in the pool. Incidentally his pants are red. Hands up if you are now thinking of a certain Beautiful South lyric (about a not-so-beautiful town in the south of the Netherlands).

Said he who has yet to smite it (but that's censorship), though probably will, just not quite yet (look, I pretend I don't go near Facebook during the day [sometimes I actually don't], so it's quite plausible I would have been unable so far to cede to his reqmand [helpfully added as a PS; yep, he must have worked in PR]).

BTW, what is the etiquette for seeing an untagged not-massively-flattering-not-massively-vile picture of oneself in a FOF's album with a caption that makes it clear that the taker didn't listen when he asked my name and instead uses the name I bowled under, that of a guy who refused to bowl? I'm leaning towards pretending I never knew he called me the wrong name and don't know the image exists.

But ignoring all that, although it is Facebook linked (it is the new forwarding), here's something that shouldn't really be quite so amusing:


And that fulfils today's quota of a-bit-lateness.

Anyhoo,