Irregular readers will know that in August 2005 I put my house on the market and spent well over a year trying to sell it with minimal interest from the house-buying hoi poloi. Finally in September 2006 I agreed a deal with a woman by the name of Felicity Time-Waster who went through then entire process only to pull out the day before the sale became contractually binding. The bitch.
Anyway, I then rented out a couple of rooms for a while, moved back in myself for a couple of months, spent £6,000 fixing up the garden, and the put it back on the market early last month.
And I appear to have a buyer. Given what happened a year ago I am not being overly optimistic, but it would be nice to be rid of the house, and in the intervening year the value has gone up significantly, so it does all go through Felicity Time-Waster will have done me a favour.
A soft toy designer has come up with a macabre new range of road kill teddies.
The first to be launched is Twitch the Raccoon which comes complete with its own body bag to keep the maggots out, reports Metro.
Twitch also has an identity tag revealing it was "run over over by a milk float last Thursday, near the Hangar Lane Giratory system in London".
A zip on each side of the toy allows the owner to remove Twitch's innards and stuff them back in again. A tyre print runs across its back.
Creators, Compost Communications, style themselves 'toy terrorists' and according to their website: "We squash and burn and bludgeon and maim. But we're also toy fanatics like you. We love toys."
Toy creator Adam Arber, 33, from London, said: "I got the idea from looking at my mother-in-law's dog which is quite ugly and I thought it would make a great toy. A friend of mine had taken some pictures of road kill and the two things gelled into one idea."
He said he thought the toys, which cost £25, would appeal to people with a sense of humour and "probably not anyone easily upset".
Coming soon are other characters including Grind the rabbit, Splodge the hedgehog and Pop the weasel.
The toys go on sale this week at Play Lounge in Soho, London, and from mid-December on www.roadkilltoys.com.
[from Ananova]
A Taiwanese lingerie company encouraged all its female office staff to go to work in their undies for the day.
The Audrey Underwear company in Taizhong city named November 21 Camisole Day to celebrate record sales.
All 500 women working in the firm's headquarters were encouraged to wear only camisoles and knickers - much to the excitement of their male colleagues.
"We have been waiting for this day all month. Today, we are super high, and don't know where to put our eyes," salesman Cai Mingda told Straits News.
More than 90% of female workers reportedly went along with the spirit of the day and worked in their underwear.
Zhang Yufeng, 32, a mother of two, admitted: "I have been on a strict diet to get ready for the day. When I was trying on my outfit at home, my husband told me I should dress like this every day."
And Liao Wenshen, 30, added: "The men were red-faced all day, and were becoming so polite to us. It's so funny!"
Huang Bihui, PR manager of the company, explained: "We introduced eight new camisoles into market and sold more than 20,000 in less than two months so we named the 21st as Camisole Day."
Employment lawyers said there was nothing illegal in the move so long as it was voluntary but it had its critics.
Wu Juanyu complained: "Some women may feel forced to join in because of peer pressure and job competition. I don't know if the company is selling underwear or women's bodies."
Let the journal be marked with the age, at 2 years 6 months and 8 days, at which Verity first said "I hate you Mummy". The first of many, for sure, with occasional "I hate my life"'s thrown in for good measure.
I, and no doubt Verity, have already forgotten the perceived crime, although it might well have been a refusal to put Pingu on the TV.
Should I be happy that she has progressed sufficiently to express such a sentiment? Or depressed that she felt the need to?
Actually I am depressed, but for a different reason - she made a grammatical error. She said, "I hated you Mummy". If she is going to be a pain in the ass, she could at least be eloquent about it.
Since my eye operation in August I have been carrying some tubes around in my head. The went from above my eye, down through the upper and lower tear ducts (and visible in the corner of my eye linking the two lids), and into my nose.
On Friday the tubes were finally removed. The technique was to snip the tube in the corner of my eye and then have me blow them with a powerful nose blow. Which worked and is exactly as gross as it sounds.
I did have my eye numbed first with an eye drop that really stung. This is akin to kicking someone in the shin to take their mind off a headache.
Anyway, it is all done now and the next step is to return to the hospital in four months time and decide whether I want to go through the whole thing again with my other eye.
[from El Reg]
An unnamed Michigan man is facing "a bevy of misdemeanor charges, including child endangerment, allowing an intoxicated person to drive his car, and allowing an unlicensed minor to drive" after asking his 13-year-old son to occupy the driver's seat because he was too sozzled to take the wheel.
The problem was, the lad was drunk too, and in attempting to get home, turned the vehicle into the Clio city park and rolled it off the pavement where it "became stuck in the muddy soil".
Cue the arrival of a Clio cop on routine patrol who was "was surprised to find a 13-year-old behind the wheel, with his father in the passenger seat", and "open beer and schnapps containers" in the car, as The Flint Journal explains.
Clio Police Chief James McLellan said of the 8 November incident: "This is not your typical event."
Father and son were both cuffed, with the boy claiming he "didn't want to drive because he was too drunk". He has "been petitioned into juvenile court on charges that include driving while intoxicated", the police said.
McLellan concluded: "Most parents are more responsible in my experience. The father definitely has some serious issues to address. Hopefully, they can get it worked out in the [court] system."
[from El Reg]
A Nottinghamshire lad had a "birthday to remember" after a stripper turned up at his school, burst into his drama class and proceeded to flaunt herself like a two-buck hussy as shocked teacher and students looked on.
According to the Telegraph, the clothes-shedding strumpet was dispatched to Nottingham's Arnold Hill School and Technology College at the behest of the boy's mum, who also asked his teacher to film the event.
The stripper entered the classroom halfway through the lesson, and then, as a fellow pupil recounted to the Daily Mail: "She asked the lad to stand up, which he did, and told him he had been a very naughty boy because he hadn't been doing his homework. Then she put on some Britney Spears music and got out a collar and lead from her bag and told him to put them on.
"No one could believe it. Next she ordered him to get on all fours, led him around the classroom and hit him 16 times - once for each year - on the bottom with her whip. Then she took off some clothes until she was down to her bra and pants, pulled out some cream, put it on her buttocks and told him to rub it in.
"To be fair to the teacher, you could tell she was just stunned - and when the cream came out she told the stripper 'That's it. That's enough'."
It apparently was enough for the honoured guest of this show, since he "ran out of the classroom while the stripper calmly packed her bag and left".
A spokeswoman for Nottinghamshire County Council said no one had been suspended and the police were not involved. She added: "We and the school are investigating into the situation."
And in case you're wondering what kind of parent would subject their offspring to this kind of humiliation, the mother in question told the school she'd actually ordered a gorilla "through an agency", but got the cream-loving dog-handler instead.
[from El Reg]
A US couple had a lucky escape when a 600lb cow unexpectedly landed on the bonnet of their minivan, unsurprisingly causing "heavy damage".
According to AP, Michigan-based Charles and Linda Everson were visiting the area around Lake Chelan, Washington, to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. On their way back to the hotel near Manson on Sunday, the bovine in question decided to plummet from a 200ft cliff and impact without warning against the vehicle.
Charles Everson admitted he "didn't see the cow falling and didn't know what happened until afterward". He added he'd been reduced to repeating: "I don't believe this. I don't believe this."
Chelan County fire chief Arnold Baker said the pair had missed being killed by a matter of inches. The cow wasn't so lucky, and was quickly "euthanised".
So from Shanghai to Singapore, but only for an overnight stop - we arrived at 10am and had to be out of there by 6am.
We were tired and needed sleep, so we spent 3 of our 8 hours in Singapore eating and drinking and the other 5 hours allowing hangovers to develop while we slept. Our hotel was the exquisite Fullerton which must have cost a packet, but a supplier was paying so I never got to find out.
From there we flew to Surabaya in Indonesia for my third trip into the southern hemisphere (Mauritius 2004, South Africa 2006). We spent two days there visiting factories, developing new products and haggling over prices, and got blind drunk both nights and ended up in Desperado's Nightclub, which is very well named.
After that, and hungover again, we flew to Singpore and chilled for 28 hours, including the obligatory photo shoot outside Raffles, then flew home via Bangkok. I am awash with airmiles and have developed a drink problem, a craving for marmite and a monstrous work backlog.
After Hong Kong we returned to China, taking a fast ferry into the Pearl River Delta to visit a factory, which was of impressive quality. The factory, not the ferry.
The ferry was pretty impressive though, zipping between massive container ships. I have never seen so many ships in my life, from leviathans to dows, most of them carrying containers, even the dows.
I do wonder how the container shipping business manages to consistently get stuff from A to B without losing it.
Anyway, after a factory tour we did lunch in a local restaurant with the factory owner then did some product development work back at the factory and headed off to the airport to fly to Shanghai.
We arrived in darkness and headed straight to dinner downtown and then had a 90 minute drive to the hotel somewhere in Haining. The hotel was interesting - luxurious for a start but with quirky touches. Such as the basket of goodies by the bed - socks, shorts, condoms, 'arousing cream' and... a pack of playing cards. Maybe strip poker is a big thing in Haining.
The Haining factory visit was very good and then back to Shanghai and its other airport to fly to Singapore. After a relatively restful time in HK, the travel schedule is becoming bruising.
I visited Hong Kong in 1981 and there have been a few changes. The skyline has gone crazy and there are new roads, bridges, tunnels and an airport, but overall it feels very familiar.
The main deterioration is with the pollution - the view from Kowloon to the Peak is permanently hazy.
We arrived there on Friday evening, went to trade shows on Saturday and Sunday, and met a bunch of potential suppliers on Monday and celebrated our last night on Monday with dinner at Aqua, 22 floors up and with the best (hazy) view in Kowloon.
Over the weekend we managed to squeeze in a little shopping - handbags, watches and electronics. With more time we would have visited the Peak, Stanley market and nipped over to Macau for some gambling fun. Next time maybe.
A couple of pictures will follow when Flickr comes back online.
