DISQUS

Love those. Absolutely spot on about Snobs, although it has been repainted several times. It was purple in the early 70s and dire.

Fab.

Bugger - is it too late? I'm mail them anyway...

Fantastic! Keep up the good work. :)

Up here, the famous Gateshead car park of Get Carter is coming down next week, one of the very last of `Owen Luder's work. I just cannot imagine how it must feel to have all one's work destroyed for what is essentially, a fashion thing. In Peterlee, the council have seen fit to keep Victor Pasmore's concrete pavilion. Although it mightn't seem comparable, the scale's the same. It /can/ be done.

What a great idea.

Charles Clore made his money in the department store biz: his flagship was Selfridges in Oxford St but he also owned the Lewis's dept store in Bull St B'ham.

Congrats, of course. But do beware all this 'leadership' prodding: it can be vacuous as well as seductive. Reminds me of grooming, but for what? You really wouldn't want to be a Charlie Clore clone, no way. He was autocratic in the extreme, an awkward employer, who paid pittances.

And it's no mistake the term has crossed over. But I'm sure you know that.

Stef - tongue and cheek is good, tho, if that's what it was. :)

The Masonic iconography thing is very interesting indeed. The seeing eye symbol is as central to the Masons as the crucifix is to Christianity. Appears time and time again, including on our banknotes.

Good grief - faded glamour? Does he think the Rum Runner ever had anything resembling glamour? It was /always/ a grubby dive. Highlights of the 1980s were the all-dancefloor fist fights. You could watch them errupt from the balcony. desperate place, good for cheap booze after lights out elsewhere, Barbarellas, mostly. Ah, those were the days.

If you put David Icke in with any search terms you come up with the lizards. What interests me is why you made that particular connection?

Thinking through this debate about how CP operates us surely better than calling people who have done so swivel eyed loons. The thing is, there may be _some_ truth in all this.

CP contacted me to do advocacy stuff back in the 90s when it seemed pretty much to be the tool of the Business Link quango and I declined because I thought the whole thing pretty iffy then.

Mixing up the investigators with known wackos like Icke is a proven way to discredit, and tbh I'd prefer to keep an open mind.

The Shirley Temple - rather fancy Chinese restaurant

A couple of years ago a woman made a collection of photographs of punning haircut shops. Triffic stuff. Can't remember her name though.

Charlotte: yes, coterminous is what I thought too. Would love to be there. Good to 'see' you around btw, and thanks to Stef whose alter ego I've encountered somewhere.

I'd definitely have been there had I still been living in lovely old Brum.

That would make um, 6 of us, yes? Trouble with this 'redressing the balance' issue, is that you can't. Women are still massively under represented in most online/tech/geek activity, and the more meets there are, the more generally blokey it all looks.

Thing is to make special efforts: if it's a childcare thing, get some of the blokes in a rota to offer babysitting (one a year each, say), and seek out women bloggers to ask them individually, don't just expect them to turn up. It can be way scary anyway turning up to something like that, without the thing being full of people of the other gender.

Also, Charlotte: why not have some women blogger's meetups? I'd maybe even come to one of those, I'd definitely host one. I live by the seaside. ;)

Yes, I love the use of photographs. Chances are that creative people will think visually, in pictures, rather than via words anyway. Thanks, Stef.

Love that stencil, Eddie.

I would have fourthed those votes for Pete, but also very deserving and a local lad to boot:

Rich Batsford

Musician, recent solo work and performances with ProjectX, music teacher, concerned local citizen and all round nice bloke.

What /is/ the matter with technorati these days? It used to be the coolest, most rock-stable authority in blog referencing. Why can't it keep things simple and go back to the minimalist brilliance of what it does best?

Anyone know?

Irritatingly, I've never been able to get Scrabulous to work. And yes, all my plugins are up to date. It does send error messages though, or just fails to load the tiles, or fails to load the board, or oh, a host of other things.

I almost de-installed it but several of my friends play, so I've been holding out in the hope that they fix it. Could be addictive, yes. :)

With Magnum references? It's in an envelope today, although won't get posted until Tues.

I missed World Photo Day as well. Duh. :)

This made me laugh out loud. I love her expression. It takes some mettle to develop a personal sense of style in a photoblog, but yours has captured something here. I'll keep watching, Jon. :)