Yanda Time

June 25, 2005

Naked Landlord

The things you see when you don't have a camera...

Oh wait! We do have a camera.

I think sometimes my darling spouse is turning into somewhat of an absent-minded professor. This morning she knocked on the door of my crazy landlord's room. "Can I come in?" she asked.

"You can come in, but I'm naked," came the reply.

She knocked again.

"Come on in, but I'm completely buck-naked!" bellowed my crazy landlord.

Despite this grave warning, she opened the door, popped her head around the corner, and immediately shrieked like a tea kettle surprised by a couple of nested cocktail shakers.

My landlord was, indeed, naked.

Now, in her defence, I should point out that she could hear the crazy landlord and his consort doing diy-like things in the room. Furthermore, my crazy landlord often replies to knocks with statements such as, "Come on in, I'm naked," or "Come on in, I'm just sorting out the missus," or even "Come on in. I'm rogering a penguin." Usually, he is doing nothing of the kind. This time, however, he was telling the truth and shocked my poor innocent demure wife who immediately ran upstairs to grab the camera and take this lovely picture.

Posted by YandaMan at 12:50 PM

June 14, 2005

Initial Tutu Fitting

My friend and colleague JoBell has thoughtfully crafted this lovely attire for the London 2 Brighton bike ride. The ride is next Sunday and is approximately 55 miles. If you approve of the look, please sponsor me at http://www.bhf.org.uk/sponsor/yanda/.

Posted by YandaMan at 9:08 AM | Comments (1)

June 9, 2005

Diy with Tulips

I found these pictures on my camera when I went to pull the Japan pictures off of it. Just before I left, my crazy Irish landlord embarked on a series of home renovations. His crazy Scottish builder father drove over from Portugal to help out. And, of course, the ever-helpful James (pictured above) came over many times to lend a hand.

On this particular day we were working on a new deck in the back garden. I spent the afternoon smashing big rocks into gravel with a hammer while James played with the power tools. Sadly, many tulips where sacrificed to the new porch (not to mention James' twisted lust).

Posted by YandaMan at 11:20 PM | Comments (0)

May 28, 2005

The Licky Stick

The yellow thing in the picture is a cat toy which Marcus's cat greatly loves. It was given to him along with various other items by a friend who bought it in Japan. As you can see, it is beginning to wear out. I have been tasked with finding a replacement while I'm in Tokyo. So, please, if you know of a pet store in Japan that sells something like this, please let me know.

Posted by YandaMan at 9:10 AM | Comments (0)

May 27, 2005

Hair and Toes

Posted by YandaMan at 2:58 PM | Comments (1)

May 17, 2005

Party PC

Posted by YandaMan at 12:29 PM | Comments (0)

November 1, 2004

Memories

I dug out my scanner last night to scan something for the old matrimonial unit and thought I'd throw a couple of my old treeplanting pics on to the web. Work has been getting me down a bit lately and so I thought it would be handy to have a reminder of how much better my current job is than my old one.

There's a lot to be said for working indoors.

More old treeplanting pics

Posted by YandaMan at 10:23 PM | Comments (2)

October 16, 2004

More photos on flickr.com

Sweet Mother of Jaysus, I really need to write about my encounter with B.J. Cooke. In the meantime though, I thought I should point out that I've got an account on a web picture service at http://www.flickr.com/photos/yanda/.

I initially signed up for this as we went to a friend's wedding and they are using it for their wedding pictures. It's one of the best services of its kind that I've seen and it's unbelievably easy to set it up to receive pictures from a camera phone. I'm using the Nokia 7610 right now which has the best camera I've come across. In theory, it should also be easy for flickr to automagically post things to this blog but I've been too lazy to set this up as my first attempt failed. So, anyway, for now at least, I'll be posting camera pics to flickr.

My charming spouse just moved house and there are some shots of the new place there. She teaches at the University of Wolverhampton and I work in London so we rent a room in a shared house in London and a room in a shared house in Walsall. The pics are of her new place in Walsall.

And, of course, there are pictures of Fiona and Matt's wedding. It was a gorgeous wedding held in the Royal Society of Arts off the Strand. The food, in particular, was amazing. Not as amazing as the bride, of course, but still damn tasty.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:10 AM | Comments (0)

June 27, 2004

Bernhardt und Brigitte im London

These pictures are actually from late last March. Work has been a bit busy lately and this is the first chance I've had to download pictures from my camera.

Brigitte and Bernhardt are a couple friends of Vicki's Mom that came to visit us in London. I wasn't around when these pictures were taken. I met up with them after Vicki had run off to Birmingham and the three of us went to see Samson and Delilah at the Royal Opera House.

The ROH is a gorgeous building. I'd like to live there some time. A bit of work and you could make it really cosy, I think.

I think B and B were impressed. Brigitte, especially, is a huge opera buff and Jose Cura performed as Samson. Our seats weren't the best. Next time, rather than go for the slips, I'll choose the nosebleed section. It may be so far away that you can't tell Samson from Delilah, but at least you can see most of the stage and get a rough picture of what is going on. From our seats in the slips, we could see less than half the stage. This, combined with the fact that my Italian is non-existant, meant I had some difficulty following the actual narrative. Oh well, it sounded good, which I suppose is the point, after all.

It was a very posh crowd. We wandered through the Crush Room and into the conservatory and as we stood there rubbernecking at the grandeur of it all, I realised I was standing right next to Simon Callow. This is Simon CALLOW, by the way, not Simon COWELL. Simon Cowell is the meanspirited materialistic dude with the high-waisted pants on pop-idol who is pretty much a poster boy for everything that is wrong about the music industry. Simon Callow is the talented actor with the gorgeous, sonorous voice. He played Gareth, the flamboyantly gay guy with a beard in Four Weddings and a Funeral (amongst other things).

Anyway, probably not a big deal for most people but I got a minor thrill eavesdropping on his conversation. He sounded exactly how I imagined Simon Callow would sound if he was discussing a show at the Royal Opera House. Uncanny, that.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

January 18, 2004

A Big Wheel in Birmingham

My charming spouse and I went up to Birmingham and this is the only picture I took the entire weekend so I thought I'd better share it with the world. I have only a vague notion of where it is. We were on a bus to Wolverhampton when I took it. And we were on that bus for a very long time. A word to the wise -- the bus from Birmingham to Wolverhampton takes an hour and fifteen minutes and costs £1. The train takes 20 minutes and costs £3.60. Take the train. It's worth the extra £2.60.

Vicki had been doing some part-time work for the dance department of the University of Wolverhampton. We were going up there to see the student show. I love seeing student shows. You get to meet the performers during the intermission and everyone is so excited, especially the audience.

I'm glad we went, because a few days later they offered her a permanent job, only half-time for now, as a lecturer at the UofW. It was good to meet some of the folks she'll be working with and a couple of the students she'll be teaching.

Posted by YandaMan at 12:30 PM | Comments (3)

September 17, 2003

A Message for David Blaine

Some friends recently went to see David Blaine, a magician and performance artist who has suspended himself dozens of feet above the ground in a glass box and is planning to fast for the next 44 days. The reason: fame and fortune and, presumably, lack of anything better to do. Most champion fasters from the past have done it for what they, at least, consider were important political reasons. Not Dave. Chicks and Dough are what he is apparently after.

And thus the above photo where a few members of the public strive through performance art to critique another artist's performance.

Posted by YandaMan at 5:16 PM | Comments (2)

January 9, 2003

Snow in London

Pix at /Yanda/pix/2003_01_09/

We had two inches of snow in London yesterday, the biggest snowfall here since February 1994. It caused huge chaos and made me very chipper. The sad thing was that most of the office went out for a huge snowball fight in Lincoln's Inn fields at lunch and I was stuck in a meeting. Oh well, perhaps next year.

I also missed out on taking any picture yesterday but snapped some on my way to work today. You may notice a subtle asthetic contrast between the area where I live and the area where I work.

Posted by YandaMan at 1:23 PM | Comments (1)

December 30, 2002

Sinead

Just for the record, this is not a leprechaun. This is my housemate, the darling wee Sinead.

Posted by YandaMan at 9:44 PM | Comments (1)

December 29, 2002

IKEA Blues

ACK! Never go to IKEA during a boxing week sale! Evil awaits! Just getting there was an adventure. The rail line we were going to take was being serviced so we had to take a bus to get to the tube to switch to another tube to switch to another tube to travel to far off Neasdon. Upon arrival we discovered that the ENTIRE POPULATION OF THE WORLD (all 6 billion people) were wedged into IKEA that day.

Others would have fled immediately. But we fortified ourselves with Swedish Meatballs and plunged into the melee. Approximately two hours later we had managed to fight and squirm our way to the warehouse where you can actually take hold of your desires. Unfortunately, the bookcase we had travelled and fought to obtain was not there on the shelves. Our trip had been in vain.

And not only that the weather was crap and Vicki had to put up with this pathetic excuse for an umbrella.

Posted by YandaMan at 4:39 PM

December 27, 2002

Rudolph

Vicki with new hairstyle.

Posted by YandaMan at 11:22 PM

December 26, 2002

Dalston Mural

Vicki and I were waiting for the bus at Dalston Junction and I had my new camera so I thought that I would take a picture of this mural just because it was there and kind of cool. So, this is what my neighbourhood looks like on Boxing Day. Usually it's swamped with a bit more traffic and people.

Posted by YandaMan at 2:23 PM | Comments (1)

August 12, 2002

Self-portrait with Koala

As you may know London is flooded with pesky Antipodeans. This little guy is worse than most. An Aussie friend of mine had brought him back as a souvenir from a trip to the homeland and a few of us got a bit crazy one night and reanimated the little bugger in the Walkabout in Shepherd's Bush using a stun gun we'd stolen from a cop and a mixture of peyote and Castlemaine. He's usually all right but he does have a tendency to get a bit aggressive after a couple of pints.

Posted by YandaMan at 6:24 PM