cakeyvoice

monthly round up

2008-06-30T23:36:00.010+01:00

CLEAR!

I have just got back from holiday. It was fun. I drank a lot of rum and generally loafed about. The sea was bloody freezing and a swarm of jellyfish washed up on the beach the day after we arrived, but we went swimming anyway because we are so very British.
You know when you get back off holiday and everything seems really weird and you can't remember what you used to do before you went on holiday? I feel like that now. I suppose I'll just quietly get to work on regenerating my liver.

CLEAR!

Trying to take a decent photo with my camera at the moment feels a bit like I am one of those monkeys trying to thrash out the works of Shakespeare on a typewriter. This is partly because I am too stubborn to not have it on a manual setting and partly because I have gone from never even so much as holding an SLR camera to attempting complicated HDR techniques which are clearly beyond the realms of my capability. After much windswept, amateurish fumbling, I finally managed to cobble one together, so here it is for posterity. You will, of course, overlook the fact that not a single part of this entire scene is properly in focus.

CLEAR!

Doctor Who, eh? Doctor WTF, more like. I totally didn't see that coming. What's going to happen now, then? WHO IS WHO?

-FLATLINE-

pwned

2008-05-17T01:41:00.008+01:00

Hello. In case you haven't guessed, I'm bored of blogging at the moment. It's boring. But I can't go much longer than a whole month without posting or my head will explode, so blah blah blah blah blah.

I am not only bored of blogging, I'm bored of this blog. I'm moving to WordPress just as soon as I can decide on a domain name because I'm also changing the name of my blog. Oh yes, I'm going there. Why am I moving to WordPress? Because not only am I bored of blogging and this blog and the name of this blog, I'm also bored of Blogger. And the word blog.

I'll tell you what else I'm bored of, though it pains me to say it. George Romero. Diary of the Dead was the final nail in the coffin. It's like The Phantom Menace all over again. In fact, I bet George Romero and George Lucas meet up for lunch every week to discuss how they can upset me even more. NICE ONE THE GEORGES.

I saw Wolverine on Free Comic Book Day. He came into the pub for a pint of shandy, which was upsetting enough as it was - I mean, as if Wolverine drinks shandy. It wasn't even SUNDAY (the only acceptable day to drink shandy in a pub). Then he removed his adamantium claws and it turned out they were just flimsy bits of moulded plastic held on with laggy bands. It makes you wonder, doesn't it.

life on mars. knitted.

2008-04-14T00:46:00.008+01:00

I'd never seen Life on Mars before I received a request to make these guys. So I watched the first episode. Then the second one. Then suddenly it was 16 hours later and I'd watched the whole lot. Not really. (But NEARLY.)

You either love Gene Hunt, or you've never seen him in action. He's The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, and if I had a car I would totally drive like him.

DCI Gene Hunt & DI Sam Tyler are off to Japan next week, which is sad (for me).

But the good news is that IT IS MY BIRTHDAY today, and also my Mum's. Happy birthday Mum! Thanks for teaching me to knit - without you, there would be no wooly Gene Hunt out there smashing up nonces with a bin lid, so this post is dedicated to you.

tea at monty's

2008-03-30T00:53:00.006Z

Our Matt (my brother) recently made a pilgrimage to the now woefully dilapidated Sleddale Hall in Cumbria, better known as Uncle Monty's country retreat from Withnail & I. It looks as if it's been empty since the film was made - a rotting memorial to what was surely both the best and most mistaken holiday destination of all time. Check out his pictures here.

'country man about town' camera case

2008-03-13T02:38:00.007Z

Hey everyone - sewing is the new knitting! Not really, of course, sewing is still just the old sewing. Had you there for a minute though, didn't I? It's annoying when people say things like that, I know. Sorry. I couldn't help myself - I have been at the wine.

I made this for Rob for his birthday. It's not an original idea, being rather inspired by a number of similar camera cases I've seen kicking around Etsy. I based it loosely on the Diana. It features real suede patches, and a proper lining and everything:

Goodness me, sewing is fast compared to knitting! I couldn't believe I'd finished it so soon. Sewing through suede is hard, and I totally ravaged my thumb making this. But it is also fun, even though the process is actually 80% cutting & pressing, 20% sewing. What a massive swizz.

Coming up next in sewing news: I attempt an extremely challenging bag, not at all recommended for beginners. All will be revealed in several months time. Until then, I've got a lot of knitting to do. Good day.

HE'S GOT AN ARM OFF

2008-02-19T18:45:00.007Z

Zombies, eh? I can't let it lie. I am giving George Romero ONE MORE CHANCE to redeem himself after Land of the Dead. Has anyone seen Diary of the Dead? Please tell me it isn't shit. I really, really want it to be good, even though I know it won't be. And let's not even mention the upcoming remake of Day of the Dead, in case my brain explodes.

Anyway, look! I've knitted a new zombie:

It feels good to be knitting zombies again. Like I've come home. And, no joke of a lie, this is my favourite of all the ones I've made so far. He only appears on screen for a few brief moments in Shaun of the Dead, meaning that I had to watch the same scene loads of times to pick up on the details of his outfit.

I wish I could find a link to it on YouTube, because no matter how many times I see it, Ed's reaction to this guy shambling into their front room cracks me up EVERY SINGLE TIME.

This zombie is for sale. Click here to check out the listing in my shop. Who KNOWS what I might knit next! You would, if you were on my mailing list. (It's down there on the right.)

picture box

2008-02-11T18:14:00.001Z

I bought this last week for £3.99 from a charity shop, after picking it up and putting it down about a hundred times. Then I suddenly imagined somebody else coming in and buying it, and there I was, sprinting towards the till with it clutched in a white-knuckle grip. It might have been my imagination, but the old lady behind the counter seemed overly happy to see it go. I think it might be haunted.

I'm glad I bought it though, because even though I've never actually seen one of these in real life, I remember it well from my childhood. It's PICTURE BOX, from the children's educational TV show of the same name. And now I own it.

Picture Box featured the weirdest theme tune known to man, guaranteed to make you feel as if you were gently riding a fairground horse on a one-way trip into another dimension. It's called 'Manege' and it featured on this (1968?) album (which I have yet to find down the chazza, but I live in hope):

Francois Baschet was a sculptor who, along with his brother Bernard, invented and built loads of crazy experimental instruments. Jacques Lasry was a modernist composer. Together with Baschet's wife Yvonne, they were 'Structures Sonores Lasry Baschet'.

But I digress. Because while looking for the title sequence for Picture Box on YouTube, I discovered that it is EVEN WEIRDER than I remember. I don't even know what to say about it, except that when Alan Rothwell pipes up with his jovial

"Hello! Do you remember that scene from the film last week?"

you can be sure that somewhere in the depths of time, a hundred thousand mentally damaged schoolchildren are silently screaming

"YES ALAN! FOR IT IS BURNED INTO MY MEMORY FOR ALL TIME AND HAUNTS MY EVERY WAKING MOMENT."

Watch it here, but don't say I didn't warn you.

zonino!

2008-02-08T02:32:00.000Z

I discovered a new word! It happened by accident when I tried to type in 'Woohoo!' using predictive text on my phone. The word is 'Zonino!' and I shall be using it liberally from now on.

I fixed the margin error on my template! It took many gruelling hours, and I'm still not quite sure how it happened. Zonino!

I dremeled a miniature cricket bat! There was a tremendous amount of dust flying everywhere. I probably shouldn't have done it in the living room, but Jeremy Kyle was on & I didn't want to miss the lie detector results. The cricket bat is to accompany the Shaun of the Dead figure that is going into the shop tomorrow. Zonino!

deluxe hot chai mix

2008-02-05T00:52:00.000Z

This is an unbelievably delicious recipe for instant spiced chai. I made two big batches of it for Christmas presents this year, and everyone who tried it absolutely LOVED it. Forget the supermarket and get yourself down the nearest Asian grocer, unless you like paying through the nose for those silly little jars of Schwartz spices.

This was my deluxe version of the recipe. For everyday consumption, I would probably reduce the sugar by half a cup or more, and maybe substitute half of the coffee whitener for more milk powder. Here we go.

You will need:

2 cups caster sugar (vanilla sugar is best)
1 cup Typhoo QT instant white tea
1 cup coffee whitener
1 cup dried skimmed milk powder
1 cup Coffee Mate 'Latte Creations', original or vanilla
4 teaspoons ground ginger
4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
2 teaspoons ground cloves
2 teaspoons ground cardamom
2 teaspoons ground allspice
1 teaspoon white pepper

Mix all the ingredients in a large bowl. Process the mixture in a blender or food processor, 1 cup at a time, and store in airtight jars.

To serve, put 2 tablespoons in a mug, top up with boiling water and wait a few minutes before drinking to allow the spices to settle at the bottom. Now drink up! Your life will never be the same again.

bing bang boing

2008-01-31T23:18:00.000Z

I don't know why I'm so excited about this, but I am. I had no idea this game existed until this morning, but right now I can think of NOTHING I would rather do than wang a ball bearing down the Bingle Flinger, across the Humdrums, up the Banglevator, through the Flickerticker and into the Boingle Bucket, all accompanied by the musical stylings of Jean-Jacques Perrey. I'm talking "Bing Bang Boing" by Ideal Games, from 1972.

Bring it back! I want one so bad! Click here to check it out at the start of this reel of old 70s toy adverts. Seriously, I can't stop watching it. The sight of all those ball bearings hopping off into the distance fairly brings tears of yearning to my eyes every time.

And if that's not enough Moog for you, have a look at this video of Jean-Jacques Perrey in action, playing the very music from this ad - "Chicken on the Rocks". Just the sort of thing you should listen to on your iPod while you are walking around your local neighbourhood. I'm telling you, you really should.

i has a graphics tablet

2008-01-24T01:45:00.000Z

WOWEEEE! The slacker got a graphics tablet for Christmas and it has finally spurred me on to make a proper banner. Look how professional it is! I bet you thought I'd had the graphic designers in, didn't you? That's my ACTUAL HANDWRITING up there. Don't act like you're not impressed.

Also, get a load of the fancy new layout - I've always wanted a three column template and have even considered moving to Typepad in the past (£££). Turns out there's no need! I got the code tweaks from Tips for New Bloggers, in case you're interested. It took me three hours to get it how I wanted. That's one hour per column. I'm never changing it again. Even though the left margin is still bigger than the right margin.....I'm fine about it though...ngggghhhhhhhh

My computer is fixed - its treacherous faulty hard drive has been ripped out and impaled on a stick on my desk as a warning to the rest of the hardware. The computer doctor tried to thwart me by inexplicably adding an administrative password and then not telling the slacker what it was when he went to collect it. But alas he had met his match, and I cracked his puny, ill conceived password like the rotten nut it was with a mere 5 minutes of guessing. Pah!

I now have NOTHING in my iTunes. It's really liberating.

Stay tuned and I might just show you the BEST CHAIR IN THE WORLD that I bought yesterday. No really, it is.

the emergency laptop

2008-01-07T03:37:00.000Z

By the power of Greyskull!!! My computer has gone for a Burton. The technical diagnosis is that its most crucial registry files have been sucked into another dimension. I knew this would happen again eventually, because my house is built on an ancient Indian burial ground. Almost.

Tomorrow I am taking it to the computer hospital to be purged of ghosts, since my last home exorcism was nothing short of a miserable failure. This time, however, I shall be forced to admit to them that I punched a gaping hole in my firewall during my vain attempts to host networked games of Settlers of Catan. Ahhhhh, but mock ye not, for tis surely by my fearless nature that I shall one day earn my rightful place in Valhalla.

This post is therefore brought to you courtesy of the emergency laptop that I borrowed off Rob. The emergency laptop is my new (slow) best friend. When I plugged it in and everything (slowly) worked, I could have kissed its (slow) little LCD face. Then I remembered that it used to belong to James, who was probably sick on it at least once, so I restrained myself. Instead, to celebrate my ongoing internet connectivity, I ate a mince pie and looked at my Christmas tree, but the magic was well and truly gone and I felt strangely empty. Welcome to 2008.

the day i traded art with Mike Mignola

2007-12-29T19:08:00.000Z

Remember knitted Hellboy? Well, shortly after being featured on Drawn, I received an email from Christine Mignola, asking if I would make another for their collection - the original having sold within 8 hours of making its internet debut.

I could hardly believe my luck when she agreed to get Mike to do a sketch as a trade. The slacker was FREAKING OUT. So I duly set about making another, trying to recreate the original as faithfully as possible from my illegible notebook scrawlings. The pressure was really on, but I did it. And it was even better than the first one, even though I say so myself. You'll have to take my word for that, as I didn't take any pictures. Ooops.

I sent it out & thankfully they loved it - even the cat was trying to get in on the action, meaning that knitted Hellboy now resides upon a high shelf in the Mignola household. True to their word, the sketch arrived a few days before Christmas, whereupon I wrapped it carefully to give to the slacker on Xmas day, thus earning me a billion girlfriend points.

Yes, Mike Mignola and I traded art. I surely got the better end of the deal, and it was the BEST CHRISTMAS EVER. God bless us, every one.

stick a fork in me, someone...

2007-12-21T18:07:00.000Z

... I'm done. Homemade Xmas presents for EVERYONE! I can't believe I pulled it off. Of course, I can't reveal what any of them are, as it will spoil the surprise. Suffice to say that I have an awesome recipe to share, as well as something ULTRA MEGA EXCITING. Seriously. It's the best thing ever. I'll reveal all on Boxing Day.

fetch me my tools...

2007-12-03T01:30:00.000Z

Save your breath! You will never convince me that building something as wholly magnificent as THIS:

is not the BEST IDEA EVER. Read the story of its creator and see more pictures of this absolute marvel of the modern age here. To think that it nearly ended up in a charity shop! The thought of stumbling across something like this one day is the reason I walk so fast everywhere. Obviously, any delay might cause a knock on effect that would ultimately result in me arriving at the chazza just in time to see some smug bastard waltzing out of the shop with it. It could happen. It musn't happen.

So if you wanted to know what I want for Christmas this year, there you go. I also wouldn't say no to a Junior Carpenter Tool Set and a short trip back in time so that I can pay better attention in my electronics classes. Thanks Santa xx

It's HALLOWEEN!

2007-11-05T01:31:00.000Z

Halloween may be over for you, but here at Cake Towers, every day is Halloween. Sort of. Well, OK, it's not at all. Nor is my house really called 'Cake Towers'. But let's all pretend that it's true for a minute, because I've just finished knitting Michael Myers:

I haven't seen Rob Zombie's remake of Halloween yet, but if it's only half as good as the original, it will be worth a watch. Of course it could never trump John Carpenter's version because a) John Carpenter didn't write the score and b) Donald Pleasance isn't in it.

Michael Myers simply will not die. I like to imagine that 30 years from now, Hollywood will still be cranking out sequels - I won't be watching them (they'll be rubbish, of course) but I'll be glad that they're there. Because Halloween is the greatest slasher movie ever. The End.

I'm taking a break from the knitted minions - they are literally sucking the life out of me. I'm just finishing up the ones I've been working on, and then I'll be moving on. *Insert theme from The Littlest Hobo here*

Oh, and yeah - both Sadako and Michael Myers are up for sale in my Etsy shop. I need the money to buy a soldering iron. And on that bombshell, I shall bid you adieu.

knitted sadako

2007-10-31T20:09:00.000Z

Wooo! Yeah, it's Halloween and, for the first time in about 7 years, I have NO costume. That's right, I'm playing it cool. I'm gonna do it on the night. I'm off round to the pub in half an hour, where I shall pull something together out of a combination of special effects makeup and lost property (not really! ew! I'm going to raid the ever-useful FANCY DRESS box). If it's any good, I might even post a picture, but don't worry - it definitely won't be.

Anyway, never mind all that, because I'm about to unleash the most terrifying knitted item ever seen on Earth. She's so creepy, I keep expecting to see her sneaking up on me out of the corner of my eye. Don't watch that video! It's SADAKO!

The Japanese version of Ring is, hands down, the scariest film of all time. If you think otherwise, you should be forced to watch a VHS copy of it, on your own, at night, in the dark, down a well. Then you'd see what I mean.

More scary knitted stuff coming up in a day or two! OOOOOooooooOOOOoooO!

bird brain

2007-10-12T00:41:00.000+01:00

Brazenly half-inched from I like, this is an interesting test which supposedly determines whether you are predominantly right or left brained. Look at the dancer to see whether she is rotating clockwise or anticlockwise. Or both, if you're super skill.

Try as I might, I can only see her turning clockwise, which does little to explain my affinity with robots, but perhaps casts some light on why I have all those tattoos and am so very rubbish at chess.

I'm also interested to know what yous guys can see. Anyone see her going both ways? Anyone surprised at the result? I wasn't surprised, just a bit disappointed that I can't be good at absolutely everything, which is pretty much the story of my life.

UPDATE: I can see it going anti-clockwise! Turns out I am great at everything after all. Chess, anyone?

back to the crunch

2007-10-08T03:22:00.000+01:00

Hello! Today I am mostly drunk on rum. But that doesn't matter, because rum or no rum, I have stumbled upon yet another invention that fills my heart with joy and hope for the future of all mankind. A timely & welcome reminder that I am not alone in the world.

Make no mistake, I love da crunch. If there was some way to make things crunchier than they were to start with, I'd do it, but it still wouldn't be crunchy enough for me. When I eat cereal, I have 90% cereal, 10% milk, and I eat it inhumanly fast. But now I can have crunchy cereal EVERY DAY, AT A LEISURELY PACE, so very crunchy, for the rest of my life. I am so happy.

Buy yours here at eatmecrunchy.com. I'm off to buy mine right now, even though I drank all that rum & should probably not be shopping on the internet at 3 in the morning. BUT 60% of the time, I do what I want ALL THE TIME, and I can no longer live without the eatmecrunchy cereal bowl, especially at £3.95 with free delivery THANK YOU WORLD, THIS IS ALL I EVER WANTED, APART FROM ALL THAT RUM WHAT I DRUNK EARLIER. Adios!

don't tase me, bro

2007-10-01T02:40:00.000+01:00

Hello! Today I am mostly excited about.....ELECTRONICS. First it was this - the SwoofTronic Pi light controlled sound module:

I stumbled across this on Etsy earlier and boy, was I excited. It's a handheld audio device that you 'play' by controlling the amount of light that reaches the little sensors in the top. The left hand module controls the pitch, and the right hand one controls the note length. If you could amplify the sound of the electrons in your brain while you were having a good, hard think about something really confusing, this is what it would sound like. Have a look for yourself at this video of it in action.

The SwoofTronic Pi is on the market for $55, from my new favourite Etsian, rarebeasts.etsy.com, whose other creations include such audiovisual wonders as the 'Orb of Sound':

But just when I thought I'd reached my daily pinnacle of sonic enthusiasm, I discovered that the MAKE: Weekend Project Podcast is all about how to make your own WALKMAN MELLOTRON - surely the best idea anyone has ever had, ever:

What are you waiting for? You must go there, go there now and make a Walkman Mellotron - don't come back until you've finished. Apparently the Walkman mellotron was based on Mike Walter's homemade Mellotron - the Melloman - an instrument of such exquisite beauty that when I clapped eyes on it, a chorus of angels serenaded me from the heavens, and everything in the world that was not Mike Walter's Melloman ceased to exist forever. MEDIC!

motocykes

2007-09-26T18:25:00.000+01:00

As we all know, I have a vintage Raleigh Commando sitting in my hallway on flat tyres - I'm ashamed to admit I haven't ridden it since I bought it, almost a year ago. My cycling mojo, it would seem, was stolen along with my Grifter. But it's coming back, oh yes it is.

Last night I had a dream that my brother got his hands on a brand new Raleigh Vektar, and I was unbelievably, furiously jealous. (This dream was probably due in part to the fact that our Matt recently picked up a signed John Piper print in a charity shop for £25, which turned out to be worth close to £2000, the JAMMY GET.)

When I woke up, I was compelled to check out the Vektar situation on th'internet, just in case the dream was a sign and I found one that was new old stock or mint in box for a fiver or something. I didn't. But I did find something else. Hang onto your hats bike fans, it's the ROADMASTER MOTOCYKE:

Wowsers. I'd never seen one of these before, although by all accounts they were pretty popular in America in the 1990s, clocking up more sales than any other 20" bike in US history.

But there's more to this 1993 dreambike than meets the eye. For with a flick of a switch, the lucky owner could activate the MotoBlaster™ engine sound, enabling them to annoy the neighbours to their heart's content. I'm serious. You can watch this video here if you don't believe me.

Of course, underneath those moulded plastic fairings was a crummy old steel framed BMX style bike, which probably weighed a ton and certainly wasn't much to look at (see here for evidence).

Would I ride this bike? No*. Do I love it wrong, like Pepé Le Pew loves that cat? Yes. And that's about the long and short of it.

Incidentally, there's one for sale over at Re-Buy-Cycle, which just so happens to be the best bike shop in the world. If you decide to buy it, don't forget to ride it past my house so I can have a good laugh at you. Now go on! Get outta here!

*unless nobody was watching

knitted hellboy

2007-09-05T18:45:00.001+01:00

Hellboy is pretty cool. The son of a demon and a witch, his fate on Earth was sealed from the moment he tasted his first 'pamcake'. But mostly I just like him because he once went to Yorkshire - I'm patriotic like that. Plus, the right hand of doom would be very useful for smashing up wasps.

Knitted Hellboy is dedicated to the good natured slacker, who has served as my creative consultant throughout. He even drew up the original schematic, because he's clever like that <3

Hellboy is ~~for sale in my Etsy shop~~ SOLD, but don't worry - you can still get your hands on my knitted zombie photo notecard sets here, plugplugplug.)

I see more knitted superheroes in the future, but before that I have a couple of other things to finish. Until then, more pics of knitted Hellboy can be found here and here. BOOM!

DO NOT WANT

2007-08-06T01:11:00.000+01:00

Wasps, it seems, are breaking all the rules. Seriously - when did wasps start coming out at night? They never taught me this at school. It's simply not supposed to happen.

It all started a couple of weeks ago. I am up late, as usual, when I'm alerted to the amplified buzzing of a wasp battering itself senseless inside the shade of the floor lamp. Normally in the case of such an invasion, I would simply give in and go to bed. But I am in the middle of a network game of Settlers of Catan and there's no way I'm flaking, because I really am that much of a geek when it comes to my stats.

So between turns, I find myself standing in my living room waving the lamp out of the window in the vain hope that the wasp will notice that it's actually night time and go back to its nest to get some sleep so it will be refreshed & sprightly in the morning, ready for a long hard day of stinging people.

But the wasp is not having any of it, and promptly flies straight back in WITH TWO OF ITS MATES. My lamp-waving, it seems, has merely served as a welcoming beacon for all the wasps in the neighbourhood, of which there suddenly seem to be rather a lot.

I look at the window and there are five more wasps crawling around on the outside. Peering into the darkness, I see a cloudy, seething mass of wasps swarming around the nearby streetlight. It's around this time that I start to panic. To prevent the situation from escalating I have no choice but to close the window, effectively trapping myself in the room with three angry, stingy wasps.

But my game of Settlers is only halfway through, and so I carry on in what is to become the least fun game of anything I have ever played in my life; for 20 minutes I am ducking and flapping and desperately hoping that someone, anyone, will just WIN THE GAME for crying out loud, so I can get out of the room. And all the time I can hear the incessant tap tap tap of more wasps smashing themselves against the window - the only way they could be more eager to get in would be if I were smothered in jam and having fifty picnics all at once.

Finally, mercifully, the game comes to an end and I retreat with great urgency to the bedroom where I wake up the good natured slacker and tell him that THERE ARE WASPS EVERYWHERE, A ZILLION WASPS ARE TRYING TO KILL ME. But the slacker is no slacker when it comes to pandering to my unreasonable requests to rid the house of insects at all hours of the day and night, and he duly crawls out of bed and hurls each and every one of their sorry asses back out of the window, while I shriek helpful encouragements from behind the door, such as "GET IT!!!!" and "DON'T LET IT COME BACK IN!!!!!"

Ever since then the wasps have been out in force every night - faintly tapping, tapping at my chamber door.

I was fully prepared for a zombie invasion, but this? As I sit imprisoned in my living room with all the windows tightly shut on the hottest night of the year so far... I can do without it, I tell you.

car boot bargain de l'année

2007-07-11T14:17:00.001+01:00

If you want to go car-booting properly you have to go up North. Or at the very least, out of Oxford. Because Oxford may be many things, but boot sale central it 'aint. The nearest car boot to me doesn't even START until 10.30am, the time by which all decent booters are packing up and going home to get the Sunday dinner on.

I love a good car boot. The only person I know who loves them more is my bro, who would willingly get up at 3am on a Sunday morning and throw himself out of a moving vehicle just for a sniff of a box of vintage vinyl. I'm with him. There's nothing better than having a good old nose at what people are getting rid of, and if you've got your eye in, there's some super bargains to be had. Take for example the fruits of my most recent booting expedition - the Super Speak & Spell:

Now I know I said I wasn't going to buy any more of this stuff, but in all fairness I never actually said that out loud, and anyway I didn't actually mean it. But you have to understand that, from the moment we met, the Super Speak & Spell and I had a connection. It SPOKE to me. It also made some crazy bleeping noises. I knew I had to have it. AND IT WAS ONLY 50p! Stop looking at me like that.

More obsessive barminess abound, as I planned my entire coach trip home just so I could go to the Sing Fat Chinese supermarket in Birmingham to pick up more Ginbis Party Animal biscuits. The trip proved to be a triumphant success, although I had to check myself before I loaded my basket with 6 boxes of them after I discovered that the entire stock had been relegated to bargain corner and was selling for 45p a box. After much internal wrangling, I reluctantly limited myself to 3 boxes, because I needed to save some room in my bag for these awesome Doraemon crackers:

Doraemon rules. He's a time-travelling robot cat from the future. If you're wondering why he doesn't have any ears, it's because they were gnawed off by a robotic mouse in the 22nd century. It doesn't seem to bother him none. Look how happy he is.

In vegetable (green) and cheese (yellow) flavours, they are almost too good to eat. But I shall eat them anyway in case they give me the ability to travel through time, in which case I would hot-foot it back to about a year ago, when I passed up the chance to buy a Speak & Maths in a charity shop, just because I was down to my last fiver & needed it to buy some food. What was I thinking?! I can barely live with the regret. If you happen to have one that you don't want, please send it to me so that I can get on with my life.

oh dear

2007-07-10T01:52:00.000+01:00