Hey ho tiddly pom blimey

Yes ladies and gentlemen, and others, that is the sound of me riding up to the Borisbike station by Moorgate tube, only to find it gone.

Yes, gone. In fact not just gone but gorn. Absent. Removed. Away. Weg. Gorn. The place has been scraped clean, like the pavement's been shaved in one of those ludicrous ads where our new seven-blade system gives you the smoothest shave yet, because it stretches as it smoothes as it slices - or whateverthehell. Gorn. Or perhaps it's more as if the Black Helicopters and their sinister operatives came in overnight and whisked away the whole kit and caboodle, leaving only the row of suspiciously-neat patches where the bike docks and console thingy had stood.

Nooooooooooooooo, I went, somewhat filmistically I hope. But then a nice chap stopped and directed me to the next one, just round the corner. So it's fine. Put the kettle on please Colin. Thank you.

The sheer bliss of being normal

I got home last night to find that Mrs von Neustadt has bought a lovely new long-arm stapler to enable her - and me, if I'm good - to staple music together for Stringwise and other fine musical type thingies. This is good. I like staplers.

To my horror the stapler, perhaps because it's a cheapo own-brand Ryman job rather than one with a proper maker's name on, does not appear to have printed or stamped on it the type of staples it needs. I thought this was absolutely standard practice, and to not do it seems … foolish … at best.

Naturally Mrs von Neustadt, before I'd got my hands on the new stapler, had thrown away the box, and compounded her sin by filling the device with staples that she thought seemed to fit OK. Seemed to fit OK? Seemed to fit OK?? Reader, do you not now begin to see the searing pain at the very heart of my existence? (No? Oh well, never mind, have a cuppa.)

In all honesty but through gritted teeth I'm forced to pause and admit that, by the purest fluke and not (of course) because 98.3% of all staples in the Cosmos are the same, Mrs von Neustadt did just happen to have filled it with the right staples. Absolute coincidence, mind, and clearly it does not in any way affect the purity of my argument. Ahem no indeed.

Anyway, I did what any red-blooded officer of my regiment (yes, thank you Tamsin, the ladies and gentlemen do, I suspect, know full well exactly which regiment we mean here) would have done, and retrieved the box from the recycling. I then tore off the little corner of cardboard which records the stapler's preferred diet and concealed it about my person before rerecycling its parent-box. Well I mean you would, wouldn't you? (No? Gosh. We should talk.)

Travelling to work this morning I was delighted to find the said insignificant-looking, but information-rich, fragment in my pocket.

Naturally I have now transcribed all of this crucial staple data into a small but strangely effective information system which lives on my portable wireless telephonic device, and which, entirely gorgeously, synchronizes silently and without fuss with its online webitty-web-access version - so if the information is here, it's also there, and, y'know, over there too. This I like, a lot.

So now I have this vital and very interesting data safely stashed away for all eternity or at least until a large systems failure of some kind. Empires may fall and rise, new elements emerge, Earth's orbital wobble may subtly change but I will always be able to tell you which staples you'll need.

I can't tell you how happy and fulfilled this little information handling and storage excursion has made me feel. I'm just glad I'm so normal. It's great.

Please don’t let the Year 10 Work Experience Kid write the press releases. Really.

A couple of corkers from the press release for the Grand Opening (yay woo) of the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel London.

The infamous sweeping forecourt, unique to a London hotel in its size and presence, provides a fitting entrance for the new hotel that will also showcase restored gold-leaf ceilings, ornate wall murals and the spectacular grand staircase.

The famous staircase, widely revered as the most majestic in England with windows measuring over 50 feet and crowned by an elaborate vaulted ceiling, has been featured in many films and music videos most notably Batman and the Spice Girl’s video for their debut single ‘Wannabe’.

Come on, toughen up, girls! Get out a dictionary and a grammar primer and do some not-very intensive study on one or two very easy topics. Either that, or give the work to – or at least, please please please, have it checked by – someone who actually uses English carefully. Or, y’know – just read it through before you publish it. That would be good too.

It’s been done by a professional PR company and, whilst I don’t want to sound too much like my own grandmother, it’s just plain sloppy.

I have wroted to them with my boring, smallminded, anal-retentive curmudgeonly complaints because hey, that’s the kind of relaxed dude I am. I even sent them, in the spirit of being lovely and nice, a bijou linkette. (Sadly, I was too lazy and/or narked to even try to sort out their Scary Batman And Singular Spice problem. But ho hum.) Will I, do you think, get a lovely, nice and helpful reply and some lovely and nice chocolate bunnies to thank me for my trouble? Dear Reader, watch this space.

Oh dear

I very nearly broke my rule on trying to avoid writing in this blog about my work. Well actually I did, then thought better of it. This replaces the previous attempt.

Hmmm.

Maybe I should write about puppies instead. Puppies are nice.

Yes.