When doing the household chores, the rewards are just doing a good job in and of itself. the one job with a perk is the laundry. The main perk is the occasional discovery of money are you check the trouser pockets before they go into the machine. (If its a bad day a couple of snotty hankies are all you get.)

Quite often my wife will leave me a pound or two, if I a really lucky five pound note she has forgotten about in her pocket. I like to think of this as a small tip to ensure I read the washing care label carefully and follow the instructions. (Hand wash only and no tumble dry being the major instructions which provide obsticales. )

The money usually gets pointed out to the owner at the end of the day, and if not needed would to towards a treat for the boy and girl or lunch money or bus fares or summit.

Yesterday, I got very excited emptying the tumble dryer. there was a note which had shaken itself loose. wow.
in fact on closer inspection their was two notes. ‘My wife had seen the job I was doing and had sent me a good tip ffor doing a good job. Hurrah.’ I thought. I emptied the machine and went back for the rewards, glowing with self satisfaction.

I took out one then two, looked at them.
I held in my hands 30 dollars from the US of A.
Brilliant. Possibly

My Mind Raced with questions…
1 – How much is $30 in £?
2 – Why did my wife have dollars in her pocket?
3 – Had she been shopping with dollars to take advantage of a favorable exchange rate somewhere, and this was her change?
4 – Where can you spend dollars in Lanark and is it a good exchange rate?
5 – What could you ransom for $30 dollars and were the police aware of this?
6 – was my son running an illegal money exchange buisness in the playground and was this his profit margin for one day?
so many questions.

so whats the meaning of this whats the back story? will it ever be discovered?
How big a reward is a puzzle?

(i didn’t buy anything.)

Changes.
They come in some unexpected places.

You came to take us
All things go, all things go
To recreate us
All things grow, all things grow
We had our mindset
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things know, all things know
(I made a lot of mistakes)
You had to find it
(I made a lot of mistakes)
All things go, all things go
(I made a lot of mistakes)

this is a photo record of what turned out to be a simple build, which looks great
to start with the publicity shot

all the bits and end reciepient/main user, (for purposes of scale obviously)

lots of packaging

instructions seperate picture (right hand side of book, from left hand side

finally done!

On Tuesday our kettle stopped working. With baby milk and stuff, having boiling water quickly is a good idea generally. While boiling on the cooker was effective, it was taking considerably longer than a kettle. Soon Wednesday due to a mobile phone message mix up, I was dispatched to buy a new kettle.

In our town a that time of night you have three options, Tesco, Argos or Homebase. I discounted Homebase as not likely to have a great range, and Tesco was stuck off the list for broadly similar reasons. This left Argos as sole supplier, but fortunately is is surprising the range Argos have. It is broad and wide (ish). I selected a kettle and bought it. What a kettle it is. It has challenged me in ways i never thought a kettle could.

Krups BW4000 Semi Pro
Having lived with it for four days now I really like it. I mean really like it. My relationships with kettles up and until this point has always been kinda ambiguous, but that has changed. ‘why?’ you ask, ‘isn’t a kettle just a kettle?’

no

the Krups BW4000 Semi Pro is not just a kettle like any other.
1 -it isn’t round or oblong in shape, The Krups has a distinctive square shape to it. I didn’t realise quite how much the shape would challenge my thoughts about kettles.
2 -The Krups has a 2l capacity. The other kettles we have had only had a 1.7 capacity, yet it doesn’t seem bigger.
3 – The Krups is heavier. i had never considered the weight of a kettle before but the Krups feels substantial, while just being right for its size.
4 – Automatic assisted lid. It seems just to make sense and keep in fitting with the rest of the machine.
5 – Concealed element. It gives the kettle an air of mystery, you don’t see the element…does it even exist.
6 – Soft grip handle. It is soft and grippy. Other kettles seem plastic-y and cold in comparison.

Before this week I hadn’t considered my relationship with my kettle. Now I wonder what other relationships I have but am unaware of…

Scotland here we come

Finally, after some broken promises and premature wishes, we are on our way to Edinburgh and Glasgow to hold back-to-back sample sales.

The Edinburgh sale will be held at:

Assembly rooms
54 George Street
Edinburgh, EH2 2LR

The opening times in Edinburgh will be:

Monday 8th June – 12:30 til 6pm
Tuesday 9th June – 9:30am til 6pm
Wednesday 10th June – 9:30am til 6pm
Thursday 11th June – 9:30am til 6pm

And then we’ll pack up and head straight over to start the Glasgow sale

Unit 23, Princes Square Shopping centre
Buchanan Street
Glasgow G1 3JX

The opening times in Glasgow will be:

Friday 12th June – 12:30 til 6pm
Saturday 13th June – 9am til 6pm
Sunday 14th June – 11am til 5pm

Phew!

As always, there will be tonnes on offer, including some amazing one off test-print tees from the print shop. We’ll also have the usual end of line stuff, one off samples, last in the box, shrunk, faded, and pre loved.

So make sure you get there before the lot is gone. Oh and bring a bag to carry your new stuff home safely (we don’t give out bags).

Hope to see you there.

after a bit of twitter action, what do you think i will be doing this weekend?

I also bought 3 books at the Oxfam bookshop,
Grace Davie’s ‘The Sociology of Religion’
Clay Shirky’s ‘Here Comes Everybody’
Appignanesi & Garratt’s Introducing Postmodernism

Good buying this week then! how was your shopping?
PS does anyone know where to buy super-8 film?

if i had to rate them then

1 Milton Jones – Absolutely Hilarious
2 Harry Hill – Just Beautiful
3 John Shuttleworth – every song a winner
4 Bill Bailey – good set
5 Joe fisher – Had a hard audience of youthworkers to work with. His “cuddling for the kingdom” was very funny though

anyway
on saturday we, ( and a mean a reasonably large group of us went to see mark steel at the Glasgow comedy festival.
it was quite funny. marks set was based around being radical and being over 40. Is observations about how he has changed and how how his perspective on what and how he believes politically, has changed and developed as he has grown older. it was very funny.

I did wonder how the rest of the guys I was with felt about it.
I had an idea about his Marxist background and how his politics had been very definitely left. I am not sure that many of the guys I was with were that aware of just how political the show would be. (it was a relatively gentle politics, but it did ground the majority of the set.)

Anyway the night was fun.
Most of us laughed consistently and had a good time.
where would he have come on my list above? Joint forth with Bill Bailey probably. (PS the top 4 are quite close together so forth isn’t bad at all.

you could read rich’s thoughts here

To celebrate World book day on Friday, rich, dressed up as a lion. I on the other hand bought a book.
“The Fragile Absolute, or why is the christian legacy worth fighting for?” by Slavoj Žižek

i think this shall be the next book i will read. continuing my ongoing attempt to read books that make me think.
from the blurb on the back:

“one of the signal features of our ear is the re-emergance of the ‘sacred’ in all its different guises, from New-Age paganism to the emerging religious sensitivity within cultural and political theory.
The wager of Žižek’s The Fragile Absolute – published
here with a new preface by the author – is that Christianity and Marxism can fight together against the contemporary onslaught of vapid spiritualism. The revolutionary core of the Christian legacy is too precious to be left to fundamentalists.”

In these times of trouble financially, the repairing manifesto from Platform 21 in amsterdam is pertinent and relevant. (I cannot remember who pointed this out but thanks to them.)