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Today we have been in Leigh on Sea for various reasons. At the church there Maddie_C noticed this rather interesting gravestone with an unusual inscription. Having done some research it seems that the grave itself is called ‘the cutlass stone’, the story being that cutlasses were sharpened on it in times past. It would be fascinating it find out more about Mary Ellis, but that is not something I have been able to do.

Posted by Dave at 6:21 pm on September 30, 2006 and filed under Essex Life, Photographs.

6 Comments

A slight exaggeration, but these days you have to overstate your case to be noticed.

Maddie_C and I have a lot of furniture and oddments that we are trying to get rid of as we have too many things and also some duplicates. We don’t want money for these items, but you would need to come and pick them up. We are about 15-20 minutes from junction 29 of the M25, down the A127 into Essex towards a town I will not name, but it rhymes with ‘Pasildon’. We are around most of the weekend, or we could make another time to be in, the sooner the better.

Items:

• King sized bed – the wooden frame bit. There is a mattress but it is not very good so you would need to buy one really.
• Ikea desk. Just a flat one with metal legs. Many of the blog cartoons from the last year and a half were drawn on it, so it is worth a fortune.
• All manner of odd household items that would come in really useful for someone setting up a home for the first time: Iron, telephone, nice curtains… um… washing basket… and loads more that I could mention if required.

Let me know if you’re interested in anything. We will be advertising elsewhere (Freecycle etc) shortly, but thought you might like first pick.

Posted by Dave at 6:26 pm on September 29, 2006 and filed under Essex Life, Sundry posts.

1 Comment

I surround myself with motivational posters as I find they spur me on in times of adversity. This is one of the ones that I am finding helpful at the moment.

Posted by Dave at 8:16 am on September 29, 2006 and filed under In-depth analysis, Signs.

9 Comments

This is a non credit card, just in case anyone wants to print it out and then not carry it with them.

Britain is at the top of the debt league and we must all do what we can to fight back at the credit card companies who blight our lives with their continual envelopes. I put some rubbish in the pre-paid return envelopes and return them, though I do not identify myself as I do not want to be added to a list of people to whom extra misery must be caused. Sometimes I fill in the forms with gobbledygook or languages with a script of my own devising. As with the spammers you should never let them know you exist as they will send you more and more of their junk.

My view is that it is ok to have one credit card for purchases that can be made no other way, and these days there are some of those. Also when overseas it is useful to not have to carry large amounts of the currency especially if bartering with weighty produce is the local custom. But I would never borrow on a credit card as it is a bad way to borrow and also I am not good with PIN numbers.

Posted by Dave at 9:21 am on September 28, 2006 and filed under Current events, Slightly grumpy.

6 Comments

A quick scribble inspired by the first of my art classes last night. I am going on the train to Leigh on Sea every Tuesday evening for fourteen weeks to study still life oil painting. I decided to start with still life as landscapes tend to move as you are painting them and people tend to get offended when the portrait resembles some unrelated form of life. My first piece (in pencil) was entitled ‘bottle, onion and cauliflower’ for reasons I will leave you to imagine.

Posted by Dave at 9:32 am on September 27, 2006 and filed under Art, Essex Life.

7 Comments

[Click on this cartoon for a larger version]

This drawing is also available on We Blog Cartoons meaning that you can freely post it on your own blog.

Posted by Dave at 1:02 pm on September 26, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, New Weblogcartoons cartoons.

6 Comments

I am trying to finish a drawing this morning so I have no time for blogging. Instead I will post this link which I have found. I did not find the link by surfing the internet though as I am too busy doing drawing.

Little People – a tiny street art project

“Little hand-painted people, left in London to fend for themselves.”

Perhaps found via Drawn, not that I have been looking at the internet.

Posted by Dave at 10:00 am on September 25, 2006 and filed under Art.

3 Comments

I suspect I was the only person watching Songs of Praise this evening who was taking photos of the screen when there were good shots of people holding hymn books. This was not one such picture, though people with open mouths are useful too.

Apologies to the BBC if taking photographs of Songs of Praise is not allowed. I tried to find out, but couldn’t.

Posted by Dave at 7:19 pm on September 24, 2006 and filed under Church, Photographs, TV.

6 Comments

Posted by Dave at 3:55 pm on September 23, 2006 and filed under Cartoons, Utter nonsense.

4 Comments

I am deeply against loyalty card schemes as they enable the big multinational supermarkets to spy on you and use your data for their evil purposes. It is quite clearly the sort of thing that is warned about in the book of Revelation.

Having said that we collect Tesco clubcard points as it enables one to get magazine subscriptions for next to nothing. I hope to get UNCUT for a few pounds a year for instance on this very basis. It isn’t as if there is a choice of supermarkets or in fact anywhere else to buy food around here anyway so my severe hypocrisy is easy to justify to myself.

Some of the other clubcard schemes aren’t very good. The Nectar scheme, for instance, where a lifetime spent gathering points will get you a biro and perhaps a mug. I’m sure, now I’ve said that, that someone will write in saying that filling up with petrol once a month enables them to go on a cruise around the Bahamas every year, but I for one don’t believe a word of it.

Anyway, here’s the real point of what I wanted to say. Tesco are now supposedly giving clubcard points for those who re-use plastic bags. Green points, or somesuch. However, I for one have never been awarded any green points and I usually just put the shopping into my rucksack and cycle home with it. Usually it isn’t much – today it was carrots and cheesecake. But I should still be getting my 1p without having to ask.

This is the end of today’s post proper. Please stop reading if the weighty analysis aspect was the only reason you tuned in.

Other information and notices:

• I’ve updated the places to buy the book list with two other stockists, taking the total up to four shops worldwide.
• I’ve removed a Technorati gizmo which has been slowing the blog down for weeks and maybe months now. Sorry to take so long to do this but I’ve only just worked out what the problem was.
• Thanks for the kind words about the last two cartoons. I’ve not had a great week and my confidence in their suitability for the blog wasn’t high, so thank you.

Posted by Dave at 6:05 pm on September 22, 2006 and filed under In-depth analysis, Sundry posts.

10 Comments

[Polite notice: Please do not hotlink this image. To place it on your blog please save it onto your own webspace. Thank you.]

Posted by Dave at 10:38 pm on September 21, 2006 and filed under Sundry posts.

10 Comments

The Awareness Course is expected to be the most revolutionary experience in Christian self-development since the Alpha Course.

So says the Anglican Communion website. The Archbishop is commending it. There doesn’t seem to be much online about it, though I eventually dug out the Trinity Foundation for Christianity and Culture which explains everything and has a YouTube video which I found too jerky to watch.

Everyone seems to me making up a course these days. I think I might make one of my own. If you let me know the sort of subjects that you’d like included I’ll see whether I can draw up some sort of syllabus. It doesn’t just have to be Christian sorts of things, we could have household hints, perhaps a bit of road safety and whatever you’d like.

Posted by Dave at 2:29 pm on September 21, 2006 and filed under Ecumenical matters, Spirituality.

6 Comments