Neatly Trimmed Bush

If you’re a fan of topiary and you like elephants (c’mon, everyone likes elephants) then you’d probably love the topiary elephants that herded into the Pavilion Gardens for the week.

They were here to raise money for “Elephant Corridors”, strips of protected land that join up conservation parks and allow elephants to roam freely between them.

They formed quite a magnificent sight, grazing on the lawn. I wish they were still going to be here on my wedding day.

The only disappointment was that they weren’t real topiary, but somehow I doubt a herd of plastic hedge-effect elephants would’ve been such a crowd puller.

Blogging From The iPhone

At last! I can join every other technogeek I’m the world! The blogging software is great so expect more random drivel from the road.

So far the only hitch is that 16Gb is nothing like enough storage. I’ve virtually filled it, so basically it’s a bit of a one-in-one-out for albums.

Stag Hunting

Last weekend was my stag do. Obviously the ancient and mystical law of the stag prevents me from revealing too many details. But suffice to say, it was a weekend of records: from the first recorded instance of a member of the opposite sex eagerly grabbing me in a club, to the largest amount of toast ever served during breakfast.

Amongst other things, I sported a fetching moustache, 611 didn’t buy a sword, the brewery weren’t brewing, I got barred from a pub for not immediately buying pork scratchings, Nat seemed to confuse inches and miles, the hotel owner had very shiny trousers, someone bought a kebab yet ate the salad and left the ‘meat’, several people rediscovered the words to Rick Astley, I was murdered, Mark blocked my SIM card and we met some really lovely people, much like ourselves.

Oh, and while Guzzler and Centurion Ghost are magnificent, the Terrier is quite hoppy.

York is a magnificent place to toast myself. My love and thanks to my friends for arranging and sharing the weekend with me. I was genuinely touched*.

* by each of them in turn

Amazing Fountain

Can’t be arsed to blog anything proper, like. So have an amazing fountain instead…

http://www.noob.us/miscellaneous/creative-waterfall/

I’m A Geek…

…so I’m writing this using Google’s new Chrome browser. It’s interesting. I like the general feel of it, and the ability to drag tabs out of the window and back in, without reloading content, is very slick indeed.  I like the little mosaic you get instead of a homepage, with mini versions of your most visited site. And it’s certainly quick handling multimedia content. It’s very slow for some pages, but does seem to improve as you use it.

But I’ll be going back to Firefox soon, if only for Adblock Plus – I’mjust not used to see any adverts at all when I browse! I also miss the customised Search Box. In Chrome, the search box is incorporated into the address bar (very sensible) but you only seem to be able to have one search engine. I use the Search Bar to search Amazon, eBay, Google, Maps, Wikipedia etc etc

I can’t wait for Firefox 4, though, if they can incorporate the more exciting and useful features of Chrome.

Nice Chinese Lady

I met a nice Chinese lady on the tube this morning.  She was trying to work out how to get to the Chinese Embassy in Holborn, and since that’s where I was going I took her along.

She’s from Beijing, and has been travelling around the UK for a couple of months on holiday but using Brighton as a base. She was probably in her 40s, and was here on her own just seeing somewhere exciting.

She loves Brighton beach and goes to the Pier a lot. She thought it was funny that there were lots of barbecues on the beach last Saturday when the sun was out – I told her that was very, very English. She was going to the embassy to arrange things to go home next month. I’m glad she had a nice time here.

I hope she found the embassy ok, I think it’s a few minutes walk from Holborn.

She was a really nice lady, and it made me happy to have chatted to her for a while and helped her out a little bit. Plus, how often do you meet someone from Beijing?