the corner office

So do people ever lie awake at night pondering the etymology of the phrase 'spot the stiff'? Me neither, but I was curious, and I think this might be the source:

We were kept up last night by the inconsiderate neighbours who were still making a racket at 1 in the morning, with a karaoke machine singing Little Mermaid songs. I don't know any Little Mermaid songs, I took Ronwen's word for it.

I've been diligent with the cycling this week... these days I cycle the full distance into work in the morning, and then cycle across London to Charing Cross to catch the train home in the evening. That takes me through Hyde Park and Green Park, which are really pretty this time of year.

Today, though, I decided to take things to the next level. In addition to 17.4 miles into work this morning, I decided to do the full distance home as well. To add a bit of zing to the experience, I decided to take a different route home - instead of a northwards arc via Lewisham, I'd try a southwards arc via Tooting and Streatham. That would ostensibly reduce the journey to closer to 16 miles, and I'd covered a large part of the route en route to and from a family gathering on the weekend. What could go wrong, I thought?

Ah yes, what could go wrong? A good old 'spot the stiff' line if ever there was one.

The first thing that went wrong is I'd gotten a bit mixed up based on the weekend journey, chose the wrong main road which I rather pig-headedly kept going along (that war memorial where I turn has to be coming up any minute now dammit) and ended up doing a not inconsiderably greater number of miles than I'd planned.

I must accept that without my co-pilot (no, not Jesus), I'm rather stuffed when it comes to navigation. It's not many a man who'll admit to that, but this one will.

The second thing which went wrong is that I was reminded yet again that when you're in a car you don't register just how steep hills actually are. The Streatham area has some monsters. The southern arc is a hard core route, even I wasn't dragging it out with detours.

Still, I made it and I'm rather proud of myself. I might be crawling around the house tomorrow, but tonight, I'm conquering and almighty.

Father and son square off over dinner, as is their wont.

"Please have this mouthful, then you can go back to sitting there looking angst-ridden"

"Don't want angst. Angst awaaaaay!"

"OK, tell you what. Have this mouthful, and you don't have to have angst."

*has mouthful*

Both Ed and Dreamy David Miliband are running for leadership of the Labour party. That's wrong... how can the two of them run publically against each other? Shouldn't they have to settle it privately first with an arm wrestle or something?

A personal record in cutting things fine. Submitted an assignment to UNISA 52 seconds before the deadline. Thank heavens for broadband!

Amidst all the excitement of hung parliaments, Leo had his third birthday this weekend, and I can tell you that negotiating for the future of the country and the fate of the parliamentary system is nothing compared to the stress entailed by organising children's birthday parties.

Perhaps I'm just not wired properly, but a room full of toddlers wired on chocolate and sugar taxes my nervous system in ways that are hard to describe. Probably not helped by the fact that I was wired on chocolate and sweets and cake too. Nonetheless, our dear son has had an excellent haul present-wise (thanks to all of you to whom that applies), the party was a great success, and we can now give ourselves 11 months before starting to panic about the next one.

Ah, it's all quite exciting, rosettes and the big BBC shindig and fancy touch-panel displays and swingometers (except poor Jeremy Vine, who has to walk around some of the kakkest-looking CGI backdrops ever).

The big story (or is it always like this?) is around voting booths closing at 10 and leaving queues of people being 'denied their right to vote.' Nothing makes the TV people happier than having something to get really exercised and pissed off about. Outrageous! Scandal! What a mess! Country going down the drain!

On the one hand, you could just tell people to go vote sooner. On the other hand, it's not always that easy if you're working or can't get there sooner. So if the lawmakers really care about the issue, they could take a lesson from South African elections (and many others, I'm sure): make election day a bank holiday.

Mortified. That's the word the PR machine decided on. It got used by some cabinet minister before Gordon Brown had even left the house, then Gordon came out with his fake smile and say-words-that-mean-nothing display of contrition on the doorstep and said he was 'mortified', then people like spinmeister Alistair Campbell and dreamy David Milliband used it this afternoon and evening. Mortified. That, and 'profound apology'.

Blah blah blah.

As for the issue itself: if dear Mrs Duffy, who might be a lovely lady in every other respect, had spoken about blacks or Jews or Muslims or Pakistanis "flocking in," how would people have reacted to Brown's comments then?

Anyway. Brown a two-faced misery-guts who scorns the small-world views of working class Labour voters? Shock horror!

That jumbo jets are unable to glide is an urban legend that I've (rather gullibly, perhaps) believed for yonks.

As it turns out (and it's on the internet so it must be true), 747s have a glide number of 15, which means they can cover 15 kilometres for every kilometre they drop. What's more, they have a 'sink' rate of about 2,000 feet per minute (see also this article) which means that if the engines went phut at 30,000 feet, the pilots would have about 15 minutes to land the thing.

The internet has ruined the art of arguing. When someone corrected me earlier this week, my reaction was not to stick to my guns and say 'does too not glide' - that would be foolish given how easy refutation can now be. My reaction was 'hmm, good point, best I google it'. We are all better informed these days, but we have, sadly, lost a little something along the way.

One of the advantages of living in the green belt is that we're just a few minutes' walk away from countryside and woods. Today we took a route that took us past loads of people out for strolls, petting a gazillion mutts as we went. Walkers with dogs are always the friendliest.

The world itself has come alive the past few weeks. The fields are green, trees are blossoming, and suddenly it's glorious sunshine all day long. We walked along a stream, trekked down a woodland path with all sorts of birds chirping, saw amazing old Victorian houses and farmhouses up on hills and sheep and even heard a peacock somewhere.

We also went over two railway bridges, and on each stuck around so that Leo could see a train coming underneath. We saw two trains passing, and in both cases the train drivers saw us watching and honked and waved as they passed underneath. Now admittedly one of them was resting his head in one hand and waving with the other, but it was a honk and a wave regardless, and that's what counts.

Problems and politics aside, this is an awesome place to live, really.