If you’ve been out and about on the tube during rush hour recently, you’ll likely have heard the dulcet tones of Boris Johnson. It’s unnerving hearing a voice doing anything other than give station and service updates, even more when it tries to be enthusiastic. Like this:

Yes, Bozza, we know, the entire system is going to be gridlock. Yes, it’s going to be unpleasant. Yes, it’s worth researching GAOTG and their station disruption maps. But stop trying to pretend that it’s going to be fun to live through this disruption.

Of course, it could easily be worse. Imagine, if you will, that the voice making these announcements was significantly more adenoid-y. “Comrades! It’s the General Secretary Mayor Livingstone here, instructing you to all find some other way to get to work, because I need these trains to get people to and from my vanity project the Glorious Olympiad!”

*shudder*

While I thoroughly enjoy the company of Roxy in the house, it has to be said, there are disadvantages to having her about. Chief amongst them is this: she likes to get a bit muddy, and run about indoors. This isn’t too big a problem downstairs where there are no carpets; that’s why the good Lord invented mops. But upstairs we have carpets and beds which don’t react too well to muddy paw-prints and dogs shaking off moisture.

Also, I’ve discovered that there are better ways to end a lie-in than having 50lb of mongrel hitting you at the end of a flying leap.

So we’ve tried a great many things to stop her going upstairs. We’ve done discipline, and it worked for a while until she was allowed up to stay in our room when she was sick. We’ve tried blocking by jamming the door at the top of the stairs, and it worked until she figured out how to open the door with her damn nose. We’ve tried rewarding her to stay downstairs, but she prefers to find out what’s going on upstairs to the treats we offer.

So, we admit defeat. We headed to Argos and made a special purchase:

Yes; we’ve admitted that the hound is going to force us to change the way that we use the house. And so, I put myself at risk of death attacking me on the staircase just so that I don’t get a muddy carpet.

If that isn’t a sign of middle-age hitting me on the back of the head, I don’t know what is.

Back in Belshaft, I was rarely bothered by political canvassers. Most of the political parties were content to rely on tribal ties to get their vote out, and the ones that made the effort to pound the pavement tended to be the ones that I’d never vote for.

Over here, it seems to be a little bit different. For example, only this weekend I had a knock on the door from my local MP, who had a little team with them and seemed to be knocking on each of the three hundred doors on my road.

“So,” said she, “Mr Hillan, I’m sure that you’re aware that the London mayoral elections are coming up next year, Ken v Boris… Do you happen to know who you’ll vote for?”

“Yes, I do. And I’m sorry, but it’s not your guy.”

“Oh I’m sorry to hear that, do you mind if I ask why?”

“Because he’s a mentalist and he scares me.”

Three things that I think, following this encounter:

1. My self restraint is better than I thought, I managed to avoid pointing out that her seat could have been won by a donkey with her colour of rosette; I managed to avoid mentioning the word ‘demagogue’, I didn’t mention anything about election stealing, Marxism or individual and non-mandated foreign policy decisions. My, I must be growing as a person.
2. Fair play to her, wandering the streets of an afternoon when there could be any number of people who’ll answer the door and point out some of the things mentioned above.
3. I’m not entirely sure that TLW will ever let me answer the door again…

ScaryDuck, who keeps a log of people looking angry in local newspapers, alerted me to this article: Faversham mum told to put dead fox in her wheelie bin, which has answered a little question of mine.

Where, in a city, do you dispose of dead animals that arrive in your garden?

Back when I were a country lad, it was simple; dead birds got put in a hole (if very young witnesses were about) or left somewhere for the local feral cats to get rid of. Larger corpses were usually dragged off by animals quickly, or a nice friendly farmer could get rid of really big things. Simples.

Here, if (for example) a dog kills a small bird and drags it into the house, you can safely hide it in the wheelie bin. But we have feral foxes here, and our dog trainer¹ told me a while back that one of her clients’ pack of dogs had eviscerated a fox that had wandered into the house. How do you get rid of that without the bloody bin police noticing it?

The above article answers: you don’t worry about the bin police, and just throw it in the bin as per normal. Which is nice to know.

—
¹ – yes, it’s gotten to the point where we have a dog trainer. Very odd.

According to t’internet, in March, April and May Londoners would expect to see 13.4, 12.7 and 12.5 rainy days. A total of 38-ish wet days in the three month period.

That’s the science.

By coincidence, we got us a little dog at the end of February, and it’s now the end of June. Which means that we have a reference for that three month period: it’s we’ve had the dog out twice a day since then. And here’s the thing: today was only the fourth time that I’ve had her out in the rain. So we’ve only really had four wet days, or just about 10% of what there should have been.

It would appear that all that news coverage about it being a bloody dry spring wasn’t too far off the mark. I suspect, given the downpours that have occurred in the last twenty four hours, that the farmers in the south east will be bloody happy today.

New York, New York… A name that conjures up a lot of images. Skyscrapers, long straight roads full of angry people in iconic yellow taxis, pavements full of angry people shouting into cell phones.

Except, in future, some of that will be different.

Japan’s Nissan Motor has won a contract to provide the next generation of New York’s famous yellow taxis.

The deal, which is estimated to be worth $1bn (£607m) was announced by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

The design will be based on Nissan’s NV200 minivan model.

Oh dear. Why would you replace the iconic saloon cars with bloody minivans? Why?

Yes, you’ll likely get more MPG out of the new cars. And you’ll get more folk into them. And they’ll probably be better and safer in most respects. But why not just steal the traditional London cab and paint it yellow? At least it’d be better looking than this:

Bleugh. That just ugly…