Seen in Kingston centre yesterday

This America, Harley Davis, Jeep with the All USA, actually A one one USA numberplate. Must be worth a few dollars even at today’s rates. Very stylish If you’ve got it flaunt it.

Just to let you know the building behind the car, now an Accessorize Shop, used to be the headquarters of the Kingston Watch. That is before there were police all male citizens of Kingston had to take their turn guarding the town. Those days the town was rather rough. Just around the corner there were over twenty pubs. One, the Rose and Crown, was the training centre of bare knuckle fighters. Who just fought and fought until one was permanently knocked out. The prize fighters and their followers, the tough industries, such as leather working and foundry, the market traders, the farm hands coming in for their monthly booze up and the watermen, the dockers meant that on market days and nights the town could be quite lively. If you were a well to do citizen of the town you can pay someone to do your night watch shift for you. And the people that you hired often passed some of the money on others. So in the end the watch’s cash went to pay the drinking bill of the people the watch should be watching.

Just made a new Tory slogan. So can you.

Really nice day and I had a drink with Louis, at the Gazebo, Kingston.  The River Thames is behind me.

Later that day I was at a 1950′s style diner.  In Eden Street.

Eden Street was originally called La Hethenstrat and was the Jewish quarter of Kingston.  At that time Kingston was quite an industial town with a big leather works, foundaries and numerous small businesses.  The road was then renamed Heathen Street, which meant rural, as in ‘of the heath’.  It was thought that there were some small craft businesses and a primitive pottery in the street, which would have justified the name ‘heathen’, ie unspophisticated crafts.

The street was changed to Eden Street because there were two churches in the street and this was considered a joke by rival congregations.  I’ll follow this up at the local heritage centre.

Good overview of the history of Kingston upon Thames.

My new strategy to get a career in fashion.  Stand near a sign like this and see how soon they’ll pay me to go away.

Pity I didn’t have my Blogger hoodie on or I’d have soon been successful.

I was developing the web site, National Apathy Week, due to run from April 2nd to April 8th, but due to procastination, and my involvement in other things,  I realise there just isn’t any time to develop the project properly.  

National Apathy Week was to be, will be an annual non-event that will take place between the 2nd April and the 8th April.  In that time people will be sponsored not, repeat not, to do stunts for charity.  

So for example if someone elects to be sponsored not to run a marathon for a particular charity, then they will only get  their sponsors to pay if they do not run.

We will develop the site  and we will try and get people to sponsor our nominated charities.  

• Simon Community
• Macmillan Cancer Care
• PDSA
• BTCV
• Arthritis Care
• Wateraid

We plan to keep the site open and encourage people to subscribe to monthly charitable donations throughout the year.  We will then organise a proper PR campaign for National Apathy Week 2010.

There’s a lot more good, inspiring stuff on the fool simulation center.

I particularly like this TV ad.

Arghh. It’s 3:30 in the morning.

and why’s a figment of my childhood telling me to go to bed.

and wasn’t he always the bossy one?

Alway’s knowing what was going on.

He must have had Dougal, Florence, Brian and Dylan constantly under surveillence.

This is part of our collective childhood. No wonder we allow all the CCTV, car number plate monitoring, government departments sifting through our files, all our emails and phone messages being stored.

I’m getting paranoid.

Night. night.