Fake Street

A whole street of fake shops is opening in Wen An Jie in Nanjing, China. To avoid litigation, the names have been changed: Starbucks becomes Bucksstar, Pizza Hut, Pizza Huh, Haagen Dazs, Haagon-Bozs, 7-Eleven, 1-Eleven, McDonald's, McDnoald's, Watsons, Watons etc!

Friday afternoon chukka

Our office is off for an outing to the England vs USA beach polo match at Sandbanks this afternoon so the female contingent is resplendent in flowery dresses, flipflops and hats. Let's hope the English captain, Chris Hyde, has every success and that we see Jodie Kidd. I'm not sure if I'll have the stamina to stay for the beach party later. It's been rather a party week. At one of them, the hostess made a speech saying, "Growing old is inevitable, growing up is optional," and she stepped off the stage where an Abba-esque band called The Fabbagirls had been playing, and she tripped and fell flat on her face! That's rather how I'm feeling this morning: distinctly jaded.

How to impress

I was glancing through an old copy of Stephen Potter's "Lifemanship" which gives advice, in one of its chapters, about how to woo women. One of the tactics Potter describes is the "cigarette stubbs of Jarvis" approach. Jarvis filled an ash-tray with cigarette stubs and then "bought half a dozen lipsticks in striking but contrasted reds (Fatal Apple, Eden End, Oblivion, Cindarella's Pumpkin, Lovers' Lip, etc) and painted the ends of the stubs with these reds to give an impression not only of the smartness, but of the variety and frequency of his companionship with other girls."

Potter then adds a note: "Few, if any, women liked this gambit, but it impressed his fellow men in the Cromer area."

The fastest hedgehog in Winchester

It was a wet night in Winchester on Monday. The rain had stopped. A weighty black cloud staggered forward to reveal a large full moon, only for a moment, then darkness returned. I opened the front door and the hall light shone onto the path. I went back to the car for one minute and when I turned to go inside the house, I saw an extraordinary thing: a hedgehog was racing towards the front door. It was a foot away from jumping inside when I pre-empted it and shut the door in its nose. Feeling rather guilty about this later, I gingerly put a saucer of milk out for it, hoping that it wouldn't barge in when I was opening the door again. However, in the morning it was clear that the hedgehog had eschewed my offer.

Bunny Austin

The last Englishman to reach a Wimbledon final was Bunny Austin who lost to Don Budge in 1938. Bunny, whose real name was Henry, is on the left in this photo. His other claim to fame was that he was the first man to wear shorts at Wimbledon. Wouldn't it be fun if Federer became the first man for years to wear trousers playing in a Wimbledon final?

Goat, anybody?

Private equity firms, desperate to restore their fortunes, are looking at goat farming in Australia as an investment opportunity. They say returns will be 8-12% from exporting goat meat, mainly to the USA. American goat merchants claim that goat meat has lower total fat, saturated fat, calories and cholesterol than "traditional" meats. I'm sure KL and Mopsa have views on this.

What is dying?

This was one of the readings at my great aunt's funeral yesterday:

A ship sails and I stand watching till she fades on the horizon and someone
at my side says, "She is gone."
Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large now as
when I last saw her. Her diminished size and total loss from my sight is in
me, not in her.
And just at the moment when someone at my side says she is gone there are
others who are watching her coming over their horizon and other voices take
up a glad shout," There she comes!"
That is what dying is. An horizon and just the limit of our sight.
Lift us up, Oh Lord, that we may see further

Bishop Brent