Saturday 25 February 2017

Random thoughts (part 3)

Here are a few more random thoughts on a variety of random subjects, including dentists, double glazing, and the secret to immortality.

"They're going for a walk without us again..."

1) How a dog sees the world...


When you go to work each morning, your dog probably thinks you're going for a walk on your own for eight hours.



2) Poor counting skills


A survey was recently carried out which asked people, "Who would you most like to run a three-legged race with?". Top of the list of answers was Holly Willoughby, which is a perfectly understandable choice. However, at number four on the list was, surprisingly, 'Ant and Dec'.

Ant and Dec?

In a three-legged race?

Maths must be different nowadays from when I was at school because back in my day that would have been a five-legged race.

Saturday 18 February 2017

Coincidental company names

Original names for electronic companies are
harder to think of than you might expect.
When writing 'How To Poison Your Husband And Get Away With It', my recently released short story collection, for one of the stories I needed to think of a name for a fictitious electronic company. I therefore got my thinking cap on and came up with...

Integrax

However, after a quick Google search it turns out that by coincidence Integrax is already a real company!

I didn't want to get into any legal difficulties over copyright, so I went back to the drawing board and came up with...

Tridox

Apparently, it turns out Tridox is already the name of a medicine. It's also the name of  a self curing, non-epoxy plastic adhesive cement. I have to admit I'm not sure what a self-curing non-epoxy plastic adhesive cement is exactly, but whatever it is, there's already one called Tridox.

Saturday 11 February 2017

Sayings from around the world (Valentine's Day special)

A Valentine's Day themed blog post.
When I was first learning Swedish I bought a Swedish phrase book and one of the things which surprised me was the 'Romance section' of the phrase book.

Incredibly, the phrase book included four expressions for how to tell a Swedish woman, 'Sorry, I'm not interested,' and only one phrase to express interest.  I have to say, whoever wrote the guide book must clearly have never have met any Swedish women, as all the Swedish women I've ever met would most definitely not prompt me to say, 'Sorry, I'm not interested.'

Anyway, although I'm not fluent in other languages, I nevertheless still find foreign sayings and expressions interesting, so in honour of Valentine's Day, here are a few romantic phrases from around the world...

Saturday 4 February 2017

'Guess the sign' quiz

Signposts are a part of everyday life. They're also quite boring, so you may be wondering why I've decided to have a quiz on them!

Well, although the majority of signs are indeed boring, the signs featured in this week's quiz all appealed to my daft sense of humour.

The text from each of the following signposts has been deleted, so see if you can guess what each sign originally said...

1) African Sign


This first sign is an amusing sign from Africa.  I've erased the text, but bearing in mind the antelope silhouette, can you guess what the sign originally said?


Yes, that's right!  As you've probably guessed the sign says...