I just love Em, who is the cartoonist for The London Paper. Her stories are so true to life and always make me smile! Dog owners will know what I am talking about here:


(Click to enlarge)

I saw this in The London Paper yesterday, and I just had to share it, because it made me laugh so much on the train that people were giving me funny looks. Tres embarrassing.

It's all about so-called 'Bush-isms', the verbal gaffes that the outgoing President has made since being in office, and they are many and varied as you'll see....

"Families is where our nation finds hope, where wings take dream" LA CROSSE, WISCONSIN 18 OCT 2000

"I know how hard it is for you to put food on your family" GREATER NASHUA, NEW HAMPSHIRE 27 JAN 2000

"You work three jobs? Uniquely American isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that" TO A DIVORCED MOTHER OF THREE, OMAHA, NEBRASKA 4 FEB 2005

"Too many good docs are getting out of the business. Too many OB-GYNs aren't able to practise their love with women all across this country" POPLAR BLUFF, MISSOURI 6 SEPT 2004

"They mis-underestimated me" RENTONVILLE, ARKANSAS 6 NOV 2000

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" FLORENCE, SOUTH CAROLINA 11 JAN 2000

"I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully" SAGINAW, MICHIGAN SEPT 2000

If that's not enough for you, they also showed this picture of a note written to Condoleeza Rice during a UN General Assembly meeting in September 2005: "I think I may need a bathroom break. Is this possible?"

I feel like I've saved up a whole load of annoyance since my last posting. Top of my Things That Annoy Me list are people who leave their dog's mess on the ground. OK, I own a dog, so I know that you can't always help when and where your little darling goes, but for goodness sake! It looks and smells dirty, it's unhygienic and particularly in the autumn it's well disguised by the fallen leaves in my local park I've noticed, which occasionally leads to a 'sticky shoe' situation a la Phoebe from 'Friends':

We've recently had a new pavement laid down near our flat. It looked lovely and clean, for about half a day. Then it began to get marred with dog poo, just like the old one. The local council obviously had a lightbulb moment when they stencilled the below image onto the pavement at regular intervals. Do they really envisage this having any, I mean any effect on the non-pooper-scoopers around here? It looks like a 5-year old painted it! And what's with the atrocious font choice? I'm no typographer but I'd like to hear what one of my typographery-type (?) friends has to say about it! I really can't see these poor excuses for stencils having much of a difference. In fact I'm tempted to go and paint polka dots on them one night but I'm too scared I might get arrested. Hold on, if I used chalk, which washes off, that would be ok, wouldn't it? Watch this space....

Also I'm annoyed already with the darker nights and colder weather. I feel like I've been robbed of a summer that was promised but never even arrived. I've been stood up by summer. My flip flops didn't even get a look-in. Still, look on the bright side, at least it isn't raining. Much.

However, even I have got something to be thankful for. Whilst out with a friend for dinner the other week, we toasted those commuters who have the daily grind to work on over-packed trains and tubes, allowing us lucky few to work at home, only having to bear the grunting, sweating masses on rare occasions when a meeting calls us into central London.

We were surprised by the long queues stretching out of restaurants in London. On a Wednesday of all days! No sign of the credit crunch in the dining industry then, lucky things. Shortly after that I heard the great phrase 'dead cat bounce', which was first coined about 23 years ago. It basically means a small and temporary recovery in a financial market following a large fall, the idea being that even a dead cat will bounce if you drop it from a great height. Fantastic.