Avatar Virtual house tour

Since we bought a slice of Hampshire, and abandoned London for the delights of country living, we’ve been showing more or less anyone around our house. Friends? Yes. Family? Yes. Friends of family? Yes. The neighbours? Yes. Some guy who just wanted to pick up some furniture we sold on eBay? Yep.

Not everyone has had the thrill of the tour yet, though, and we understand that for some the wait is becoming intolerable. So, to help out, I’d like to extend an invitation for you to join us now on a virtual tour.

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Avatar House

There will, I expect, be more posts from me on this subject in the near future, because it has become a very large part of my life. But for now, it is probably enough to say that getting yourself a house is an enormous process that takes up a lot of your time and energy, and has far reaching consequences for the whole of your life. It is difficult and tiring.

On the other hand, though, it’s one of the best things ever, and it has made us this happy.

Normal service will resume in February. In the meantime, if you need me, I’ll be trying to find something in a box that is under three other boxes at the back of a room full of boxes.

Avatar Quoin (what did you call me?)

Take a look at this word:

Quoin

What’s going on there exactly? It’s very odd, as though someone was trying to type ‘coin’ in their phone and came out with a right old mess of nonsense.

The more you look at it the less it makes sense, possibly causing fits of giggles from its nonsensical nature. In a way it’s a bit like that picture of George that got funnier the longer you stared at it; scientists are yet to understand the power of Gorg.

For those not in the know, myself included, a quoin is a masonry block at the corner of a wall. Some are structural, providing strength for a wall made with inferior stone or rubble, while others merely add aesthetic details to a corner.

Imagine that, your corner is looking a little out-dated, not completely on the fashions so you rustle up a sexy quoin and stick it on the outside of your house ot make the neighbours jealous. If I had a collection of quoins mine would all have feather boas and they’d dangle from the side of my block of flats, teasing those that walk past with their dogs.

I wonder how many quoins Kevin has been through in his redevelopment cycle encompassing most of the British Isles.

Avatar Down

There’s a button labelled “down”, but it’s not a lift. In fact the button appears to be attached to some sort of horn or flange.

Pressing the button must, therefore, do something down related using the flangehorn.

I concluded that a push of the button would result in large amounts of feathery duck down being sprayed out of the hornhole into my face.

I declined to push the button.

Avatar A lesson from the Commodores

I recently got a new computer to play games on, and filled it with all the games I like to play. The games I most like to play are the ones I used to play when I was about 15. This includes one of my all-time favourites, SimCity 3000.

SimCity 3000 is full of silly jokes and unexpected references, and when I was 15 I didn’t get all of them. Coming back to the game in the last month or two, having not really touched it for perhaps the best part of a decade, a joke popped up that made sense to me for the first time, and it made sense thanks to one Kevindo F. Menendez and one Ian “Hotter Otter” McIver, who had kindly introduced me to a song the teenage Chris had never heard, and my life was all the better for it.

Avatar Curious Architecture

As the weather slightly improves in the British Isles, with varying degrees of success, so I am more inclined to leave the warm confines of the office and stretch my legs in the outside world. It’s a bit of a shocker at the moment. If people aren’t panic-buying soap and toilet paper they’re worriedly moving along the street, covering their mouths and greeting everyone with the level of suspicion they would normally reserve for an old man in a trenchcoat.

I remain a flurry of activity in myself and have no concern about these matters for the moment. All I care about is what I’m putting in my mouth (and also how it affects the shares of Greggs, what with the dip of people decreasing the amount of wares sold during the breakfast and lunch period, of course).

With my recent increase in eyes I can now see more than I ever have done before and you will not believe what I came across the other day. There is a house near to the office with the most unusual of… how to describe, well take a look yourself:

At first I walked past, had to stop, turn around and go back to see if I had actually seen what I had seen.

Are they the tops of baby bottles? Are they nipples? Are they sand castles The colour doesn’t even try to match the brickwork underneath. They stand out an absolute mile. What on earth was the designer going through to concoct such a bizarre structure?

The good news is that the property is on the market so if you’re looking for a beautiful four bedroom detached house with luxurious stone boobs to greet you as you come home every evening then this is the house for you!

Avatar Flexible workspace

We’re all on the lookout for a flexible workspace these days. Somewhere you can just sit down, maybe order a latte, open your laptop and, I don’t know, edit a podcast or grow a hipster beard or something.

The other day, while exploring an area I hadn’t visited before down in the sub-basement of the 1930s part of the building at work, I found an excellent flexible workspace and wanted to share my find with you. Here it is.

As you can see, it’s pleasingly raised above the general floor level, offering a sense of superiority and a view over all the people working nearby (or water heating machinery; I think it was mostly water heating machinery and sewage pipes you could see from here). It also has many useful features:

  • A light, so the workspace has excellent all-over lighting levels
  • A railing, so it’s very safe
  • A calming white/grey colour scheme
  • A red pipe

Obviously I’m claiming first dibs on this, and will be moving in there first thing Monday with my laptop to grow a podcast and edit my beard. But if you want to book a slot yourself, just get in touch.