The limerick form can be traced back several hundred years is normally satirical or downright rude. According to Wiki, Gershon Legman, who compiled the largest and most scholarly anthology, held that the true limerick, as a folk form, is always obscene. (more…)
Well done Steph for a completely bonkers blog last week, I loved it.
This week I’ve been thinking about scores to films. I pondered to my friend that:
There are no films with good soundtracks any more, my number one favourite is Back to the Future, deeer deeeer deeeer, di di di di di der, (hold on, I can’t do this the whole way through the email, I’m going to get our IT specialist to help me record my dum di dums and post it on the blog, wish me luck with that). With the possible exception of Jurassic Park, rousing (that’s rousing without the a, naughty) scores died out in the 80s.
Greetings! With this email I am going to introduce myself, Steph – new member of the Launderettes, to you, our lovely and supportive Laundry customers (your reputations precede you, it seems!), with a certain panache, verve and jingle jangle of accompaniment, so here we go… (more…)
Little time, The Laundry, very ill
The steam from my Lemsip clouds the glasses of my mind
Tissues, tissues, said Amanda (more…)
We’ve gone to town this week; Harry has been busy doing some illustrator fiddling and lookee here. We have created a poster that explains exactly how the Laundry works for you to print off and stick in a clever place, maybe behind the reception desk, maybe by the Laundry bin*, the work notice board or places that people actually look at, like out of the window??
Have you ever had a really terrible blind date? You’ve trusted your friend’s opinion and ended up with someone whose main area of interest is carp fishing (no offence to any recycling anglers out there). Well, I know I have. My most memorable being the person I met on a bus - you know, wooed by the chance-meeting, ‘oh isn’t London such a romantic city’ sort of blindness; we couldn’t speak to each other as I didn’t speak Portuguese and he didn’t speak full stop. He also came up to about my elbow (I’m quite tall though - that’s not a dig at short people - just my sitting down on a bus warped judgement). Well, anyway, here’s your chance to set all those bad memories aside.
The Laundry has gone all romantic this week and we thought we would offer up our newest recruit to our lovely customer-base, for a date (not as a sacrifice). By hooking up with Samuel Smith, The Laundry Volunteer and soon-to-be environmental master’s student you will also get the chance for ultimate fame in a write-up in the Laundry email next week. So our lovely volunteer Sam….
Sam is reasonably new to London and so hasn’t got a huge number of friends here - somewhere around 4.5 he says. He recently joined an ultimate frisbee club to keep himself in shape and also likes to spend his evenings strumming guitars. We have put a little photo of him on the website so you can see him.
So do you feel like doing something a little different this Tuesday night? Do you have 4.5 friends in London, and wanna make it 5.5?
If you, or someone in your office are aged between 18-24 and looking for a date with someone who’s just so fresh and so clean this Tuesday, please send us an email to recycle@thelaundry.biz with your answers to some or all of Laundry Man Sam’s mini-interview questions (below) and a photo by Tuesday at Midday. You can also ask Sam any questions you like too!
We will pick the winner and let you know by 3pm all in good time for a not-too-naughty-as-its-a-school-night date where you shall meet for a drink at 8ish and then go on to the classy Le QuecumBar in Battersea for an open-mic night of gypsy swing and jazz.
So here goes: -
1. (Just to warm you up!) Which is your favourite- a) The Blue Bag, b) The Orange Bag or c) The Stickers?!
2. What’s your idea of a perfect day?
3. Which album do you own but sneakily stash at the bottom of your CD rack?
4. What’s the best music act you’ve ever seen?
5. (The classic work- interview put you in the hot-seat question) How would you describe yourself using just three words.
6. Where in the world would you most like to live?
With love from Harriet, Sam and Gemma at The Laundry xxx
BioRegional (the Laundry’s mummy) is an environmental charity. I sit opposite one of the founders – my desk buddy Pooran Desai (OBE!). Two weeks ago I gave him a tin of spam. Last week he gave me a free ticket to go and see Live Earth in a box seat right at the centre line of Wembley Stadium.
Is that the best swapsie you’ve ever heard of? (more…)
When my friend’s brother was younger, he had a cat called Scallywag, a tom cat. One holiday, they were driving round a roundabout in Birmingham (not sure if that was the final destination of their holiday – I shall resist all other comments) and Scallywag made a bid for freedom through the slightly open back window. Despite driving round the roundabout for the next few hours and combing the surrounding area, Scallywag was not to be found. The dejected family were about to carry on their way, when suddenly the cat was spotted! Elated, they grabbed the moggy and shut it firmly in the car.
Ah the summer has started - no, it’s not the torrential rain that’s told me that, it’s Big Brother back on our screens! Rachel announced to me yesterday that she wouldn’t be watching this year, and is going to read intellectual books and possibly learn to knit or something worthy like that instead. Me however, I have no such pretensions and having managed to clear my anti-Big Brother watching housemates out on Wednesday night, settled down to watch the latest bunch of housemates begin their incarceration.
This week, I have been thinking about emails. It seems all modern and shiny, but did you know the first systems that sent messages between computers started in 1965? The email address as we know it today, with the @ symbol, was invented in 1972 and now more than 600 million people internationally use email.
My estranged cousin Gertrude is visiting me in London this weekend, she’s never been to our fair capital before and I’m run amok…
[this actually means: ‘(among members of certain Southeast Asian cultures) a psychic disturbance characterized by depression followed by a manic urge to murder’ and I don’t actually mean it like that, but hey, you catch my drift;)]
…with what to do and where to take her. It feels like it’s such a big city- so much to see! so much to do! but I’d really like to take her off the beaten track a little and give her some flavour of the real London (you know, rush–hour-rodent-riots and over-priced watery cappuccinos!!). (more…)
After Edd’s comment on the blog yesterday about cup stacking records (have a look here and visit the link for an amazing display of cup stacking – never thought I’d be so impressed by that!), it got me thinking about world records.
There are the Colin Jacksons of this world who do very credible things such as being the fastest man in the world over 110m hurdles. And then there are the Matthew Henshaws of this world, responsible for the ‘heaviest weight dangled from a swallowed sword’ record (if you’re interested, 20.1 kg) (ouch).
We’ve hit the big time - well, in the recycling world at least. Letsrecycle.com wrote a lovely little story about our Laundry party,
look here for the full story! (scroll down a bit when you open the link)
Get this week’s hottest laundrebrity news in this week’s edition of sHeat Magazine, the paper lovers weekly (just in case – as in a sheet of paper and heat magazine – Tom reckons you won’t get it, but it does sound rather like a swear word, eh?). Our comprehensive (and cool) package of sneaky photos, cheeky gossip, recycled style, exclusive interviews and the latest glowbiz news.
It all started a couple of weeks ago when I came home to find my housemate prowling the house in his dressing gown, armed with a saucepan and a bowl of carrots. He was on a mouse hunt, as he’d spotted one scampering across the living room, and this was his hunting equipment.