At my primary school we had this headmaster called Mr Mather who was well into his May Pole dancing. Every year he used to get out his accordion and each class in the school would have a go at careering in between each other directed by his megaphone! Swinging off the brightly coloured ribbons- often crashing shoulders and making irrevocable knots where there was supposed to be an intricate pattern. (more…)
This week guest stars Helen, an ex-Laundrette who emailed us some interesting facts about Easter.
This year is the earliest western Easter any of us will ever see for the rest of our lives! Only the most elderly of our population have ever seen it this early, and none of us have ever, or will ever, see it a day earlier! (more…)
This week we’re still thinking about tradition and country ways. My friend and ex-laundry manager Jess showed me this passage from “Discovering the Folklore of Plants by Margaret Baker:
“The mandrake has an ancient reputation as “Devil’s apples”. (more…)
On this day…
In 1982 the Mary Rose was recovered from the deep. I don’t remember that but, here is one person’s recollection
“I was 10. Our teacher made us sit through it on TV for the whole day. It was boring beyond belief” – thanks Dominic. (more…)
Remember a while back when I tired to explain the meaning of everything – phew, well I thought I’d get some professional help in by signing up to a 10 week philosophy course. Stretch my philosophical muscles. (more…)
Lunch-club (this is where we take it in turns to cook or prep-up lunch for everyone in the office- can be really nice but when it’s your turn it gets a bit hectic when, for example, if the oven fails you whilst baking 30 potatoes) ended on a slightly posher note than is usual yesterday, with the huge cuts of a wedding’s leftovers of cheese including, Rachel (Shrewsbury born and bred) was proud to point out, some Shropshire Blue. She was keen that I should try some (even though it’s quite an alarming orange and blue combo) and it was very tasty. We got to talking about what other special foodstuffs had sprung up from her home town (more…)
Ok so it happens to us all, writers block (well not all of us - those who have to write on demand). I’ve double cheated you by first making you click on to the blog page and now you have to read this. The good news is that instead of writing a blog entry about people with writer’s block (see the Edinburgh fringe for examples of this get out clause) I’m going to treat you to some blog entries for our “big bin” customers that you haven’t seen before. All penned by Helen and Harriet, not Rachel. Enjoy! SO it’s really more like a 8 for 1 deal.
Rachel is away sunning herself in Hungary- she has taken an extravaganza train trip and so, dear Laundry readers, you are stuck with a little whitter from Harry, Gemma and Sam (Sam Smith that is- he shares his name with the respected pub-chain)
We have the very lovely volunteer Sam working for us at the moment, and its driven us to thinking about work experience experiences. Have you had some terrible, commical or otherwise, time during work experience, or, the other way around, someone getting experienecs working with you? (more…)
This week we have been thinking about made up words. Sometimes normal words just won’t do. Here is our summary of made up words:
Quadpod - like a tripod but with four legs, so yes, maybe you could call it a stool, but it doesn’t sound as good.
Today we have a tour going round BedZED (the Laundry’s home) of extremely intelligent 10 year olds. They all look very earnest and slightly worried. I’ve been thinking about how serious everything seems when you are little and how all my earliest memories are based on very-serious-at-the-time-but-now-ridiculous-embarrassing-incidents. (more…)
Ed Morello inspired this week’s email as our comedy advisor, when he told me about this…
There was a story about a guy in the States who was diagnosed with multi personality disorder. He had 7 separate identities. 6 were upstanding citizens. The 7th was a violent alcoholic (well we all have those days!). The 6 nice personalities hired a lawyer to sue the 7th for ruining their lives. If they won their case their insurance company had to pay out $750,000. The only problem was all 7 of them had a shared bank account so the 7th guy spent the money getting drunk. (more…)
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.
It’s snowing - hooray - well I hope it is as I am writing this from sunny (but cold) Wednesday. (update: hurrah it is snowing. Well hurrah because it looks pretty, boo because it means we all spent far too long getting to work today and The Laundry vans are battling the elements picking up bags!)
I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about Scotland. I was doing a search yesterday for a surname that I could read properly and found 14 of you of Scottish decent, the Macs and the Mcs. So three things on this:
I was having a conversation with my housemate last night who said she hates the use of the word funky, especially by people who are over 30 and are trying to seem cool (!). As in “I really think we could do with some more funky office furniture” or “I went to a restaurant last night” “oh,yes?” “yeah it was really funky”. I also had a friend who was in a band who hates any other band which described themselves as funky or retro-funk or funk-reggae-groove- with Swedish beats. or the like. I just nodded but embarrassingly remembered my overuse of the word and then felt really old (even though I’m not) and a bit of a country bumpkin = she is 22 and from London. Why the distaste - or is it a polluting of the word funk?: