I don’t care what the weather man says, I’m gambling.

OK forgive the rambling I just realised I have to write this bit of the email and I have about 10 minutes before our after work staff catch up starts.. anway:

There’s a lot of ‘will it’ ‘won’t it’ dilly dallying going on about the weather this summer and forecasters have started to predict stuff, saying things like:

“The signs are that high pressure will start to build again across the southern half of the UK for the end of May and start of June. This means a good chance of some fine summer (more…)

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…)

There weren’t very many of us in the office yesterday- seems lots of people were very clever and booked off the 2^nd for generous recovery so we decided to head up the road to The Goat our local pub for some haute cuisine; plates of scampi, toasties, cheese and pickle sandwiches with ready salted crisp garnish, that sort of thing.  It was a sunny day, full of hope and the promise of the New Year ahead, we chatted about what sorts of resolutions everyone had decided on this year.  (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…)

While I was away having a low carbon adventure in Europe (I’ve decided never to fly again) my travel buddies told me about…..the anarchic hand.  This condition is a brain injury related syndrome where one of your hands performs actions against your will.  Here are some of my favourite examples

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Did anyone hear the story last week of a chap in New Zealand who said that if 100,000 people join his Facebook group, he will call his new born child Spiderpig? It turns out it was all a big scam, causing disappointment to thousands all over the world, and no doubt relief to his family, oh and of course a lifetime of humiliation has been prevented for the baby-to-be.

I wonder if he (or she) had been named Spiderpig, if he would have changed his name? I think it’s quite original, certainly better than Hipposlug or Chickenbear….. or Hagfish. Talking of name changes, many celebrities change their name. I suppose to sound a bit more wacky. For example…

Woody Allen was actually Allan Stewart Konigsberg, not so catchy now eh? Likewise, Jennifer Aniston was originally Jennifer Anastassakis. And Tom Cruise is really a shortened version of Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, a bit more grand. Marilyn Monroe, known as the most beautiful woman ever, was really a Norma (Norma Jean Mortenson). (goodbye Norma Jean… candle in the wind la la la)
Elton John was previously Reginald Kenneth Dwight. And the list goes on and on.

Writers often go under a pen name. George Orwell was really called Eric Arthur Blair. There is also the great authorship mystery surrounding William Shakespeare: was it actually just the work of another well known author at the time?

And on a similar note, many towns have gone through name changes. No doubt you heard of Nottingham, but did you know in Anglo-Saxon times it was actually called Snotingham? It was under the rule of a Saxon chieftain named Snot, and so it was known as ‘the homestead of Snot’s people’. The only reason Snotingham is now called Nottingham is because the French were unable to pronounce the “sn”! Now there’s a story for good pub banter.

So let’s here it. What would you change your name to to spice things up a bit?

Have a lovely week chums,

Biggy Boris Raindrop V (aka Samuel William Smith)

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…)

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…)

Last week was about words, this week is only about pictures.  Take a look at what we get up to behind the scenes here: (more…)

When I was growing up most years (when it was on) we would go to Glastonbury. Ah so cool, soo cool. But, no!

Not when you’re growing up in Tring, the rainbow warrior t-shirt-down-to-your-knees look is not one celebrated by those (in same peer group) whose own style is comprised more of those classic common denominators: Ellesse pumps and some Addidas trackies.

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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.

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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…)

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…)

At the Laundry we love you so we are featuring some of you fab customers and your fab businesses this week.

Firstly April’s (oops – better late than never) recycling hero of the month - Toast TV, our stupendo 1000th customer. Toast is an exciting bunch of commercial film producers. If you are a telly addict like me (no no I have lots of other outside interests too) – you might have come across the work of a “Toaster”; like the Innocent Drinks tv ad – yum.

www.thelaundry.biz/imahero

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