give peas a chance (redux)

From time to time I get people email me about a picture that I've posted onto flickr.

It will usually be a snap of a particular London building that someone wants for an online guide or a picture of a 'thing' like a locomotive or 'person' like a pop-star that I've clicked at some point.

If it's non-commercial/non-political then I'm happy to assist and I can usually work out the basis of the request. This time someone has asked me about the bridge on the M25, which I happened to snap when riding as a passenger whilst stuck in a traffic jam. The slogan on the bridge is known to many travellers 'Give Peas a Chance'. There's probably quite a few of us that smile as we pass it (even in the traffic jams).

Anyway, I was intrigued at the request and did a sort of reverse google to find the person that had asked me. It turns out that they have a special site for the bridge on Facebook and are collecting pictures of the bridge. It's a bit like when I started to collect those little yellow men crossing pictures that have been spotted by various pedestrian road crossings.

What fascinated me about the bridge was a backstory that the sign hasn't always said "Give Peas a chance". Apparently it started out with just "Peas" and someone else added the rest of the slogan. I've uploaded a large resolution version of the picture and, yes, there's a difference in the painting style between the word "Peas" and the rest.

And thats all we are saying.

fixing buzzing guitar frets

It's been a fixin' it kind of day today.

The Sunday Morning rain preceded a visit to Halfords on the trail of a very particular lightbulb. The blue car had become one eyed and I had to suffer the inevitable time penalty associated with its replacement. It's almost a conventional Sunday activity, fiddling around with a car. It already looks clean though, so there's no danger of even more traditionalism.

Then I was sitting next to my work PC ominously switched on, because of some stuff from Friday that I couldn't complete. Basically, there's another computer fault which means a further trip to the repair den in the office on Monday. This will be the third time since I received the 'new improved' device in November.

And I wanted to record another track from my lyric-making, this time with my rather economically priced acoustic guitar, only to remember that the middle frets have become non-playable since around the last time I re-stringed it.

Grrr.

A few minutes with a pair of pliers and a small piece of plastic and I was back in business. Its probably not the way a luthier would repair it, but it worked for me.

I did try that big bolt "truss rod" adjustment first, but I could tell it wasn't going to work, whilst pinging the pegs for the strings and adding a sliver of packing to the bridge has done the trick.

Full pix for anyone else so foolhardy, are here