Sunday 22 March 2009

Sunday 22/03/55

Yesterday I mentioned Google Street View and how is could possibly allow crims and terrorists to reconnoiter locations without arousing suspicion. Hay and I have produced a list of what we think should be considered suspicious people or activity.

• Young (or old) person,
• Male (or possibly female),
• Black or Asian (white only if male),
• Wearing any form of sports clothing,
• Congregating in groups later than 1,
• Wearing a beard – especially if male and Asian,
• Wearing sunglasses if not sunny,
• Sporting any form of tattoo or piercings,

Please feel free to add to the list.

Overheard yesterday in St Ives, Cornwall: The Chairman and Hayley are looking around a shop where everything has been reduced to £1. The Chairman is looking at a stand of sunglasses, which were previously priced at around £12.

Chairman: “Hey, I feel like buying the lot. I could sell them on eBay for at least a fiver each and make 400% margin.”

Hayley: “Good God, sometimes you can be such a scabby northerner. I can just imagine you in a Liverpool shopping centre; one tooth in your head, roll-up dangling from the corner of your mouth, dressed in a tracksuit and selling knock-off stuff from a suitcase.”

I think I may have stumbled on a gap in the market. Whereas I can buy a pair of +1.25 spectacles for driving at under a tenner, I can’t buy a +1.25 pair of sunglasses, meaning I can’t wear sunglasses at all without either putting my normal specs over the top (which I sometimes do, regardless of how ridiculous it looks), or buying an expensive pair of prescription sunglasses. Never really thought about it before. Surely someone must be servicing this need for cheap sunglasses having proper lenses for driving/reading. Come to think of it, and having struggled with finding the correct terminology, what is the name for a pair of sunglasses with a reading/driving lens? They’re not prescription sunglasses, as they are bespoke and not off-the shelf.

My ten year-old son coined a new word yesterday (at least one I’ve never heard used before) – techknowledgable. I think it’s fantastic. We should all adopt it and spread it and hope it enters popular useage.


9 comments:

The Irascible Fairy said...

I have three pairs of verifocals - two normal and one polarised - most necessary for ship/car driving.

For safety perhaps you should do the same.

Richard x x x

The Irascible Fairy said...

Ahhh - The magic of eBay - there was a lady living round the corner who was (is) buying up bundles of rags - rescuing the clothing from the bundles - washing, ironing, repairing them and then selling on eBay - I'm not sure how many teeth she has.

Richard x x x

The Irascible Fairy said...

I have just emailed Privacy International asking them - in fairly strong language - to lay off Google Street View!

(privacyint@privacy.org)

Richard x x xc

The Irascible Fairy said...

I have just heard on the news that Jade Goody has died - I am sad for her and her family.

Richard x x x

Rosaria Williams said...

I know I'm on another continent when Irascible Fairy talks about Jade Goody. I have no idea who they are. Wait, should I have said, whom they are? What is the proper construction in the land of natives?

Also, the traffic roller listed me coming in from Moscow, Idaho. Funny! I'm nowhere close to Moscow, Idaho. Seattle, San Francisco, maybe. I don't even know myself where Moscow, Idaho is. Please, do not look up these places or you'll be confused. Herein we have created an alternative universe for those of us, meaning most of us, who came from somewhere else. I'm leaving the same way I came.
By.

Kabbalah Rookie said...

Dear Chairman,
Your conversation around prescription sunglasses for driving/reading reminds me of the Billy Connelly sketch where he convinced his Dad that prescription windscreens for cars actually existed...

I used to wear clip on sunshades over the top of my specs, the weight of which led to deep trenches either side of my nose. Rather lazily now I wear contact lenses that I can sleep in, which solves that little problem.

As for coining the term to describe reading/driving sunglasses.. I would like to try but fear that I am not techknowledgable enough...

Jinksy said...

Perhaps son would be the best person to make up a new word for the specs?!

The Return of the Native ... sort of. said...

Below is what I have just read in the paper ... I don't believe it. Shades of Princess Di. I am sorry for the girl, but this is simply awful. Rant for the day over.

Speaking on Sky News, Reverend Jonathan Blake, who officiated at Goody and Tweed's marriage ceremony, called the bride, "a saint from Upshire and a princess from Bermondsey".

"My thoughts and prayers and love are very much with the family and friends. Jade has become for us, so many different things, a saint from Upshire and a princess from Bermondsey, an exemplar of biblical proportions."

A Woman Of No Importance said...

My list of suspicious loiterers with intent, obviously just waiting to 'case the joint' via Google Streetmap, rather thank walking down said street:

Daily Mail Readers/Thinkers
Youths in hoodies
Youths not in hoodies
Anyone in cheap sunglasses
Anyone looking at my/your/their house in a funny way...
Anyone with an accent that's 'not from 'round 'ere!'
Jack Tweedy

I think that's enough, TC, don't you?
Except I want to add anyone in a dog collar eulogising saints from Upshire!