For those who care about such ephemera, I am Sockettrousers on twitter.

Nothing to do with me BTW, just a photo I had on my phone.

Anyone still reading this?

Our last posession has left Ukraine. We’ve been in the US six months and finally the Discovery left Ukraine and is now sitting in a bonded warehouse in the UK.

I have a buyer for it and all I have to do now is (remotely) wrangle it through customs. Seems like we won’t get away without paying any tax at all but we can value it very …uhhh… competitively so that HMG’s cut is small. Certainly smaller than the VAT on the new price.

We already have a buyer but if you need a lowmilage, lhd 4×4 with great gas-milage* and a solid history of being in exciting countries, please reply at the address below.

* not really.

The internet is a funny old thing but not as funny as the World of Warcraft wherein exist “Boots of Blasphemy“. Jane and I stumbled on this concept whilst trying to read the whole internet (as you do). It immedaitely set us thinking about what the magical power of said boots would be. Were they just a little tight and pinched when you ran for the bus? Or did they empower the wearer to stride around out blaspheming his enemies?

After two days in Ukraine, I can reveal that the Boots of Blasphemy are a pair of brown size eight ankle boots made by Prada about 5 years ago. Jane bought them for me and I brought them to Kyiv.

A Boot of Blasphemy.

The weather here has been just around zero: near enough so that the snow on the pavement is just on the verge of thawing and freezing all day. Walking around I’ve been slipping and sliding all over the place nearly falling over every five minutes repeating “Christ this is woaaahhh…. Jesus I nearly fell! Christ…” etc. over and over.

Some snow yesterday

Ho Ho. Sunday night is going to be festive. I’m trying to get to London…

We have a new member of the family.

Burt is a 1998 Subaru Forester L. We adopted him from Scott who I work with for the grand price of $4500 - that’s about four blackjacks in the old money if you still count Imperialwise.

Cars in America don’t age like cars in the UK. When you buy a second had car in the UK you have to worry about rot around the doorsils and if it’s been kept in a garage to stop the sophits getting damp. In California there is no weather so cars just carry on until they suddenly fall apart on the freeway from terminal old-age.

Burt has driven 150,000 and still looks new. 150,000 miles is a visitfrom Jane’s parents to my mum’s house every month for 50 years. I think Burt looks quite goo on it.

Of course, the question everyone asks is “Why Burt?”

Halloween was a bit of a wash out this year - the city banned the usual celebration in the Castro. We turned up anyway, but the streets were empty apart from a small number of revelers asking a large number of policemen where they bought such good costumes.

(Luckily we had been invited to a spiffing party the Saturday before - there are a few pictures of it on the link below.)

But we’re lucky enough to live in a Hispanic area of town, and were introduced to a new celebration - the Day of the Dead. Apparently this is a holiday celebrated mainly in Mexico and the Mexican community living in the United States and Canada. San Francisco’s celebrations have been happening for the past 27 years - a procession starts at 24th and Bryant (just a few blocks from us) and makes its way to Garfield Park, where altars have been built and lanterns hung in the trees.

We had a good look, and then went to Mis Antojitos for the best guacamole on the planet. (They put quesa fresca on it. Yum.)

Photos here.

A friend took us to Club Sportiva drool over a $300,000 Ferrari.

Sadly we didn’t like the colour so we’re considering the Lotus which matches Madame’s eyes.

One day walking down Andrevski, we caught sight of an old guy selling oil paintings stolen from Soviet institutions.

$50 later we were up one rolled canvas on Lenin. We smuggled him past the border guards rolled in a map of the world and then had him mounted at Edgewise Arts [1] which cost significantly more than $50.

He came back at the weekend and yesterday I hung him. I was particularly impressed with the way the crappy iPhone camera and the halogen picture light gave Vova a halo.

[1] Dan at Edgewise arts took one look at the picture and said “Oh yeah, this guy looks familiar” looking pointedly at me. “Yes, the father of modern comunism” I replied. “Oh, so you didn’t just shave the beard off then…”.