A winning style

The glittering 2009 Manchester Blog Awards are now clear on the horizon, "celebrating the best of the city's online writing". There will be a right proper knees-up on October 21 at the all-new Band On The Wall and gongs will be awarded in no less than six categories.
Nominations for your favourite blogs are open until September 18.
Words & Fixtures? Just a thought...


Follow @mcrblogawards on Twitter (there's even a hashtag, folks - #mcrblogawards) or visit the website at http://www.manchesterblogawards.com

Totally foxed

Here's a great sign that was posted on the noticeboard of the campsite we stayed at in Berlin. It reads: "Do not let stand your shoes outside! We have a fox, he robs the shoes!"
Apart from it being a lovely example of literal translation, it also taught us that the German word for fox is "Fuchs". Tee hee!
The other foxy pictures are of a German bottletop and one of my knockers. I just thought I'd include them for your delectation.

Half-baked idea?

I mentioned last week that one of my friends was soon to be embarrassing herself in our fair capital's Trafalgar Square. Well, she climbed aloft the fourth plinth on Sunday as part of One & Other (see http://www.oneandother.co.uk/), and your trusty reporter was there to witness the momentous occasion.
Nik's appearance happened to coincide with National Sponge Cake Day, so she decided to take baking as her theme and promptly spent much of the hour-long slot lobbing muffins into the audience, drawing quite a crowd in the process. The finale was to be a tribute to the artist behind the project, Antony Gormley, but unfortunately the Angel Cake Of The North never quite came to fruition.

Prior to the event, I was called upon for a possible loan of cake-baking paraphernalia as props, and this is the inventory I forwarded (I am a big fan of lists; more list action will follow on W&F some time in the future):

1 rolling pin
2 large glass mixing bowls, what you mix cake batter in
1 cake-baking tin with push-up bottom
1 fairy-cake/muffin-baking tin (I think)
1 loaf tin
a number of wooden spoons
a selection of white plastic pastry cutters (eg for scones/mince pies, bleurgh)
1 pastry brush, slightly manky
2 small cartons of fairy cake paper holder thingies
a number of birthday cake candles and holders
1 half-used packet birthday cake sparklers
1 cake tin, popular blue and white 1970s (Hornsea?) pattern
1 cake plate (one of those ones for fairy cakes, not a stand for sponges)
1 blue and white striped pinny (in need of a good wash)
plain and self-raising flour
caster sugar
yeast
baking powder
cooking chocolate
cocoa
2 eggs

Meet and greet

Today's Fry's English Delight, in which Stephen Fry "explores the highways and byways of the English language", was all about the roots of the word "hallo".
And very interesting it was, too, drawing links with "holler", "hola", "hello" and various other phrases, exclamations and utterances. Even my maiden name namesake Davy Crockett was attributed as being one of the first users of the word, what ho.
For those of you existing without the luxury of being able to listen to the radio at nine in the morning, you have a week in which you can still catch the programme on iPlayer. Simply go to http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00lv1k1

The Galaxy of Transylvania

While on my recent mammoth road trip across Europe, I drove through Transylvania in Romania.
Contrary to popular belief, there weren't any vampires, sweet transsexuals or Sylvanian Families (not that I remember encountering, anyway), but I will acknowledge that there are a number of noteworthy places in the region.
One such example is Turda, which definitely lives up to its name and looks like a really shitty little town.
At one point, I also fancied taking a detour, but having realised that leaving the pot-holed single-carriageway main route would probably add an extra day to the trek east, I had to make do with childishly giggling at the two signs, one above the other, indicating the way to both Cunta and Spring.