On twitter, most people use a tiny photo of themselves as an avatar. That's good - it's nice to know the Alison King on twitter is the Alison King you went to college with. And I think we've all followed people because we quite fancy them from their photos. This is also good. But I also like to see a bit of creativity, tiny pictures that still look striking when they rush past in your twitter stream.

I've designed quite a few avatars since joining twitter. Shrunk down, all the details get lost. "What's your avatar meant to be?" "It's my cat on a train to Lisbon" "It looks like a furry cake" "Well, it's not". (This is a hypothetical conversation.) The best avatars are very simple and slightly unusual. So here are my favourites from the people I follow. (I won't include ones I've designed, that would be egotistical.)

@9600

High contrast photo; red background. Rather beautiful. And 9600 is an excellent username.

@markleggett

A happy cat in a bowtie. It makes Mark's wonderful posts even funnier somehow. 

@rhodri

Charlie Brown Rhodri Marsden. It's very sweet. It makes me say, "Oh, Rhodri" (to myself) whenever I see it. (Not actually all the time.)

@iamjamesward

So far, James Ward has been Grace Jones, Falco, and one of the models from a Roxy Music album (the one without the eagle on the cover). Again, somewhat disturbing. 

@themanwhofell

Another black, white & red colour scheme (the best of all the colour schemes). The red stripe across the eye gives it a sort of Modernist Adam Ant feel (before he lost the stripe and his songs went downhill).

 

 

I was watching something from the 1980s (let's call it Detective Bimm) and noticed one of the characters was drinking from a Tesco-branded can. Was it Tesco Value? I don't think it was. I don't think Tesco Value even existed then. I think it was simply a Tesco-branded can of soft drink. Anyway, in Googling the history of Tesco Value I found this advert:

The soundtrack is slightly haunting, mournful. Yoghurt seems more expensive than it ought to have been in 1982, and whatever Checkout 82 is is never explained. Neither is 'Checkout'. Do they just mean the tills? Anyway, it stands re-watching and re-watching. 

Unlike THIS shit from the Co-Op. Despite appearing almost a year after Tesco's advert, the idiots at Co-Op can't even afford FILM in their advert, so every shot is just a static photograph.

Oh hang on, there is a bit of film at the end. Never mind. But it's no Checkout 82, clearly.

That's right. The title explains what happened. I visited the Natural History Musuem. Mainly I wanted to see dinosaurs. It turned out that there were no living dinosaurs there, just fossilised skeletons. It was a bit disappointing, but it was free. This isn't Jurassic Park and they make no claims to it being Jurassic Park. What they do have is this:

Penguins. Penguins and humans. They look very life-like, but it's actually a scale model of what a gathering of penguins and humans might look like. Now, I'm no scientist, but they have made the penguins about 6 times bigger than the humans. I've never been to the Penguin Pole,* but surely this is inaccurate? But I shalln't argue with science. Penguins are huge. I learned that today.

Then, excited by a sign leading to 'DInosaurs', I was sad to see another sign. This sign: 

So no dinosaurs, then. Just skeletons. The dinosaurs themselves were taking a well earned rest. It's good to know that they're treated well and humanely. But I found it hard to hide my disappointment. 

Moving along, the let-down of not seeing a dinosaur was made up for by seeing a real Capybara:

He kept very still as I took his photo. Thanks, capybara! Sadly my capybara-induced high was blunted by this next sight. An owl with a pencil through its head: 

If they treat the dinosaurs so well, I don't understand why they can't at least avoid poking pencils through the heads of their owls. Even so, he seemed cheerful enough and - like the capybara - was more than happy for me to take his photo. Thank you, owl!

Then I went home. 

 

 

*Whichever of the poles has penguins.