Signing 2 - Boris Johnson

Do you remember Ian Dury, the late, great protopunk performer?

I do, but then, I'm old.

He once sung a song called "Reasons to be Cheerful, Part 3", which to be brutally frank isn't the greatest ballad of all time, but that's irrelevant, I only mention it because I have several reasons to be cheerful today including:

1. The football season (English not American) started this evening, albeit only with the relatively turgid affair of Norwich v Watford, but on the bright side this means that the Premier League will also be arriving in short order.
2. Chilli peppers have started to appear on the chilli plant on my balcony meaning that I'll soon be able to save £1.97 on my weekly grocery shop. During these harsh economic times that is something which is not to be sniffed at (a bit like the Glade Plug-in Bamboo and White Fresia© air freshner in my living room, I've learned).
3. Boris Johnson has become the latest from my list of '500 Iconic Britons' to sign my flag.
4. I have learned how to use the 'bullet point' function on Blogger.
   

That having been said, Boris's signing wasn't conducted in the most conventional of ways for two reasons, namely:

1. The Mayor of London only signed one of my two flags ie the one being auctioned off for Help for Heroes and not the one which is going to be sent to Barack Obama. This may be due to the fact there's a little bit of previous between the two men see here or perhaps simply because what I am doing could be termed 'political' and being a politician himself, the Mayor didn't think it appropriate to get involved in that part of my project and
2. I wasn't actually present for the signing of the second flag, which probably explains why the pictures above and below are of far better quality than most of the others on here.
   

The flag wasn't signed in my presence due to the fact that Boris, if you haven't been aware, has been pretty busy over the last few weeks with the launch of a ceratin public bike system here in London and has been to-ing and fro-ing like a newton's cradle for the last few days. I was thus invited to either hang around City Hall for a few hours awaiting any potential arrival by the Mayor or to leave the flag at reception and pick it up the next day.

Sadly I have a day job that involves finding jobs for lawyers, I'm sorry about that, someone's got to do it, and so the second course of action was deemed more preferable.

It was, though, signed and it goes without saying that I'm incredibly grateful to the Mayor and am equally grateful to his assistants Ann and Rebecca for helping to sort out all of the logistics.


In other news, I was informed the other day by a friend of mine that I have the writing style of someone with Aspergers Syndrome to which I replied that so does Mark Haddon and it didn't do him any harm (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time won the Whitbread prize in 2003).