Neighbourhood

A local event has gathered different performers last night, but all of them living nearby in a walking distance from the club:







That's what I really love here - nothing is heavily centralized. You can always find something interesting literally just round the corner.

Steam'n'gleam

Markfield Beam Engine museum (wiki) was open today for the first time this year. To be honest, I expected something semi-abandoned (you know, a small museum in the area with no tourists etc.) and boringly dusty, but surprisingly the well lighted building was full of people.

The engine which had been pumping sewage for the Tottenham till 1905 is a perfect piece of Victorian era engineering. Really, seeing and being able to touch that is a great entertainment:



Now the main thing - today, after the reconstruction at 1970s, it's fully operational. Moving pivots and plungers are greased with oil (threatening your clothes), and tools with spare parts seen around aren't just a decoration:



On April 5th it will the first so-called Steam Day of 2010 - the engine will be working, again available for public access. Woo-hoo! We were offered of steam clouds and authentic noise, and I only regret for not being a child.

Comfortably numbered

Only two numbers are required to make a payment to somebodys bank account in UK: payee's account number (8 digits) and their sort code (6 digits). That's all you need to know, and it's barely longer than a phone number in international format.

For international transfers, IBAN code is generated from these two parameters.

It's getting warmer

Pimple for a dimple

Some mistakes are considered typical for native English speakers and at the same time are very rare when English is a second language, i.e. confusing "then" and "than", "whose" and "who's", "it's" and "its" etc.

My only idea is that native speakers first remember how word sounds and than then write it down mixing up different variants of representation, and as against to that those who acquired language knowledge from dictionary first remember its spelling.

On the other hand one of my personal very annoying problems is with prepositions and phrasal verbs. Translating literally and using Russian prepositions doesn't work, resulting in numerous silly faults. Also, there is no rule allowing to derive a right conclusion and you depend entirely on your vocabulary realizing how modest your skill is slightly more often than it is needed to keep yourself in tone.

A tough call

[bigger version to read text]

Poor David Lammy! It's a real challenge, and I don't even mean reclaiming people's money. I mean finding bankers in Tottenham for that.

Evening

[by jane_z]