Ben Aston | benaston.com

bluebert’s new clothes, originally uploaded by benaston.

Bluebert is a whole new man/bike. Gone are the horrible drop handlebars that reeked of faded 70’s glory. In are the new customised straight handlebars which are so ‘09. I use ‘customised’ in particularly generously – I lopped a bit off the length with my new ?3.99 Wilkinson hacksaw to optimise my streamlineness and more importantly, to look cool.

Combined with the new levers, grips and cables, all this might mean I’ll be able to stop at more traffic lights.

Nerd.

I am a tailor, originally uploaded by benaston.

The credit crunch has landed. To mark the occasion, I thought I should probably craft some celebratory cushions.

I’m not exactly a cushion expert, but I learnt a few valuable lessons along the way, which may be of assistance to those bidding their goodbyes to Tesco Finest and embracing a life of thrift.

Quackers – I went for duck feather cushions, and the biggest I could find – 91cm ?. They?re heavy. No surprises there, but the word on the street is polyester is portability.

Widths – When buying fabric, you’d be forgiven for thinking that it was all about square meterage. But no, you buy it in widths. So, asking for 3m x 2m was a bit of a faux pas. How embarrassing.

Zippage – For sewing machine novices, these are particularly difficult. The combination of tacking, pins and narrow seams make this a painful process. Put them on first, putting them on at the end is trop difficile.

Machining – Make sure the sewing machine is set up properly, if it’s not, you can waste hours wondering why the sewing machine is broken. It also helps if you double check what you’re sewing, so you don’t end up sewing two bits together that shouldn’t be. That saves hours of unpicking.

Mothers – Helpful when engaged appropriately, they know all kinds of things about sewing machines.

Cushions x 3 – ?44.04
Continuous zip – ?5.72
Fabric – ?45.54
Labour – ?85.95 (15hrs at the minimum wage)
Total – ?181.24

Take that crunch, credit.

Walkman wins a Silver Campaign BIG Award, originally uploaded by benaston.

My penchant for producing award winning interactive advertising continued, in what is sure to be the first of many awards for the Walkman Project. I (well I wasn’t there because I’m not important enough, so Dare) picked up a Campaign BIG award silver in one of the most hotly contested categories – Consumer Durables and Furniture.

The pain was worth it; almost anyway. A big shout out to BRPB who made it all possible.

Billie Piper jumps on the Winston bandwagon, originally uploaded by benaston.

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that a celeb in possession of a child must be in want of an unusual name. There’s been a spate of attempts to go for something devastating original – naming it after a piece of fruit, or at least some sort of little known appendage.

It didn’t come as a complete surprise then, to discover that Billy Piper named her son Winston. After all, how many Winston’s do you know?

But that’s the problem. Winston, in some circles referred to as ‘the miracle fish’ was clearly born first and it seems slightly inappropriate for Billie to try and steal Winston’s thunder by using his name. A close friend of Billie suggested she named it Winston, ‘because we want to’ although she may have been referring to her chart success in ‘98. Whatever.

Winston is reported to be un-phased by the incident.

our friend winston, originally uploaded by benaston.

It came as a bit of a surprise, but on Sunday, one of the Molly’s gave birth to a beautiful fry who we’ve named Winston. No eggs, it just popped out. Winston’s mother seems a little embarrassed about the whole situation and is yet to identify herself.

There are two interesting things about this:
1) it’s only mammals that give birth to live young isn’t it?
2) we had no idea that the fish were pregnant in the first place

Despite a few early scares in which Winston was spotted swimming perilously close to the jaws of his Mother, he now seems to have successfully made the transition from swimming in amniotic fluid, to water, without a hitch.

In a blog entry spotted on the interwebsuperhighway, Winston describes himself as ‘ambitious and hungry’.

the earth proclaims the work of his hands, originally uploaded by benaston.

It was during a discussion with my chums about doing manly things that we decided that we should do the Welsh 3000’s, mainly because the 3 Peaks challenge was too easy.

The initial plan was that we would do a a ‘training’ weekend in Snowdonia as a bit of a warm up. However, it then dawned on us that not only were we far too busy important to have a practise, but that this would spoil the point of the challenge in the first place.

At the time, it seemed like such a good idea, after all, we’d all walked Snowdon before. 21 hours, 30 miles, and 15 peaks later, with the Welsh 3000 complete it wasn’t such a good idea at all – it was very painful, and the hallucinations made it all the more surreal.

The pictures are pretty though.