Monday 22 August 2016

One Banana, Two Banana

I have noticed an interesting pattern along my route to work each day. This pattern is best described in pictures, so I'll let them do the talking.









You may have noticed a couple of things. Firstly, that my walk to work each morning is really quite picturesque (Oxford is pretty nice, you know), and secondly and most importantly for the purposes of this post, that the distance from the Low Commission to the nearest public bin (outside the churchyard at the end of Church Lane) seems to be exactly the same distance as it takes me to eat a banana at my normal walking pace.

Strangely enough, if I'm feeling particularly peckish and decide that it's a two banana day, then the next public bin (by the horse paddock) is exactly the right distance to deposit my next banana skin. I hereby designate this distance to be One Oxford Banana and will endeavour to use this measurement wherever possible.

Fun fact: This isn't the first time in my life that I've used bananas for measurement, in honour of an old friend I've rated every movie I've seen for a last decade as 'seven cool bananas'.

I'd hoped that the Oxford Banana would be more useful globally, breaking down the barriers between metric and imperial measurement, causing world peace and unification one measure of distance that we could all get behind, but Mrs. Owl has helpfully reminded me that there's a slight flaw in my plan. Bananas come in all sorts of zany shapes and sizes and can't be relied upon. The ones she's been eating in Bangalore probably wouldn't produce the same results.


Blaugust Writing Prompts
1) Noticed anything you've never seen before while travelling a familiar path?
2) The wonders of camera phones helped you capture anything awesome?
3) What do you think has gone wrong to produce bananas that small?



As an aside, did you notice that lovely stone wall around the churchyard? They rebuilt it last week and I caught them in the act of cutting back the earth to install concrete blocks and give the wall some additional strength. What is the world coming to, when even an 11th century Norman churchyard isn't as it seems?


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