Many years ago, someone gave me a badge that said “Please maintain in an upright position when full of liquid.” I was reminded of this when I saw the sticker on this card:
stereotyping
Rumour has it that IKEA is an acronym meaning I Keep Every Allen-key. While this may not be true, I think anyone who has ever shopped at IKEA or browsed their catalogue has wondered at the product names.
The Swedish names are difficult enough, but there are some that just don’t make sense: why, for example, would you call a wok Tolerant, a lamp Barometer, a clothes horse Frost, or a plain black highchair Leopard?
Those are just mildly bizarre name choices, whereas the one in the photo – the Gurli throw – risks offending anyone who is concerned about gender stereotyping.
(For those who want to explore the full list, it’s available here)
baa, humbug
Alternatively, Happy (lunar) New Year.
And a fragment of a poem, which at least has sheep tracks if not the animals themselves:
I’ve walked the sheeptracks of your dreams
in search of unicorns, but they have fled.
Now they graze where honey flows in streams
through pillowing hills.
Though perhaps it should be goats not sheep in the photo, and Chinese dragons not unicorns in the poem.
mixed messages
The issue of foreigners in the UK is one that is almost guaranteed to set Brits arguing.
If the subject crops up during a social gathering, perhaps the best that can be hoped for is that most British of compromises “we’ll agree to differ” – an unsatisfactory acknowledgment that there are no easy answers.
The photo, taken in the local housewares store, suggests that one reason answers are difficult is that we haven’t agreed on what the question is: do we want foreign visitors to adapt, or do we want to get rid of them all together?
no way back
I went to an open mike evening the other day. It was supposed to be in a fairly spartan room above a pub, but the bookings had got mixed up and the SWP were there before us, so at the very last minute the venue was changed.
The new venue was a basement room, although the décor was altogether too decadent to make me feel like an underground poet. The Trotskyists might have liked the wall colour, but I’m sure the spit-and-sawdust pub setting suited them better.
I say “basement”, but I suppose in fact ground level was lower at the back, or there would have been no windows downstairs. 
Not that we could access them.
It seems that the world of discovery that lies “through the arched window” is out of bounds. I wonder if the square and round windows are similarly barred.
Once more, then, I find “you can’t go home again.”
Even little ted looks rather worse for wear.
don't confuse the narrator 