If you can't beat 'em join 'em

Spot the difference...

That's right all you eagled eyed ladies and gentlemen out there, the top brown sign is FAKE!

My visual cortex has more cell space than most dedicated to the colour brown on sign shaped objects, so I'm very good at noticing oddities in brown tourist signs. Over the years I've noticed quite a few fake brown signs but usually I've been on a motorway somewhere when taking a picture would be more dangerous than normal so I've never recorded the event. To my delight I found this brown sign recently in Christchurch, Dorset pointing the way to a little tea room. I told you, brown signs are so good they're getting ripped off, 'mazing.

“When a thing has been said and well said, have no scruple; take it and copy it” - Anatole France (French Writer, won the Nobel Prize for Literature 1921)

Walk, don't run, around Norman Park

Today I felt both fenced in and lethargic. New year's hangovers hang around man. Living in deepest suburbia means it's pretty hard to just skip out of your front door and have a big walk in the countryside to blow away the cobwebs, also unfortunately for me I can't afford to insure the pile of crap that is my car so I couldn't even drive off to the nearest heritage trail.

So my sister and I took a walk around the streets of Bromley. Luckily I could also do some brown signing because this sign directs you to my local park. Wicked.

Beware callers asking questions about brown tourist signs

This morning I've been calling attractions around the country, especially the quirky smaller ones which may not hear about my quest to fill my map of Britain with brown signed attractions. I don't want to leave them out and they're a big part of The Brown Sign Way after all. So I called a small house and garden in Leicestershire (which shall remain nameless) and started the conversation in much the same way as I usually do, encountering the standard confusion I always get when explaining my project, but I couldn't quite pull this conversation back like I normally can:

Jeager Bombs and a 1000 year old priory (not both together though mind)

So this week came in the form of a holiday with my Dad down in Bournemouth. I do love hanging with people when they take trips around the UK so I can discover all the local brown signs in the area for very little cost to my very poor self, thanks parents, love you. After settling in at the lovely sea view hotel I decided to do some planning for all the brown signing I could do around these parts, but first things first. Did you know that exploration of your surroundings is often best on a spontaneous late night bar crawl? Well you do now. So this (much to next day's dismay) is what I decided to engage in first. Needless to say I wasn't noticing many brown signs on this little adventure but it was hilarious to be surrounded by lots of students and drinking a copious amount of disgusting jeager bombs. Oh how I tried to be one of those students who can drink into the early hours, sleep until noon and get straight back on it the next evening with little or no repercussions.... The harsh reality though was the 30 year old I am (this I can't disguise) was looking like a massive tool dancing around to Yazz at 2am in a club full of 18 year olds. Time my similarly old non student companion and I pin balled our way home. It was both brilliant and awful to wake up in the morning fully dressed with the lights still on and make up smeared all across my face. I really am getting too old for this.

Let me tell you about The Man Who Planted Trees

I feel a bit bad that recently I've been focussing a lot on my website and getting it to look all nice and attractive and inspiring for visitors but also sacrificing time on the blog and actually going out brown signing. Brown signs, you are still in my heart as I sit most days into the night tapping away at the computer learning how to build a website for you and unearthing research to populate it with *punches chest*.

In lieu of any brown signing activity then I'll draw your attention (there's a pun there) to something I have been thinking about a lot. Its a 1987 animated film called "The Man Who Planted Trees" and its 30 minutes of pure joy for me. More on that in a minute, but let me tell you how I got to here.