At the back of the children’s section in Waterstone’s Battersea is a fish tank. I only noticed it because MiniMe has taken a sudden interest in fish (more particularly, pointing them out while shouting “fish!”)

In there is Dr Fish. Dr Fish has only one eye, but manages to carry it off with a look of pure malevolence, the likes of which raise him to the level of Bond villain. Indeed, when you consider that any of the other fish could sneak up on him easily by simply approaching from his right it’s clear that he is using fear to rule the tank and keep the other fish in line while he works on his evil masterplan.

The exact nature of his masterplan eludes me. As does the cause of the injury that turned a talented, high-achieving and well-balanced fish into an evil sociopath. But trust me, when he gazes out of that tank with his good eye he’s thinking of nothing short of total domination of the children’s section.

Having said all that, if your taste in literature runs to better imaginations and far, far better writers than me you might be interested in the SW11 Literary Festival (organised in conjunction with Waterstones) and running all this month.

Sort of following on from yesterday. The SW11 Literary Festival launches later today and this year’s competition is to come up with a ‘slogan for Battersea’.

It follows a similar pattern to last year’s Battersea Poems. Text Battslog and the slogan to 07786 202844 (charged at standard rate) or tweet them with a #battslog hashtag.

The best entries will feature in shop windows in Battersea and the overall winner get Waterstone’s voucher and see their slogan used for the next year.

Fortunately my Philistinism has been recognised by the council (perhaps in part because of my involvement with Battersea Poems last year) so I no longer have anything to do with this sort of thing. A good job, because my effort would probably have only been something like “it’s not Clapham, innit.”

As I have mentioned summer is a quieter time on the council than the rest of the year. While last week saw no trips to the Town Hall this week saw only one for my regular briefing and policy meeting with officers.

Much of the rest of the week has been, not to put to fine a point on it, slightly geeky.

Managing conversations
The week started meeting a couple of guys who are developing a product that (and I can’t think of a better way to put this) manages and centralises conversations. So, for example, the debate about CCTV or councillor surgeries took place over a number of blog posts and on Twitter, making it difficult to follow unless you were watching both – this would mean there would be a central place to see them all. It’s quite an exciting idea and I’m hoping to try it out in the near-ish future.

Battersea Poems
Another meeting was about a scheme called ‘Battersea Poems’ which will be part of the SW11 Literary Festival. Poetry itself isn’t geeky, of course, but Battersea Poems is a scheme whereby individuals can text their poetry in. The poems will be visible on a website and later this year the best will be chosen for publication in an anthology.

Google Localgov
And today I’m at Google’s London offices for their ‘Localgov’ event. It has, so far, been interesting – but the afternoon promises to be much better, looking at some of the creative options Google offer. I’m hoping to pick up some things to bore visitors to this blog with!