Well ok, it's actually a new hair salon in Western Road. It's an intriguing pricing policy they have though. Lisa's going to walk in tomorrow, ask for some natural hair extensions, and expect change from a tenner.
But barberism aside, I had an e-mail yesterday from someone who claims to be working on an all-new Poddington Peas blog in conjunction with the creators of the original TV series. One of whom used to discuss storylines with me in a small office in Essex. I like to think it was my ideas which led directly to the production company going bust.
Anyhoo, needless to say they weren't e-mailing to ask if I'd like to work on the screenplay for a new vegetable-based feature film, they were actually wondering if they could link to my Poddington Peas quiz. Unfortunately, upon visiting my site, they'd found that the quiz doesn't work.
All of which was news to me. I'm very fond of that quiz, mainly because I wrote it exactly one week after meeting Lisa (which explains the potato waffle question), but as surprising as it may sound, I hadn't clicked on the link for a good couple of years, and had no idea it didn't work.
It was obviously just me though. This page about the Peas, written in August 2008, states that "unfortunately the 'Which Poddington Pea are you?' quiz has been taken down". Nice that the only person who didn't know that was me.
Anyhoo, it turns out that in July of this year, Quizilla revamped their website and changed the address of my quiz. I've updated the link, but sadly that's the least of my troubles. The newly formatted site no longer accepts detailed in-depth psychological analysis about Maltesers, and has cruelly cut off the second half of all my questions, rendering the quiz even more meaningless than it was to start with. Which, as you can imagine, is quite an achievement.
But it gets worse. Quizilla keeps a record of how many people have taken each quiz, and I'm proud to say that over the past four and a half years, more than ten thousand people have successfully discovered which Poddington Pea they are by dilligently answering questions about death, obesity and pot-holing. I used to put that fact on my CV when I applied for writing jobs. Which probably explains why I didn't get them. Unfortunately, as part of the website redesign, that number was automatically reset, and the total now reads 63. Mind you, considering the link doesn't work and you can't read the questions, sixty-three's not bad.
Anyhoo, all I can say is thank heavens for the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I managed to find this page from the 2004 version of Quizilla, and copy the text onto a new page on my website, never to be lost again. It's good to know that in-depth questions about pushing your friends onto railway lines and blowing up fat people with dynamite have been preserved for future generations.
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