A different way to open a car door

Today a friend needed some rather dramatic medical attention, and I dropped by to provide what I hope was a little moral support. Outside the place where this was happening, I encountered this cute little vehicle:

Two interesting things about this little gizmo. First, there is the way that its door opens. The door on its right is open, in the above photos. Useful in a tight space, I should guess.

And second is what it does, there being a website on it which enables you to learn about this. It takes tissue or samples from sick people to a lab, where the lab decides its opinion about the nature of that sickness.

I like these little cars, which are so small they are almost motor bikes. I certainly prefer them to those huge Chelsea Tractors, which look like they’re for doing bank robbery getaways or off-roading or maybe both at once. Which, let’s face it, most Londoners do neither of, ever.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

A model of a building that never happened

I took this photo of the big 3D map of London that is in the Building Centre, Store Street, in 2010:

And here is a close up of that distant City Cluster that you can vaguely discern in the distance, above:

Gherkin, tick. Cheesegrater, tick. Crossrail, semi-tick, still slogging its way towards belated completion. But, note the Helter Skelter, which never happened. That’s the tall and twisty one in the middle there, that looks like a helter skelter. They started it, but then they (presumably a different they) turned what they had into something different, 22 Bishopsgate.

Some photos get better with the passing of the years. Soon, the Helter Skelter will be largely forgotten.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog

Man with food

The summer of February 2019 has now ended, but I still have some photo-memories of it to stick up here.

These photos, for instance, of a man whom GodDaughter2 and I encountered in Hyde Park, back on February 15th. As I have already related, there was a lot of feeding of birds going on that day, but before all that bird frenzy, we had already encountered a guy who had taken the feeding of birds (and squirrels) to a whole new level. He wasn’t so much feeding these creatures as laying on a free canteen for them. And they obviously knew this, and greeted him like a long lost friend.

I photoed him and his friends (who included two green parrots), a lot:

You can see evolution taking a distinct turn towards something different, can’t you? The most trusting and friendly and fearless creatures are the ones who get best fed.

Originally posted at Brian Micklethwait’s Old Blog