I haven’t been out photoing a lot lately, so here are some Christmas-themed photos picked out from the archives, taken during about the last five years or more.
There’s two dozen in all that are ready to go. Here are the first dozen:
Another dozen tomorrow.
I hope your Christmas is going well, with some of the right people with you, and not too many of the wrong people.
Just came across this, photoed by me in Piccadilly, on June 4th of this year:
So, right around now.
Stow-Away is a recent arrival in Lower Marsh:
Stow-Away is a new sustainable and eco friendly apart hotel concept. Stow-Away Waterloo is our first London base made from 26 re-purposed shipping containers, stylishly designed to provide a snug comfortable Stow-Away sleeping experience.
Lots of people have tried to do architecture with old shipping containers, but personally I doubt if it makes much sense. But, if your task is to sell hotel rooms, then shipping containers are perhaps a good gimmick, for attracting attention and for giving guests something to talk about. “I slept in a shipping container.” Etc. I’ve never done this.
It got my attention:
I enjoy in particular the various reflections there.
All but the last of these photos were photoed in one burst, last September. The final photo was photoed more recently, in the evening.
I think this hotel is quite good fun, especially those strange looking shades, red on the inside, that are a feature of the front. But, I regret the trend of which this “apart hotel” is a part, which is the transformation of Lower Marsh from a fascinating and quite cheap thoroughfare, full of diverting shops and eateries, into a dreary and expensive thoroughfare, stripped of all those diverting shops and eateries.
This happens all the time. A street contains lots of lively and amusing stuff. Word of that liveliness spreads, and the rents then go through the roof. The liveliness is priced off to another part of town. Such is urban life.
What I am really saying is: RIP Gramex. Follow that link and you find “an important message to our much-valued customers”. That would be me. But this “important message” is dated 4th August 2017. I gave up hope at least a year ago.
On the same day, September 24th 2013, that I took all those artistic photos not of cranes, I also photoed something else that wasn’t a crane either. In addition to liking cranes I also like bridges, but this other something wasn’t a bridge either, despite looking a lot like one. I refer to this contrivance:
So far as I can work it out, this is a structure to protect a road against some power lines which are crossing that road. The road in question being the A1014, aka “The Manorway”, just before it runs out of puff at a roundabout.
I know. Why this one structure, there? What’s so special about these power lines? Were people about to start working on them, and were they scared that they might fall on the road and set light to a lorry laden with some highly inflammable liquid, of the sort they concern themselves with in Coryton? Could be. According to this, there used to be a refinery there (hence yesterday’s ruins). Now, there either already is or there is about to be a diesel import terminal. Yes, apparently this got going last year.
Maybe the structure I photoed is somehow a consequence of this change.
October 21st of this year was a good photoday for me. There was this, and then this. Now let me show you nine chimney pot photos, taken on that same day:
The first four were photoed in the vicinity of South Kensington tube station. Then I tubed myself to the West End, which is where the rest of these photos were photoed.
I think my favourite is the fifth, or perhaps 3.2, depending on how you prefer your numbering to be done. But I like them all, or I’d not have shown them to you.
The final one, 9 or 3.3, was taken from the inside of the top of Foyles.
I’ve called this “chimney pots” because all these photos have that in common. But there are many other kinds of roof clutter also on show. I rejected including “roof clutter” in the title, because although most chimney pot arrays do indeed become very cluttered, as in randomly varied and chaotic, that cannot be said of photo 4, aka 2.1.
The satellite dish in 1.3, aka 3, looks, to a casual observer, aka me when I first encountered it in the directory (not when I actually photoed I), the moon.
Which I like. And I also like it when there are chimney shadows, as in 1.1 (1), and 5 (2.2). And there are other sorts of shadows in 6 (2.3).
Plus there’s a crane (7 (3.1)). and a pigeon (9 (3.3)). But, not any scaffolding that I can see.
Yesterday I found myself in Duke of York Square, which is just along the King’s Road from Sloane Square. So, what with the Duke of York being one of Britain’s most under-rated military leaders, at any rate according to this book, I thought that, this might be a statue of the Duke himself.
But a closer look at the plinth told me different:
Wikipedia tells us more about this, the original Sloane, from whom, of course, Sloane Square took its name, and because of whom Sloanes are called Sloanes. Sir Hans Sloane, it seems, was the collector of scientific specimens who first got the British Museum started. Plus, this:
He is credited with creating drinking chocolate.
Blog and learn. Here is a rather more artistic close-up of this same statue:
This statue is a recreation by Simon Smith of a statue carved in 1737 by John Rysbrack. Smith’s new statue was unveiled in 2007:
The original statue, now deteriorated, is housed in the British Museum, with a cast in the Chelsea Physic Garden. The sculptor, Simon Smith, said: “`I wanted the sculpture to show Sir Hans Sloane as a kind man with a sharp intellect and an enquiring mind. An approachable man of principle and logic, who’s morals and philanthropy are still of benefit to us today.”
The light yesterday was very dim, even early in the afternoon. But whereas buildings often respond well to bright sunlight, I find that statue photos are often deranged if sunlight is unimpeded, and better when the light is more spread around and is coming from lots of different directions, as happens under cloud. Less light, but of the right sort, does the job.
On April Fools Day 2009 (the same day and just before I took these photos (that being how I came across this photo (which I took just north of Charing Cross station))), a man decides that he doesn’t want either a massive jacket or a crazy “T/shirt”:
Perhaps he feared that, what with it being April Fools Day, he might discover that the T/shirts were all pretty sensible, and the jackets only of moderate size, albeit both quite persuasively priced.
I tried googling “Tommy Coopers clothing”, but could find nothing that looked like this enterprise. Only references to a certain comedy hat.
Moments earlier, on that same photo-walk, next to St-Martin-in-the-Fields off Trafalgar Square, I took this photo, of a van:
I love how certain very bright paint colours look all the brighter on dull days. Hartley would surely like this one.
So, Friday, and something about cats, or dogs, or other creatures. Dogs, as it turns out.
I took the following two photos a month or two ago, when rootling around in East London in the District Line DLR sort of area, where the City of London is busy turning into Docklands. And I am pretty that this first photo was intended, in my mind, to be of the notices in the foreground:
But then I noticed the background. Was that a lorry? On top of a building? For no reason? With no obvious way back down?
Yes it was:
Not an entirely clear photo, and it was also getting dark which didn’t help. But trust me, there was no easy way up, or down, for this vehicle. A lot of trouble was gone to, by someone. But, why?
No, I don’t know either. But sometimes mysteries are the funnest things to photo.
I think I must have noticed this strange phenomenon before, but then I forgot about it. But whether I ever did notice it before or not, I recently noticed it again, or I noticed it:
I’m guessing that what this means is that if you are in Zone 2, and move to Zone 2/3, you haven’t moved into another zone. And if you are in Zone 3 and then move to Zone 2/3, ditto.
But since I have an Old Git Pass, none of this really matters to me. I just like the oddity of the situation.
Nothing says Christmas to me quite like Special Christmas Edition packs of Walkers Potato Crisps. And actually, I came across these in Sainsbury’s … it must have been nearly a fortnight ago now:
Photoing a shiny package, with information directly under the shininess, is somewhat above my photoing pay grade, what with my photoing pay grade being: zero without expenses. On the left there, we have Turkey & Stuffing, Brussels Sprout, and Pigs in Blankets. On the right, Glazed Ham, Turkey & Stuffing (again), and … well that’s not so clear.
So here’s another photo which explains that it is Cheese & Cranberry:
However, my favourite bit is this little disclaimer, concerning the Brussels Sprout crisps:
I love it. Guaranteed entirely made with artificial flavouring. No natural flavouring at all. Real turkey. Real stuffing. Real pigs. Real blankets. Real ham with real glaze, real cheese, real cranberry. But: fake sprouts.
I don’t always hate the twenty first century. Today, I love it.
One way to photo such packages as these more clearly is to empty them, and flatten them out, like they’ve done here, because that brings the light under control. At lest, I think that’s what they did. Those photos certainly look flat. But a package that is flat rather than curved stops looking like a package. Such photos literally take the crisps out of the picture. And who wants that?