Name the film which the title of this post is from and I’ll owe you a beer. But more important than that is new that I have recently proposed to my girlfriend and we are to get married. This is the very best of news (to quote a sketch I once saw). I have drunk more champagne in the last 5 days than I have in a year, and in more locations than I normally visit in a month.
It started in London last wednesday and reached it’s peak in Brussels at the weekend. I’m enjoying being engaged a lot.
Now there’s the little matter of planning a wedding.
I often read lists of top ten things to do, books to read, films to see. A London focused list of Top Ten Summer Outings on TheOldWorld made me think that my most reliable favorite outing is walking around the city with my camera and photographing whatever takes my interest.
So here’s my Ten places to wonder about, taking photos. I couldn’t put them in an order. (more…)
Following that post on HD sunglasses here’s one on some new advertising to hit London’s tube. Last October TFL started trailing some new video projection adverts on the tube on the platforms.
Large projectors were set up at Euston which would project silent videos onto the wall across from where people stand waiting for the tube. The silent video is very powerful, whatever is showing you can’t help but let your eyes get drawn to it and before you realise you’re staring at the moving pictures, lost in a trance (Ben Elton once did an excellent sketch on this but I can’t find any trace of it on the web.).
Both Diamond Geezer and The Londonist have written more about this but the point that sticks with me is the lack of choice you have about viewing these adverts, particularly on the tube, everywhere you look there is an advert. At a station like Euston where the platform is 5 people deep at rush hour you have no option but to look straight ahead as you’re crushed from every other side and let the the slogans, straplines associations and brand from the adverts stare you in the face.
But if a lack of adverts meant a substantial increase in fares, then the companies win and we will have to watch what they have to say.
An excellent example of a company jumping on the latest technology bandwagon to promote something completely unrelated.
I guess they wouldn’t do it if people didn’t buy it.
I shouldn’t really hate Ikea, and I’m a hypocrite for doing so, but I can’t help it.
I live near a store and over the last 12 months it has been invaluable for buying cheap functional attractive furniture for my new flat. Especially when it came to a new sofa, as we couldn’t get anything of decent size through the door and round the hallway. A build your self (and later dismantle yourself) sofa was the ideal solution.
But every trip destroys my will to live, and a visit yesterday was no different. As the minutes roll buy and I walked my way around the store the need for home furnishings dwindled, my energy was drained and the craving to escape rose to unbearable levels.
When we got back at home all was well again, We surveyed the nice new things we’d brought and began putting them together.
This post by swissmiss from blank is like blank sums it up perfectly for me.
I know one day I’ll have to go again.
I wonder what kind of emergency they expect at Highbury and Islington which would demand an emergency cupboard.
Who knows.
It would certainly make a good caption competition.
Haagen-Dazs have set up an open air ice ream parlor by Liverpool street tube in Broadgate circle, where the ice rink is during the winter. They’ve laid down some astroturf, put up an airy marque and laid out a few dozen cushions and a few sun loungers.
Considering the decent weather we’re having the place wasn’t packed, but I didn’t get close enough to see how much a shotglass equivalent of ice cream cost, which could have been another decider.
There is often something happening around this part of liverpool street, and even though I expect it to be hugely overpriced it was a welcome sight and encouraged people to take a break from their busy lives, lay down on a large cushion and enjoy some ice cream. And that can’t be a bad thing really can it.
It was still there this morning so head along if you’re in the area and the weather holds up!
