The news has a cutesy rhyming name for the storm which is bringing so very much snow to these parts. They can keep said name, because it’s stupid.

So, we’ve had the Working In A Snowglobe thing the last few days.

Also, the canal froze a bit.

And then a bit more.

Yes, that’s a road cone.

It’s frozen into the surface.

Apparently one of the folks from work tried walking, or at least standing, on the ice, and didn’t go through.

My street looked like this.

Interestingly, the snow builds up a lot more on my side street than on the main road, possibly because it’s light powdery stuff this time, so it gets blown away?

Aylesbury Vale Parkway & Aylesbury stations, as seen on my morning commute.

The canal is now really frozen.

Though the statue of Ronnie Barker seems fairly chill about the whole snowfall thing.

It’s not building up much because the snow is so light and dry. It’ll collect in low drifts, but only if there’s something to build up against.

The flat-roofed building opposite work was almost free of snow, except where dunes built up on an obstruction.

Reminds me of the snow you’d get on Mt. Ruapehu, where aside from the ground cover, the drifts are either in front of or behind an object, and you could watch the wind pick up streams of ice crystals & carry them around in long tendrils.

Speaking of snow drifts;

I currently have some form of lurgh, so this may descend into even less comprehensible ramblings than usual

Back in 2016. at the start of my trip around the USA, I stayed in a hotel with some … unusual … wall art; This was in the corridor.

On the walls of the room itself were pictures which looked like photomanipulations, or composites, and I have been wondering who did them, and what, if anything, the story behind them was.

Eventually I had the idea of feeding the pictures I’d taken into an image search, which came back with an artist named Todd Baxter.

The first one is from a project called PROJECT ASTORIA : TEST 01 | Elk Grove, about an interplanetary colony which is slowly decaying, and the children who’ve grown up there.

The second is from Owl Scouts: Lost in the Woods, which is … dark.
Let’s just say that it doesn’t go well for the kid facing down the bear.

In my experience, if I try to do some form of grand summing up of an event with lots of bits, I get bored partway through.
So let’s not do that.

Instead, let’s talk Christmas Markets.

This is the one in Leicester Square, which I visited while wandering around on Christmas Eve, and where I got some of this;

Raclette. The long stringy bits are cheese-rind, which I can take or leave, though I’d prefer to leave it.

I wound up in Leicester Square because I was wandering in search of misc. Christmassy stuff, and found it.
But that’s not what this post is about.

Nor is it really about this other market, which is not a Christmas Market, except for the fact that it’s happening at Christmas.

Nope, this is about the Greenwich Christmas Market, which looks like a set from Doctor Who.

Tree Infestation Contained: Warning Lights Set.

Revelers Detected: Prepare For Kringle Deployment

This will be our most sanitary Christmas ever!

The whole place looked like this.
Identical metal vendor booths, most of them padlocked shut, swaths of that white flooring stuff, and anything remotely natural or Christmassy hemmed in and safely corralled.

I wondered when the Santa-Bots from … at least one Doctor Who Christmas Special? … would be deployed.

I didn’t manage to get a picture of the two … well, I’m assuming they were Santa’s Helpers, based on their position on the path leading to Santa’s Grotto, but the khaki trousers and red berets made them look less traditionally festive and more We Are Redistributing The Gifts To The People Based On Need, Not The Arbitrary Bourgeois Notions Of Goodness, Comrade.

That said, there were Traditional Christmas Churros, so, it wasn’t all bad.
Just odd.

Every so often I’m reminded of my alleged contributions to the global store of … let’s call it knowledge … over on Google Maps.

Places I’ve reviewed, information I’ve provided, and photos I’ve uploaded.

As I type this, 1216 people have viewed this image, taken on the mound by Oxford Castle;

it looks like I’m photobombing the dynamic walking shot of bobble-hat-guy.

136 have viewed this one, taken in a guest house in Inverness;

shall we all take a moment to take in that carpet?

But here’s the one with the most views;

it’s a hotel room (duh) in New Orleans, at The Saint hotel.

23,954 views.
More than twice as many as the next highest, an exterior shot of High Street Hostel in Edinburgh.

I have no explanation for this.

I mean, The Saint was a nice hotel.
I had an espresso soda there, which was strange but refreshing, and the decor had a certain Vous etes ici pour un Dirty Weekend vibe to it, crossed with an element of we saw this on CSI and thought it looked cool, but it’s just a hotel.
With awesome carpet.

If there is one thing I could change about this picture, one tiny thing, it would be this;
The typo in the title, because my top-viewed picture of all time, seen by more people than I can fathom being interested in such a thing, is titled “Rook with king-sized bed”.

ok, that was weak

I’ve been doing a “Christmassy Picture A Day” thing for advent, over on The Social Medias.
Daily posts to WordPress are a bit annoying, so here’s a digest version – I’ll update it as new images happen.

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2

3

4

I couldn’t decide for the 4th of December, so there’s two.

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

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18

Two pictures today, partially because I couldn’t decide, and partially because it’s super cold out there.

19

I feel that this one deserves some ‘splaining.
This is a box of misc. NZ sugary crap, sent by a friend in NZ in exchange for some tea & some Yorkie Bars.

I’m stashing it in my desk until the team, or at least the ‘local’ team, are all on deck, so that they can try strange New Zealand lump-based¹ cuisine.

¹ Someone commented that there are pineapple lumps, and jaffa lumps, and that NZ confectionery seems to have a lot of lumps in it, which led me, through Entirely Reasonable Steps, to come up with the phrase “lump-based cuisine”.

20

21

These aren’t enormous plushie reindeer; They’re inflatable, and the pumps look to be linked to the lighting, so if you get there early enough they’re hanging like limp reindeer husks.

It’s kind of creepy, but not as creepy as watching them inflate.

22

The subject of today’s Christmassy Image is named Sammy, and enjoys tennis balls and not being easy to photograph.

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Took me a while to decide on the very last Christmassy Picture for my advent-esque series.

Tried setting up a few shots, but nothing quite seemed to work, so I took a walk to a Christmas Market in Leicester Square, and along the way, took this picture.

So, this happened.

I’d thought it was pretty quiet out there, even for a Sunday morning, and when I looked out … Yep, there was a reason.

Naturally, I went for a walk, and because there’s not really a lot of Berryfields to walk to, ended up at the train station.

Where, despite the signage, there were no trains.

Inexplicably, Nymphadora wanted to go outside a lot, possibly to watch the snowflakes.

It slowed down, but hasn’t shown any sign of stopping, and the trains aren’t running out this far.

Alternate forms of transport may be required.

This is all mostly somewhat the fault of Chris, who made a comment about the Black Helicopters landing in (probably) Spokane.

See, that reminded me of this song by Soul Coughing.

But in the process of finding a link to it, I discovered another song named “Unmarked Helicopters”, this one by The Jezabels.

Who did another song which, having been reminded of it, promptly got stuck in my head.

A song which was used in a Danny MacAskill ‘cycling’ video.
I’d forgotten that part of it was shot in Edinburgh, so it was sort of fun to recognise places.

Which in turn led me to the most inventive cycling video I’ve ever seen.

The +1 has nothing to with any of that. I just like the song.