a nice matter

Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory has a lot to answer for, if in addition to her more obvious contribution, she also influenced the derivation of the living organism known as the meme. I was rewarded with a meme a few days ago by bob-kat, who cited rashbre central as a place where 'nice matters'. So I feel honoured and then honour bound to pass the award along.

I'm already in august company, with many who have already received the award. So I thought I'd head across to a few sites that consistently amuse and challenge me, but in most cases they are the sort to normally eschew memes and similar.

So I'll start with one of my sources of Web 3, social networking in the form of webby's world which provides an almost daily commentary on new bits and pieces of our ever more online existence.

Then onto a big site...that of the most maximum bob, someone with eclectic comment, swooping between idyllic holidays in France to the merits of the helvetica typeface, via excellent critiques of classy films. And now banned in Turkey along with all of wordpress....unless you use wordpressproxy.org, of course.

I felt I should include Doris Mash (Version 2) who doesn't post daily but has some amazingly thought provoking posts which really stay in the mind.

An enjoyable site from a long way away is WindBag and Thunder in Brisbane, Australia, with a mix of folklore, mythology and amazing Flying Star Toys. I'm still trying to figure out how to negotiate with Florence for the passage of 'sweet sixteen' from Australia to England but I think my email must be disapperaing down a spam filter somewhere.

Next is actually a flickr photo stream, but it can be approached via the occasional blog called nothing to write home about. Enjoy the posts and the sumptuous photographic experiments which are easier to find on the flickr part of Debra's world.

My last one is from Vancouver. The original Netchick. I know I'm in the current writing competiton over there but for me its just for fun(I scored around 3 and the winners scored about 1000). The slightly disorganised global competition is a piece of classic fun from this original and interesting site.

Thats about the right number of people; I could easily add more and its tough to know where to stop. Fortunately I know that there's a fair few people doing this and that the 'niceness' is spreading quite well through the efforts of others. There's two forms of badge for this...The original and one which I modified. The pink crochet knitted version clashed with the usual graffiti of rashbre central.

So I'd be honoured for my nominees to accept their awards, and ask them to 'pass it forward' to hopefully make some else smile.

tags technorati : rashbre maximum bob windbag and thunder photography nice matters vancouver netchick webby's world debra niceness nice matters

arcs

I normally refer to the fun of going forward, but the last few days triggered thoughts from the past.

One moment related to childhood summer, when it was possible to lay on grass in the garden looking towards the sky at distant silvery passing planes. So when I fly back into London at this time of year, it is still light enough in early evening to pick out landmarks. If I spot the route traverses the area of my childhood, then I look for landmarks of the river, certain roads and the area of that garden, so I can look back from the plane to the spot where I used to gaze upwards. My return from Amsterdam this week gave a perfect moment.

And then, today, I was propelled into another situation evoking the past, an improbable amalgam of people, illustrating possibilities and paths. Yes, it was a school re-union.

tags technorati : rashbre childhood sky planes stars school renunion west hatch london

burma

Calling Burma by its other name is what the junta wants. The military rulers of the country have been systematically quelling the pro-democracy protesters, of whom a large proportion appear to be Burmese monks. China is a major trading partner to Burma and has been supplying arms to support the junta, whilst resisting the efforts of the United Nations to exercise sanctions. China has also developed ports, factories and power plants in the country as a way to further its own economy.

Here is another corner of the world where major state imposed tyranny pushes the population back with brutal suppression. Neighboring China's agenda is supposed to be one of stability in the region, although its own record illustrates that its not too picky if that is achieved using guns and tanks as a form of suppression. China's eyes are also on its upcoming Communist Party politburo reshuffle and the 2008 Olympics as a global stage.

So now we have a United Nations envoy visiting Rangoon and the United States in discussions with China about the situation. The new global dependencies on China as a manufacturing base as well as a still largely untapped market, yet alone the host to the global games create interesting dilemmas for the economies of the west, where olden day threats of sanctions now get balanced against unintended consequences to global economies.

So will appeal to either Burma or China make a difference? The world watches.

tags technorati : rashbre burma china injustice sanctions rangoon monks

touching

Slight hiccup today when it emerged that a photo of an MP (the Secretary of State) was slightly 'retouched' because he hadn't actually been present when the picture was taken. Some other MPs turned up on time, but the final picture seems to have accidentally merged them with the separate picture of the missing person. A terrible mix-up, even the hospital trust where the photo was taken and the MP's press office appeared confused.

In this new era of spin free politics, exemplified by the recent original speeches from Gordon Brown we must guard against accidentally being misled by this kind of thing.

In another news item, Gordon has just published a new book about everyday heroes, which he claims to have written himself after talking to the people featured. I see its being serialised in the Daily Mail at the moment. Interesting that several of the people featured in the extensive chapters had only (allegedly) had brief 3-4 minute phone calls with the man until they met him at the book launch. We should be under no illusion about the power of his words.

generally speaking

I was expecting an announcement about a general election for the UK today. By my reckoning, if there was to be an election before the end of the year, it would need to be in October at the latest. I don't know quite how many weeks notice one has to give, but I'm guessing 4 weeks or a calendar month. Elections are usually on a Thursday, so that limits the number of dates left.

I can't imagine we'd have an election too close to Christmas; that rules out December. November starts to see grotty weather and coldness, so that could put off voters visiting their polling stations. The week of Guy Fawkes Night would be a strange time to vote for a new Parliament (after all, Guy Fawkes was the fellah that tried to blow up Parliament), so my bet would have been for the last Thursday in October. Thats the 25th October. Or at a pinch the 1st of November.

But as we are past the calendar month point and we have a weekend in front of us, I'd have thought now would have been the time to announce it. The Conservative conference probably throws a spanner in the works. If it was announced this weekend then the half of the Conservative MPs that make the trip to Blackpool could have a field day chatting about it. That means it could be as late as next Thursday before an announcement, with a view to also running a spoiler on the Conservative conference output.

Its interesting, because the latest the UK has had an election in any year since 1945 was 25 October in 1951. Never November, December or January and the earliest date in February is 23rd. So if it isn't by 25th October/1st November, then I wonder if we will wait until next February/March? Strictly, of course, we don't need to have an election until 2009, but I can't see Gordon waiting that long. Presumably some of the monetary gremlins will start to go munching if its left too long.

The chart below shows my 'look back into history' view of the last 50 or so years of votes. Nearest (biggest) are the most recent ones...


And here it is as a table:

So will UK get an election? I suppose its still anybody's guess?

Thursday Thirteen (V46)

1) Today, I awoke to start the day in darkness
2) Today, I left the house to start work in darkness
3) Early today, When I looked into the sky, I could see a bright moon as well as some space hardware.
4) The brightest item appeared to be what I guess was the space station.
5) Today, when I arrived at the airport, it was still dark.
6) Today, I watched the sun rising like a big red ball from the window of the plane parked on the tarmac.
7) Today, when I arrived at my destination, there was a big rather menacing looking black car which swooped in to pick me up. Several people looked around becuase it was one of those funny sunglasses and dark clothing moments.
8) My driver was on the cellphone for the whole journey, speaking Dutch and trying to sell a camper van for €11,000.
9 Today, at lunchtime, I completely randomly bumped into a friend who I havn't seen for a while and we had a brief chat

10) Today, in the late afternoon, I requested a car back to the airport and on the way the driver diverted to pickup the same friend I'd met at lunchtme, who was working in a nearby office block
11) We chatted together in the airport lounge before going our separate ways on different planes
12) Today, I arrived back over London just as it was getting dark.
13) Today, it was dark when I got home; the moon was shining again but I couldn't see the space station.
Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday

Vote

Vote for a budding short story author in Netchick's great competition here.

OTA : Wordless Wednesday

View from my hotel, Zaventem, Belgium

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Thanks mar

Tag: Wordless Wednesday trackback

a nice matter

My thanks to bob-kat for the flattering nomination for the 'nice matters' award.

Correctly, bob-kat and mar surmised that the standard form of the award might not look comfortable on rashbre central, so the art department had a very quick go at a makeover. The original main components are a white low heeled shoe, some pink ribbon and a lot of pink flowers.

This, perhaps slightly edgier, variation uses a red soled, black high-heeled louboutin, some red ribbon and some co-ordinated black-fronted red-backed nail varnish instead of flowers. I think it does the trick. Anyway, the real award picture is here if you want to compare.

I'll do nominations when my brain is working again. And a big thank you to bob-kat.

reserved reversal

Yesterday, after playing with bicycles, I was working in London and then tucked away in a hotel for the evening.

Earlier in the day I'd listened to some of the new KT Tunstall album in my car and was slightly taken aback. The album starts with a track that could easily have been on a Sheryl Crow recording and uses some similar production values too. Nothing against Sheryl, but the point with KT Tunstall was that she sounded like, well, KT Tunstall. The next track continued with a shimmered studio production and for me this hides some of the 'gaps between the sounds' that make the earlier Tunstall albums interesting. The 'eye to the telescope' sold several million, so I guess the record company know what they are doing, but I also suppose that's part of the point. Its not good if all artists get produced in a way that tends to make them bland or derivative.

I'll be in a minority on this, I'm sure, and other people have already said how 'drastic' and 'fantastic' the new album is. But then a strange thing happened...

...In my hotel, I discovered a way to listen to the album that somehow changes my initial impression.

Earlier, I'd copied the CD into iTunes and then dropped it into my iPod.

The hotel had a little plug on the clock radio (as they do nowadays) so that I could play my iPod and I casually selected 'recently added'.

The result was to listen to the same album, but with all of the tracks played in the reverse sequence (ahem on a lo-fi radio system). And you know something? It somehow sounds better! Old vinyls were often put together with care for the sequencing, but I'm not so sure nowadays. Certainly the reverse sequence sets a different initial tone and guides the listener towards some of the more heavily produced material. So when I get a few spare moments, I shall re-cut the album, in reverse track order, back to CD for my car and listen again.

So concluding, what with my PJ Harvey post a couple of days ago, I thought the PJ image from Slane 2003 and the KT 2007 album cover could do with some comparison.

freewheel

I have a special road bike for Central London if I think I may need to park it somewhere. It's green with a slightly peeling finish and has quite a lot of rust showing. There's no fancy speedos or telemetry. The lights are big duracell blocks that unclip with a key. It has a plastic bag over the saddle and both a boingy spiral cable lock and a Kryptonite D-Lock. The saddle is a QR, but I hide the flip switch inside the plastic bag.

The reason is the expected life of an unattended bicycle in Central London is very short. This is a great shame, because London is trying to improve the cycle ways and to encourage cyclists on a series of alternateive and lightly used routes. I think its a great idea and this Sunday's Freewheel Day in Central London attracted tens of thousands of cyclists to zip around some of the best bits of central London which were liberated from other traffic for the day. Parliament, the Mall, Whitehall, Buck House were all included.

It may not be a practical solution yet, but if safe parking security and alternative routes can be provided then it becomes an attractive and interesting way to get around the mainly short distances of the central area.

Thanks, London and Hovis for facilitating this freewheel. Hmm, with Flora sponsoring the London Marathon and Hovis the Freewheel bicycle event, London sure knows which way its bread is buttered (!)

artist

We've all wanted to go to somewhere like the sunny river scene in this picture.

Rosanna's display at the Chiddingfold gallery in Surrey on Saturday captured vibrant scenes with punchy colour conveying a happy mood across a variety of subjects. Working initially in pastels and then developing towards some pure oil painting, the style and detailing are important items on Rosanna's mind right now. There's thought and preparation in scenes like the one above, moving from pencil sketches, through rough painted attempts in an artist notebook, experimentation with paint blending styles and the final crafted delivery.

Whether examining the impressionism of the Japanese Bridge in Monet's garden at Giverney, or musing over delicate fibres for an ink and textile collage, Rosanna is determined to make a style of her own.

Now you've looked at a couple of works from this upcoming artist pop to the gallery on flickr

enchanted braid

"Earth, water, fire and air.
Mix together in the garden fair.
Put in a basket, tie with string.
If you answer this riddle you'll never begin."

I've been listening to the album of a friend with a performance name of i-sense and the album called "The enchanted braid". It contains a riddle like the shape of the elements in a alchemical picture.

Evocative of the mystic middle east, there's four tracks in a sort of song cycle, with commentary and atmospheric sounds of arabic flutes, deep bass drums, synthetic drones and arpeggiated sweeping synthesizers. The subject matter deals with transcendance on several levels, including the ritual of a Pharoh's second death as a path to enlightenment, and the simpler pleasures of love.

i-sense has created a clever album and I'm sure there's more embedded in the tracks than I've found - probably requiring sub-conscious examination. The "sense" of "I" referred to in the artist title is probably a clue to volitionally liberating consciousness from self-restrictions, and I shall enjoy puzzling the hidden meanings.

So whether its about Isis (the spirit) and Osiris (the soul) or a kingdom usurped by Typhon, the elements won't be far from this composition and their intersection at the i of the i-sense.

khalil (sandstorm mix)

white chalk

I've referenced PJ Harvey here before, including that song with Thom York about New York.

I guess PJ's trademark sound has been jagged guitars and a raw vocal style, although listen to her interviews and a different voice appears like a Yin to the Yang.

The latest album officially emerges on Monday, so this is something of a preview, conveying a stripped down sound with piano, harp and some banjo and even a cellphone replacing the heavily bass-amped guitars of the previous recordings.

Interestingly, the vocals sound closer to the interview voice in this album, higher registers and somehow more vulnerable, but a listen to the words soon dismisses this with dark, steely lyrics and some soundscapes that create a chill and atmospheric listening experience. In the past Polly has said that the albums and the lyrics were not about her; it will be interesting to hear the commentary for this one.

So to get an idea of what this is about, here's a few tune extracts in pre-release. Click to accompany your blog browsing and if you like what you hear, then here's an echoey live extract during a recent performance in Denmark.

...or if humbucking telecasters are more your thing then PJ Harvey and Bjork singing "Satisfaction" may be an amusing interlude.

latte

A few minutes sitting in a coffee bar before a meeting today. I was a little early and picked a place at random in Fleet Street to sit and catch up on a few emails.

Turns out one of the people I was meeting was in another coffee bar around the corner.

Fleet Street is the area where the major newspapers used to operate before they all modernised and moved out of the centre. There's still a good legacy of wine bars and pubs in the area and you can spot some suitably business-like people emerging from "The Old Bell Tavern" across the road from where I was sitting.

Nowadays there's still good business from the legal profession, investment banks and accountants in the area and along the road are the Law Court Chambers, often featured on the television news. A short walk in the other direction is the equally famous Old Bailey, site of many famous trials.

The main traffic of buses, taxis, white vans and bicycles is indicative of the area in the centre of the Congestion Charge zone and later this will increase and the streets fill with city folk on their way home. But me, I now have to meet my colleague and then head into a nearby building.

give me a bell

I just read somewhere (in the analogue world of ink and paper) that mobile phones have been going for around 20 years. "This calls for a montage", I thought, "or at least a few photoshopped pictures".

I expect there's already people who don't remember phones with dials, and the idea of remembering actual phone numbers is long since gone. I don't get all misty eyed though because the cellular world offers a lot of advantages with quick text messaging, conferencing, photography and video and I actually miss the text chat facility I had on my last mobile phone, which seems impossible to emulate in the world of Windows on my current one.
Of course, when phones only had to make phone calls, they were a lot simpler, and there's a special law that says whenever its something urgent the phone will throw a tantrum and demand a reboot, which seems to take about a minute. And the last two phones I've had both have qwerty keyboards instead of numbers, so I've got used to typing in part of someone's name now when I want to call them.

So I don't really reminisce for the days of early mobile with short battery life and a burning sensation around the ear after a long call. I'm still slightly suspicious of bluetooth operating on the same frequency as microwave ovens, but I suppose someone has proved that a bluetooth headset can't cook baked beans.

And of course with all the hilarious and imaginative ring-tones around, the old style "bring-bring" bell has also made a solid come-back.
UPDATE: I checked. The first cellphone was used in 1973 by Martin Cooper/Motorola and the first ones sold were 1984. So Gordon Gecko in Wall Street(1987) was cutting edge.

Cookie Socks Shocks

Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, where have you been?
"I've been to London to look at the queen."
Pussy-cat, pussy-cat, what did you there?
"I frightened a little mouse under the chair."

Shocking news that Socks the Blue Peter cat may have been renamed (allegedly). The phone in competition to name this childrens' programme pet seems to have been overruled by someone on the programme. Apparently the most common/popular phone-in name was deemed inappropriate and substituted for the name of Bill Clinton's cat.

Hmm, I wonder what the original name was, and whether there's any connection with the substitution?

Antonia and the exploding gas cylinders

I spent longer than expected in the fens of Cambridgeshire and beyond today as a result of the exploding gas cylinders of the A14. A truck toppled over and let loose its contents of metal gas cylinders. I first noticed something untoward when the map on my sat nav went red all around Cambridge. First a few warning yellow cars and then a steady procession of little red cars marched across the map like so many ants. And then four 'no entry' signs popped up at the cardinals of Cambridge.

"Hmm", I thought, as I sat in stationary traffic, "I'd better find a local radio station". And so to Antonia on Radio Cambridgeshire drivetime, who announced that there had been an accident and then that the police had closed all of the useful roads in the most of Cambridgeshire.

Antonia Brickell's(?) slightly subversive radio style was quite entertaining whilst I whiled away my normally economical fuel consumption in the gridlock of the month. Radio Cambs lasted a good hour and a half until I finally got moving again and the station faded out of reception.

I can understand the need for exclusion zones around unidentified gas canisters; even if they were described as 'empty'. Notable was the good humour and patience of the long streams of motorists caught up in today's events.

Halo 3, Halo 4, Halo 5 and beyond

tags technorati : rashbre halo halo3 halo4 halo5 halo6 halo7 halo8 halo cheats

jazzy

Waiting Friday, on Lambeth Bridge, viewing Parliament and the Eye

Not my usual form of music, but as a quick way to test Logic Pro 8, and somewhat inspired by the jazz on Friday, I've boshed together a quick track called "Waitin' for Mel", which I've also attempted to give a live vibe to. The waiting was by Lambeth Bridge.

Its traditional swing without any special electronica (well none that shows) although the instruments and so forth are all mere triggers on my Mac.

I think the cymbals are a bit overdone, but hey, I'm only practicing with the new layout of Logic.

Waitin' for Mel (live)

Or, download .mp3 to play here.

Polar Bear

I said I'd be having a jazzy evening on Friday, and a gang of us certainly did. We met in Lambeth, just across the river from the Houses of Parliament, and headed into an ex church, which was the site of the gig by the very excellent Polar Bear. I'd been listening to their back catalogue during the week such as "Held on the Tips of Fingers" as well as a few demo tapes that were loaded to their web site.

So, with softly spoken band leader Seb Rochford (drums), Pete Wareham (Tenor and Baritone saxophone), Mark Lockheart (Tenor saxophone), Tom Herbert (Double Bass), Leafcutter John (mandolin and electronics) didn't disappoint and we had an evening of eclectic fusion jazz, featuring electronica, performed to a warm and friendly audience, washed down with beer (till it ran out), then lager and cider.

Here's an extract. Handheld phone..

tags technorati : rashbre polar bear jazz london museum ex-church seb rochford leafcutter john

Logic Studio 8

Passing the Apple shop in Regent's Street today, I noticed they had one copy of the upgrade for Logic on the shelf. What could I do? More later once its installed.

Mrs Caddy's Field

A picture I took a couple of weeks ago in Mrs Caddy's field, where the recent show took place that I attended.

My surprise to read in the London Times that ths very field is the source of the latest outbreak of the terrible foot and mouth disease.

OTA : Wordless Wednesday

Bicycle Ride




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Hyde Park

I've been asked (via Mary and Julie) to load some more from Hyde Park. We'll drop it onto Christina's site, when sufficient time.

loose ends

- ease of access to the chapel and its environs
- the big hole road works
- access to the sea and boats
- previous users of hire cars
- access to tranquilisers and sedatives
- access to hair samples to check chemicals ingestion
- knowledge of medical procedures
- unidentified people carrying children
- timing, clarity and effectiveness of room checks
- Occam's razor

water

Nya, I'm sitting here looking at a big glass bottle of water which costs €4.30 to open. I'm in a hotel by the Rhine River in Dusseldorf and I can walk ten steps to the hotel bathroom, where the water in the tap is free.

The glass of water by the side of the bottle is from that tap and it tastes wonderful. Cool, smooth and probably surprisingly pure.

If I'm outdoors like on Saturday at a concert I might buy water, but for day to day consumption, the tap still provides a great choice. I admit I use a filter at home and keep the filtered water in the fridge, but the source still comes from the tap. And if I take water with me when I go cycling, I simply fill a camelback and drop it into the rucksack.

2.17 billion litres per year from bottles in the UK, costing £1.5bn. Thats a lot of landfill.

9/11

I was going to pick up a car. I arrived at the garage and they said it would be a few minutes, but I could watch the television whilst I waited. They said there'd been an accident and a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. In my mind I imagined a Cessna or something similar and idled across to the television. A few others were also watching. " plane has crashed into the Pentagon", someone commented. "OK", I thought, "the other guy said the World Trade Center - obviously a mistake". I watched for a few minutes as the enormity started to unfold. Then, like many others, I shared the world's shock at the events of that terrible afternoon.

why

Here's the thing...A couple of blogs I read fairly regularly are diamond geezer and maximum bob. They've both recently posted about how their blogs are viewed and in the case of dg there's a fairly thoughtful equation about hits, viewers, readers and those that interact.

I offer my humble chart into the discussion; Its all about activity vs words. If I'm busy, then I should have more things to write about. But then I don't always have time. So last night, tucked in the hotel, I listed a few bloggable things that I could feature over the next period. I stopped when I got to number 26.

I'm not trying to say that what I do is interesting to anyone but me, but I think it provokes an interesting quandary. Doing stuff or writing about it? There's a balance to find between the two.

Its also a challenge with ideas to 'use them up' before they go stale. As an example, the fabulous mar, a reader of rashbre central commented a few days ago about my city dweller emphasis in a number of the posts. My amused response? to take a camera out on a recent bike ride to snap a few scenes of the countryside through which I was riding. Just for fun of course. Have I posted it? Nope. And if I leave it much longer all of the trees will have gone brown and then it won't be realistic any longer.

I admire someone like dg who can develop a full blown project around a blog entry. Planning, exploring a neighbourhood, photography, meaningful commentary about what has been seen and a post of maybe 750 plus words. Similarly maximum bob who will drill into a topic to a degree worthy of a thoughtful lesson plan.

So I'm batting along at around ten minutes for a post (including a photo upload) and as a rule I sub-edit the wordage down after crashing out an initial idea. When I do a Thursday Thirteen or describe an amble across part of London or somewhere I'm visiting, then probably the time and words go up, but I must balance driving a blog with having time to read the thoughts of others and dropping an occasional comment.

ok. twenty minutes for this one (extra links to find)

activist

Body Shop creator Anita Roddick passed away today. She started a company from necessity but created something with a global conscience and a direct line to the producers of its products in underpriviledged parts of the world. Thirty years for big business to catch up with the sentiment.

An activist, a networker, an articulate entreprenuer who claimed to have learned it all from life. Actually a blogger too.

no one shall sleep (nessun dorma)

A late night again yesterday - it was 'The Last Night of the Proms' in London. This is a traditional night at the end of the series of inexpensive concerts put on throughout the summer at the Royal Albert Hall. They are rooted in classical music, though the definition becomes broader every year.

On the last night everyone attending the main concert dresses up and takes flags, streamers and similar and there is always a conclusion with stirring British music comprising sea shanties, "land of hope and glory" and "Jerusalem".

flags whilst will young sings
Tickets for the Alb are like duck's teeth, so along with several hundred thousand others, we ambled to the Park to watch it on the big television screens. Actually there's a full show also from Hyde Park and we managed to get very close to the main stage and also near to one of the big screens, so it was easy to see everything.

trexstacy
Whilst the main performance from the Royal Albert Hall comprises classical music, the Park has a mixture and this year included Lesley Garrett, Juan Diego Florez, a T-Rex tribute band and Julie and Andrea's favourite, Will Young. More of that later when I can load some mobile phone video.

Great evening, with much flag waving as well as various sporting victories for England along the way, winning the soccer against Israel, the cricket and then beating the USA at rugby. "Tramontate, stelle! All'alba vincerò!"..."Set, stars; at dawn I will win!", as Pavarotti had sung from the same spot.

you say potato, I say potato art

Thanks, storm, for bringing the London bus shelter potato art phenomenon to rashbre central's attention. Now will there be any at Black Friar's? or maybe some on the Tubers? or on the Bakedloo line?

These spudniks are all very sci-fry.

tags technorati : rashbre potato bus shelter art spudnik

another invader

This is not just any brick wall, this brick wall has another one of those space invaders half way up it.

I spotted it a few days ago during my travels around London.

You may have to look carefully to see it as well as to wonder how it got there in the first place.