unusually quiet in these parts of town?

It's supposed to be back to normal this week, with full commuter trains, busy tubes and plenty of traffic jams. I'm slightly suspicious that there's a stillness in some of the central area.

There's space on usually busy platforms, and even parts of the normally bustling areas around the South Bank and the London Eye are surprisingly quiet.

These are parts of London that don't usually have seasonal effects, but maybe, just for once, everyone is over-travelled and shopped- out?

throwing dice along the wharf

The New Year has more or less resumed its normal rotation this week, with work restarted, traffic jams re-instigated in the usual places, TV schedules back to normal and an early start to the 2015 UK election featuring in every single news broadcast.

Like summer holiday adverts which start on Boxing Day, there's probably been a popular agreement that broadcasters get their spinometers out at the first hint of a new year speech.

The old colour coding won't hack it for the next time around, that's for sure.

Nowadays, there'll probably be talk of big data and deep dive analytics.

It'll be interesting to see how the pundits dance along the coloured wind without dangling from a rope of sand.

Meantime, here's an aerial view of Nathalie Miebach's transformation of some big data.

Weave away, boys, weave away.

rooks, buzzards, red kites, a little owl and a black cat

We were out and about around the country lanes.

Already fuelled from a stop in Alresford the spin through Preston Candover and Farleigh Wallop yielded plenty of unexpected wildlife spotting opportunities.

Long shadowed late afternoon sunshine silhouetted livestock as well as a few birds of prey including red kites lazily circling for easy pickings.

Not too difficult as the road edges had their share of the carnage from smaller animals. We stopped to let some moorhens cross at one point and silly pheasants could well have been on borrowed time.

The bare branches of trees at both ends of one village were filled with rooks beginning to settle for the evening.

I noticed a little owl sunlit high in a tree. Later a large buzzard swooped and accompanied us along the road for several hundred yards, branching off when it decided that an approaching black cat was perhaps somewhat ambitious.

xmas party games

Survivors of rashbre central's previous seasonal festivities will know that there's a certain point when the silly hats and party games make an appearance.

Not the Nintendo / X-Box360 / Playstation variety, but games involving old wrapping paper, sticky tape, fruit and the like. For the convenience of others, here's a few sure fire winners, which can be played at everything from amateur through to full Pro standard.

Required items: Wrapping paper, sticky tape, magazines, newspapers, highlighter pen, pins

1) Guess the name : Yes - simply providing the guests with paper hats or pin on labels which they can't see with the name of a sleb (celebrity) on it. They have to guess with the Yes/No answers. Classed as an icebreaker. Marilyn Monroe, George Bush, Frankenstein, Albert Einstein, Babe Ruth, Jason Bourne, 007, Mickey Mouse, Madonna, Britney Spears, Beyonce. You get the idea.
2) Dress the person : Kinetic Game, two teams: 2-5 minutes. Select someone to be dressed using either old wrapping paper or a couple of recent magazines or newspapers.
3) Kipper racing : multiple teams. needs a long clear indoor space. cut or tear a largish fish shape from a sheet of wrapping paper or anything similar to hand. Add detail such as a hole for the eye, maybe a dorsal fin. Lie them flat on the floor and give other team members further sheets of paper/magazines to use to create air currents to propel the fish from a start line to a distant improvised finishing line.
4) Tell a tale : Pre select some groups of 7 unusual words from a magazine or newspaper article. Hand them to each team and and ask each team member in turn to tell a story using the seven words. Other teams have to try to guess the words.
(Example words from random article today : luckier; heterosexual; chevrolet; banana; promoted; quitter; eggs. and from another page: emissions; cruise; leisurely; overcome; scoop; howling; endurance...you get the idea.)
5) Pass the orange : Why wait until after the dinner has finished to play this game? goes great with coffee.
6) Pictionary: drawing fast pictures based upon words. The boxed set is best for this one.
7) GrEEn GlaSS dOOr : The person in charge suggests playing this and that everyone else can try to be selected to go through the green glass door by suggesting appropriate pairs of things. Things that get in are a pOOl but no water; glaSS but no picture; MiRRor but no reflection (ie the first thing needs a double letter in it.. Play till last person gets it)
8) GGD variants : Play GGD (7) where instead of double letters, each sentence said by the next person has to start with a vowel "...and blah blah bla; ...or blah blah blah ...obviously" and another variant vowel/then consonant and another variant is start with next letter of alphabet.
9) Alphabet Game : Choose topic (Animals, Cars, Candy Bars, Popstars, Drinks). Start at A and round robin through to Z.
10) Stirring the Mush : Announce you are stirring the mush and (eg stand up, sit down, scratch your ear etc). Then start stirring the mush by any hand/body gesture you like. The invite someone to copy. the trick is thay have to do what you did BEFORE you started stirring the mush (eg scratch ear etc). Tell them whether they have passed or not then select next 'victim'. Repeat until all have worked it out.
11) Erect-a-pup : More newspaper for this two in -oner. Part one. Teams. who can make the longest tube in 2 minutes from rolled up paper? Sounds easy. Just watch what happens. Part Two. Now, in another three minutes make a model life sized puppy out of tubes of newspaper. Warning that some puppies will have 3, 5 legs at the end of this.

I think thats enough to get started. No animals harmed in the testing of these entertainments. You'll have to email me for the (ahem) rules of the frying pan and wooden spoon game...and don't forget charades!

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