recording the moment

There's been a strange development recently as we've added a vinyl record player back into the rashbre central mix.

One of my totally unexpected Christmas presents, and a very intriguing one.

The rashbre central environment is wifi'd to the hilt and has various sets of speakers connected to the main music server as well as most devices from phones to iPads to PCs being able to select music.

Yet strangely the old-school record player with built in speakers and a manual tone arm and accompanying small stash of albums has been the hit over the holiday period.

There's a different ceremony to listening to music in 20-25 minute blocks with all the sound coming from the same part of the room. Of course, some of the old albums that never made it to CD or MP3 have been resurrected too. And even a couple of recent ones that were presented as vinyl instead of cd (like Evelyn Evelyn).

The idea to do this came about when we were in Hollywood earlier in the year. Strangely enough, the record player in use is an exact replica of the one from there too.
A great, if unexpected, holiday souvenir.

Oops, the side has just finished. I must select another one.

antique antics

This pub is usually a point on one of my bicycle routes where I'd stop for a few minutes, but on Wednesday we loitered there for a couple of pints (shandy in my case).

We'd already been to another sleepy village, where the consensus seemed to be to not open any of the shops again until Thursday at the very earliest. Luckily I didn't have the need for any emergency antique purchases so it wasn't very critical to the day's plans.

Then back to an evening of quizzes interspersed with some Charles Dickens.

And port.

Served in very tiny antique glasses.

And passed to the left.

no jams, honey

I can understand how people lose track of the right day during this week, but not why everyone wants to rush to the shops by Boxing Day and sit for hours in traffic.

Our successful visits managed to avoid most of the ten mile plus shoppers' traffic jams all around London.

I suspect they are caused by the big shopping centres progressively being sprinkled around the edges of London. There's two either side of the river in East London as well as another new one which opened in time for the Olympics. I noticed the big jam for many miles leading to the north side of the Dartford Crossing.

The west side of London has another large shopping centre which is almost adjacent to the now closed Hammersmith fly-over - one of the main routes in and out of the centre. This would account for the traffic jams I spotted all the way out to the M25 near to the M4. And the middle of London has the usual tourist shopping areas in any case.

By taking the counter-intuitive way around the motorway, we dodged all of the jams we headed for our visits yesterday.

No shopping involved.

Tidings of Comfort and Joy

Ever since the year we accidentally left the front door open on Boxing Day, we've been a bit more careful when we go out.

On Boxing Day, that is.

We'd a complement of extra visitors and lots of shiny new toys and gizmos when we all decided to go out to the pub or something.

The bustling group of us returned later to the sight of a police car and a couple of neighbours loitering in the garden.

"What's happened?" was the obvious question.

"We spotted your door open but no-one in and wondered if something had happened?" (our neighbours know us better than that nowadays). "Phew - the Champagne's still here" I could hear someone shouting.

The police looked as if they'd had enough of the scene and good naturedly prepared to leave. I don't think there was any paperwork, although a lot of thanks to everyone involved.

Nowadays, if neighbours see the door left open (or the car boot), they quietly close it for us and move along.

Christmas Greetings

A quick snap of the tree, now that its been trimmed.

Most of the decorations are ones acquired on various trips and visits, so the little German soldier is from a snowy Christmas spent in Rothenburg ob der Tauber and the little sign behind it says 'Grand Canyon' from a visit about ten years ago.

Behind that (but tastefully blurred in the photo) is a bauble painted in the Native American style from Puget Sound. We picked it up in the Gaslight district of Vancouver.

...But enough. There's mince pies to be eaten.

Festive Seasonal Greetings.

last minute preparations?

There were still quite a few shoppers out today, seemlingly buying 'filler-in' items rather than major Christmas purchases.

We'd had a late brunch at Mike's in Notting Hill, before heading to the nearby Electric Cinema to see an afternoon movie. The cinema was filled with the aroma of mulled wine which was being served in half pint beer mugs, complete with mince pies.



Of course the film was suitably Christmassy too, "It's a Wonderful Life" back on the Silver Screen.

Then outside into the still bustling Portobello Market before a crimson sunset in preparation for Santa's flightpath.

lights twinkle

Now that most of the lights have moved from bulbs to the little LEDs, there's less things to go wrong than previously.

The biggest area to have to negotiate is the 'prevailing colour along our road'.

I already knew the solar powered blue lights were no-no, but I wasn't sure which kind of white light this year.

It turns out its 'warm white' rather than 'white' and means the houses around all sort of link together with the same theme.

I will sneak the multi-coloured flashing set into an upstairs room later.

And try to liberate and incorporate the multi coloured light up snow man.

the right shoes?

Early for a meeting, I decided to grab a late breakfast toast and a cup of coffee. The coffee bar was mainly empty except for two or three people sitting along the walls chugging through emails on their computers.

I took a window seat and concentrated on the toast as I gradually became more aware of my surroundings. Two people arrived at a nearby table. Well-dressed casual. The jacket of one one them was placed on the side, inside out so a large 'Moncler' label was prominent.

This, apparently, was the interviewer.

The other person started to explain their plans and aspirations. It was clearly a job-seeking session.

I tuned out and back to my coffee.

Until I noticed.

The fashionable Moncler one conducting the interview was wearing different shoes. They were the same brown colour but had different patterning.

I wondered if the interviewee had noticed. Or whether the session's intensity meant he would miss this detail.

This wasn't like fashionable different socks.

They say in interviews its good to think of the interviewer in a levelling situation. This one could be easy.

Having to get dressed in the dark.

The toast and coffee was great.

an on y mous

Some of us have just had a bit of a do and although the main photos won't make it to the internet, this one has the necessary anonymity.

Of course, it's the rectangular sunglasses that do it.

A simple design that can more or less guarantee that the parties at this time of the year won't be giving away more photographic evidence than they should.

how to rank a london twit

I was over at diamond geezer's blog when I noticed his post about twitter.

It provided links to a site that lists various charts about twitterers and naturally I couldn't resist looking at rashbre which turns out to be in the first 150 twitterers in London. I can also check out the rashbre twitter serial number here

Now, after 1,777 days I've done over 2,300 tweets.

At 45 seconds per tweet that would be circa 28 hours of tweeting.

I'd better not add up the blog time.

lights, fir tree, action?

Our tree for Christmas is currently awaiting preparation. I need to find the tree stand and the lights. The latter will probably require another visit to the garden centre although the newer LED based lights have a higher chance that they will still work.

At the moment the tree is still in that net wrapping and may stay that way until the weekend.

There's still uncharacteristically few lights in houses around the area too. Maybe this weekend is the main lighting up time?

Liberty print

I mentioned we'd been in Liberty's shop for a bite to eat before the show. I thought it worth a further reference to this mock Tudor shop in Argyll Place.

The best way to show it is with the two pictures, from 1924 and another from now, that together illustrate that time may have moved along, but that the store appears somewhat unruffled by the busy area around it.

Parts inside are modernised, but other areas are still of another time, with hand written scrolled writing for the cashier station and a small lift that feels like one is travelling in a piece of oak furniture.

Sure, we were on the third floor among the fancy clothes with their untouchable price tags, the Alexander McQueen and Lady Ga-Ga scarves (between £125-£350) but nearby you could still buy a button, or a neatly folded off-cut of a Liberty print.

And plenty of people were.