Smoking woman
This photograph I took in Tooting from the top deck of a bus in 2015 is getting a lot of views in my Flickr account.
It is of a woman having a cigarette in an alley just off Mitcham Road, by Tooting Broadway. She appears to be pregnant, is what it is, I think.
Repost: “Edwin Hubble Discovers the Universe”
In celebration of the Hubble telescope’s thirtieth birthday, I’m reposting this article from Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD), as I love the image on this glass photographic plate.
Buildings in London that are gone now
Change is good, generally. It keeps us from stagnating. The challenge of new ideas and new ways of doing things is good for our brains and drives adaptation and innovation. It underpins our evolutionary development.
In London, despite many years of imposed austerity and economic and social decline for the general population, property developers continue to be busy, avariciously gambling on unsustainable future growth that fails to account for the exigencies of the pivotal era we live in, by which I mean, the Climate Emergency in particular, but also, the social policies that are disenfranchising the working population, the rise of nationalism and so on.
Chewing through a building (video 0:44)
Walking down Old Street on my way to work one morning, I happened to catch a glimpse of this impressive machine taking down a building.
Beaching the inshore lifeboat at Cromer, Norfolk
Wednesday 24 April. At about 7.50pm, I was watching the sun setting at Cromer in Norfolk when I saw the inshore lifeboat east of the pier. As I went down to the beach to get a closer look, the boat turned towards the shore.
Fly-tipped
A week ago, a truck fly-tipped a load of waste onto the little road I can see from the back of my house. They did this blatantly and in broad daylight on Saturday morning. Within a couple of minutes, they were gone.
What looked like general household waste was eventually revealed to be a large quantity of building crap - rubble, plaster, and other solid and heavy debris. I posted a photo on our local community forum. Various people thought they saw the truck but didn’t get the licence number. Others pitched in saying they thought the licence plate was either covered, removed or fake. Somebody managed to get a photo of the truck making its getaway.
1960s slide of a barrage balloon
This is a photograph I’ve been wanting to see again for years and years. I only vaguely remembered this particular trip, to the point that I doubted that it had happened. I remembered a giant airship, and people jumping from it. I had no idea at the time what it was I was seeing.
Nile turtle in the Dalyan River (video 1:29)
This Nile Turtle arrived for breakfast every morning at the Longhouse Inn Hotel by the riverside in Dalyan. It was fed on any leftover eggs (scrambled and boiled). Some establishments on the riverside lure the species with chicken skin in order to attract more customers, a practice which is in fact harmful to this secretive turtle which is unable to digest this food alien to its natural diet. I would imagine eggs aren't great for it to be eating every day either.
Tree-felling in Istanbul (video 4:26)
One morning while on holiday in Istanbul, I heard a chainsaw in the street. I tried to ignore it but it was a really intrusive noise and I wondered what was taking such a hammering. I looked out of the window and was peturbed to see a man cutting down the large Acacia tree (I think) in the yard of the house opposite...
Romney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway: train arriving at Dungeness (video 1:01)
The Romney, Hythe & Dymchurch Railway (RH&DR) is a 15in (381 mm) gauge light railway in Kent, England, operating steam and internal combustion locomotives.
2 trains, 1 platform (video 00:12)
Something I’ve never seen before - and that shouldn’t ever happen; two trains on one platform, at Victoria Underground Station, on the southbound Victoria Line platform, September 11, 2018.
Paddington Station then and now
I took a photograph in Paddington Station a few days before coming across one taken from almost the same spot 35 years earlier, in 1982.
Why is there a pair of scissors in this phone box?
Walking back from the post office in Streatham, I glanced into this very urban phone box and spotted a pair of scissors in there.
Colindale Underground Station
Colindale is a London Underground station in Colindale, a suburb of north London. The station is on the north-south Edgware branch of the Northern line, between Burnt Oak and Hendon Central stations.
Explosion in Colindale
It seems it was a tar boiler, which explains all the black smoke. Here is an entry about the incident on the London Fire Brigade website:
Inside a Nimrod R1 spy plane
Last week I went up to the RAF Museum at RAF Cosford in Shrophire and got the chance to go inside the Hawker Siddeley Nimrod R1, a Cold War-era reconnaissance and electronic intelligence gathering spyplane.
Cars collided in front of me (video 00:31)
Unimpressive low-speed impact which I didn't even see until it had happened
Water-mill at Merton Abbey Mills (video 00:44)
There has been working waterwheel on this site for hundreds of years. Originally used to grind corn, the waterwheel later powered machinery used in the dyeing and printing of fabrics, most recently by Liberty’s of London - until 1972.
My Strand Underpass photo on Wikipedia
This is a brief entry merely to note that a photo I took 7 years ago is now being used to illustrate the Wikipedia entry on Strand Underpass.