ITV Chooses the Wrong Film
Today on ITV3 at 12:55, you could have watched that glorious film, Carry on Cruising.
Isn’t it rather a bad choice considering the news at the moment? But then ITV doesn’t have a Taste and Tact Department.
Losing the Art of Packaging
I went to John Lewis at Eastfield and bought a humidifier to see if it could make me feel better in this house with underfloor central heating.
It was a bit difficult to get home and they put it in two plastic bags one inside the other.
Although it was still rather unwieldy, I managed to get it home by changing trains at Canonbury and then using a 30 bus.
There was a time, when shops would make you a nice handle from sticky tape. In the end I made one from another bag, that came with another purchase.
Names on Clothing
I was standing in the queue in Waitrose, when a guy came up to stand behind me. He had this jumper on advertising a company called Franklin and Marshall in large letters. As one does, I was curious as to what the firm did, as I’ve seen quite a few jumpers like this. He then said it was just the name of the brand. When I asked how much they paid him, he just laughed.
I may well have a North Face quilted jacket, but the branding is more discrete.
IKEA By Car
I needed to go to IKEA and an old school friend said he’d take me, as he wanted to have a look round where we lived in Southgate and towards Tottenham and Clapton.
We looked at the house where I used to live and the sink outlet from the downstairs toilet was still covered in concrete. Why had my father done that? Partly to stop it freezing, but mainly to stop thieves nicking the lead pipe.
In this age of metal theft, some things never change! Even after fifty years!
North Shall Be East
When I used to use the northern part of the Piccadilly line, you always talked about going north and south. So from Turnpike Lane, or Turnpicky Larny in the local speak, to get to Cockfosters, you took a northbound train. But not any more, as this picture taken at the station shows.
North Shall be East
London Underground, now uses a convention, that the line has the same cardinal directions at every station.
Is God He or She?
I don’t believe in any supreme being, but I find it strange that Christianity, Islam and a lot of other religions assume that God is male. Others do have famale deities, so it’s not universal.
It would be a real problem for some religions and especially sects in some, if God did appear and she was female. It would certainly cause a lot of embarrassment. But I suppose they wouldn’t believe her, as their God is male.
At least not believing in anything means, I won’t have that problem.
The Artist at the Barbican
I went to the Barbican Centre last night to see The Artist.
It was well worth seeing and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
It is very much a feel-good film.
Perhaps, I’m being sentimental, but I also felt it was about how you get over loss. The main character had lost his career because of talking films and was very much on the point of suicide after a downward spiral. He was in the end saved by his dog and another actor, Peppi.
I hope it wins the Oscar for best film, but will this happen as the film is French?
All I want now, is my Peppi to come along.
Jon Snow Is Everywhere
It’s a good cause and I agree with the charity’s aims.
Trees for Cities Advert with Jon Snow
Adverts for Trees for Cities are everywhere on the Underground and they feature Jon Snow.
I was at Liverpool University, just before Jon Snow organised the protest against Lord Salisbury, who at the time was Chancellor of the university. There must have been an earlier protest, as I remember something about 1968. In Engineering, who didn’t take too much of a political stance. the reasons were a bit above our head. Although, we did think that Lord Salisbury was not the sort of old right-wing political buffer, who should hold that position. Wikipedia says this about the protest in 1970.
Apart from his political career Salisbury was Chancellor of the University of Liverpool from 1951 until 1971. In 1970, students at the university staged an occupation at Senate House to demand his removal, over his support for apartheid and similarly reactionary views.
I think it is true to say, that today, anybody with those views wouldn’t hold such a position.
In the end Jon Snow was rusticated for organising the protest, but the University did later award him an honorary Doctor of Letters in 2011.
C’s tutor at the University was Robert Kilroy Silk. He was also one of the organisers of the protest against Lord Salisbury, but I have read that at the last minute he didn’t turn up. It couldn’t have been because he was giving a tutorial to C, as she had graduated from the university in the previous year and we were living in London. Obviously, no punishment was handed down to Kilroy Silk.
C always found him odious and I can remember her stinking with tobacco smoke after she had been to one of his tutorials, where he chain-smoked Capstan Full Strength all the way through.
He obviously left the right impression on her, as once we were standing next to him at Newmarket racecourse and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t get her to approach him and speak of her times at Liverpool under his tutelage.
So now I think justice has been done. Kilroy was here, briefly and Jon Snow is everywhere. Sadly C is no more, but I still have her memories of her tutor in my mind.
McQueen on the Green
I took this picture as I passed the Screen on Islington Green.
McQueen on the Green
It’s nice to see humour and creativity in something as mundane as a cinema advert. I can’t imagine a major chain doing something like this.
You Can Advertise But Not Sell
James Smith & Sons is probably the last real umbrella and walking stick shop left in London if not the world.
I passed the shop on a bus yesterday and took this picture.
James Smith & Sons
Note that at the top right the wonderful shop front says they sell dagger canes and swordsticks.
They may do for those who have a special need, but I suppose if I walked in to buy one, I would be refused.
The Anonymous Widower 