Today I decided that I would like to do one of those “A Year In …” postings, at the end of this year, featuring newspaper front pages, one for each month.  Everything hinged on whether I’d happened already to have taken any pictures of front pages during January.

And, I had.  These front pages:

And I expanded the picture, and scrolled across.  Tax demands.  Some NHS politics ruckus.  Snow warning.  Something to do with racing, which anyway is not properly visible.  Yawn yawn yawn yawn.  And then there’s that “Big D”.  I still don’t know what “Big D” stands for.  It’s incomprehensible.  But look at this subheading:

That’ll do.  The rest will have to be rather better, helping readers to remember big stories of the year, but this little story will do for starters.  The project survives.

A rather more serious newspaper page which I also photoed in January, not a front page but it got my attention, was this, from the Evening Standard of January 21st:

Latest news about that:

Badawi is serving 10 years in prison, and has also been sentenced to 1,000 lashes for blog posts criticizing Saudi Arabia’s clerics.

The first 50 lashes were delivered on Jan. 9 and Amnesty said he’s had none since then.

…

His detention and sentence have stirred up worldwide condemnation.

Amnesty being one of the chief stirrers.  Good for Amnesty.

“Insulting Islam” is what Badawi has been convicted of.  Carry on handing out punishments like that for “crimes” like that, and the “insults” hurled at the evil monstrosity that is Islam can only grow in volume.

Islam.  The bad stuff in it is bad.  And the supposedly good stuff in it only helps the bad stuff to go on doing bad, which means that the “good” stuff is bad also.

Recently, circumstances took me up from the South Bank walkway onto Waterloo Bridge.  As I recall it, the idea was to walk across the bridge to one of the District Line tube stations on the north bank.  But before I did that, I took pictures from the south end of the bridge, from which a lot can be seen.  This isn’t the half of it, but it is some of it: 

Time was when I’d have taken only pictures like that last one, of Big Ben through The Wheel.  Note that all the other pictures contain things that will soon pass.  Cranes.  And two adverts for entertainment, one for this and one inside the Thing the advert is on the outside of.  Also, in among taking these shots, I also took this one, which was very temporary indeed.

That Big Ben shot is through a gap between, I think, the Royal Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery.  Between two of those South Bank concrete lumps, anyway.  I do like gaps.  And then I moved a few yards south, and through the same gap between the lumps, or maybe through another gap, I saw this:

Here are two pictures I took a few days later, to explain what the above roof clutter is, both taken outside Westminster Abbey:

As you can see, the spikey bobble is on the top of Methodist Central Hall.  And the roof clutter is one of London’s great roof clutter clusters, on top of top of New Scotland Yard.  As so often with roof clutter, such a bland facade.  With such a crazy hairdo.

The man scratching his back is, I think, St George, commemorating the Crimean War.  But that could be quite wrong.

As I get to know London better, I learn to connect distant views to close-up views, not just of obvious stuff, but of everything.

Adverts can be very revealing:

I spotted this advert at a bus stop in Quimper, Brittany, on January 2nd.

The point is, this is not Paris.  Quimper is a provincial French city rather than a big French city.  So this really got my attention.

More fun being had with the Union Jack there.

Indeed.  Behind the photographer is a coach:

Passing buses and lorries make fine backdrops for photos I find.  I especially like this because the picture on the coach (in aid of this enterprise, I presume) is so bizarre.  This is exactly how the picture emerged from the camera.  No cropping, no rotating, nothing.  It was taken last September, outside Westminster Abbey, looking away from the main entrance and towards Parliament Square.  None of which is even at bit clear, because of the coach.  Unless you are a railings spotter.

I spent the day building CD shelves, hence the need for a quota photo.

When in France, I have no particular desire to do as the French do.  I have my own agendas.  So, for instance, French people do not make a point of photoing French posters advertising British or American films in the Paris Metro.  But, I like to do this:

I am using an alien computer.  Contriving the above photo-display took some doing.  Were I using my own computer I might have cropped that photo.  As it is, it is as it was when it came out of my camera.

Mostly, I just like the thought that we are making movies that they consider good enough to show in Paris.  But I think I am also interested in what sort of picture of my country they are seeing.  I’m guessing it is one that they want to see.  In this case, for example, they are see us Anglos being, although quite good looking, also boring, disgusting, uncultured and gross, and generally behaving like people upon whom wealth is wasted.  Not wanting to see Anglos in this light myself, I have not seen this movie, so I may be entirely wrong about what it is like.

But if it is not like that, they shouldn’t have called it that.  As a general rule, it is surely good business to take your movie look in the posters (and sound in its title) the way it actually is, because that way the people who will be attracted to it by the poster will then enjoy it, and the word of mouth will be good.  Many a movie is not what they first advertised it as, and hence was denounced by its early audiences, but was good in some other way, and ended up appealing to quite other people.  Had they advertised it more accurately to start with, they’d have done better business.

Today I went walkabout in the City of London with my friend Gus, father of Goddaughter 1.  This evening I found, for the first time, this short video interview at the Arup (his long time employer) website, done with Gus in 2010.

Here are four vertical favourite-photos I took:

On the left, Gus shows me a magazine picture of the Cheesegrater, taken on a much nicer day than the day, cold and windy, that we were having to put up with today.  Next in line is one of those Big Things seen through a gap in the foreground shots, but with a difference.  This time, there are two Big Things involved.  There is a sliver of Walkie-Talkie on the right, and then way beyond it, you can see the Shard.  Then, we see Gus joke-propping-up the miniature Lego Gherkin that is to be seen next to the regular Gherkin.  On the right, Gus looks up at something or other, this being the best snap I did of him.

Now for all my favourite horizontals.

I’m too tired after all that walking about in the cold to say much about these pictures, but see in particular 2.1, which is, I’m pretty sure, some of the bolts, a few of which recently disintegrated.  Now they are having to check all such bolts, and there are a lot.

1.1: Mmmm, cranes.  Grim day, well done my recently acquired camera, good in low light conditions.

1.2: Canon Street tube.  Designed like a bridge, said Gus, ace bridge designer, because under it there are tube lines which it is built on top of, like a bridge.  This is the building I asked about in an earlier posting here.

1.3: I included this because of the sign saying “all inquiries”.  All?  You know what they mean, but there is fun to be had on the phone with this sign.

2.2: A Gherkin detail, is there because I said, when I saw it, that looks rather plastic.  And guess what, it is plastic.

2.4: Shows us the Lego Gherkin in front of the Actual Gherkin

3.2: A more fun picture of Gus, featuring also: me, in the right hand purple circle.

3.3, 3.4, 4.1: All the Walkie-Talkie.

4.4: For scaring pigeons, something you seldom see from above.  I saw this particular cluster of pigeon scarers while descending a staircase at Liverpool Street station.  That last was the very last photo I took.

When I emerged from Pimlico tube, near my home, I was amazed at how dark it had become, at a quarter to four in the afternoon.  Like I say, my new camera really did the business today.

Sorry for all the cock-ups and mispronts in this posting.  I’m knackered and am now going to bed.

Yes, I think so.  Shot by me last Easter time:

If Hitchcock had ever made a movie called “The Rabbits”, this is the kind of shot that would have been in it.

So, a while back, I copied that shot over into the I Just Like It directory, all the time lamenting that I had no idea what the rabbit was doing in that particular part of London.  I still don’t really know, but today I found a picture that I had taken one minute earlier, from which the rectangle below was cropped, in a way that removed people, kept the rabbit, and also kept the writting underneath the rabbit:

“London Eye presents Bunnies on the Run” proved more than enough to get an answer from Google, but really, I am none the wiser.  Were there other bunnies dotted around London that I could have photoed?  Who knows?

But, I do like my bunny photo.

The lion statues in Tragalgar Square are famous, and they deserve to be.  But there is another lion statue in London that I am also fond of, namely the one on the far side of Westminster Bridge from the Houses of Parliament.  I like, when I walk along beside the river next to St Thomas’ Hospital, to photo it lined up with the Wheel.

Here is how it looked, on the day I also took these photos, and these, and these:

I really liked this when I saw it.  You wouldn’t want a guide lion, but, that’s the joke.

And this other guy liked it too:

I couldn’t wait for Friday to come round so I could show these snaps to you people.  Inconveniently, I took them on a Saturday.

The BBC have been doing cats, in a three part documentary, and the papers are all over it.

It turns out that with us, cats are cats.  Then they go outdoors and become lions.  They get on better with us than they do with each other.  They have evolved to manipulate us into feeding and sheltering them.

With the arrival of the internet, the evolution of cats has entered a new and more intense phase.

LATER: Although guide lions probably wouldn’t work, here’s a 2012 story about a guide cat, who guides a dog.

SUNDAY: I was back there yesterday, and that bit of yellow writing wasn’t there when I first photoed this guide dog lion:

And they have also sorted out that strap around the lion’s front.

More about what is going on here, here.

One of these (which was one of these):

The economics of car ownership is interesting.  On the face of it, I might be the sort of person who would get a really small car (even if not this exact one).  But the way I (and many others?) see it is: If I go to the bother of getting a car, and finding somewhere to park it, and a way of insuring it, and of protecting it from burglars and vandals, I might as well spend a bit more and get a proper car.  You either buy a car, of the sort that can do all the things proper cars do, like transport another four people, transport bits of furniture, drive to Scotland or Paris or some such place, impress rather than amuse friends and enemies, and so forth.  Or, you don’t.

You don’t buy a bit of car.

The only exception is if your entire country has only just started buying cars, in which case even a bit of car is worth having.  Especially if, for the time being, that’s all you can get

Overheard in a TV advert for sweeties:

You can’t trust atoms.  They make up everything.

Talking of which, I am now reading Lee Smolin’s book about String Theory.  Basic message: It’s a cult.  I haven’t yet read him using that actual word, but that’s what he is saying.

I am, of course, not qualified to judge if Smolin is right, but you don’t have to be qualified to express a judgement, and I judge that Smolin is right.  And the way I like to learn about new stuff is by reading arguments about it, starting with the argument that says I am right about it.  Smolin is basically telling me that my ignorant prejudice that String Theory is one of the current world’s epicentres of the Higher Bollocks is right, although he is careful not to express himself as crudely as I just did, for fear of upsetting his physicist friends, and because, unlike me, he sees some merit in String Theory.

I have known that String Theory was in trouble for some time, because Big Bang Theory’s resident String Theorist, Dr Sheldon Cooper, has been having doubts about it.  He wanted to switch to something else, but they said: We hired you as a String Theorist and a String Theorist you will remain.

The above link is to a blog I had not heard of before, entitled Not Even Wrong.  Not Even Wrong is the title of another book I have recently obtained with has a go at String Theory.  I have not yet started reading this.

It’s true.  You can’t trust atoms.  And grabbing both ends of one and stretching it out into a string doesn’t change that.  It makes it worse.

Yes, that about says it:

Taken by me, yesterday afternoon.

I went on a photo-expedition to Erith, last Tuesday.  Well, strictly speaking, from Erith.  What I did was go to Erith by train, and then walk back along the south side of the river, to Woolwich.

I took about a thousand photos, truly about a thousand, of which the one below was one of the first.  My journey to Erith by train started at London Bridge Station, and this photo was taken at that station, while I awaited my train to Erith.

This guy has the full story of this strange circumstance.

First off, he notes, it’s not a V2.  It’s a sixties vintage Atlas booster.  So, what gives?  Someone, he pointed out, is looking after this object, so it must be there for a reason.  But, what reason?

A commenter explains:

It’s advertising the Britain at War experience below London Bridge Station.

And all is explained.  That link no longer works, on account of the Britain at War Experience having now been closed down, on account of the redevelopment around London Bridge Station.  But advertising the Britain at War Experience is how it got to be there.

Maybe the Not-V2 will soon start to look at bit tatty.  It may even vanish altogether.  All the more reason to photo it now.

I see cat faces on bags:

On the left, in Trafalgar Square.  On the right in a shop window, somewhere or other.

I see Hello Kitty continuing its conquest of the world:

On the left: Patriotic Kitty, both an English Nationalist and a British Unionist.  (Hello Kitty is patriotic everywhere.) On the right: Hello Kitty colonises one of my local supermarkets.  Today shower gel, tomorrow, who knows?  One day, there will be Hello Kitty versions of everything.

And now I see this vast cat face on the outside of a building site at the top end of Victoria Street:

Note the surveillance camera right in front of it.  Those things are also now everywhere.

This huge cat face was what got me noticing that Victoria Masterplan.

Apparently the cat face is an art installation.  Scroll down here if you doubt me:

A bold new art installation has landed here at Nova, Victoria. The enigmatic gaze of a 37ft tall black cat will become the new landmark to greet people as they arrive in SW1. Taking up residence on site, the portrait is the first European commission by American artist, Marlo Pascual. The chic black cat occupies the Victoria Street facade of our four storey site cabins, converting a disheartening grey slab into the most stimulating of canvases.

The untitled installation kicks off a series of iconic and non-conformist art projects that will unfold at Nova, Victoria on its journey to becoming the most forward-thinking and aspirational place to work, live, eat, drink, shop and enjoy in London’s West End.

So, people, nice big photos of cat faces are now iconic and non-conformist.  Modern Art eat your heart out.

(See also the bit where a discussion about “THE FUTURE OF LONDON DINNING” is advertised.)

All of which pales into insignificance beside what has undoubtedly been the week’s biggest cat news, which concerned an amazing YouTube video of a cat attacking a dog.  This story is now everywhere.  The dog was doing serious damage to the youngest son of the family, and was about to do even more serious damage than that.  But the dog reckoned without Tara the Cat, who launched what looked like a suicide bomber attack on the dog, which not surprisingly caused the dog to retreat.  Tara behaved exactly as if the small boy was one of her kittens.

Cats are complained about for being like perfectly evolved parasites on humans. We feed them, stroke them, put a warm roof over their heads, buy anything with cat faces on it, and in return they do pretty much nothing.

Tara, on the other hand, has surely repaid any debts she ever owed.

Today, when out and about, I encountered a big building site with a website on it, and when I got home I investigated.  And I found my way to this computer-modified photo of Victoria Street, other side of from me:

Click on that and you get the bigger picture, which I am keeping here, for when it inevitably disappears from its original home.

Masterplan my nether regions.  More like a random assemblage of mostly rather ugly great lumps, with no discernible aesthetic affinity other than lots of plate glass being involved, with lots of strange little peculiarly shaped spaces in between.  The London Look, in other words.  Perfect.

For the benefit of all those pathetic wretches reading this who are not native to London, the London Look of my title is a reference to this advertising campaign.

Are you a struggling designer?  Want lots of publicity?  Can’t afford to buy it?  What do you do?

You design a table for cats to play in.  Job done.

Last night “CATable” got 150,000 hits.  At 10am this morning, the score had reached: 213,000.

Will cats ignore the thing?  Probably:

Ruan Hao’s CATable could only be the invention of a severely Stockholm Syndrome-impaired cat owner. Designed as a desperate ploy to convince your cat that there’s somewhere more interesting to be than on top of your laptop right now, there is only one possible reaction I can imagine from the world’s feline population: utter disdain.

Cats may ignore Ruan Hao’s CATable, but the www is not ignoring it.

Maybe Ruan Hao thought of this?  Mmmmm?  Maybe not desperate?  Maybe smart?