Going to Somerset House

QOTD Tower Hill tube station, 19 May:

qotd

Today you are you
That is truer than true
There is no one alive
Who is youer than you!

Dr Seuss

I didn’t realize Trollope was responsible for pillar boxes:

trollope

Incidentally, this one, on the Strand, is an Edward VII one:

edviipostbox

Some interesting English at Photo London:

krims

Stairs:

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stairs1

Happy New Year

This made a very small splash in the centre of Upminster. No Chinese appear to have been present. Jiu Jitsu may have been involved.

dr3w

The event was combined with Christmas costumes:

dr42

It was definitely easier to get shots than in Gerrard Street last year.

Hydrophobic in Hackney

It’s ‘peeback’ time in Shoreditch and Dalston reports the use of paint that urinates back at you. Who first had the idea that Ultra-Ever Dry paint would work like this? Apparently Hamburg beat San Francisco to it.

San Francisco is not the first city to implement urine-repelling paint. The city of Hamburg, Germany has also used the paint and saw a decrease in people who use the streets as a bathroom.

“Based on Hamburg, we know this pilot program is going to work,” Nuru said. “It will reduce the number of people using the walls. I really think it will deter them.”

Boar’s Head Ceremony

Worshipfuls saying cheese.

boar1w

By chance I was near Regent’s Park just before this year’s Boar’s Head ceremony started at 15.40 from Oat Lane. The Worshipful Company of Butchers process through the smaller City streets to Mansion House. This is not the real boar’s head, though – apparently they do send one but are not allowed to parade with it, so papier mâché has to do.

boar2w

Here they are turning into Gresham Street:

boar3w

Joan Littlewood

Statue outside the Theatre Royal in Stratford is apparently new. Yesterday she would have been 101.

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jl2w

Roger Lewis writes:

If Stalin had been a theatre director he’d have resembled Joan Littlewood. …Joan dismissed every one of the Redgraves (‘How do these untalented people make it?’) and when she saw Flora Robson, Cedric Hardwicke and Ralph Richardson, she was ‘appalled’. Shakespeare didn’t quite make the grade, because ‘too politically middle-of-the-road’, and neither did the second world war impress her, as it was ‘large, boring’.

(Newham Recorder)