Earlswood Bike update 2

Well, it's been about 10 days now (since I first noticed)...and today I had a few seconds to take a look and see if anything has actually happened...answer?  Nope...
The red bike is still there (complete with removal notice) -

- and the other two bikes are still just as securely fastened, but have had their threat letters removed (by wind or by hand?  Who knows?)...but it looks like they needn't have been too worried about (imminent) destruction...

First frost of the year...

...not too bad, but I did decide to wear my gloves today...brrr! ;)


...and just for a change instead of walking through the woods I went up past the golf course, so I could better enjoy the crisp Autumn sunrise... ;)

The Thames by night...

...snapped the other evening... ;)

Peeping over the fence at London Bridge Station

Yep, there is still quite a lot of work to do... ;)

Earlswood Bike update

Double checked this morning...not sure when the signs first appeared, I noticed them on the morning of the 22nd, but I suppose they could have been there since Monday, but either way - the little notices say that the bikes would be "removed and disposed of" if the owners didn't wheel them away within 72 hours!  We'll see what's happened tomorrow morning, but if the threat was real, those three labelled bikes should be gone... :0

Still seems a little harsh - there isn't even a little sign telling you this might happen if you leave your bike here - not that I would have left my bike for ages, but I would have assumed it would have been (apart from bike thieves) pretty safe locked up at a station - certainly from the staff!

Original post was here...

The Gap in the middle of Tower Bridge

...and yes, it is quite a big gap, you can see right through the pavement to the river Thames below...don't recall ever stopping to take a look at it before... ;)

It's right between the two black lines below the back of the yellow van (looking from the side)...

Earlswood bike locking policy

Spotted this when I got to the station this morning, little paper signs attached to 3 or 4 of the push bikes on platform 1 warning the owners that they had been reported to station staff as "dumped"...they certainly didn't look like they were dumped, making me wonder if the owners have left them there while they have gone off on holiday or something?  Or perhaps don't like riding them in the rain (which it has been quite a bit lately)?

Anyway, being fair, I decided to check on the cycle policy and there is no mention of a time limit on storage of bikes - although it does say that if you don't own a folding bike they would advise you to keep one bike locked up at each end of your journey (which would explain why some of these bikes never appear to move - if the owners travel earlier/later in the day than most commuters) - interestingly, the station facilities section for Earlswood station notes that there are no bike storage facilities available (although it also says there is no ticket machine, which is there clearly is)...so perhaps their web site is just horribly out of date...

Wonder what is going to happen to these bikes?  Especially if the bit of paper blows away in an Autumn gust... :s

Twilight Shard

...snapped the other evening...

Mmmm...love the tube...

...when there aren't *any* commuters... ;)

Tower Bridge Danger Door

It almost didn't need the sign, did it?

The Emergency Exit...

...from the Shuttle Bus...hope I never need it... ;)

THEY SHALL NOT PASS!

Spotted just up the road from the office...oddly quite far away from Cable Street...but anyway, it's an interesting part of the history of this little bit of London...and it reminds me of The Lord of the Rings... ;)

The Empress, Wapping

In a shock departure from the norm, I decided to have a chicken vindaloo and a keema naan for lunch today...(I usually - and for that you can read - every curry I have eaten out in the last 25 years - have a chicken tikka dansak and garlic naan)...what on earth is going on...? <;O

The Thames at sunrise

Some numbers...

Haven't done this sort of post for a *very* long time...to be honest I haven't even *glanced* at the numbers for a very long time, but there we go...plenty of capacity in mente right now - so out swarm the tentacles (carefully)...

Having peeped through my fingers and forced my pseudopodia around the place here are just a few raw facts and figures (expecting, of course, some bristling between Google Analytics et al - but that is par for the course) about this tiny corner of the internets (feel free to switch off here if this sort of thing doesn't interest you ;)

These numbers are "All Time" (i.e. back to when I started this little personal experiment with Social Media)-

Total number of blog posts (Yeah, not "blogs") - 2,388 (or about 0.73 posts per day - down a bit on previous numbers - as was expected)

Most viewed post - This one - read (so far) 15,150 times...followed fairly closely by this one, read 7,897 times...to put it in context, as of right now, most of my new posts are getting just under 100 page views (the odd blip aside - this one and this one got significantly more than that)...

Total page views -552,496 (by 375k visitors) - daily visitor numbers are actually waaay down on what they used to be, but then I did leave the site pretty much alone (for a couple of years)!  Picking back up (very healthily) again now of course... ;)

Average dwell time - 1 minute 9 seconds (so, taking this average, "the folk of the internet" have spent -very roughly- 38.1 million seconds / 635k minutes / 10.6k hours / 441 x 24 hour days - or approximately 302 full working weeks?) Well - put it this way - quite a bit of time has been spent absorbing what has been written here.  Thank you... ;)

Total pictures posted - 15,327 (way less than 5% of what we, as a family, actually shoot - storage issues at home are a frequent...urm...point of discussion...?)

Total pictures viewed - 1,770,713 (-very- roughly 115 times each)

My most viewed picture?  This one...spotted in NPG HQ in Kings Cross...viewed 26,026 times... ;)

My most "interesting" picture (according to Flickr)?  This one, a very rare, very rusty, very -expensive- project bus snapped at the show and shine at the Volksworld festival...

Tweets - 7371 updates since July 16th 2007 (or about 4 tweets a day - sometimes more, sometimes less)...but yeah, old school...tweeting before it was cool...oh and Stephen Fry still follows me (not *entirely* sure why though)...probably because he is nice... ;)

So there we go, most numbers, over the last three years, have at least doubled since I last checked...Makes me wonder what would have happened if I had been paying attention? ;)

Secret Entrance to the Baby Shard?

Snapped this morning (behind some sheeting) from the tunnel near the entrance to the tube at London Bridge...could this be the first glimpse of the new shopping arcade under "The Place"? ;)

Barriers down at the Baby Shard!

So now you can (pretty much) walk right up to the building...

(the windows could do with a bit of a clean)! ;)

Wonder where these escalators go?  Guess it won't be long until I can take a sneaky trip down there! :)

Sweet Chestnut Hunting!

In Priory Park on Sunday morning, just Thomas and I, starting with a walk up to the top of the hill to visit the monument -

- showing him where Daddy used to go and play (*many* years ago) -

- (close up on the inscription - which reads "This Park was given to the corporation of Reigate by M and M Randal Vogan AD 1920 - To be preserved in it's natural beauty for the use and quiet enjoyment of the public")...it is certainly quiet, especially up there early on a Sunday morning... ;)

We crept through the woods, gloves and tongs in hand -

- (as they are *extremely* spiky) -

- and got absolutely loads...(much to Thomas' delight)...I had the nasty job of extracting them all from the spiky casings (although Thomas did help for a little while)...they are all sat in a big bowl at home now, waiting for someone to pop a little cross in them with a knife and cook them for about 30 minutes at 200 degrees...there just wasn't time yesterday!  Oh well...  ;)

The Tate Modern, Opening 2000

...and here is a nice example of a bit of stencilling that didn't need to be quite so resilient (still bright and clear over 13 years later on the pavements of Southwark)...The Tate Modern, in case you didn't notice, is opening in the year 2000... ;)

Mini Shard & Maxi Shard

(My new office - well, as of next year, once they fit it all out beautifully)...

Both structures looking *rather* fetching today... ;)  Or perhaps you prefer a portrait shot of the Shard? Does sort of deserve it, I suppose...Gives more of an impression of scale (but *loads* less context)...tough call... ;)

Daniel Solander's Tomb

Wow, spotted this not far from the office, in the middle of what appears to be a building site (currently) at one end of a patch of green right by a road called "Swedenborg Gardens" (a good clue)... ;)

Turns out this was once the site of the first ever Swedish church in London (built in 1728), it was long ago demolished (worshippers moved to updated premises elsewhere), but from the looks of things they left at least one of their number behind...

Daniel Solander (as you can see from the hand-painted sign) was a Swede, in fact the first Swede ever to circle the globe, doing so with Captain Cook on the Endeavour - he was one of the botanists to inspire the later named "Botany Bay" upon their discovery of Australia)...as well as working to create this important catalogue of Australian and South American plants (during and after the voyage), he also travelled to Iceland, the Hebrides and the Orkneys, topping his career by being appointed Keeper of the Natural History Department at the British Museum...he also invented the Solander box, which is still used in libraries and archives today...for such a fellow doesn't this memorial seem a little bit...temporary?

"Before I die" by Candy Chang

Spotted in Southwark the other day...it's basically a huge blackboard and hundreds of bits of chalk, part of the "Merge Festival"...Spotted another one on Borough High Street, in a very similar condition... ;)

Good fun... ;)