Merry Christmas From Your Local Pub

Which, you will note, is open noon to 3 p.m.

-- Post From My iPhone

Tuesday Catblogging

Greg and me. (Apologies for the quality: It's a photo of a photo.)

Well, there's some bad news on the catblogging front. Greg has departed. Not this plane of existence, but he's gone to live with our pastoral assistant, who was his chief caretaker. A lot of turnover in the parish--several longtime priests have moved on to another parish the order runs Kent--meant that Greg was feeling a little out of sorts. His new home is a little more rural, perfect for a maturing cat like Greg. I was chatting with the pastoral assistant about his new life. She said he'd mastered the catdoor to go outside, but was having a little trouble figuring out how to get back in through the same door. To teach him how to do it, she said she'd gone out another door, then "posted" him--as a postman might--through his catdoor.

London, 8:26 a.m.

Somewhere over there is the sun.
-- Post From My iPhone

London, 8:12 a.m.

Looks like we'll see some sun today.

-- Post From My iPhone

The PSA Tales

I might have mentioned in the past that public service advertisements are a bit different here, with a tendency to scare instead of persuade. Here are a couple more examples:



Dear Hollywood,

My film-going habits have changed in recent years not because I'm downloading pirated movies, but because I've grown weary of your constant recycling of superhero movies and remakes. I could tolerate this advert if it were simply on my television--that's what mute buttons are for. However, that I'm forced to sit through this advert in a cinema after I've paid £8 to get in is well beyond insulting. Knock it off.



Dear Department for Work and Pensions,

I doubt even 1 percent of this advert's viewers are benefit thieves. I would applaud your vigilance if I didn't know that this ad was instead aimed at me, the taxpayer, to try to persuade me that you're doing a good job at cracking down on benefit fraud. However, what this ad reveals to me is that the scale of the benefit fraud and the efforts to eliminate it are about equal. Not a good use of resources.

(This one is rather unpleasant.)


Dear Think! ad campaign,

This ad is just disgusting. You know what having this ad thrust in front of me during a quiet night's TV watching is like? Imagine me coming into your house at dinner time, and spitting on your plate. Yeah, it's like that. Please take it off.



Dear Countryside Access,
This one is still enjoyable after all this time. I could watch this one again and again. Thank you, Countryside Access, for coming up with a PSA that is charming and persuasive.

Tuesday Catblogging

If you look at Greg's tail closely, you may find it forms a golden spiral.

London, 8 a.m.

The sun is about to rise, or so they tell me.

-- Post From My iPhone

Another Neighbor

John Bunyan is another resident of Bunhill Field, maybe 50 yards away from William Blake and Daniel Defoe.

-- Post From My iPhone


EDITIED: I know how to spell Daniel Defoe, but I can't always see what I'm writing on BlogPress.

Darkness On The Edge Of Town

The city, or maybe the merchants, light your way home, at least for December.

-- Post From My iPhone

8 a.m. Dec. 9

I don't see the sun yet.


-- Post From My iPhone

Who Made Steve Guttenberg A Star? We Did! We Did!

Pantomime: One quarter comedy, one quarter vaudeville slapstick, one quarter rock opera, one quarter Christmas celebration, one quarter kid screamfest, and, uh, that's five quarters, but you get the idea. Throw in an out-of-work movie star, some minor TV celebrities, some West End actors, a children's dance troupe, some topical jokes for the parents, some silly jokes for the kids, and some audience participation. Sounds like a right mess, but it's fun. And they're still playing through January.

And in other panto news: Mickey Rooney's in one somewhere on this fair isle. I thought he was dead.


-- Post From My iPhone

Swiss catblogging

Nala, who lives with our friends in Switzerland, gets snuggly with her stuffed chicken while it snows outside.

December Sunsetblogging

The sun sets way too early.


That's better ...


... because it's better to light a single snowman than curse the darkness.

We're in that part of the year again, when the sun doesn't rise until after 8 and sets before 4. It's nice to see the merchants lighting up our streets during the dark months.