So, that’s it for another year, and the end of the road for this particular blog. There will be another, at a different WordPress address, coincident with the start of the Chinese New Year on 31 January 2014…
All that remains for me now though is to say thank you to a few loyal visitors to this site over the past twelve months, specifically to gpcox, Frivolous Monsters, and to my sister Chris…a very Happy New Year to you all :).
Excuse me, Dear Reader, there’s something I need to get off my chest, some detritus left there by gale force winds and torrential rain…
Ah, that feels better; that was some audio therapy from a Welsh band called Budgie, from their 1972 album, ‘Squawk’, the track being ‘Stranded’, and an epitome for the frustration of being marooned on Portsea Island over Christmas, when I should have been celebrating the festival with family in faraway Kent…
But never mind, let’s take some positives from it all; it at least provided me with an opportunity to watch a few films I otherwise wouldn’t have watched, including ‘The Bishop’s Wife’, ‘The Red Shoes’ and ‘Love Actually’, while today I wandered down to Canoe Lake in Southsea, and enjoyed a ramble along the seafront under beautiful blue skies, to Southsea Castle and the nearby D-Day Museum…
Southsea seafront near Canoe Lake…
Canoe Lake has plentiful swans, and here’s one of them…
And in homage to ‘The Red Shoes’, with Moira Shearer in all her Technicolor beauty, here are a couple of swans enacting pas de deux in ‘Le Lac des cygnes’… 😉
And here is one final photo of a swan on this photoblog, which now has less than a week to run…
Wandering westwards along the seafront, the wonderful South Parade Pier soon comes into view…
Promenading (and jogging) along the seafront is a popular activity among both locals and visitors…
There’s very obviously some lens flare here to the right of the pier, but I thought I’d post it nonetheless…
Wasn’t doing any business today, but it’s a lot more popular in the summer months
Nearing Southsea Castle, with its lighthouse, and visible in the distance are both the Naval War Memorial and at the extreme right, the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth Harbour…
The Castle Lighthouse, done in sepia…
In front of the D-Day Museum, near Southsea Castle, are a couple of restored Second World War tanks…
A British Churchill Crocodile tank …
A Canadian Sherman Grizzly tank…
From the D-Day Museum, I wandered up to Palmerston Road, for a pint in The Lord Palmerston (Wetherspoon’s) pub, before heading on to Debenhams, to have a look at the Boxing Day Sale items. I didn’t buy anything, but this rather appealed…
‘Nancy’ one of the ‘Pretty Ladies’ figurines in the Royal Doulton series…
As did this Christmas gift from my boss at work, which I drank this evening…Cheers!…and just two more posts to go :)…
A Lakeland Pale Ale, ‘Cocker Hoop’ from Jennings Brewery
Had a bit of Christmas shopping to finish off, so wended my way down to the West End, from Woodside Park to Leicester Square, and wandered on from there around the locality…
Awaiting a Kennington via Charing Cross train at Woodside Park Tube station
Eros in a bubble in the rain at Piccadilly Circus
The 2002 statue of Beau Brummell by Irena Sedlecka in Jermyn Street
The Apollo Theatre in Shaftesbury Avenue…no place to be on Thursday evening this week 😦
An illuminated South Bank, from Hungerford Bridge, at around a quarter to ten in the evening…
And this is a bit of an afterthought, a photo taken on Friday evening…I just like the seat design :)…
Tube carriage seat on the Northern Line…
And finally, Merry Christmas, and a Happy and Prosperous 2014 to anyone who happens to read this…
Worked a ten-hour day on Thursday, so treated myself to a half day on Friday…and spent a couple of hours in Fareham town centre…
A pint of Carling, at Table 63, in The Vanguard Pub, in Fareham West Street…
The sculpture at the right is called ‘Still Moves’ and carries the inscription ‘Nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed’…which I’d have to meditate on for a very long time before it made any sense ;)…
A bit further along the pedestrianised part of West Street, in the direction of the railway station…
Had my barnet cut, by long-time barber Giovanni at Baker Street on Saturday afternoon, then headed down to the West End by way of King’s Cross…
The wonderful interior of King’s Cross station, rendered in mono…
I’ve posted a couple of other photos of Platform 9¾ at King’s Cross on this blog, but never before have I caught a Harry Potter fan so…err…mid-air 🙂
An enthusiastic Harry Potter fan :)…
That wonderful interior in colour…
The Victorian frontage of King’s Cross, in the Euston Road…
Black cabs, outside St Pancras International…
The Hippodrome, on the corner of Cranbourn Street and the Charing Cross Road
Cranbourn Street, leading to the north side of Leicester Square…
A festive Leicester Square, viewed from its south-western corner…
And a bit further north in Chinatown, a TCM/Massage clinic in Newport Court, off the Charing Cross Road
A temporary ‘Gift Factory’ outside the Royal Festival Hall on London’s South Bank, with the London Eye visible in the distance…
Travelling down the escalator to the Northern Line platform at Waterloo Tube station…
Awaiting a High Barnet train home….and I’m wondering who composed the poem…presumably not Boris ;)…
A Weekend Diary 