Old Signs

It’s interesting when walking around to take a look and see if you can work out how long something has been in place. Some things are easy, a church or other public building may have a dedication stone; you can estimate how old a tree is from its size. How do you work out how long a shop front has been in place, without resorting to google street-view (if it even goes back far enough)?

The other day, I spotted this strip of tape around the bottom of the door in a local shop. I know the shop hasn’t changed significantly in at least 25 years, but I was surprised to see the 01-London telephone number on the tape – given that it went out of service in 1990, this shopfront is at least 35 years old.

Old shop fittings
Barking Shop Fitters tape with a barking dog logo and two 01 telephone numbers.

2025 / 365

I’m a long-term user of the Flickr photo sharing / social media site. I joined some time in 2005, so it’s 20 years this year. I’ve 29,198 images on there, of which 2,813 are public. These numbers are accurate right now, but will be inaccurate very quickly.

I’m going to take a photo per day this year and upload it to a specific album, so I can document the year though photographs.

If the embedding works, the album should be below.

Frosty Latch. 4/365

2024 – N/S/E/W Up and Down

I did quite a bit of travel this year, getting closer to both poles of the planet than ever before. How did this year fare?

North
In Transport South Greenland
On Foot Reykjavik Iceland (64.14414470677431, -21.926072275395274)

South
In Transport Paradise Bay, Antarctica
On Foot Ushuaia, Tierra del Fuego Province, Argentina -54.826000, -68.344000

East
In Transport Saxmundham 52.2139015355 1.4935505485
On Foot Snape Maltings 52.2139969672, 1.4933598289

West
In Transport Minneapolis 44.920 -93.262 (bus)
On Foot Minneapolis 44.920 -93.262 (bus stop)

Up
In Transport 11.5824 km (Aircraft)
On Foot 160 m BT Tower Restaurant

Down
In Transport -26m ASL (Waterloo Jubilee line platforms)
On Foot -26m ASL (Waterloo Jubilee line platforms)

If all goes to plan in 2025, I should get a great deal further East and Up.

Snow.

Large clumps of wet snow following on directly behind a downpour of rain. Settling briefly on darker coloured cars.

This might be the earliest snow in London in a long time. I don’t recall any earlier in the last 40-someting years.