- The lake is almost completely frozen over. If you stand on the bridge and peer down into the water, you glimpse some interesting objects suspended in partial cryogenesis: twigs, leaves and feathers are to be expected; Starbucks’ cups and biros less so.
- The birds are, for the most part, unconcerned by the frozen lake. They perch on the ice looking mildly bemused, occasionally pecking at something on the surface in the hope that it’s edible. One seagull stood in the same place for so long that I worried her feet had been frozen to the spot, but it turned out she was just stopping for a think, and soon moved on.
- St James’s Park is as pretty in winter as it is in summer, and less busy (though not by much)
- Somebody somewhere is making a fortune selling black woolly hats with “LONDON” emblazoned across them. Every other person I passed was wearing one, having presumably miscalculated the amount of clothing necessary to sustain life in this weather.
Category Archives: Small pleasures
Observations made in the course of a walk in St. James’s Park
A joke
Q. Why is Christmas the best time to buy philosophy books?
A. Because the Schopenhauers are longer.
(I apologise. That wasn’t in a cracker, but it could have been. One of the more upmarket sorts of cracker, perhaps.)
Seasonal songs
I’ve realised, too late, that I should have created my own online advent calendar by embedding a video for a different Christmas song each day. Well, it’s too late to do it from the 1st, but it’s not too late to start now. So from now until Christmas, except on the 19th-22nd inclusive when I will be out of the country and may not have internet access, I will link to a new Christmas song each day from among my personal favourites. We will begin with an item which is neither an embedded video nor even a video at all, really, but it’s one of the happiest Christmas songs there is: Andy Williams singing Sleigh Ride. Make sure you listen all the way through; it gets better as it goes along. Just like advent.
Another advent calendar
Radio 4′s Today programme also has an online advent calendar, with each day’s offering an “audio treat” from the past eleven months of early morning broadcasting. Although as I write it’s after 7pm and today’s entry isn’t available yet. But I mainly want to draw it to your attention because it will almost certainly feature the moment several months ago when Charlotte Green suffered a fit of the giggles whilst announcing the news of a death, and if you haven’t heard it already you really ought to.
You’ll be delighted to hear that I eventually found a real-life advent calendar which didn’t feature chocolates, although it is a bit godly. But I suppose that’s forgiveable. It’s from Oxfam – are they to do with god? I can never remember.
Oh noes
I am still glued to Failblog. This is the best way to while away a sleepy Friday afternoon ever!
fail
Whilst I’m reluctant to go against the relentlessly cheery spirit of gladallover by celebrating failure, I don’t think I can remember the last time I accidentally found something on the internet that made me laugh and laugh, and then laugh some more. There’s no connecting theme to the pictures and clips posted on Failblog, except that one way or another, each of them represents a failure – of human intellect, animal cunning, mechanical expertise or some terrifying combination of the three. The effect is cumulative, so you’ll enjoy it more if you just go and spend a happy hour browsing, as I’ve done. But I expect you’ve got places to be, so here are a couple of tasters:
Be warned, though: there are some fairly horrifying images tucked away here and there. I would avoid it if you’re eating.
Gerberas
I have some gerberas in a vase in front of my window. I don’t ever buy gerberas, but I was buying flowers for a boy who was staying in my house and they seemed appropriately manly. And you know what? I really, really like them. I might only ever buy gerberas from now on.
Are flower names capitalised? And why do I want the plural of gerbera to be “gerbera”?
Small pleasures, number 4
Paying for lunch on a card and having the person you’re with give you the cash. Free money!
Small pleasures: number 3
…getting in to work on a Monday morning and being greeted by an empty email inbox. At least, there were five new messages, but two of them were about cake and three of them were telling me my mailbox is over its size limit, which I already know.
Sponsor me for the Race For Life in June 2012
