December 2019 – Page 2 – Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

The roof of 120 Fenchurch Street

Yes, they claim it’s a garden, but really it’s just the roof. But what a roof:

Apparently, as of now, it’s free. Memo to self: when I get better or when the weather gets warmer, preferably both, check it out.

Early good impressions of my new Dyson vacuum cleaner

My home is too dusty, and that’s partly because vacuuming with an uncordless (cordful?) vacuum cleaner is not fun. So, I don’t do it nearly enough. There is a big push on to get us all to buy cordless vacuum cleaners, and I told my friend that I wanted one too, and could she help? She did. Upshot, a new but very mildly obsolete Dyson V6, which was much admired by all who intennet-reviewed it, at a considerably reduced price, refurbished and guaranteed by Dyson itself. It arrived this afternoon, thanks to a nearby post office.

I’ve already done a bit of cleaning with it, and although it is rather noisy, it is clearly going to get more used than the old vacuum cleaner with its electric wire all over the place everywhere and its tediously long pipe connecting the bit that does the dusting to the clunky old mothership but still not nearly long enough to avoid having the lug the damn machine around when I am vacuuming.

But the thing that really impressed me was this:

That’s the adapter, for recharging this new gizmo. That’s the plug and the wire that makes this new wireless vacuum cleaner actually wireless, when you’re actually vacuuming with it. And it is highly likely that this adapter/recharger will remain completely recognisable as the recharger for my vacuum cleaner. It even has “Dyson” written on it.

Most such contrivances look like these ones:

That’s a photo I also took today of the drawer were I keep some of my many no-longer-used adapters. (I have others.) I fear to chuck out any of these because who knows when I might turn out to need one of them? These things can be hellishly expensive to replace, because the internet can detect your desperation and it prices accordingly, and anyway, when you want to find the right sort of adapter you want to get your hands on it now. But, once any of these get separated from the original object of their attentions, it becomes pure guesswork which one is the right one. Or rather, it becomes a skill that I personally don’t have. I have friends who could probably help me with this nonsense, but it’s still nonsense.

But this Dyson adapter will continue to identify itself as the adapter for my Dyson vacuum cleaner. It’s a weird not-quite-black colour, the exact same weird not-quite-black-black colour as its gizmo. It is a very individual shape, unlike all the other regular-black adapters in the above drawer. Best of all, it says Dyson on it.

I’m impressed. This suggests to me what already feels like it’s true for the gizmo as a whole, which is that this Dyson V6 has been very well designed, with every aspect of its design having been thought about carefully.

I We It – January 2004

All this coughing I’ve been doing lately, and the consequent not sleeping properly, is keeping me confined to my quarters, which means that photo-ops have been few.

So, I’ve done more than my usual amount of rootling around in the archives. In which archives, this evening, I found these photos:

I remember being quite impressed by these artworks, when I first came across them, in (as we can see) Gloucester Road tube. Kudos to me for taking a photo of the poster that told me now, this evening, who did these Things and what he called them, as well as just lots of photos of the Things themselves. There’s even a clear date on the poster, which corroborates the date Windows Photo Viewer offers, as the date when these photos were “first modified”.

I do not recall being as impressed by any other artwork in a tube station since then. Maybe this was the first art I ever properly saw (properly because for the first time I was looking for stuff to photo (with my recently acquired Canon A70 (had I had a better camera the photos would have been a lot prettier))) in a tube station, and maybe that’s why it made quite an impression on me.

I say “quite” because even these Things were not really that great. Quite striking. Quite impressive. And more so than just about all Art in the Tube that I have encountered since then, which has mostly been very disappointing. Well, quite disappointing.

LATER (FRIDAY MORNING): The above done in some haste. I now, with some difficulty, found my way to this, which says more concerning the above images. Summary: Corporate capitalism is scary because it is totalitarian. (He’s quoting adverts for various capitalist goods and services.)

Suspicion: he thinks we should all believe in what would actually, I think, turn into actual totalitarianism. He has a quite big point. Corporate capitalism is becoming rather totalitarian. But he is wrong on the even bigger point. No wonder I only quite liked it. It is a quite expert attack on my opinions, and he’d surely agree about that, if about little else of a political sort, if we ever talked it through.

I’ll believe it when I see it (but I just might see it quite soon)

It’s a bridge. It’s a swimming pool. A Because Now We Can! swimming pool:

And according to this, they’re actually going to build it, in London, a walk away from me.

An e-scooter obliges me by stopping

For some time now I’ve been wanting to exhibit a photo here, of an e-scooter. Any e-scooter. Trouble is, e-scooters have a way of e-scooting by and being gone, before I can get my camera out and functioning.

But this evening, that changed. Yes the e-scooter scooted by, but then it stopped, at one of the local shops, and parked itself outside:

It’s not the best photo you’ll ever see, but that’s not my point. My point is, that’s an e-scooter, and I’m starting to see them around, quite a lot. Even though riding them on public roads or pavements is apparently still illegal.

By the way, in case you’re wondering, this photo was taken with the permission of its rider. This guy wasn’t behaving like he knew he was breaking any law. At the time, I had no idea about such a thing either.

I don’t know, but I can well imagine a quite near future, for places like London, where e-scooters are having a noticeable impact on transport, especially by commuters, while more elaborate technologies, like robot cars, continue to be Just About To Happen Real Soon Now but still not actually happening. E-scooters, unlike robot cars, already work perfectly adequately. All that’s needed is for the law to catch up, and for cycle lanes and general non-car areas to keep spreading.

A particular plus from where I stand, on the pavement, e-scooters are definitely less scary than rogue cyclists

The thing about bikes is that using them is rather strenuous, and bikes are a bit hard to store. E-scooters are basically vehicles you stand still on, and are surely far easier to store. Next to your desk basically.

E-scooters look to me like a transport technology that is just about to happen. Soon, as opposed to Real Soon Now. I will continue to try to photo these gizmos. Preferably during the hours of daylight, and with people on board.

Churchill War Rooms gallery

One of the nice things about people coming to stay is that you often find yourself visiting touristy but interesting things that you’d never quite get around to seeing on your own. Later, maybe, but not today. It’ll always be there won’t it?

Touristy things like: the Churchill War Rooms. In February of last year, nearly two years ago now, GodDaughter2’s Dad was in town, and that’s one of the places we went.

And I took the odd photo or two. Well, more like 350, of which here are 84:

A big spread of photos like that would have been an impossibly tedious operation to stick up at Brian Micklethwait’s Previous Blog, and an equally tedious business for you to be scrutinising. But now, here they all are, and you can do the usual, clicking through as quickly or as slowly as you like. Enjoy. Especially if you rarely or never visit London, and have no plans to see this place for real.

There’s a million things I could say about it. One of the more striking of the photos above is photo 33, which shows how thick the concrete was protecting everything, from all but the most direct of direct hits, that passage that you see having been drilled through afterwards, when they were turning these working spaces into a place people could visit and circulate around.

Other talking points? Well, lots of signs and souvenirs, often signs made into souvenirs, for sale in the inevitable gift shop. And also: signs that are not Original but Modern. Signs with lots of words. Which is appropriate, given how important Churchill knew words (see photo 80) to be.

Most of the human figures that you see are not real; they’re sculpted. And “Other creatures” is in the category list because, inevitably, there are bulldogs.

I did all the hard work for this posting before I got ill, and I’m still not fully recovered. So, please continue to wish me well.