Tag: christmas

Posted on

Then and Now Take Two – Cabot Circus Christmas Changes

This is a regular series of blogs about photographs of the same place taken years apart. The first of the posts in this series was of a council building in Manchester. I always thought I should give then and now photographs a go. However what I have started to notice is that I have been doing Then and Now photographs unintentionally over the years and have been taking photographs of the same thing or place from the same view or perspective years apart. Now this has come to my attention I have started to intentionally take photographs of the same place.

This photograph was taken on the 26th November 2022.

I remembered I had taken a photograph in the same location, back on December 8th 2019. I was on my way to do a pick up from the Vue Cinema, so I took a photograph of the festive Cabot Circus.

I also wrote about it back then as well and in that post I used an image I found  searching Flickr from December 2012. It would seem I am not alone in taking photographs from that vantage point outside House of Fraser.

Cabots Circus by David X Mitchell via Flickr CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Back then I wrote about the changes between the two images.

Its interesting to see the differences. Cafe Rouge has gone and has been replaced by Five Guys. I noticed recently that Giraffe had closed and the unit was now a Slim Chickens. On the ground floor was was SoHo (which has moved around the corner) is now a Tortilla and a Typo. In 2012 Patisserie Valerie was still open, today it’s closed and boarded up.

Since 2019, Krispy Kreme have taken over the Patisserie Valerie location.

Posted on

M&S think it’s Christmas

So there I was at one of those “unexpected items in the bagging area” machines at M&S and next to it was the plastic bags.

These were Christmas bags….

It’s March! Oh you can’t get those shortbread tins either now…

Actually part of me thinks this is quite a good thing, means we were using less plastic bags when they thought we would use more, so had overstocked.

Posted on

My top ten tweets of 2020

Last year I posted my top ten tweets for 2019 and I did the same in 2018, 2017 and 2016 which was interesting to see which tweets of mine were popular.

So the most popular tweet of 2019 was this one about keeping the old Twitter.

Alas the hack didn’t last too long so we have to use the new Twitter.

So in 2020, my tenth most popular tweet was this one, a response to one about signage in the libraries.

The photo was from an April Fool we did at the library in Gloucestershire College. What was interesting was that it didn’t work, no one noticed the new signs or paid them any attention,.

Though it should be said we never had a problem with swimming in the library again.

The ninth most popular tweet of mine was from an event I attended in February on trans national education and I posted a sketchnote.

The tweet at number eight was about the lack of a door in Matt Hancock’s home office.

The seventh most popular tweet was a picture of Buckingham Palace!

It was a response to an original New York Post tweet that has now been deleted. It talked about the UK Christmas covid-19 planning with a picture of Paris.

Number six, was a link to a story about how students realised they could game an assessment as it was been graded by an AI and not a person.

Wasn’t cheating, it was just doing what was required to get top marks.

Fifth most popular tweet was about shopping centre clocks.

Fourth most popular tweet was another tweet in response to that original New York Post tweet that has now been deleted. It talked about the UK Christmas covid-19 planning with a picture of Paris.

Luckily someone managed to get a screengrab.

The third most popular tweet was about The Sovereign Centre shopping centre, which appears to be chasing the title of the UK’s Worst Shopping Centre…

Back in January I misread a tweet from Stephen Fry and that was the most popular tweet at number two.

So my top tweet  of 2020 was me reminiscing when WHSmith in Bristol went all Dexter.