Sorry. Things happen. Didn't post last night. But here we are now, so let's continue.

Above: The Moon in the trees, Tuesday night. I didn't think of it at the time, but it echoes the Monday Bleat ban. As above, so below. But acksually the Monday picture is a reflection of something above, so it's technically not below Oh shut up.

Downsizing, con’t: I have a lot of CDs to get rid of. I ripped them at the start of the MP3 era, but couldn’t part with them: physical media still seems like a reliable backup to “everything on someone else’s server.” A long time ago I replaced the thick plastic jewel boxes with thin ones, keeping the folder, the art. These were stored in the garage in a plastic box, the existence of which annoyed Wife. When are you going to do something with those?

Hmmm. Never?

I mean, I’d intended to take them to Goodwill or Arc, but A) when I was looking through the crate for something, I came across some CDs / DVDs with personal information. Sigh. Had I mixed up my own backups with the CDs? Probably. Never thought it would matter. Soooooo that means going through them, one by one, to see if there’s anything I don’t want loose in the world.

There was not. Then I got a brilliant idea: shuck ‘em. Take the discs out of the plastic squares and just put them in coffee cans. Shrink the whole crate down to two compact cylinders! Brilliant! Went up to my studio to get an old coffee can full of backup CDs, thinking, I can toss these, because they’re all defective. Tried to mount them with the CD player, and nothing happened.

But . . . hadn’t I decided that the problem was the CD drive? Didn’t I think I should get a new one, and try again? Right. Well. Okay. Remove the old CDs from the cans, take cans back to the garage, shuck and stack. I now have two cans of music CDs and two stacks of backup DVDs on the office floor, waiting for a new coffee can. This means I have to buy some can-coffee coffee, if you know what I mean. I hope I can find this . . .

Probably not.

Do I want to get a new disk drive and check all the DVDs? No. Do I want to toss the lot? No. Should I be in this position at all? No.

Curious what the Creek and Woods looked like today? Sure. I wouldn't bother . . . but it is the last season here.

		Cold, though. The wind took the temps down to the 40s. It only gets colder from here.

I think this is the last installment. I didn't get a lot of London. Besides, none of this is essential to us, here. But it reminds you of the wonderful secrets cities hold. You walk briskly down a block, note this or that, and keep striding unaware of how much history is held in these stones, and how the structures and purposes are constantly being updated and repurposed.

A not-unusual scene on Picadilly Street:

Let’s look on the left first. It has a series of busts embedded in the facade.

		I've done what I can with the Google Street View images.
		DeWint, Barret . . .
		Girtin, Cozen, Sandey, and so on.

You could run the names through the Googles and Groks to see what turns up, but is there any way to ID the building? Zoom out, and the structure has a pin: BAFTA.

Ah. Well, that will help. Eventually you land here, and learn:

It was originally built in 1883 as a gallery space for the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours, a medium then overlooked by the neighbouring Royal Academy of Arts.

Thus, you assume, Sandey Cozens Barret DeWint et al were painters. The lease expired in 1970, and the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours moved to a new location. It still exists.

The site today:

On the right, the wrapped building: Let’s go back a few years.

Why is it sheathed in plastic now?

Oh

So much going on everywhere, behind the old stone walls.

I was part of a space mission team that was going to Mars on a regular basis. The first time we let out some ants to see what happened; they grew slightly larger then coalesced into a white goo, and froze. The next time we brought puppies. I was horrified by this experiment and breathed on the puppy, keeping it alive, until we could get back to the base; I was informed that his oxygen would have to come out of my ration, and I said fine, I’ll just breath less. It was a King George Spaniel dog. I don’t even like that breed.

Early Tiny, with the wishy-washy facial features of the early style.

Tiny's hands are disconcerting. Solution here.

The majority of this year's crops of bottom-dwellers and bubbling-unders have been disco / soul, with the occasional rocker or boring ballad.

I was not prepared for this one. Nor, I suspect, are you. Unless you remember it.

Wikipedia:

"Shoes" is described by one critic as a "bizarre wedding song". The lyrics tell the story of Johnny and Louise's wedding day, and the contributions of various relatives and friends to the wedding. The song is not about shoes, although it does include the line "Mother didn't give her abuse / she didn't forget her shoes". 

Lawsuits and distribution problems blunted its success.

That'll do. Hope the week wasn't too grim. Now the weekend! We'll see you here on Monday morning, smart as paint.