As of 1 November, new potential sign-ups to the free version of Pagecord have to be invited. Previously, anyone could sign up, but according to the site owner, the site has had a lot a spammers signing up so they could use the Pagecord as a stepping stone to get viewers to come to a site they host elsewhere. If I were on the receiving end of that I wouldn’t like it: No one likes being used.

Anyone with a premium account has codes to give out to people they know so that person can use the invitation to get access.

Well, I joined and had a free account and then a paid account before all this blew up, and very early on, at the beginning when Olly built the site.

He has taken a lot of stick for using AI for some of the coding. It’s hard to please everyone. 

I happen to like Pagecord and I can’t see me getting annoyed over how the site was constructed when I would not be able to do that work myself. People are funny. Well, not funny really. They just love to get offended.

I was wondering about the progress of mankind. People are more individual than they used to be. That is probably in line with the move away from tight, rural communities. In the city, people have their antennae out because they don’t know who is around them. Nearly everyone is a stranger, and that turns a person into a stranger too.

So I was wondering whether we are all snowflakes now, hypersensitive when there is no need, or whether we have actually become more sensitive and that is a good thing – or at least not a negative thing – because we are all tuned in more to each other?

Cambridge Botanical Garden

The photos here are from a visit to the Botanic Garden in Cambridge that I visited with a friend this past week. It’s November and the leaves are still on the trees. A magnolia had large buds on it. What are they going to do? Will they hang on until the Earth turns? Will they be nipped in the bud if there is a cold spell? Are we feeling a bit discombobulated because the planet it not behaving in the regular way we like, and are we reading into this the early signs of the coming age of a catastrophe?

A stretch of Oxford Street is now pedestrianised. People were walking up and down, mostly on the pavements. The man with the signboard had the middle of the street pretty much to himself.

I guess we need training before we spread all over the street. It reminds me of a man who kept a chicken farm. Most of his chickens roosted in a big barn, but a few roosted in an ark. An ark is a moveable barn on wheels.

So on this particular occasion the farmer moved the ark from where it had been standing for months. And when the chicken came to roost that evening, they went to where the ark was and not where it was now. They folded their legs under themselves to roost and sat on the grass as though sitting on roosting poles.

The biggest surprise were the bollards and barriers that interrupted the sweep of the traffic-free stretch of street that I had imagined.

Two of the ambassadors (helpfully dressed in pink) explained that the changes were being done in stages, so eventually, they said, the obstructions will be gone.

Of course, the biggest change is that all the bus routes have had to be changed to run along adjoining streets.

If you want to be entertained, as any taxi driver what he thinks of the changes.

Outside Kew Gardens Tube Station on the road that leads to Kew Gardens, there is a distinct feeling that a person has stepped back in time a few decades. Long may the ambiance continue because as we all see, the tendency is for all shopping areas to begin to look like each other.

This was pure chance. Tamara and I were coming along the covered walkway at Covent Garden. In the distance I heard people shouting and saw men in yellow hazard suits. I figured it was either a protest, an emergency, or someone advertising something. It turned out to be a happening for Run, a zombie thriller that describes itself as the first independent Black British zombie thriller.

It was about 4:00pm and the light was fading. A glance at my camera and I just knew I had to crank up the ISO. Things were moving fast and the people were coming towards me, so I just spun the dial and didn’t exactly look at what ISO the dial had landed on.

I see now from the EXIF data that it was ISO 2000. I also see that I shot at 1/30th of a second at f7.1. If I had had my brain in gear more I would have opened the aperture so I could have a faster shutter speed.

But that is the thing with street shooting – it happens fast.

The man in red in the photo called out to me to ask if I wanted to take a photo and of course I did. He told me he was the producer of the film and handed me a survivor pass that confirmed I had been cleared of zombie infection.

The premiere of Run, a short film with a run time of 30 minutes, is on Monday 26th October at Genesis Cinema at 93-95 Mile End Road, Whitechapel, London E1 4UJ. The blurb says for the film says:

London has fallen. Food is gone. Hope is fading. The undead roam the streets.
Two survivors, having run out of food, set out on a dangerous supply run.
After encountering the infected they’re separated, both forced to survive alone long enough to find their way back to each other in one piece.

The photo above links to the image file, so click it, and maybe click again and you can see it bigger.

Fenton House is in Hampstead in London. It is now owned by the National Trust, given to it by Mr Fenton who made his fortune in Latvia and retired to this house towards the end of his life.

It is a modestly grand house, but what caught my eye for a photo was this corner of the garden with greenhouse, high wall, water butt, and wooden gate.

The house is made interesting by the collection of twenty-three harpsichords rescued in time from another house in London that was bombed in the Second World War.

Tamara and I went on a tour in the house of the instruments being played by a man who knew oodles about the history of the instruments.

He knew who made them and the variations in their layout and capabilities, and also about the development and waning of the harpsichord as an instrument against the coming of the piano.

He played several of the instruments and it was a magnificent tour – really memorable. And all the more special for Tamara because she plays the piano and is a good pianist.