December 25th. It seemed a good day to photograph with the streets empty. And mostly they were except in the strip between Oxford Street and Piccadilly.

And then there were the hotel guests enjoying a horse and carriage ride.

As the carriage drivers passed me they were polite and with little nods acknowledged that I was not spooking the horses.

But they looked pretty grim faced, and why not. It is a working day for them when nearly everyone else is enjoying their free time.

Almost everyone. Starbucks and a couple of other cafes were open.

Tech Stuff

All photos taken with Canon EOS R6 wit 28-70mm f2.8 lens

Click the photo and then click again to see it bigger.

Meanwhile, on the way out of the Tube, the blazing neon Keys Cut. Watch Repairs, and Sneaker Cleaning contrast with the dingy walls and floor and ceiling. So I stopped.

And now, looking at it, I am wondering how the Sneaker Cleaning place works? Do people take off their sneakers for a while-you-wait service? Do they know in advance and bring a spare pair from home?

It’s quite a responsibility not to mess up someone’s sneakers. Reminds me of the sign in a barber’s I saw a couple of days ago – You are only as good as your last haircut.

Centre Point is the name of a building at the junction of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road.

It was built in the 1960s and stood empty for years. In the heady days of student revolution in the 1960s it became a symbol of what was wrong with untrammelled free-market capitalism.

It was designed as offices but is now converted to flats. I read that it is more or less all let, but not actually occupied. And it’s not the only building that is occupied in name but not actually occupied in fact.

Taxi drivers say that when they work at night they see empty flats dotting the upmarket parts of the capital. They think the owners own luxury flats in London as a way to park excess money in a convenient and stable place.

The problem is that like with any auction – and house prices are basically a slow-motion auction – when people at the top push the valuations up, then everything below that goes up a notch.

That is why we have the situation in the UK, and particularly in the wealthy cities, that many people are simply driven out of the housing market and have no prospect of owning their own home.

If course there is an existential question of what ownership means, particularly when the owners are saddled with a large mortgage to finance.

But it can come down to something as simple as knowing one is free to paint a wall red.