Skip to content

December 2003

7 years of christmas factory fun

jane has been as busy as a busy bee. i was a little busy, but only at the implimentation and printing stage. jane drove the concept, construction and dispatch phase.
“what am i on about ?” you ask. “christmas cards” i answer.
2003
i’m not going to reveal our 2003 christmas card just yet as some readers will be receiving their’s by the method of her majesty’s royal mail.
(others will have already seen it and are here to claim their money back guarantee).
update: you can see 2003’s here
however, here are some ones of years gone by for your delight. it’s interesting to see how things have progressed. my photo shop skills have improved for sure !
CLICK PHOTOS FOR BIGGER VERSIONS
2002
a paper nativity with movable characters. the first few photos are from the photo shoot. this was kezia’s first appearance
.

the final card and commemorative top trump card (i went a bit photoshop mad last year):

2001
kezia hadn’t been born and esther was an angel.


2000
esther as a toddler

1999
what was i thinking. it must have been the 6 months of sleepless nights with esther which made this such a poor entry. i can only apologise to anyone who received this card for the quality.

1998
this wasn’t too bad – i stuck our heads on someone else’s picture i think

1997
the earliest card on electronic record. we were married in 1996 and i don’t think we did anything fancy card-wise that year (i don’t think we even had a proper computer). but we did by 1997 and we went kerazee !

another fake photo

here is a photo i received on our internal post at work. last time i received such a photo it was a fake. therefore i can only assume the same here.
but i shall give the sender some pleasure by displaying the photo here anyway. i won’t put it on davescollections as an official photo though !
DSC08894.jpg

shed

so, you live in a first floor flat in the city, you’ve got no garden, but you’ve always hankered after a shed to keep your mower in.
so what do you do ? obviously, you put up a load of scaffolding and build your shed outside your window.
DSC08900.jpg

juggling

it was never like this on the 3rd floor. following the american example of ‘whooping up the day’, pete and i did brief spot of competitive juggling. needless to say, the multi-tasking master beat me hands down.
DSC08892.jpg DSC08893.jpg

baileys

round the corner from the pop idol bus were these two bottles of baileys (empty). i thought they looked quite nice balanced on a pavement edge opposite a pub.
DSC08891.jpg

pop idol mark

i get a number of visitors to this website who are looking for Pop Idol information. I come second in Google if you do a search for ‘junior pop idol‘ for example.
this morning, i saw the pop idol bus asking us to ‘Vote Mark’. If i’d thought about it i should have knocked on the door and said “is mark in”, but i didn’t.
who is mark ? should he win ? i dunno nothing.
DSC08890.jpg
update: about 4 hours later i saw the bus again and this time they were giving out bars of chocolate. still no sign of mark (still no idea who he is).
DSC08898.jpg DSC08899.jpg

£1

i often see money and i rarely pick it. i prefer to leave it for those who really need it. here is £1.
DSC08889.jpg

seeing things

rather randomly i thought i saw battersea power station across hyde park this morning. it must have been there every day, but i’ve just never looked down the road at this angle before. you can just see it’s four jutting jutters through the trees and beyond the mist.
DSC08888.jpg

advent day 16

day sixteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a teddy
DSC08855.jpg
here are the photos. it’s paddington bear as seen as paddington station in london. i go through paddington station every day. paddingston station is of course named after paddington bear.
paddington station also named after a small welsh hamlet famous for producing fluffy cotton wool (a derivation of padding-town).
all of the facts above are false (and therefore a fictions).
here is paddington with his mysterious eyes. the photos were taken nearly 10 hours apart (on the way to work, and on way back again)
DSC08871.jpg DSC08880.jpg

passport photo

another passport photo. this time found by myself at Edgware Road tube station.
i wasn’t going to get off at this station (as paddington station, where i was heading, was the next stop), but found myself unmistakenly drawn to get up and walk the 10 minutes to paddington.
as i walked up the stairs which lead to the exit i found this photo for my collection
being on top of the world from such spiritual guidance i walked boldly off to paddington station. on the way a police man stopped me and said “and why do you think you can walk down here sir ?”.
It turned out there was a ‘suspect package’ in the street and they had closed the road (though tube trains were probably running just under the road !).
If i’d be quick of thought i would have answered “because i am impervious to explosives”, but you never think of these things at the time. in the end my walk took me 20 minutes instead because of the diversion, but it was worth it to find the photo.
this is my first cut-out photo.
DSC08881.jpg
by the way, i’m planning on a proper makeover to the davescollection website which is why i haven’t updated it for a while. this will be my christmas project, and my main present to my friends and family (apologies to those expecting CDs etc) …

cleaning the gherkin

here is london’s newest landmark – the gherkin. i took this photo as it looked nice, but it also shows a little man in a box dangling off a very thin stick, cleaning the windows.
DSC08878.jpg

chilly

it was a bit chilly this morning and i spotted this holly nicely frosted up.
pity i didn’t spot it in similar conditions on Advent Day 5
DSC08869.jpg

snowman let down

here are some inflatable snowmen who felt like i did yesterday.
DSC08860.jpg

advent day 15

day fifteen of the advent calendar picture challenge – it’s a reindeer.
DSC08854.jpg
here are the photos:
tacky plastic reindeer in a shop window – note how they’ve kept the foam pieces in their plastic bags to prevent a mess
DSC08862.jpg
and here is my plastic reindeer barometer dressed in a crown, hair extensions and tie. on the right is a moose with a charles and diana biscuit tin balanced on its head
DSC08866.jpg DSC08867.jpg

a room with a view

my new office has a nice view of BT Tower out the window. hoorah !
DSC08852.jpg

coaster

there is a modern trend to walk down the street with a cup of coffee on the way to or from work and meetings. of course people also talk on their mobiles whilst walking down the street.
so what do you do if your phone rings and you have a cup of coffee ? well you put the coffee down of course. but where ?
on a street coaster of course. here is one decorated with a cow in the middle of the road.
personally i think it’s a little dangerous to walk in to the middle of the road to put your coffee down, but the risk assessment men with their complicated spreadsheets will probably have calculated that for this particular piece of road, the risk of burning your ear with coffee whilst answering your phone is greater
DSC08850.jpg

morning is broken

i felt considerably peaky this morning. if i knew i was ill i would have stayed in bed, but i don’t know if it’s just something i ate yesterday as i had some pudding with egg in and that makes me bad (incredible hulk style). if it’s my own fault then my employer shouldn’t have to suffer as a result. so i’ve come in anyway and will just feel like death on a plate for a while.
meanwhile there was a fantastic sun rise this morning. i watched it out of the train window. by the time i got to london the main bit was over, but there was still some dramatic sun-through-steam-on-buildings type things
DSC08848.jpg
update: i started feeling even more ill so went home. rest of the day in bed with laptop 🙁

odd job man

here is pete. he’s the first aid bloke, and configures our telephone exchange. he’s also the cleaning man.
DSC08851.jpg