It seems hard to believe that it’s well over a year already since I was made redundant from my previous job in Torquay, and that the first anniversary of my new job in London is just a month away. But I still keep in contact with my former colleagues and friends down in the Westcountry, and last week I popped down there to see some of them again for a Christmas catch-up. So I thought I’d do a little write-up about it, as I have some festive photos and video clips to share as well.
Continue reading “Christmas In Devon”Month: December 2023
Christmas 2023 Favourites – Part 1
Seasons greetings, I hope your preparations for Christmas are going well, November always feels a little bit festive, but for me it was even more so than normal this year, because I’ve already explored a variety of London’s displays, seen a bunch of snowmen on a sculpture trail, and had a free Christmas dinner courtesy of a PR invite. On top of that I’ve also seen a couple of theatre shows, while at home I’ve been enjoying some more TV and music as always.
Consequently it makes sense to treat this as a festive Favourites post and video, and spread the joy over 2 months. It’s not too early as far as I’m concerned. So with the usual disclaimer that all opinions are my own, including for the free food, let’s crack on with it, and I hope you enjoy!
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Walking With The Snowman
Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without The Snowman on TV. The animation, based on the book by Raymond Briggs, is such an adorable and moving story, brought to life with wonderful imagery and music, that it quickly became a perennial favourite for millions of people, and last year it celebrated its 40th anniversary.
And now you can see the iconic character in person, courtesy of a sculpture trail called Walking With The Snowman. It began in Salford in 2018, and then in every year since then (except 2020 when nobody could go anywhere) it’s been at multiple locations over the festive period. So this year the trails are taking place at Hillsborough Castle & Gardens, Knole House and the Fleet Street Quarter. And I recently explored the latter in London.
It’s been put together by Wild In Art, who were also behind Morph’s Epic Art Adventure that I enjoying looking at in the summer, and indeed 7 of the artists from that trail have contributed to this one as well, alongside a few others. So here we get a dozen snowmen, themed around the Twelve Days Of Christmas, each one painted in a beautifully distinctive and interesting way.
The sculptures will be in place until 5 January 2024, so there’s still plenty of time to see them. I went on a midweek afternoon, so it was nice and quiet, but I imagine there will be a lot of children keen to see them at weekends and during the Christmas holidays, which might make it harder to take photos of them.
There is a PDF map on the website, but it’s more about pretty design rather than accuracy, so it only gives a very rough visual sense of where each statue is. I found it a lot more reliable to use the list of statues in the bottom left corner, typing each road or place name into Google Maps to find them. And even then, there are some major roadworks going on in one particular area that added to the confusion and sent me off track slightly. But I did find them all in the end, it took me about 2 hours to do the whole trail. People with full sight would be able to do it much quicker I’m sure, but it’s very rewarding in any case, as they do look great.
So here’s a little gallery of the Snowman sculptures in central London, and you can click on the pictures to look more closely. This isn’t sponsored or affiliated by anyone involved with the project, I just enjoyed hunting them down, and I hope you enjoy looking through them!
Continue reading “Walking With The Snowman”
Well Eye Never 