This week, for Sunday Selections, I’m taking you all the way back to London, 2009, when we travelled down to The Smoke for an Eddie Izzard show.

I’m not going to show you photos of Eddie Izzard, because, well, for one thing I won’t disturb a performance by taking photos, and for another we were too far away from the stage. But we did walk along the embankment a little way before we took the river taxi to the O2 centre and I got some nice pictures of the London Eye.

This is the base of the wheel, showing the area where people queue. I like to take pictures of things like this when they are closed, so as not to get people in the shot. I think it lets you concentrate on the form of the structure. And, of course, I don’t end up wanting to kill people for wandering across in front of my camera, or jostling me, or treading on my feet etc.

Going back towards the Belvedere Road, I got a longer shot, which – since it was November – includes some of the lights they’d strung up for Christmas. I like the way you can see a slice of the wheel all lit up at the top left hand corner, too.

And lastly, this rather lovely, velvety black night-sky shot, with twinkly lights from the trees and structure of the wheel only really visible because it was picked out with bright white lights.

I really do have to give credit where credit’s due and say I have my little pocket-sized Panasonic Lumix to thank for this. The automatic setting with flash disabled and the camera set firmly on a bollard did the trick for this one. The only important thing to remember is to focus on a dark area, not the lights, or you won’t get a black sky.

Or is that the other way round? Um … yeah, I’m pretty sure it’s the other way round.

Now. Do trot over to Frog Ponds Rock and take a look at the other contributions for Sunday Selections. You’ll be amazed at the creativity!

Oh, and yes, thanks! Eddie Izzard was great! We both really enjoyed the show, and we’d love to do it again. Ah well, one day, perhaps we will.

Yes! A whole £46 plus loose change – that’s what we saved on our internet shopping order today, plus a discount of 15% for a voucher I got by email.

No wonder I’m smiling as I type this!

As you can see by the picture this is Ocado, an internet supermarket which carries the Waitrose brand. I love Waitrose! It’s not the cheapest supermarket in the world, but it stocks some great lines. Some of my favourite things include the nicest ‘sachet’ chicken stock on the market (containing no yeast, which is important to me), their ‘Cornish Quartz’ brand of mature cheddar, a genuine sourdough loaf (ie, not packed with extra yeast and/or made by the Chorley Wood method), Pane di Altamura, and Tarallini, a baked version of the Puglian snack food made of flour, olive oil and fennel seeds. Oh, and a rather interesting toilet roll made of waste sugar cane. How’s that for ecologically sound?

Actually it constantly surprises me that more thought isn’t given to toilet rolls in the ‘green’ campaign, because the amount of paper – much of it virgin – which is tossed down into the sewers is criminal. Why not use waste sugar cane – or even bamboo, which is fast-growing, resistant to disease and pests, and actually produces a very soft fibre? Digressing even further from my original theme:

“How many trees can we save if we switched to recycled toilet paper?*
According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the United States could save 470,000 trees, 1.2 million feet of cubic landfill space, and 169 million gallons of water if everyone in the US traded one roll of regular toilet paper for a recycled roll. That’s just for one roll. Imagine if we all made the permanent switch to recycled toilet paper!”

And that, dear readers, comes from the history section of the bizarrely intriguing ‘Toilet Paper World‘. You couldn’t make it up, huh? I’m left shaking my head in amazement at the idea that someone has built a site entirely devoted to toilet paper. But there you go … there it is, I found it, and I linked to it, so Ken Fischburg is clearly just fulfilling one of the world’s lesser known needs.

Anyway. Back to Ocado.

I shop now and again with Ocado, not only because I like Waitrose stuff, but also because it’s nice to get the heavy stuff delivered to your door, and because I get vouchers by email which can save a lot of money – £15 in this case – and they do great special offers.

By browsing only the special offer section and picking out things we normally use, I managed to save £46.90. Say it slowly; forty-six pounds and ninety pence. That’s more than a lot of people spend on a whole week’s shopping!

This is store-cupboard stuff, for the most part, and includes multiple purchases of things like toilet rolls, kitchen rolls, cleaning fluids, and the hard-to-find breakfast cereal that OH favours. OK, I admit it, and eight bottles of vino. Which were ALL on special offer.

It gets delivered within an hour time slot (I chose 12-1pm) and if they’re going to be late (or early) they ring. They also take away all the carrier bags, if you want them to.

And the really poetic thing about all this? Having worked out the prices against the savings, we’ve decided that those eight bottles of wine come entirely free with this order, because our savings pretty much cover the cost for them.

That should last us a few days!

* This is a horrible sentence, grammatically, but it is not mine. It’s just a quote, OK?

Well, it surprised me! Not sure about the dogs…

I was taking the little doggies for their evening walk yesterday, and it was dark. I dunno about where you live, but here we have those horrible sodium lights which just seem to turn everything a sickly yellow-brown colour without actually shedding much in the way of actual light, so it was pretty gloomy.

Anyway.

There I was walking the dogs, and – since the outing was for their benefit – letting them sniff at this and that and pee up things* and all, and there is this one hedge where they nearly always spend a few minutes reading the pee-mail. I expect it serves as the local doggy newsagent, or something. And then it dawned on me that I’d been standing there for quite a few minutes, and the dogs still had their noses in the hedge, so I took a step towards them and …

‘MRRAAAOOOOOWWW!!!’

Well. It made ME jump! Not so the dogs, who still had their noses stuck in the hedge closely observing (as it turned out) a cat. A very vocal cat. A cat who was tired of being observed by two very large and curious dogs and was issuing a serious threat in Classical Feline.

Clearly the dogs don’t speak the lingo, so it was up to me to interpret.

‘Come on chaps’, I said, gently pulling on the leads. ‘Unless you want to get your eyes scratched out’.

And they came instantly. Suspiciously fast. Almost as if – dare I say – they were just waiting for a reason to leave without unseemly and undignified haste.

‘I was just ‘splaining to Ranger …’ said Sid, hopping rapidly up the road behind me, and not looking back.

‘Yes, but what IS it?’ demanded Ranger. ‘Looked quite int’resting to me. Smelled funny though .. ‘

‘Trust me, you don’t want it’ I told him, firmly. ‘They bite and they scratch’.

‘OK’, Ranger said, tucking himself between me and Sid. ‘Anyway, you know I don’t like fluffy toys. Especially if they have sharp bits!’

Tonight we walked by that same hedge again. I half-expected them both to pull over towards it to see if the cat was still there, but no. They studiously ignored it and passed without a glance.

But I did find the cat stuffie Ranger was given for Christmas later, tossed out of his bed with half its tail missing.

I blame Sid. Remember the octopus?

* Not people’s cars, or flower beds, or rubbish bins, obviously. People can show a deplorable lack of understanding about such things.

Well, it’s been a while since I took part in Sunday Selections, but I have a lot of unpublished photos (and a whole lot of things I don’t want to do around the house) and it is a great meme, so I’m going to show you some pictures of the Italian Festival which came to Peterborough. I’m taking you back in time, but not so very far, because this event took place in September 2011.

It was fun to see a little bit of Italy right here in England – they brought what they could, including (naturally) a scooter or two.

And even a Ferrari, even if it was a miniature one!

There were market stalls, of course, and this was my favourite;

Mmm! Wine, olive oil and pasta, straight from Puglia. I was quite proud of myself, because I bought some beautiful greeny-gold Extra Virgin Olive Oil, communicating completely in Italian (which surprised the young man behind the counter) and managed to make myself understood quite well. I would have bought some wine, too, except that they had forgotten to bring some glasses. A seriously bad oversight, because while they might sell a bottle or two, they could probably have sold it by the case if people had been able to taste before buying. It was a good price .. but I simply cannot drink poor quality, acidic wine any more.

The bread stall amused and slightly irritated me. I’m sorry I don’t have a picture, because the variety of bread was quite staggering, and looked delicious. I gave it my best shot and, again using my best Italian, asked the olive-skinned, Italian-looking guy if he had any Tuscan bread – which I like because it has no added salt. He grinned apologetically at me and said in a strong local accent:

‘Sorry luv, I don’t speak Italian!’

Well, that made me look silly, didn’t it? Tee hee.

Anyway, later on they brought out the men in tights buglers in mediaeval dress.

They were the heralds for the flag-throwing display team.  The flag-throwers were interesting – and not just because they wore tights!  They tossed full-sized flags into the air in formation, and did little … I dunno, kind of baton-twirling routines with them.  It was such a windy day, that I held my breath expecting one to be snatched away and end up yards from the outstretched hand of the owner, but no!  They were very skilful and every one was properly caught.  Well, most of them.  A couple of our brave, tights-clad men had to run for it, and I think it was a very close thing for one, and someone in the crowd got an unexpected moment of excitement.

And not just because they were wearing tights!

Seriously, it was a fun day. They even set up a stage and had a couple of Italian singers, who for some reason were dressed like waiters.

They were pretty good, but I was a tad disappointed with them. I mean, they sang Italian songs, alright, but they sang them mostly in English!! And the ones they sang in Italian were cover versions of English songs. What? Do they think we’re so uncultured that we can’t appreciate proper Italian music?

Anyway, I’m looking forward to next year. Meanwhile, why not mosey on over to Kim at Frog Ponds Rock, and see what other bloggers have for you today?