It’s Christmas! Or, at least, John Lewis’s window leads one to believe that it is. It’s only 29th September, for goodness sake!

I know moaning about Christmas getting earlier every year is a little tedious, but really… a Christmas window in a major department store in September?!

Wendy drew this picture of us on a whiteboard shortly after we started dating. I took a photo, printed it, and framed it. Almost a decade (and several house moves) later, it’s still sitting on her dressing table.

This is one of the sculptures to be found in Hebburn Riverside Park, which is not to be confused with the Tyne Riverside Country Park which I’ve shown you before.

In addition to the sculptures like that above, there are a number of artworks in Hebburn Riverside Park, including these carved wooden waymarkers, each of which features a different image:

But perhaps the most famous artwork is the one I don’t have a picture of… Flash@Hebburn by Charles Quick, installed in 2009. This consists of twelve 8m columns with solar panels and blue and white LEDs on the top. These flash in patterns which reflect Hebburn’s industrial heritage, apparently. But to me, trying to attract people to a public park at dusk by promising a “Flash” just seems like a bad idea all round…!

This is a recent picture, though not taken today. It shows a unique designer carpet, that I personally found quite stressful and headache inducing. This is unfortunate, given its location… which I’ll leave as an exercise for the reader.

This is the postcard I received today from Bobbie Johnson, co-founder of a brilliant journalistic project I’m supporting called Matter. Perhaps a little bizarrely, I’ve also previously received a postcard from his partner, Anna Pickard, as part of her Snailr project a couple of years ago:

And I sent this postcard in return:

Anyway, there’s something a little odd and something a little lovely about having almost serendipitously exchanged three postcards with a couple I’ve never met. I used to read them both in The Guardian when I was at university, and have followed their articles, blogs, and latterly their Twitter accounts, ever since. In a strange way, I almost feel like I know them, having followed their move to the States and back, and the fairly recent birth of their son.

I hope that this doesn’t freak out either Bobbie or Anna if they come across it… they both seem like lovely people, and I’m a little worried that this post makes me sound a bit like a stalker…! I just thought it was quite a nice story for a rainy Tuesday night.

This is the first pop-up Calendar Club that I’ve seen this year – and it seems a depressing reminder that Christmas is coming!

Calendar Club has grown at a remarkable pace since the first 12 stores opened in 1998. It now opens over 300 temporary stores every Christmas, and sells over 4 million calendars from a selection of over 3,000 varieties. These days, it even publishes its own calendars under the Other House label.

One of the most remarkable parts of their business model is their store turnaround time: they aim to open within 24hrs of taking a store’s lease. Minimal turn-around times maximise the company’s profit, but also give it a great reputation with retail landlords who typically want to minimise the number of closed units in their malls… which, in turn, gives the company a stronger negotiating position year-on-year, reducing rents and further maximising profits.

As I’ve logged on to post today’s picture, I’ve realised that I forgot to post anything yesterday… so, as recompense, here’s a picture I took last week of the Thames Barrier. It should also serve as a reminder of what the sky looks like when it isn’t bucketing – something we all need after a day like today!

Earlier this month, I said that I didn’t think local glazier Wadds used their distinctive stencil anymore… but here’s a local Subway, proving me wrong!

I’m cheating a bit today, because I actually took this picture earlier in the week. It’s Britain’s quintessential derelict building, Millennium Mills. It’s on the south side of the Royal Victoria Dock in London, just across from the ExCel exhibition centre.

The building has played the role of “derelict building” in any number of TV shows, films and music videos, from Ashes to Ashes to Green Zone. It’s one of those buildings that, when I walk past it, makes me desperate to explore inside. Of course, the law-abiding and safety-conscious side of my brain ensures that the nearest thing to urban exploration that I ever do is logging on to 28 Days Later and looking at others’ fascinating photographs.

In this case, it’s probably a good job: the place is full of asbestos, floors which are decayed to the point of collapse, and nine storey drops. It’s definitely not a good place to go exploring!

The future of Millennium Mills looks uncertain at the moment: many plans have been made, from converting the building to luxury flats, to demolishing it and building an aquarium. All have fallen through. So who knows what’s next for this beguiling building?

This is a memorial fountain designed by James Woodford in 1954. It stands in the courtyard at BMA House, commemorating doctors killed during the Second World War.

James Woodford served in both World Wars, with the the 11th Battalion Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire Regiment (Sherwood Foresters) in the First, and with the Air Ministry in the Second. He won the Prix de Rome for Sculpture in 1922, and went on to create his best known work in 1953: ten heraldic beasts which stood at the entrance to Westminster Abbey for the Queen’s coronation.

Now, I’m sure we’ve all experienced one of those awkward moments after a big party when you suddenly think, “Damn, what on Earth am I going to do with all these decorative heraldic beasts?” I know I have!

Well, luckily, Woodford had the foresight to plan for that moment, and made them only out of plaster so that they could be easily thrown away. But – shock horror – the beasts turned out to be very popular. So popular, in fact, that he had to do a nifty bit of negotiation with the Home Office to get a 50:50 split on the takings from the rights to copying them.

And to this day, you can see a complete set in the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew.