You can consider this photo as being in lieu of one yesterday, since I failed to post one then. This scene just felt appropriate given the news!

I have an oddly large head, as proven by my inability to wear Christmas cracker hats or round neck t-shirts. At least it’s not quite as big as this artwork at Newcastle University!

A few months ago, I tweeted this:

The response was comprehensive – everybody else in my personal twitterverse manages not to destroy them:

So take today’s photo-a-day as my defence! The pictured card is a little under three months old. It has lived in my wallet, I haven’t done anything other than use it to pay for stuff and to get cash out of cash machines, and yet already the plastic coating is peeling away. Within the next few months, the peeling will increase in size, the card will become a complete virtually unusable mess, and I’ll have to get it replaced.

I have no explanation for why this happens. It happens across all my cards, no one provider is worse than any other, and is but one of many problems I seem to experience with bank cards failing to thrive. Does anyone have an explanation? Or, for that matter, the same problem?

One assumes that customers weren’t asked to rate staff members’ knowledge of possessive apostrophes…! And I’m sure I can’t be the only one who thinks those teddy bears look slightly threatening!

When I was younger, my nan used to buy my brother, my sister and me a liquorice selection box for Christmas, until one Christmas they seemed to no longer be sold. I was no less than amazed, therefore, to come across this in a shop… it’s almost exactly as I remember, though without the liquorice pipe which I guess isn’t considered a suitable present for kids these days!

M&S appear to have gone all-out with their Christmas decorations this year… After all, nothing says “Christmas” like a squirrel wearing a crown.

Glitzen is a 40ft tall reindeer. As tall as a house, she’s the tallest reindeer sculpture in the world. This is the third year she’s featured among the Metrocentre’s Christmas decorations, and this year, she has two children with her.

The scale of the sculpture is certainly arresting – far more so, actually, in person than in photographs. The frame is made of over 2km of aluminium, and the sculpture is decorated with over 10,000 fairy lights. I’ve no stats on the new baby ones, but you’ll notice from the picture that each is more than a storey tall.

It’s just slightly depressing to be seeing them in October!

An extra second photo to make up for forgetting last Sunday… and it’s the first snowfall of the season here in Newcastle! Dad predicted that it would arrive today… I think it’s the first year he’s accurately forecast it!

I don’t know what it was about this scene, but it felt oddly atmospheric: a closed down shop with the lights shining through the gauze of the rolled-down shutter, with (I assume) the remaining stock gathered at the back and the occasional staff member busying about.

I don’t know what the shop used to be, or why it has closed down, or why there are still people and things in it despite it looking like it’s been shut for a while… but it is a little bit of a sad sight. Perhaps a little depressing for a Friday night?!

You’d think they’d proofread for excessive, commas!