Outside is the new inside

It's hard not to notice them. Every year they are certainly getting more common and over the top. Some of them are simply twinkling lights and some at the other end of the spectrum include large inflatable Santa's and animated puppets and perhaps even sound effects.

I am of course talking about the Christmas decorations that are once again adorning the outside of many homes across the country. What used to be a fairly infrequent occurrence has now become much more popular. Here and there about our nation are some Christmas decorations that are totally over the top. Some of these have even been known to stop traffic as drivers turn their eyes from the road to stare at the gaudy adornments.

http://media.sacbee.com/static/weblogs/photos/images/2010/dec10/christmas_lights_sm/christmas_lights_08.jpg

According to the Lincolnshire Echo a couple have decorated the inside and outside of their home. Their bungalow has become totally transformed into a shrine for the festive season. This couple are hoping to use their Christmas decorating obsession to raise money for the local Air Ambulance.

I think that many people have added lights to the outside of their homes not to celebrate the festive season but instead for a much more practical reason. You might have noticed that your street lights now turn off at a set time at night, perhaps 11pm, leaving the nations streets in darkness in an effort to save money and energy.

Dark streets are not safe for party goers to stagger home in so the Christmas lights and inflatable Santa Homer Simpsons point the way home.

Altogether now, "Show me the way to go home. I'm tired and I want to go to bed..."

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Sparkly bathroom prevented by natural chemical equilibria

Image
I have had the pleasure of cleaning the bathroom today. I have used a number of different products over the years to find a chemical that will remove the annoying marks from the tiles, taps and shower screen. The hard water means that no matter how clean and sparkly I get the taps, they are only two showers away from being once again covered in the annoying white powder.   Crystals of limescale (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Kesselstein_k.jpg) There is a lot of interesting chemistry involved in limescale. It is essentially deposits of insoluble calcium carbonate left behind from the hot water. But how does it get into the water in the first place and why doesn't it stay in it? Limescale initially starts as limestone, chalk and other similar sedimentary rocks that formed from the bodies of tiny calcium containing sea creatures that lived in warm shallow tropical seas millions of years ago. See the BBC clip at this learning zone site. Since their formation these rocks have been
Read more

Polka dot, 7 inches, 15 minutes, luke warm

Image
January 2010 and a new craze hit Facebook. Across the social network women started to post colours as their status. Some posted beige, some ivory, some hot pink, some polka dot. For a while people across the world were confused, intrigued, indeed fascinated by what these colours could mean. In fact the colours referred to the colour of the bra the woman was wearing that particular day. This 'craze' was in aid of a breast cancer awareness campaign a fantastic cause and in my opinion a clever and innovative use of Facebook. Over the last couple of days some of the ladies have begun to post a length measured in inches followed by a time in minutes. This has resulted in a status that might read '6 inches 25 minutes'. Oh how amusing...I like a bit of smut but I found these updates strangely annoying. Obviously it doesn't mean what it says and is code for something fairly inane and boring. So slightly intrigued and determined to crack the code I did what I always
Read more

What's Your Station?

Image
One of my most vivid memories is completing my Silver Duke of Edinburgh Expedition in the New Forest one October half term. It must have been 1987 as Mike Smith was the Radio 1 breakfast host and I remember cooking bacon on the Trangia stove, in a field behind a scout hut in Fordingbridge, whilst listening to T'Pau's new single China in Your Hand, it was a gorgeous Autumn morning.  http://asymptotia.com/wp-images/2007/08/Radio_dynamo.jpg I had a red plastic battery operated radio that we listened to as we walked. That radio once got us into trouble on a snowy February in Dartmoor as the magnet in the speaker affected our compass, a rookie error that put us out a couple of miles searching for a postbox on Rough Tor.   Radio 1 was the station to listen to, the new music was heard first on this station, and alongside Mike Smith the line-up included Simon Bates, Mike Read, Simon Mayo and of course Steve Wright. Whilst at Uni I still enjoyed listening to Simon Mayo's breakfast
Read more