{"id":428,"date":"2005-12-25T16:52:46","date_gmt":"2005-12-25T15:52:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/?p=428"},"modified":"2006-03-25T15:56:41","modified_gmt":"2006-03-25T14:56:41","slug":"alone-again-festively","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/archive\/alone-again-festively\/","title":{"rendered":"Alone Again, Festively"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A clear, crisp, bright lunchtime. I indulge in my usual Christmas Day routine: feeding the ducks in Waterlow Park. Playing Santa to the coots.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve rented out &#8216;Grand Hotel&#8217; on DVD. A new catchphrase of mine is &#8220;Sorry, I can&#8217;t come to your gig \/ club \/ party \/ dinner.  I&#8217;m having an attack of the Garbos&#8221;. They understand. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/garbo.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"400\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>All by myself today. And I wouldn&#8217;t want it any other way. <\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas1.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"DE at the duck pond, Dec 25th 2005\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas2.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas3.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In an obligingly seasonal gesture, a small robin approached as I was feeding the ducks:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas4.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Close up:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas5.jpg\" width=\"264\" height=\"168\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Other photos taken today: the London skyline as seen from Highgate. It&#8217;s a Bright Christmas, though a little chilly:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas6.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>A young man playing football in Waterlow Park:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas7.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>The Christmas Day noonday sun:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas8.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Highgate Village High Street:<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas9.jpg\" width=\"375\" height=\"500\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>In the window of the local bookshop there&#8217;s a display of Schott&#8217;s 2006 Almanac, labelled &#8220;Local Author. Signed Copies&#8221;. So, there&#8217;s one more piece of trivia to add to the umpteen lists and facts contained within: Mr Schott lives in Highgate. You don&#8217;t have to be a bestselling trivia goose to live in Highgate Village, but it helps. <\/p>\n<p>His original compendium, &#8220;Schott&#8217;s Miscellany&#8221; was quite fun when it came out a few years ago, but clearly it made too much money for him to NOT shove out something &#8211; ANYTHING &#8211; with his name on, every single Christmas since then. Well, at least it&#8217;s his own bandwagon he&#8217;s jumping on. I wonder how many people received a copy of this today?<br \/>\n<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/dickonedwards.co.uk\/diary\/wp-content\/xmas10.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" alt=\"\" title=\"\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A clear, crisp, bright lunchtime. I indulge in my usual Christmas Day routine: feeding the ducks in Waterlow Park. Playing Santa to the coots. I&#8217;ve rented out &#8216;Grand Hotel&#8217; on DVD. A new catchphrase of mine is &#8220;Sorry, I can&#8217;t come to your gig \/ club \/ party \/ dinner. I&#8217;m having an attack of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dickonedwards.com\/diary\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}