Paul Rhodes

Maybe...

Is it trying to claw its own eyes out?

Christmas Ident Calendar Day 5 extra. BBC TV channels almost didn't broadcast over Christmas in 1978 because of strike action. It was resolved at the very last minute. Here's a BBC news report on what happened, with behind the scenes footage of the BBC1 symbol being put together.

It was definitely on the cards ... bsky.app/profile/parh...

Field of Dreamscape

Miss Sweetly loves every one of the delicious Toffees and Chocolates in Quality Street. Major Quality replies, "Would that I were a Chocolate Soldier..."

The Gold Blend couple of their day!

Ah, now, looking at 1936 ads, the characters are "Major Quality" and "Miss Sweetly", who were impressed by the selection of chocolates and caramels, each made to the quality for which Mackintosh's were rightly famous. Any resemblance to characters from the play was surely coincidental.

Here you go! #ChristmasSongBingo
Whammageddon is for losers!!!

"Years and years ago, there was a production of The Tempest, out of doors, at an Oxford college on a lawn, which was the stage, and the lawn went back towards the lake in the grounds of the college, and the play began in natural light. But as it developed, and as it became time for Ariel to say his farewell to the world of The Tempest, the evening had started to close in and there was some artificial lighting coming on. And as Ariel uttered his last speech, he turned and he ran across the grass, and he got to the edge of the lake and he just kept running across the top of the water — the producer having thoughtfully provided a kind of walkway an inch beneath the water. And you could see and you could hear the plish, plash as he ran away from you across the top of the lake, until the gloom enveloped him and he disappeared from your view. And as he did so, from the further shore, a firework rocket was ignited, and it went whoosh into the air, and high up there it burst into lots of sparks, and all the sparks went out, and he had gone. "When you look up the stage directions, it says, 'Exit Ariel.”

Eleven years ago, I wrote to Tom Stoppard to ask about this coup de théâtre from 1949. It took me down an unexpected rabbit hole - in memory of Stoppard, here's what I found.

Birds painted on beer mats.

A new hardback book with my first 50 beer mats.

darrenhaymanart.com

BBC News: Official Themes - David Lowe Music Marking the length of time that David’s BBC News Theme theme has been heard by so many, here’s a new album of David's original mixes for BBC News. Including the iconic “Countdown” sequence and also o...

"Stream now on all platforms..." davidlowemusic.com/product/bbc-...

Cover to That's the Way to the Zoo, written and composed by J.F.Mitchell, sung with immense success by T.W.Barrett

That's the Way to the Zoo ?

Ah, 40 wouldn't even have been half way there.

Kit Williams' Masquerade hare, which is after all a fine jewellery pendant on a chain, being modelled as a necklace.

Honestly never occurred to me that it could be *worn*.

Of course, aside from a surprising variety of programmes about "Invalid Cookery", this also catches things about problems with passwords, legal principles, and a You and Yours about people whose driving insurance was invalidated.

EVERY search result for the word 'invalid' is hidden as "language that some may find offensive'

Checks out...

The Masquerade Hare | Fine Jewelry | 2025 | Sotheby's <p>Set with a ruby eye, the body of pierced design with foliate scrolls, stars and five flowerhead motifs, each set with a cabochon turquoise, suspending five tinkling bells, a mouse, a frog, a bird a...

Damn, already slightly over my budget. Anyone want to lend me, say, forty grand? www.sothebys.com/en/buy/aucti...

Ah, now it makes sense. GPUs are made of Electrons. Each containing a single 1MHz 6502A CPU, so it probably does need quite a lot of them.

Bournemouth Echo From The Archives feature: Bournemouth's Wessex Way was fought tooth and nail by the people of Springbourne. Image is a colourised version of an archive photo of protesters. Their placards have been rendered into nonsense.

Tell me you’ve used AI to tweak an archive photo without telling me you’ve used AI to tweak an archive photo. Breeds musnuey, indeed.

YouTube video by Peter Miles Doctor Who - Derbyshire-ish 1963 #60thAnniversary #DoctorWho

I have finished a three year long project. Original Doctor Who theme remade from the ground up. Going to take a very long nap.😴

youtu.be/pCzrppQtK9Y?...

As one of the BBC’s most extraordinary series returns to iPlayer to mark its fortieth anniversary, Jude Rogers speaks to several key members of the team who made the ecologically minded crime thriller

Why #EdgeOfDarkness makes so much sense in 2025

buff.ly/nIF9mdh

I had them all in Pelican paperbacks. Happy days.

Bakers, one standing in a pit. Photo of obscure provenance but possibly 60s.

Not entirely unheard of, it seems.... Incidentally art was by Eugen Hartung, Mainzer was the publisher.

And more specifically, since bsky doesn't display the quoted post: bsky.app/profile/oldu...

What goes around comes around... bsky.app/profile/alis...

Danish biscuit tin. Unusually containing biscuits.

The Airbnb left us a sewing kit. Someone's put biscuits in it. Bit weird.

Puffin Post vol 1 no. 3, Autumn 1967

Well, it might seem a bit of an unlikely 'holy grail' but at one point, having not even found a picture of it, I did wonder if this issue even existed.

small building at 130 w. 10th

just learned about the delightful 1940s.nyc, which matches tax assessment photos with old maps for maximum street-view time travel. here's the almanac house, where pete seeger & woody guthrie threw basement gigs & partied with dashiell hammett & nicholas ray, among others.

The cover shows the haunted man being haunted by a shadow.

Following the critically-acclaimed release of The Chimes, I've produced two more full-cast adaptations of Charles Dickens’ Christmas stories; THE CRICKET ON THE HEARTH & THE HAUNTED MAN.

Extremely proud of this. It will make your Christmas 100% more Christmassy!

Order here: averageromp.com

THEY'VE ACTUALLY GONE AND DONE THE REGGIE PERRIN BIT