Sunday 28 June 2009

Street Piano

First thing first...
...before I get told off by Al for not uploading this video to flickr, I have tried uploading this about ten times. Thinking I was probably doing something wrong James tried uploading it too, and it still didnt work. Apparently it is a known error with this type of file!

Anyhow, in my last post I mentioned about a piano having been left in St Helens and wondering what it was about. It is part of Street Pianos, 30 pianos are left around London until 13th July, then the pianos are going to be donated to local schools. How good is that ;o)

On my way to Liverpool Street Station on Tuesday night, on the corner of Leadenhall Street and St Mary Axe, I saw this bloke sitting at the piano, and thought I would wait to see if he would start playing it. There was a lady sitting next to him and I could hear her tickling the ivories. So I got out my trusty mobile phone and recorded it for your viewing pleasure ;o).



I apologise for the poor quality of this video but am going to take my camera with me to work next week, so hopefully I will be able to get something better ;o). Incidentally Wednesday night I witnessed what can only be described as a "classically trained" lady playing the piano. She was really good and was doing all the head movements too ;o).
I had Thursday and Friday off this week, and we decided to go to Westfield Shopping Centre, I just went there primarily for a look around. It wasnt as big as I thought it would be, but is bigger than what we have here in Chelmsford.
I ended up buying a t-shirt from DKNY Jeans, it was in their sale too, so was a bargain to boot ;o).
I must have done loads more walking about than what I normally do, as the backs of my legs were really aching all night!
Friday we went to Southend, just for something to do.
While waiting for my Indian Daal Curry Vegpot to cook, I was looking at the packaging (as you do) and I read this ode to lunchtime on the inside of the sleeve...
"Let us give praise for lunchtime. For it is a time for when work is stilled. Computers flick to screensave, the mouse ceases to scurry and people of the world unite in the need to be anywhere but near a workstation. They may sally forth into a place of fresher air. They may look at a newspaper or favourite tree. Any they may visit the office kitchen to indulge in a veg pot. They may think to themselves "What a lucky soul am I, to be alive on this planet and have all of these vegetables, and stuff in a pot" And then they may go back to work".
I will have to look out for more of these ;o).
While doing the big shop this morning, I swiped the scanner display holder to get my scanner (so i could pack the groceries as I go around) and the lcd display was reading my card number for about two minutes then the screen went blank and started going through what looked like a "reboot". The display about a minute later then was back to normal saying "please swipe your card" or something like that, so I swiped my card again and again the same thing happens. At this point the other people trying to get their scanners are asking "are you able to get your scanner" and I tell them about it rebooting etc. The screen again at this point asks to "please swipe your card" so I do this again and the display now says "you can only have one scanner" *sigh*. I tell the other person who asked what was happening and she says "let me try my card" so she tries her card and it said the same thing! At this point I thought to myself there is no point hanging around I might as well get on with the shopping.
So I am down the fruit aisle and I see someone with a scanner, (and he was scanning his shopping too) where he got his before it all started to reboot. A couple of minutes later I see a lady going behind the customer services counter so I ask her if she can reset my card as I was unable to get a scanner and she tells me "the scanners are out of order". So I tell her about the bloke and his scanner and again she says "the scanners are out of order, Im going to put a notice on them". Then right on cue the bloke comes to the counter and says "my scanner has stopped working". I then had to carry on with my shopping.
I must say having to load all my shopping on to the conveyor belt and packing at the end wasnt as bad as I thought it would be. But I still prefer packing as I go along.
I weighed myself this morning and not only have I lost the 200 grammes I put on last week, but lost another 200 grammes too ;o).

9 comments:

James (UK) said...

I'm still not sure what's up with Flickr, or indeed, if it's the video itself... there's loads of "talk" on the forums about 3pg uploads not working, but I notice blogger has re-rendered it as mp4 now, in the embedded flash.

(Non-"techy" people may want to stop reading at this point..

I'll see if I can use "Scrapbook" in Firefox to grab the flash out of the page and then you could try uploading that, possibly...

James (UK) said...

Extracted it as an .mp4 video, like I thought it would be, and that plays fine "locally", in QuickTime. Saved it for you, if you want to try uploading it to Flickr later.

J

chocolat lover said...

thanks for that James, Ive now uploaded it to Flickr ;o)

Every one should have theyre own IT person on hand ;o).

Anonymous said...

I did try and comment on this yesterday, I truly did, but Blogger was having some sort of strop and wouldn't let me.

I think I'll just borrow your IT person as and when if that's okay!

It must be a quite recent problem with Flickr as I uploaded two videos from my mobile not so long ago and didn't have any problems with those at all. In fact the only one I did have trouble with was the very first one I did. Glad you managed to sort it in the end though.

Innocent have things like that on a lot of their packaging. It's nice of them to give you something to read while you're waiting. You'll have to see if they're all the same or if there are several different messages out there.

chocolat lover said...

yes, I can lend him out ;o)

I found another interesting titbit on another vegpot, so will post it in my next... errrrrr... post.

Anonymous said...

what a neat thing to see/experience....good thing you had your phone with you!

I guess I shouldn't feel weird toting my camera along with me, everyone else has cell phones with cameras nowadays!

ITs are nice to have at hand, but they tend to be a little 'off' in one way or another ;) (only teasing, i promise, but the ex does IT and stuff, and he is more than a little off)

chocolat lover said...

Ironically since brining my camera with me I havent seen anyone using the piano again!

James sometimes seems to be a "off" with me too, but he does help in the end ;o)

chocolat lover said...

Welcome Barbara ;o)

The important question is...

...how did you come across my blog?

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