Keith Lard’s Diary

It is a bit like that song Walking in Memphis, except in Finchley, instead of Memphis. And instead of the land of the delta blues, it could be the land of late night newsagents that sell huge suspicious looking Polish sossidges.

A nice building I saw in London with k.s. also it makes your web browser go a bit mental if you scroll it up and down. I like photos that are geometrickal like this. Also it is a giant picture of the sky which is my other favourite type of picture.

Bad moon rising over London’s Finchley, this is the magical evening view from keithlard’s living room.

It did not really look like this of course, like something out of a Twin Peaks dream sequence, but the exposure made it go strange for some reason.

The riparian idyll of the Welsh Harp. Only 5 minutes from the North Circular, which is peculiar, on the other hand if you are going to build a massive ring road, herons do not have votes.

A curious game I found in the Landseer pub, which is brilliant and has all sorts of games and books, and drinks. Actually normal pubs have drinks as well, so just games and books.

These are the even more frightening animals I met while spending a super weekend with Stephen and Helena, children are a lot of fun but it would be good if there was some type of magnetic containmint field like with a fusion reactor or something. So they could not get at you but dissipate their energy harmlessly (or use it to power local homes).

This is some animals I saw when we went on a special family fun day out to Marwell Zooerlogical Park! Can you guess which type of animal this is, do not write in.

The last one is quite difficult to identify as it does not look like anything from Earth.

More pics from my Heathrow adventure. I went for a wander after dark, getting a bit lost around the maze of freight depots and car parks that surround the airport. I found Concorde! Which was pretty exciting. It was just standing in a yard behind a big fence, next to some bins, which seems wrong. It should be in pride of place in the middle of Terminal 5 or something. You could put 10p in the slot and kids could sit in it and pretend to fly.

The ILS localiser array at the end of 27L. It broadcasts a signal which pilots miles away can zero in on and line up their aircraft precisely for the runway, like airborne Bisto kids. In fact modern airliners can land entirely on automatic, which is fine as long as they do not suddenly home in on the nearest pirate radio station and try to land in Brixton High Street.

Unidentified aircraft about to land on top of me. The next few frames from the camera are blurry, but you can just make out my terrified face diving for cover in some bushes.

The Concorde I found was G-BOAB “Alpha Bravo”. It is a shame that Concordes do not fly any more as it is a beautiful machine, essentially a jet fighter with extra seats. If you look at Heathrow carefully in Google Earth you can see Alpha Bravo in its previous location just off one of the taxiways, surrounded by cones!

This went a bit wrong as you can see, but I quite like the squiggly bits!

F-ODVG, a Jordanian Airbus A310-304 freighter. The next time you go on an aircraft make sure to get its tail number then you can stalk it on airliners.net!

Unidentified 747 passing a few yards above the heads of oblivious motorists on the A30 at Hatton Cross. It is impressive to see something the size of quite a large building flying around the place. I walked around to the departure runway and watched a succession of aircraft throttling up for takeoff, standing behind a 747 while it does that is quite a thrill. It is possibly the loudest sound I’ve ever experienced except for a Mogwai gig I went to once.

And so we leave the exciting world of the airport, at least for a while. I stood for ages in the dark watching aircraft taking off, imagining all the exotick places that people might be going to, eg Hong Kong, Sydney, New York, Rome, Phuket. Then I had a refreshing coffee at the terminal and got the tube home to Finchley.

Well you knew I was not going monochrome forever, I am like Picasso and his Blue period, only black and white (I am not saying I’m Picasso; that is for others to say). I had a super adventure on Saturday to Heathrow Airport, to take some intresting pictures of planes. This is an unidentified commuter jet, probably an Embraer ERJ145, inbound on short final to runway 27L, just around sunset.

G-CPEM, a BA Boeing 757-236, and friends, on the same approach. If you go to Hatton Cross tube station it is right next to the end of the runway, so huge jets are passing about 80 feet over your head! Heathrow is one of the busiest airports in the world, with aircraft landing about 60 seconds apart, so you can actually see them queueing up on final. Do not try to jump the queue especially in front of a Jumbo.

It is a jolly long ride out to Heathrow on the Piccadilly Line, so I was glad not to miss the golden hour when I got there. It had been a fine sunny day, but now heavy cloud was rolling in from the east creating a pleasing letterbox effect.

9V-SPM, a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747-412. You can see the wake from each of the four engines, ordinarily you do not want to get this close to them. It could cause a seriously bad hair day.

There is a mesh fence just too small to get a telephoto lens through, they must have designed it specifically to annoy photergraphers. There is razor wire on top specifically to annoy terrorists. Still it is quite attractive visually, this was shortly before the police and Special Branch arrived to arrest me for taking suspicious photergraphs of the security perimeter.