@pomfob.bsky.social

@pomfob.bsky.social

160 Followers 191 Following

A photo of a frankly rather ridiculous stereo separates system. There's a white shelf unit with some records neatly filed, two reasonable looking speakers on top of the unit with black grills and sober dark wood sides. The hifi itself is a turntable for the records and a total of 8 (eight) silver boxes with lights, dials buttons and sliders. I'm sure it's fun to play with and it will sound fantastic, but you don't need to go to those lengths to get a good sound. Having said that, I'm just jealous. If I had the money, time and skill to set that up, I totally would. And then play some lofi distorted nonsense on it. Oh, I forgot to mention, along with the speakers, turntable, amps, pre amps and equalisers, the system has a reel to reel tape connected to it. Nice.
A black and white photo of the writer Kathy Acker, born 1947, died of cancer 1997. Acker has short, bleached blonde hair, multiple ear piercings, a chunky looking black leather biker jacket and a couple of rings that stretch half way up her fingers. She looks inscrutable. She's looking slightly upward to look at the camera, so it's like she's looking directly at you, the viewer. It's not a look I'd be comfortable about if I was on the receiving end. As I mentioned in the main text, I wrote my college dissertation about her. Acker would have been alive at the time so I should have tried to interview her. I regret that I didn't, but I doubt I'd have lived to tell the tale.
A still from one of the Kung Fu Panda films. This shows Po the eponymous martial arts bear striking a pose before striking down his enemies. He's stood on a roof against a threatening red sky. He looks ready to pounce, resolved and confident. He also looks a bit ridiculous as he's wearing a pair of too tight trousers.
A screenshot of the BlueSky home page for the inspiration of my Modern French Republican Calendar. This is @sansculottid dot es, the original French Republican Calendar account. If they see what I've done, I hope they understand it's done with love, not taking the piss. The background picture at the top of the page is two classical figures against a tree on the left, with the sun breaking through clouds taking up the rest of the picture. Probably an allegory for the founding of the Republic. The avatar in the circle at the top left is of a smiling young woman with short dark hair against the backdrop of a French Tricolore flag. Oh, and she's holding the head of an aristocrat. Below the pictures is the standard page set up for BlueSky. Over on the right, a bell with a plus sign button, a button with the word Following, and an ellipsis button for more actions. Going down the page we have as follows The French Republican Calendar A stylised robot head to indicate this is an automatic account or bot. The number of followers, 5.4k, but only following 3 accounts. That's three, not three thousand. 1k posts Then there's an explanation of what this account does. A celebration of the French Republican Calendar. Posts daily at midnight, Parisian time. Website is frenchrepublican dot info Ping @folkwizard dot online if I'm broken And if you're not following this account, you should if you want to understand what the heck I'm doing.
Firstly, those other famous Finns would be Hannu Mikkola, rally driver and Half Man Half Biscuit lyric, and film director Aki Kaurismäki. That's it. Now, the photo is of the Finnish hardback edition of The Hobbit, as illustrated by Tove Jansson. In Finnish, the title is BILBO EN HOBBITS ÄVENTYR. The illustration has Bilbo at the front with big eyes and looking rather nervous, pretty much as you'd expect from Jansson. He's wearing a long green robe and a long white cap. He's carrying a round green shield and a long battle axe. In the background are some blue mountains, some small figures on horseback and a big blue dragon flying overhead.
A photo of a red kite, milvus milvus soaring against a clear blue sky. As the name suggests, it's a gingery red bird. It has some pale patches, most notably on the underside of its identifying forked tail and at the end of the wings. The red kite also has a pale head. The tips of it's wings, the finger feathers, are dark, almost black. Piercing eyes and a hooked beak mark it out as a meat eating bird of prey.
The painting Boar Lane, Leeds by John Atkinson Grimshaw. It would have been painted in the 1870s or 1880s, but it's recognisably the Boar Lane of the 1980s or today. Like many Atkinson Grimshaw paintings, it's set in twilight. The sky is a pale, washed out grey. The buildings on either side of the street are dark, but their windows are brightly lit with yellowy light. Big windows, so presumably they're shops. The lights are reflected on the wide, wet street. There are lots of people about, but they're all dark and anonymous. Yeah, it's well gothy.
A photo of a bonobo sitting in some grass and giving the photographer a particularly hard stare. You're a primate, not Paddington Bear. Bonobos used to be known as pygmy chimpanzees, and they do resemble small chimps. They have darker faces, and generally they have a much more relaxed but organised social structure. Mind, this one doesn't look relaxed. They look fed up waiting for the photographer to get their picture.
A photo of a drum machine on a white background. It's an Oberheim DMX, and if the internet search is to be trusted, it's the same make as the original Doctor Avalanche. It certainly looks quite old. It's a plastic box with wooden sides, lots of square black plastic buttons and sliders to programme your required drum patterns. Andrew Eldrich was a proper nerd about working out how to get the most out of a drum machine, apparently.
A photo of male and female smew ducks, mergus albellus, gliding from left to right across coppery coloured water. Hopefully that's because it's autumn and it's reflecting the leaves rather than horrible pollution. They're both quite small birds. The female is to the front of the picture. She has a grey body and wings, with a large white patch on the edge of her wings. She has a white neck and chin, a short grey bill and a dark gingery head, feathers slightly spiky at the back. The male at the back looks very different. He also has a grey bill, but there the similarities end. He's mainly white with a couple of black patches on his back and a black mask around his eyes. His feathers go up on top of head, making it look like he has a rockabilly style quiff.
A photo of a cardboard box on the traditional cyclorama background, with a pile of flat cardboard boxes waiting to be put into shape. They're brown, unmarked, cardboard. Not a lot to be said about cardboard boxes is there? But without them, piles of stuff would take over your home, moving out would be almost impossible and lots of items would be broken. They make excellent dens for domestic pets, great toys for imaginative children and when too worn out to store things in, flatten them out and put them in the garden to keep down the weeds. In my research for today's celebration, I saw an article about making a bed from cardboard boxes. You're welcome to give it a go.
A still from the 1928 black and white, silent film The Passion Of Joan Of Arc. It's a close up of Renée Falconetti in the title role. Her head is tilted back, she's weeping and she looks utterly devastated. Which you would, SPOILERS she's looking up at the pyre she's going to be burned alive on. Her hair is short. Sitting awkwardly on the side of her head is a mock crown made of coiled rope. She's also carrying a goose feather as a mock sceptre.
A photo of the office of Pom, also the spare bedroom at Casa del Poms. There's a blue grey rug on the floor, with a pattern of regular dots. From left to right in the room, the window is open and you can just make out a silver car across the road. There's a large painting on the wall advertising the 2011 Nottingham Indie Pop All Dayer. That's at the top and you can't see it. What you can see is the lower part of a figure in a pink dress with white rabbits and SAT OCT @THE CHAMELEON. Then there's a bookcase, with various things like records and files but no books. In the centre of the room is an ironing board. Its cover is blue, with illustrations of electronic devices like iPods, game controllers and wireless headphones. Fitting really, since the ironing board doubles as a standing desk. To show this, there are two wooden crates on the board, each with a laptop on them. The laptop on the right is open, on, showing a pale blue origami flower on a paler blue background. It's a black Lenovo ThinkPad and it's my work laptop. The laptop on the left is shut, chunkier, older and my personal one. It's covered in stickers but you can't make them out. They're on the stickertop.art website if you're interested.
An illustration titled THE HISTORY OF COMPUTERS. It has six drawings of computers over the last eighty years, two rows of three, each computer on a coloured circle. The first is a desk in itself from the 1940s. Then something that fits on a desktop but looks more like a typewriter representing the 1970s, and so on to the laptop representing the 2020s. Which probably looks a little dated already.
A black and white photo of the novelist, philosopher and all round hero Ursula Le Guin. This is a photo of her when she was younger, as I've never seen any of her before about the age of seventy. This is a head and shoulders portrait. She's wearing a white shirt and stood against a white background. This emphasises her very dark hair, cut in a severe Louise Brooks style bob. Ursula's head is turned over her left shoulder and she's looking at something out of shot. Her expression is inscrutable. Is she wondering what's going on over there? Or is it amusing her? Or is she pulling a face to confuse the viewer?
One of my favourite photos. It's from 100 years ago, so perhaps we can forgive its title, Marcel Breuer With His Harem. Actually, no. It's a shitty misogynistic thing to call the photo. In fairness to Breuer, the photographer probably chose it, not Marcel. And it's more commonly seen with him cropped out. The photo is black and white, with four people stood against a wooden plank wall. On the left is Marcel Breuer, in a sober suit, neat haircut and a quizzical expression. His right arm is across his chest, his left raised to his face, holding a cigarette. To me, he bears a strong resemblance to Andy Dad Dancer McLusky of Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark. The other three people are students at The Bauhaus, left to right Martha Erps, Katt Both and Ruth Hollos. They look cool as fuck. Erps is the shortest, with short, curly, tangled up dark hair. She's leaning slightly to the right and has an amused look about her. She's wearing a sleeveless, belted, possibly denim dress. Both has even more tangled hair, though it's probably straight. She's wearing a white shirt with something around her next, possibly glasses, possibly a bow. Her eyes are wide and she looks spooked. Finally, Hollos is wearing a darkish smock. Her hair is, you guessed it, dark and tangled, dropping over her eyes a little. She looks the tallest of the three, and has a severe expression. Maybe she knows what the photographer is going to call the picture.
A photo taken by yours truly of a page from National Geographic May 2025. The title of the page is HOW PENGUINS SPREAD OUT, and unsurprisingly is a graphic showing illustrations of all eighteen species of penguin. They're drawn in three rows, starting top left with the Emperor, the second row being the crested penguins like the Macaroni, and the bottom row being the smaller ones, ending with the Little Penguin on the right. The background to the illustration is pale blue.
A photo of four McVitie's Penguin chocolate biscuits. They're all in red wrappers, each illustrated with a penguin taking a pose while uttering the the tag line P..P..P...PICK UP A...PENGUIN. The first two bars show penguins grooving to something on an iPod, through headphones as penguins are polite. The third bar has a penguin with a sock puppet of a penguin. That's getting a bit metaphysical, isn't it? The last one shows a penguin rather fancifully bouncing about on a pogo stick. That's just unrealistic, isn't it? By the way, the penguins depicted on the wrappers appear to be either King or Emperor penguins. Not entirely sure, I'm not an expert.
A photo of a pipe organ in Sydney, Australia. Looks like a secular venue like the City Hall rather than a religious building. The first thing to say about this pipe organ is that it's fucking huge. Not the largest, but taking up the side of the great hall it's in. You can see a tiny figure at the keyboards at the bottom centre of the photo. The structure of the organ is white with gold decorations, blending in with the decor of the hall. The pipes themselves are plain black, in stark contrast to the rest of the space. The save around the slits where the air comes out are a brassy, coppery colour. Pipe organs are a mixture of musical instrument, art and architecture. It's built into the building. You're not packing this down and taking it on a world tour. I've not heard this particular organ, but I love what artists like Kali Malone, Ellen Arkboro and Claire M Singer are doing with extended drone music from pipe organs.
A photo of William Hamper, better known as Wild Billy Childish. Born in Chatham, UK in 1959, he worked in the dockyard until he deliberately broke his hand with a hammer and dedicated his life to painting, music and writing. Today Billy Childish is a difficult person would be an understatement. He's on stage, bending over while playing guitar. He's pointing the guitar at the photographer like it was a lance. The guitar isn't in focus, so you can't see what make it is. It's a right handed one that's got a left handed headstock, so the tuning pegs are underneath. Billy is wearing jeans and a plain dark t shirt, which is quite casual for him. He does have his customary deerstalker hat or headcoat on, and is sporting a very fine moustache. White, bushy, going up at the ends. There's a microphone stand to Billy's right, and the stage backdrop might say RENO. Difficult to make out, since the picture is focussed on the performer, and he's taking up most of the frame.
A poster of the various different species of whale. Actually, it says Cetaceans in the top left corner, and a small part of the bottom right is given over to dolphins and porpoises, but the vast majority of the space is thirteen types of whale, plus an elephant in the top right and a human for scale. The whales are everything from the enormous Blue Whale, largest living thing on Earth ever, through the curious looking Bowhead Whale, along to the relatively small white Beluga and the impressively spiky Narwhal.
A photo of a wall of crisps. A grid of five rows and seven columns of crisp packets. From the sublime Seabrooks to the ridiculous lentil chips things. Though I wouldn't say no if offered lentil based crisps. There's some retro beauties like Frisps and Fish N' Chips. Obscurities too, like the rare Worcestershire Sauce Seabrooks. It should really be Hendos, but we'll let that pass. I've never seen or heard of Happy Snax before. Any ideas? The corporate evil of Walkers are also represented, and of course, there has to be the Pom Bear, doesn't there?
A painting that's supposed to be of William Shakespeare. Whether it is or not is debatable, but it's come to be what people think of when they picture Shakespeare. It's the head and upper body of a white man in his thirties or early forties, wearing a black shirt with a plain white lace collar. He has a short dark beard and long dark curly hair, heavily receding at the front. He has a gold ring in his left ear. Shakespeare is giving the artist the side eye, and he's looking a bit impatient. Probably got a play to finish.
A photo of the Eiffel Tower on a sunny, almost cloudless day. Neat lawns in front of it, trees and flowerbeds on either side of the lawn, white buildings far in the background, deep blue sky overhead. The tower is a big, red brown metal framework structure on four stout legs looking out over Paris. It's one of those things people instinctively know, even if they've never been anywhere near it.
One of Kazimir Malevich's Suprematist paintings. Doing alt text for this isn't going to be easy. If I'd wanted to keep it simple, I should have gone for Black Square, which is a black square and nothing else. Ok, this painting has a white background. It's entirely abstract and non figurative, but it is very precise. We're not in Jack The Dripper Pollock territory. On a wide, grey curved form there are a lot of rectangles of different sizes and shapes. There's one long black rectangle almost cutting the picture diagonally in half. About half the rectangles are black, the others being white, yellow, a small and thin in blue towards the bottom left and a longer but similarly thin mauve rectangle towards the top right. I expect that Malevich had very defined ideas about the placing of the shapes on the canvas. I don't know what they were. It could be a town plan, or maybe there's a military theme. Puts me in mind of Dazzle Ships. The anti detection paint scheme before radar was invented, not the LP by Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark.
A photograph of an electric fan. It's the electric fan we have in the house of the Poms, recently cleaned too. It's sat on a pale wooden stool in front of a white chest of drawers. The fan is curved silvery chrome metal legs on either side of a silvery chrome basket to contain the actual fan and its motor. The fan itself is dark blue, as is the motor, but that's behind the fan so isn't visible. There's a round blue badge in the centre of the basket, with the make of fan, BIONAIRE, in blue letters across the middle.
A photo looking down on a garden maze, at Longleat I believe. Lots of green hedges all sinuous and curving. You could imagine getting lost very easily in there. This maze has the unusual feature of several small wooden bridges dotted around it so you can climb up them and see where you are. You can make out a couple of figures doing just that on the bridge in the foreground.
A photo of a set of gamelan in a wooden floored hall. There are various drums, gongs, percussive bowls and xylophone like instruments set up. The gongs and bowls are brass, the wooden frames supporting the instruments are red and gold. A golden serpent decorates the top of the gong frame.
A still from the film Man Of Aran. It's black and white, as you'd expect from a film made in 1934. The frame is of the cliffs on the coast of the island, above a wind lashed Atlantic Ocean. At the top centre, two figures are running along the cliff. They're two of the central characters in the film, the son and the mother of the family unit. Though they're locals and not professional actors, the family weren't actually one at all. SPOILER ALERT! The still comes from the end of the film, where the small fishing boat of the father of the family is wrecked on the shore but he escapes unharmed. If you're a fan of (British) Sea Power, you'll know this as you'll have seen Man Of Aran with their rework of the soundtrack. This will be when No Man Is An Archipelago aka The Great Skua kicks in. The French pianist Christine Ott has also done a very good new soundtrack recently, along with Taboo and Nanook Of The North, two other Flaherty films that look like documentaries but aren't.
A photograph of male and female ducks gliding along in water. They are the subjects of today's celebrations in the modernised French Republican Calendar, scaups, aythya marila. They bear a passing resemblance to mallards but are smaller and quieter. The male on the left is black on his head, breast and tail, with a pale grey back and white sides. The female on the right is mostly shades of brown. They both have grey bills and very bright eyes. This pair look like they've had a row and aren't talking to each other.
An illustration to represent email. It's pale blue oval on a white background, and a rusty red envelope on the oval. Popping out of the envelope is a white piece of paper with a great big black at symbol, the @. I hope whoever invented that symbol gets royalties every time it's used.
An illustration for the debut release by the ambient drone group Badger Damage. It's black and white, same colour scheme as a badger. The words BADGER DAMAGE are top centre in white. The impassive face of a badger, striped white and black takes up most of the picture. To emphasize the musical nature of the project, superimposed over the badger's eyes is the cogs of a cassette tape. They look a bit like hipster sunglasses. Two small screws are in the bottom corners, like there would be on a cassette. In case you're interested, here's a link to Badger Damage's Bandcamp page. https://badgerdamage.bandcamp.com/album/10-3-26
A screenshot of the Ecosia search engine on from my phone. I've been using it for years instead of Google. Unlike Google, Ecosia is trying to do good. It has planted millions of trees with its profits. The screen is mainly shades of green. I assume it's meant to symbolise a forest. In the top left hand corner is a small pencil symbol in white on a grey circle. At the top centre is the word ECOSIA. Across the middle of the screen is the statement Runs on green energy. This statement changes throughout the day. At the bottom of the screen is the search bar and the usual bottom of a phone clutter. It's easy to swap to Ecosia as your default search engine and it helps the environment.
A photo of the front of a building on a rather dull looking street. The building is painted black, though the lower section is glass panels. Some are clear, some painted black and a few painted pink. On two of the pink panels is writing in white, too small to read but since the building is the live music venue Future Yard in Birkenhead on the Wirral, I guess that it's what bands are coming up. On one of the black panels you can make out the venue's motto, The Future Is Birkenhead.
A photo of a starling, sturnus vulgaris, standing on a branch. Their expression is cheerful and attentive. They're smallish birds, bigger than sparrows but smaller than blackbirds. This one has orangey coloured legs, for toes on each. One toe is really long. The starling's beak is bright yellow, which means they're probably in the mating season, since the rest of the year it's a duller, browny colour. The feathers are dark green, black and a few red brown ones on the breast. There's an oily sheen to them, and pale tips to starlings' feathers give them a spotted appearance. A starling will look dull blackish brown if you catch a glance, but if you actually look a bit more, it's a shimmering rainbow of colours. A lesson for all of us to be more observant if we can.
The cover of a book edition of the Charles M. Schulz comic strip Peanuts. You can tell because it has his name and the title at the top, and lots of the characters all the way down the page on a sandy coloured background. Charlie Brown stands at the centre with a nervous grin. He's surrounded by all the main characters like Snoopy dancing, Linus with his security blanket, Lucy bothering Schroeder and so on. Lots of less well known characters too.
A cartoon advertisement for peanuts. No, not Peanuts the comic strip, KP salted peanuts. It's from the 1970s or early 1980s by the looks of it. There's a bag of KP salted peanuts on the left of the picture. It's dark blue, with a window near the bottom to show the delicious salty treats. For some reason, the part of the bag below the window has red stripes on the blue background. KP and PEANUTS are written in big, yellow rounded letters that were used on pretty much everything in the 1970s. Salted is written in the same style, but smaller and in white. On the right of the advert are four cartoon children, three boys, one girl, all white. Very 1970s. Above them in blue is the advertising slogan, The loveable nuts. The o in loveable is in the shape of a heart. Quite fancy some peanuts now, so the advert works.
The painting A View Of Toledo by El Greco, made at the turn of the sixteenth into the seventeenth century. That's Toledo in Spain, in case you're unsure. El Greco's style is very stark, and seems to deliberately miss out colour that could give the painting a sense of warmth. The walls and towers of Toledo straggle across the middle of the painting, silvery grey and ghostly. They neatly cut the painting in half, the lower section being hills and greenery. Above, possibly the most ominous sky you can imagine. Huge dark clouds almost blot out the sky, but the sun and blue sky poke through. This doesn't give any relief though. The light just emphasises the threatening clouds. The whole scene looks more like a particularly gruelling day along the Pennine Way through North Yorkshire rather than Spain.
A still from a television programme about a group in a recording studio in the 1970s. The frame is dominated by a man in a brown corduroy top, unnecessarily unbuttoned to reveal a slightly hairy chest. He has brown curly hair and a brown curly beard and he wears an expression of ecstatic joy. Why? Because in his right hand, he has a drumstick. In his right, a cowbell. He's playing the latter with the former as if he could go on forever. Ok, it's the actor Will Ferrell in the classic Saturday Night Live comedy sketch where the scary record producer played by Christopher Walken demands more cowbell, much to the rest of the group's chagrin.
A photograph of two pairs of sunglasses on a pale wood surface. They're two of my three pairs of prescription sunglasses, sat on the kitchen table of The Poms. The pair on the left are classic black Ray-Ban style, though the lenses are brown, not black. These are my newest ones. The pair on the right also have brown lenses. They've a brown tortoiseshell coloured frame and are slightly wider than the Ray-Bans. These are my oldest sunglasses. There's another pair that cost about twice what these two pairs together did, and they're shit.
A photo of an old school film camera, sat on a wooden desk. I'm unsure if the photo is colour or black and white seeing everything is monochrome The camera itself is a Soviet era Lomo Lubitel 166. Which unless you're a camera buff will mean nothing. It's a hard black plastic box with a flip up view finder on the top. It's probably from the late 1960s or early 1970s, but the design seems more 1930s. Two lenses, one on top of the other, various numbers and selectors around them. I know nothing about cameras, so I have no idea what that's for, if this is any good or not. However, it looks good, so that's nice.
A photo of male and female goldeye ducks, bucephala clangula. They're in water, probably a lake. The male is on the left. His body is white, his wings black, he has a white patch on his cheek. As you'd expect, the eye is a gold dot. Same goes for the female on the right. She's a mix of brown head, grey body and wings, with some white patches. What's interesting about this photo is that usually, we'd have the two ducks gliding serenely by. Not here. The male is looking directly upwards, his beak open, his head resting on his back. The female is looking upwards too, and appears to be about to copy the male. The pair of them looked a bit tipsy.
An illustration of the types of vitamins and what foods you can get them from. The illustration is in the form of a wheel, with at the centre, the word Vitamins written in a drop of water for some reason. Around that are the various vitamins humans need from A, the eight different varieties of B, C, D and E and just to be awkward, K. The outer wheel shows which foods contain which. For instance, B2 is found in bananas, peas, asparagus and dairy, whilst out on a limb K is in eggs, nuts, green vegetables and a shapeless red brown lump I presume is meat. Sorry, the food illustrations are quite small and not that clear. The eggs in K might actually be more nuts. Seek proper medical advice, not some daft bastard on the internet doing a silly project.
The great stained glass window of Coventry cathedral. It's curved, floor to ceiling and made up of glass rectangles, dark at the edges, before becoming a white gold circle in the centre. There's a wooden screen in front of it, similarly composed of rectangles. It gives the scene a chess board effect. The photo would look completely abstract without the rows of pews on the grey marble cathedral floor.
A black and white photo of the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe. While I was more diplomatic on the upstairs post, I think she's one of the crucial founders of rock n' roll. This picture shows her in the 1940s at a big old fixed microphone. Sister Rosetta is wearing a sparkly frock and playing what looks like a Gibson electric guitar. Sister Rosetta looks absolutely full of joy.
A photograph of a tub of popcorn on a white cyclorama backdrop. The popcorn is looking particularly unhealthy yet tasty shade of buttery yellow. The tub has the word POPCORN on it, and just in case you're still not sure, the tub has popcorn drawn on it.
A still from the original version of the film The Wicker Man. We don't mention the Nicholas Cage mistake. The picture shows the titular wicker statue in the centre, on fire with black smoke billowing out. The local community have set it on fire at sunset to celebrate midsummer. A bank of clouds is low on the horizon under an otherwise blue sky. At a distance from the bonfire, we see the backs of the local community watching their handiwork go up in flames. There's what appears to be a tree stump right at the front of the picture, partially obscuring the view.
A cartoon drawing of Calvin and Hobbes zipping along in a small red trolley. Calvin is a small boy with spiky yellow hair nominally steering, Hobbes is his accomplice, a stuffed tiger toy but also at least as smart as Calvin. They both look happy and exhilarated.
A black and white photo to illustrate the musical genre of post rock, also known as prog rock for hipsters and loud then quiet. The photo is the backs of a load of blokes' heads in a music venue. They're facing a stage which is entirely obscured by bright white light. You can't make out a single thing. I imagine the really loud bit has just kicked in.
A photo of a concert class xylophone in what's either a recording studio or a very professional rehearsal space. Clean wooden floors, plain white walls. The xylophone looks pristine. It's in some ways like a keyboard, only the keys replaced by dark wooden blocks that have been carefully tuned. There are two padded sticks laying on the blocks, ready to play the xylophone. The pads are red. The xylophone is supported on wooden legs. It has grey metal casters to wheel it around easily. All the other metalwork is brass. There are numerous metal pipes or tubes coming from the underside of the xylophone. These are longest at the ends, gently curving to their shortest at the centre. Presumably this is to amplify the sound of the wooden blocks when struck. There are not one, not two but three music stands in front of the xylophone. It is surrounded by other instruments that would class a percussion. A pair of congas, perhaps a glockenspiel. A couple of others I'm not sure about. Maybe a sound shield to control the noise?
A photo of The Tennis, taken by your pal, Mister Pom earlier today. It's the Nottingham Open, from the top of the East Stand towards a three quarters full West Stand. Green plastic seats, grass court, heavy clouds but it hasn't rained yet. Two players, on the left in lime green, the one on the right in red with a white cap. He won.
A photo of a black utility kilt on a plain white background. It's a side view of this skirt like garment to show the external pockets. The kilt appears to be made of a tough, denim fabric. All the buttons, zips and rather unnecessary D rings are of a white metal.
A photo of a European robin, erithacus rubecula. They're perched on a rock or a tree stump, can't tell which. The robin is a round little bird, brown on top, grey underneath with a red face and chest. This one appears to be in a particularly bad mood. It's thinking, get orf my land!
A photo of the Deya Brewery Tap in Cheltenham, taken yesterday by @typicalcowboybullshit on a flying visit. The sky is blue over a courtyard mostly in shadow. To the right are a few people stood at a shipping container converted into a bar. There's a big cylindrical tank at the back, with DEYA painted down it in white. The Tap is on an industrial estate round the corner from the railway station, and one of the units has been converted into a massive beer hall. Excellent beers they are too.
A blue frisbee on a white background. It's a plastic circle for chucking around.
A black and white photo of the surrealist Claude Cahun. They're made up like a doll, hearts painted on their cheeks, short dark hair flattened with a couple of kiss curls as a fringe. I think their expression is meant to be a mockery of alluring. Their lips might be rouged and pouting, but the heavily made up eyes are quizzical and piercing. Cahun wears a scarf around their neck and a top with the slogan I AM IN TRAINING DON'T KISS ME There's a pair of lips drawn underneath.
A photo of Barcelona taken by your pal Pom in May 2017 from the Hospital de Santa Creu i Sant Pau. Sunny day, looking down a tree lined avenue towards the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia, Antoni Gaudi's masterpiece, a gigantic, wildly improbable looking cathedral and the most picturesque building site in the world. You can't see the Sagrada Familia in any detail, just towers and even taller cranes. Nothing does it justice though, and professional photos don't look real.
A photo of a leatherback turtle working its way down a sandy beach to the sea. Leatherbacks are the really big turtles that lay their eggs on beaches, then spend the rest of the time in the ocean. Hence this one looks a bit uncomfortable on land.
A photo of a radiogram on the traditional white background. A curving white backdrop to create the illusion of no background is called a cyclorama in photography. That's a bit of info you only get if you read the alt text. Bonus, eh? The radiogram is a big old piece of kit from the 1950s and 1960s. It's a music centre in the shape of a sideboard. Mainly wood, a cream coloured panel covering the speaker, with a proper old school radio on the front. Big white dials and a tuning panel showing you what stations are where on particular frequencies. It'll have exotic places like Luxembourg, Hilversum and Cleethorpes on it.
A promotional poster for the film Aliens. The colour palette is black and silver. The word ALIENS is across the top, the I replaced by a thin glowing portal. The rest of the picture is the Xenomorph alien, all teeth, acidic saliva, bony whiplike tail and generally a nasty piece of work. Nuke the entire site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.