![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Christmas lights
Dec. 5th, 2006 08:17 pmLeytonstone gets the prize for crass stupidity this year. Well, perhaps last year too, since I wasn't here then, but walking along the High Road the other evening I stopped dead when I saw the lights.
Not the first set - coming out of the station (on the way back from Stoppard and carol singing at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
conductrixvitae's), the first thing I saw was a tree hung with deep blue LED fairy lights, and (as one does) I stopped to admire it, and decided to take the slightly longer route home to see what else they'd put up.
The second thing I noticed was that they'd clearly got their LED strings from two different manufacturers, as there's a very noticeable change halfway down, and two different shades of blue.
The third thing was that the pretty white lights strung down each side of the streetlamps are actually bog-standard incandescent bulbs.
Twenty clear bulbs, uncovered or otherwise unguarded, on each pole, for quite some distance. I shudder to think how much energy they're wasting, how much excess hear they're giving off (that's more or less the equivalent of an electric bar heater on every streetlamp, out in the open), and how many they're going to have to replace by the end of the month. At least, this being London, the extra light pollution won't be noticeable.
I like Christmas lights a lot, if they're well done, but off-the-shelf efforts like this, clearly done on the cheap and without any imagination, are just depressing.
Not the first set - coming out of the station (on the way back from Stoppard and carol singing at
conductrixvitae's), the first thing I saw was a tree hung with deep blue LED fairy lights, and (as one does) I stopped to admire it, and decided to take the slightly longer route home to see what else they'd put up.The second thing I noticed was that they'd clearly got their LED strings from two different manufacturers, as there's a very noticeable change halfway down, and two different shades of blue.
The third thing was that the pretty white lights strung down each side of the streetlamps are actually bog-standard incandescent bulbs.
Twenty clear bulbs, uncovered or otherwise unguarded, on each pole, for quite some distance. I shudder to think how much energy they're wasting, how much excess hear they're giving off (that's more or less the equivalent of an electric bar heater on every streetlamp, out in the open), and how many they're going to have to replace by the end of the month. At least, this being London, the extra light pollution won't be noticeable.
I like Christmas lights a lot, if they're well done, but off-the-shelf efforts like this, clearly done on the cheap and without any imagination, are just depressing.
