I've set my home page so that immediately under this blog there's a block displaying my 'latest' album. I've also discovered that, as this simply means the album that appears first when you view the albums in the organizer, this can be any album you like as you can re-order the albums so that the one you want to display is first in the list.
Which is a long-winded way of saying that if you scroll down below the blog you'll see a mosaic of my London A-Z album; a collection of London streetname signs. There are around 350 of them (and growing as I have more to post...) so it displays a different selection every time I open the home page.

But why take photos of street names? From a practical point of view it's useful when you're wandering around taking photos as it helps to identify the location later but once you start doing it, it can become a bit of an obsession. It's not only the origin of the names - I've put brief notes about this under some of the photos - but the signs themselves that I find fascintating; there are so many different styles and types from different eras and varying from location to location.

There are the old, faded painted signs



The possibly even older carved stone signs

Signs showing the old metropolitan boroughs (abolished in when the GLC was created in 1965)



Tiled signs, particularly in Hampstead


And more...
But gradually these old signs disappear (although I think many, if not all, of the Hampstead tiled ones may be listed) to be replaced by bland, modern signs conforming to the latest style guidance so it seems good to document them while they're still here. We had a group for them in the other place... Maybe here later, who knows? Too much else to do at the moment.

[Footnote: Would prefer the photos slightly smaller but can only easily post thumbnail (too small) or this size. Would also like to flow the text. Maybe time to brush up on my html?]