Seeing The London Christmas Lights 2022

This has been my fourth year seeing the Christmas lights with my mother in London. This is also the first time I used two different cameras - there was my digital one I usually use, but I recently got a smart phone with a camera installed on it. I uploaded the digital camera ones for this blog post because they were the easiest ones to upload, but hopefully I can upload the phone ones in the future.

It was quite a different experience this year compared to the last two years due to not so many COVID-19 regulations being in place. Adding the fact that the visit was much closer to Christmas Eve than in previous years and what we encountered was a busier London with more people out. That said, it did not stop us from getting a good look at what we wanted to see, as well as some new decorations.

Waterloo Station had what I consider to be a guilty pleasure of mine - a Haribo-themed Christmas tree. Extremely commercial, but for some reason I can't help but love it. Especially with the sweets being used as decorations. There was also a pretty banging Christmas tune playing at the same time.

We took the train to Green Park, where one of the first things we encountered was the Ritz Hotel decked up.

Bond Street had very different lights this year. For the past many years, they've have the same peacock-styled ones, but this time they had crowns. This is what the street looks like in the daytime.

And this is one of the lights at nighttime.

Fortnam & Mason's had impressive window displays as always. This year, the main theme was sayings and words of advice paired with images of a bellboy trying to get tasks done before Christmas, with a cat and mouse helping him the whole time. This one is paired with the saying "don't give the game (or cat) away".

And this is one of the bellboy making mince pies while a cow watches from the window.

What I particularly liked was the small little details involving the mice. Here is one decorating a bauble.

And here is one ready to post mail off.

The advent windows are still at the top of the building as usual, and I was able to get plenty of photos of them at nighttime.

Outside the churchyard was this Christmas tree. Interestingly enough, the lights on it showed up better on my camera during the day than during the night.

Waterstone's was dressed up for Christmas as usual. Though the windows were going through some revamping at the time, they were still able to have this amazing model of Raymond Briggs's Snowman outside on top of the entrance.

They also had a model of the Snowman inside with penguin toys underneath him. Not sure how penguins were able to appear in the Arctic in those films, but they still look cute.

And of course they had the Christmas tree in the Children's books section as always. The sweets are always a nice touch to it, and the reindeer head was a humorous addition. Unfortunately, this is the only good picture I got without people's faces in it where I could easily crop it, but hopefully it still works.

There was also a smaller one, which looked just as lovely with its baubles on.

On a less Christmassy note, they were celebrating the release of the recent Matilda movie with an installation set up to look like Miss Trunchbull's office. Obviously not a place you'd want to visit in real life given her nasty personality, but that chocolate cake looks so yummy. No wonder Bruce Bogtrotter nicked a slice from it.

It was in Waterstone's that I had a hot chocolate with a mince pie brownie. There was more mincemeat in it than chocolate, but it had a nice gooey texture and it was something festive and different to try for a change.

This is both my selection and my Mum's selection together. My hot chocolate did accidentally overflow, but it didn't stop me enjoying it!

After looking round Waterstone's and taking more photos there, we headed out. The Piccadilly angel models were exactly the same as last time, but it didn't stop me from capturing them on camera.

Regent Street also uses the same angel models, but again, it's nice to have a gander at them.

Barbour had a Paddington-themed display, and given my love for the character, I couldn't ignore the opportunity to take photos at all.

On the way to Carnaby Street, I encountered this interesting model of a reindeer in a shop window, so I had to take a photo of that as well.

I've always loved how Carnaby Street looks at Christmas time, but they really topped themselves this year. To celebrate their anniversary, they had a selection of the many different lights they've used over the past years.

There were the marine animals from 2019 and the inspirational quotes from 2020, but they also had the Rolling Stones lips, which I hadn't seen up there before. I particularly liked these giant robin models.

There was also this rather amusing snowman model hanging in the air.

Conduit Street had these very pretty holly decorations. Compared to the other Christmas lights and decorations, they were a lot more modest, but that was partly why they were some of my favourites from this year.

Oxford Street also had modest decorations, in this case the nice star decorations from last year.

The lights on the buildings next to them really helped to add something to them too.

To celebrate their anniversary, John Lewis has been putting up models of teddy bears in their stores, both large and small. The window display in London was particularly impressive, such as with this Christmas tree made up of a stack of them.

There also seemed to be a common pattern of some of the teddy bears tripping over and falling on their backs. This is just one of them.

There were some things I didn't get to take photos of due to running out of time and having a train to catch, such as the Selfridge's store windows, but that can always be visited after Christmas.

This year was pretty chaotic for me, especially with regard to my mental health and anxiety issues. However, there's always something calming about seeing the Christmas lights in London every year, even if the crowds are chaotic and the shops busy. For me, Christmas is about unwinding from the year as a whole and just taking a gander at the world getting dressed up in the festive spirit is one way I do it.

Celebrating 10 Years Of Club Penguin's Operation Blackout

Remember back in 2012 when people thought the world was going to end because of an absurd misunderstanding of how the Mayan Calendar works? People were churning out books, songs and even Minecraft mods based around it, and yet on the 21st December, nothing happened. Which, being a major skeptic of the whole business in the first place, I wasn't surprised at all. Besides, as long as you didn't take the mass hysteria over the whole deal into account, there were absolutely zero signs of this so-called apocalypse about to occur during the "build-up" to it.

...Except in Club Penguin. For about a week, the apocalypse really was coming. And it was the most badass moment in the franchise of all time.

It's exactly ten years since the famous Operation Blackout mission occurred and ended in Club Penguin. Originally planned to last from the 14th November to the 4th December 2022, it received so much positive feedback that it got extended by two days.

The live-action Disney Channel promotions were outright dire and didn't get the whole scope of the mission across. It was just teenagers explaining to each other what you had to do and making it seem like light-hearted fare. The adverts made by the game itself though really let you know what you were in for. It showed that for once, Club Penguin as you knew it was know more and would now go into straight-up dystopia territory.

Essentially, longtime villain Herbert P. Bear, after failing to stop the E.P.F. spy organisation that protects Club Penguin Island, finally proved he was more than a joke villain. He now planned to block out the sun in order to freeze his penguin enemies to death. He'd already made the machine, which was causing an eternal winter to come about the island in response...and he successfully destroyed the E.P.F. base to make sure they couldn't do anything.

Of course, Herbert had ended the P.S.A. (the originally spy organisation) sometime back when he blew up the facilities...with a popcorn bomb. Yep, you read that right. A popcorn bomb. And despite the place looking pretty bad on the inside as a result of the explosion, that was the extent. Barely anyone except the P.S.A. themselves reacted when the explosion happened, and the E.P.F. replaced it soon afterwards anyway. Certainly a far cry from setting another building on fire and having fire engines failing to put it out.

Why Herbert planned to block out the sun and freeze the island over when he himself hates the cold and would have risked death himself is a mystery. I'm guessing though that he was planning to give them an ironic death and was making sure to stay safe in his own lair, so that when the penguins were no more, he could just undo everything and then turn the island into a warm paradise for himself.

Fridge logic aside, the rest of the mission is ingenious. All the other E.P.F. members are being hunted down and being cryogenically frozen in order to stop them from interfering with Herbert's plans. Meanwhile, you as the player have to complete set tasks in order to shut down the machine that Herbert is using to block out the sun. Oh, and the whole time, Herbert has turned the island into a dictatorship where fun is banned and the only play you can watch is of his "life story".

Yes, this all happens in a family-friendly online game. It's both horrifying and amazing at the same time. Both a mixture of dystopia and spy thriller. If you encounter anyone who claims that Club Penguin was just simplistic "kiddie" fair, let them know about this mission and it will help change their mind.

And as for when you do complete the mission? You get treated to an epic cutscene in which sunlight returns to the island, the E.P.F. are freed and Herbert is forced to watch his plans fall apart from a distance. It's not even like the other cutscenes that you received in other missions - it has a genuinely cinematic vibe.

Best of all though? The Director, previously one for hiding their identity, finally reveals themself...and it's none other than Aunt Arctic everyone's favourite agony aunt and the top suspect for being the Director's true identity in the eyes of the fans. It's a wonderful moment, and the voice acting that they chose to add for the scene really heightens it.

In the eyes of many fans, this is where the franchise peaked. The story was brilliant, the gameplay amazing and it really changed the course of the game. It had gone to places it would never have explored beforehand, Herbert was no longer a joke and the Director's identity was no longer hidden. It's kind of a bummer that everything else that happened in the franchise afterwards was just Disney using it to piggyback their own franchises, but the mission still has a positive impression on fans today.

For more discussion on why Operation Blackout was such an awesome moment for Club Penguin from a Club Penguin fan's perspective, I highly recommend checking out YouTuber Keyan Carlile's video essay on the mission and its history here, which really helped give me a new insight into it and goes into depth on the love and talent put into it by the game developers and fans. There are also many fan projects that exist out there linked with it, as well as the walkthroughs that you can watch in case you were unable to play the mission while it was happening.