I'm rather taken with Geoffrey, a friendly giraffe used to promote Toys R Us since 1965. I'm even more taken with his bench inside W H Smith in Chippenham. Prior to the chain's sale earlier this year, it was agreed that certain stores would also have a Toys R Us section within them. Geoffrey's bench marks the transition from one of our traditional High Street retailers into something more fun and entertaining, though sadly rather empty when I took this photo. At some point the name W H Smith will morph into its new owner's chosen rebrand name, T G Jones* - rather bland in my opinion which appears to have been made up, unlike the original name which refers to the company's original founder Henry Walton Smith and reaches back to the year 1792. * = it has already in nearby Malmesbury, though they have yet to erase the etched W H Smith from the glass doors. They seem to have retained the corporate blue colour on the shopfront too, for now at least. UPDATE - it tur...
Oh they're pretty. Will they grow up to be huge hosta-eating snails though..?
ReplyDeleteVery cute..... but also grrr snails :)
ReplyDeleteCJ - I'm intrigued by them. They look very much like the tiny freshwater snails I'm used to seeing when I do stream survey work. But which of the familiar ones in the garden do they grow up to be? I'm sure they'll like my hostas though!
ReplyDeleteGaz - yes they are! But half an hour later they'd disappeared :/
They certainly are different from the baby snails in my garden, which have pretty flat shells. Perhaps you're about to become a site of special scientific interest!
ReplyDeleteWhy do babies of any species look so cute?
ReplyDeleteWhat was their fate?
Did they live to see another day or did you despatch them?
Helen - we nearly moved to North Wales a few years ago and the house I liked the look of did have a SSSI in its garden!
ReplyDeleteDobby - they simply crawled away! I'm trying to find out what they were because they're unlike the usual garden snails we see and they look much more like freshwater snails.