Faded Fangs

If you go by bike you see more of your surroundings than if you were driving.  But I was reminded yesterday that if you go by foot and have a wandering eye, you'll see even more.  Walking over to Ditch Alley from Egerton Drive, I spotted a wall sign that I must have passed thousands of times.  I must also have stopped seeing it at some point, probably way back in the 1960s until it disappeared from my seeing eye under what I'll call the blindness of familiarity.  It's on the Blackheath Road end of Egerton Drive on the west side:

A closer look will reveal the words

ARTIFICIAL TEETH

???? 10 till 7

10 till 2 Saturday

I wonder why they'd chosen the word ''artificial'' instead of ''false'' - I suppose it might have been following the expression ''artificial limb.''  After all, we wouldn't dream of calling a prosthesis, say, a fake leg, we'd simply call it an artificial leg.

This faded sign is just 50, 60 yards up Blackheath Road, where the Taylor & Sons sign remains.

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Perhaps some of our road markings could also be classed as faded signs.  They certainly can be as fascinating and undecipherable.  Here's a landing strip for a Vertical Take Off and Landing Bicycle.  It's a bit small so it would require a very skilled bicycle pilot to get both wheels in the box.  (Apparently, because it's surrounded by a continuous line it would be illegal to cycle into it.)  

Its main function, of course, is simply to accustom drivers to ignore bike lanes and routinely drive over them.

Oh look, there's another one on the other side of the road...perhaps it's a game of hopscotch

Seriously though, I've no idea what the point of them is.  And I'd lay odds that drivers won't know either.

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Finally, just because I was passing, here's the Beerseller's Asylum on Nunhead Green.  I saw the name on the old Stanford map and the very idea of it has made me smile every since.  It's between the Nun's Head and the Pyrotechnic's Arms.