I started piano lessons the summer I was 8 years old, and I remember that by Christmas that first year, I was able to pick out the song Little Drummer Boy to be able to play something Christmas-y on the piano. I think it was the following year that someone — probably my parents — gave me a book of popular Christmas songs. The first one from that book I learned to play was the song Silver Bells.

For whatever reason, I associate that song with Perry Como – I must have heard him sing it on one of those Christmas TV specials he did when I was a kid. However, it’s really Bing Crosby who is more associated with that song, as it turns out, as he was the first to record that song.

He was not first to sing it, however. I had no idea until I looked it up just now that the song Silver Bells was first introduced in a movie called The Lemon Drop Kid, performed by the stars of the movie,  Bob Hope and Marilyn Maxwell. Click here to see a clip on YouTube.

Anyway, I bring this up because earlier this month when Chris and I were in London, it rained almost every day. This meant that the streets were wet almost every day.  Which wasn’t ideal weather for walking around … except it did lead to some interesting reflections on the wet pavements.

As I stood in the rain one day, taking the photos in the gallery below, I kept hearing in my head the following piece of lyrics from that song:

… Strings of street lights
Even stop lights
Blink a bright red and green
As the shoppers rush
home with their treasures…

Now the people who kept getting in the way was I was trying to take these photos were more likely on their way to work or class at the nearby university. And the stop lights turned not only red and green by also yellow – at one point it would actually be a yellow-red. And I didn’t ever get a photo liked of the plain yellow one.

However, in honor of Christmas Eve today, the Christmas season, and the Christmas song, Silver Bells, I’ll offer a few photos of stop lights from the wet sidewalks of London.

Enjoy.

*****

P.S. I couldn’t figure out a good way to work it into the body of the text above, but my fondest memory of the song Little Drummer Boy is not my attempts to play it on the piano, but rather the duet by Bing Crosby and David Bowie, which you can here by clicking here.