When Pigs Fly

To commemorate, er, the 38 1/2-year anniversary of The Dark Side of the Moon the reissue of Pink Floyd's back catalogue, some clever PR company decided to recreate the famous cover of the album Animals by flying an inflatable pig over Battersea Power Station once again today. It wasn't the same pig, it seems, as the original went on to provide inspiration for the Tamworth Two by escaping from its smoky prison.

Although Wish You Were Here is my favourite Pink Floyd song by quite a long stretch, it isn't every day you get to see a famous album cover being recreated (well, unless you live as close to Abbey Road as I do, that is), and it was just about feasible to get from my office to the river and bank in a (long) lunch break, so off we trotted.

I was expecting quite a crowd on the North Bank, near Pimlico, but there were just a few other joggers and photographers. My photo is, of course, taken from the wrong angle and I don't have any image editing software to flip it. Soon after we arrived, the pig seemed to lose its enthusiasm--or, at least, its helium--and started to sink towards the river, so I'm glad we arrived when we did. I still think it's pretty cool.

As for my own favourite album cover, I don't really have one. I don't own that many whole albums (many of those albums I once owned in full have since been culled down to my favourite two or three songs, in a bid to save space on a small hard disk drive) and I haven't saved the cover art of most of those. If pushed, I might say The Stone Roses's eponymous debut album but I don't have any strong desires to recreate it.