le grande depart…

last weekend the tour de france was in London…and it so totally rocked! We watched the first time trial of the tour from outside the queen’s digs and then wandered up the road to Blackfriars Bridge to say goodbye as they pushed off toward Canterbury for stage 1. check out some pics on flickr including one of Cadel Evans- 41 – cycling towards St Pauls.

rainy bank holidays

we are enjoying the second saturday of our long weekend at the moment. The bank holiday naming is a bit bizarre but I suppose it is quite accurate. It has been raining quite heavily all morning but hopefully we are going to venture out soon to see a photography exhibition at the Tate Britain and enjoy some time under our umbrellas. This is perhaps the only place I have lived that buying a nice brolly doesn’t seem like an indulgence but a necessity!

london in the spring

one of the best things about where we live in london is that i get to walk to and from work. This means two things, one i don’t have to puke in bins outside the station on my arrival and two I get to enjoy time seeing the sights which in my case aren’t the inside of a tunnel. At the moment however, walking around london is a bit of a health hazard as the air is thick with pollen. After a couple of days you get used to seeing people walking past you choking on the stuff or trying to get things out of their eyes, but it does feel a little like nature is striking back. Hopefully it will all be over by the weekend, but until then i am very tempted to wear a japanese style face mask and goggles for protection…

where is Mr Darcy?

As a bit of a birthday treat on Friday we drove up to the Peak District and on Saturday visited Lyme Park, otherwise known to BBC Pride and Prej fans as Pemberley. As you can imagine I was most excited and although I requested nicely, Justin refused to take a dip in the lake in his long johns. Rather selfish I am sure you would agree.

30!

how did i suddenly become 30? as you can see from above i definitely haven’t grown up but the wrinkles and the double chin are starting to show. April, Alex, Justin and Anne helped me celebrate on the night and we are planning a birthday ale crawl this coming sat. If you are here we are meeting at Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street at 3pm if you aren’t, wish you were here.

k x

i love japan

if you haven’t checked out the extreme excellent-ness that is www.plasticbamboo.com do yourself a favour. if it doesn’t make you want to run out and buy a plane ticket to tokyo immediately, i will eat my pink kitty chan phone accessory. This is our fav link of the moment – http://www.1-click.jp/

happy monday!

ahhhhhhhhh berlin…

who would have thought that we would have a berlin drought for a whole 2 years. on the weekend we went back for four days and got a fill of grit, grunge and graffiti and suprisingly I spent more time looking at the city without the viewfinder of my camera coming between us. Coolest moments – seeing Willem Defoe in Mitte and having breakfast with Vladan and Sally at the Schwarz Pump.

it snowed!

we woke up this morning to a very rare london treat – snow! I took these on my way to work and was a little embarrassed at being such a tourist until I noticed that lots of people were doing the same thing apparently it hardly ever snows heavily enough to reach the ground like this. Of course it was all melted by day end but I am watching the clouds hopefully for more winter wonderland in the morning.

crazy weather

you may have seen on the news that we have been having nuts weather the last couple of days in London. Last thursday was probably the worst with gale force winds causing all hell to break loose on public transport (average journey home 3 hours! lucky my legs can get me home in 40 mins), London Bridge Station to loose its roof and the Tate Modern loosing a bit of its famous stack light. But we did get great armageddon skies to go with it so the photographers amongst us can’t really complain. Below is a pic I took from Blackfriars Bridge looking west last week.