29th June 2010

I walked past this ship in a bottle on the 4th plinth in Trafalgar Square this evening when heading back to Charing Cross after a work dinner. My colleague was rather perturbed though that the sail arrangement was inaccurate, personally I just thought it looked rather nice and was happy to allow the artist a little leeway.

28th June 2010

Today I went to Wimbledon with my Mum, where we enjoyed smoked salmon sandwiches, champagne, strawberries and cream and Pimms. Oh yes, and some exciting tennis matches, including Andy Murray beating Sam Querrey in straight sets.  How nice, after the pain of watching England's pitiful 4-1 loss against Germany in the football World Cup, to see a British sportsman actually winning without causing their supporters immense discomfort in the process.  There was a temporary blip at the end of the first set but fortunately after that Andy got his act together and we were spared the agony of a long-drawn out match wondering whether or not he would keep a nation's dreams of having a British champ at Wimbledon alive.

27th June 2010

Unfortunately, unless you go for one of those rather soul-less instant BBQs, the follow-up to a BBQ is the rather less pleasurable task of cleaning it.  Fortunately for me, this is a chore that Mr W is rather good at! :)

26th June 2010

This is one of my favourite summer sights - Mr W in charge of cooking lunch on the BBQ! Only trouble with having such a feast at lunchtime is that it makes you then want to spend the rest of the day relaxing in the sun. Nice for us but not so good for all the poor plants waiting to be transferred to more spacious pots - oh well, there's always mañana...

25th June 2010

This is the view from the rather scary floor to ceiling windows in my eighth floor room where I've been staying in Hamburg this week. I felt quite nervous when I first approached the windows to check out the view on Monday and even though I was somewhat reassured by there being the roof of the lobby area a couple of floors down I still avoided the windows for most of the week! I'm much relieved to be back in my bedroom just one floor up at home tonight.

24th June 2010

I get the impression sometimes that Mr W views my work trips to Hamburg as one long jolly and my photos from the last two days may be doing nothing to dispel that myth.  Therefore in an effort to set the record straight, today's photo is submitted as Exhibit A in the case for proving that we do actually to some work on these trips.  The main meeting finished at lunchtime today, but before we can return home and put our feet up there are more meetings to prepare the follow-up action lists and minutes - it really is quite an intense week!

23rd June 2010

This evening Germany beat Ghana 1-0 in the World Cup, however considering the celebrations on the streets of Hamburg this evening you could be forgiven for thinking they'd won the whole thing! Mind you I wonder what the celebrations were like in London after England managed to scrape through in their pool - next up is Germany - what's the betting that match goes to penalties! :)

22nd June 2010

After our meeting today we got taken on a tour of the Hamburg Maritime Museum. It was created from one man's personal collection, including over 36,000 small scale ships models. Prior to being placed in this 9 floor museum he kept them in his three storey house - his wife must have the patience of a saint! Anyway this was my favourite exhibit - a Lego model of the Queen Mary 2. I was also slightly bemused by the pickled fish in jars but didn't really fancy taking a picture of them!

21st June 2010

Today I am going to Hamburg for work and so I have had to endure the delights of the M25 to get to Heathrow T5. There have however been shopping opportunities to make up for those missed at Westfield last week :)

20th June 2010

These are my father-in-law's shoes and these are the reason that we cycled 26 miles there and back to the other side of Croydon this afternoon.  You see the thing is he left them behind after we were all visiting my parents in Weymouth the other weekend and because we left later we got to bring them back up to London, then somewhere along the line I had a bright idea that we could return them by bike... Me and my bright ideas, my elephant-hunting weary legs are even more weary and now my posterior hurts as well!

19th June 2010

The good thing about elephant hunting is that it's taken us to many new parts of London that we hadn't visited before, from the uber-smart Mayfair to the more gritty parts of town such as Brixton and Elephant and Castle. Today however whilst on the final leg of our hunt in upmarket Kensington we came upon a road named after us! :)

18th June 2010

Now I like shopping as much as the next girl, but I'm afraid Selfridges just doesn't do it for me - it's just too big and sprawling with too many sub-areas so that I can never find what I want. Take today for example, all I needed to do was find 5 decorated elephants (yes, I was elephant hunting again!) and it took me nearly 30 minutes of going up and down the countless escalators and round and round the many floors before I managed to locate them. And even then I'd had to ask several security guards and staff members for help along the way!  Mind you as you can see from the picture Selfridges has been around for over 100 years - so it must be doing it for some people...

17th June 2010

Today's photo was going to be this rather cool old-fashioned convertible car with a canvas awning that I saw whilst running at lunchtime, but then I got home and found our first ripe radish whilst watering the garden.  It may seem dull but this is our first harvest from our new vegetable box that Mr W built for me at the end of last year and so to me it was exciting!  We have now eaten said radish and I can confirm that it was good!

16th June 2010

Today I went to Westfield for the first time, but it was not for the shops. Yet again I have had a busy day elephant hunting - five before work, around 20 whilst on a run at lunchtime and then a mammoth hike across the northern part of the Circle line after work with Mr W culminating in a visit to Westfield to find the shiny pachyderms there.

My feet are exhausted!

15th June 2010

This elephant hunting business seems to be becoming an obsession.  It started as a passing fancy to take a few pictures of some the elephants in the London Elephant Parade, but somewhere along the line it has developed into a full-blown challenge to see all 258 in their original positions.  The only trouble is I still have around 120 to visit and only a few days left to do so, which is how I ended up spending my lunchtime today in Chinawhite nightclub in Fitzrovia. Mr W and I were visiting the rather naughty 'Gerald' who has been banished from Selfridges for being too offensive.  It didn't seem too bad to me - you had to study the leaves quite intently to see the explicit content of the paper they were made from - and I was amused to see a family with 2 young children turn-up for a viewing as we were leaving!

14th June 2010

Falkland House is just up the road from my office and I walk past it most days on my way to and from work, yet today was the first day I've noticed a flag flying outside.  I'm hoping that it's simply because the flag flying is a one-off to celebrate the 28th anniversary of the Argentine surrender in the Falklands War and not because I'm terribly unobservant...

13th June 2010

Today we did the Eltham 5 race and I was going to include some rather dull snaps of the Start and Finish flags but then during the run I saw this guy.  Despite the heat he was running in army gear with a full pack and rather than wearing comfy trainers he was wearing his army boots.  Yet for half the race he was ahead of me and then even once I'd overtaken him he wasn't far behind me - quite an inspiration!

12th June 2010

This is the lake where we went swimming today and I am very pleased to report that I survived without being eaten by a giant fish or pecked by an angry swan!  In fact, I can actually say that I really rather enjoyed it.
The swim induction session was very thorough with an onshore run-through of all the safety aspects, followed by into our wetsuits and acclimitisation in the water - not nearly as cold as I'd expected! We then did one lap of a small triangle with the instructor followed by one lap on our own and upon completing that we were deemed competent enough to swim in the lake on our own and issued with a membership card as confirmation.  I will definitely be going back for another go! :)

11th June 2010

This was my birthday present from Mr W and tomorrow I get to try it out for the first time!  As part of my birthday present he signed me up for an swim induction session at Leybourne Lakes and if I'm honest I somewhat scared about the prospect of swimming in a cold British lake, even with my new snug wetsuit.  Not to mention the fact that the lake is rumoured to have giant pike lurking in its depths!

10th June 2010

The football World Cup starts tomorrow. Mars have launched special packaging and we've got a sweepstake in the office.  Not sure I'm going to get too excited though, despite being a small office and thus getting to pick 3 teams each, I have still managed to select three dud teams - Uruguay, South Africa and Greece.  This morning's Metro said although Uruguay were the first ever winners of the World Cup they weren't likely to be needing the Brasso again in a hurry and described South Africa as the weakest host team since the USA in 1994.  After that I was too depressed to even look what it said about Greece!  Still, I will enjoy munching the Mars Bar and maybe England will give us something to smile about for once...

9th June 2010

I took a walk up to Victoria Tower Gardens at lunchtime today in order to bag some more elephants from the London Elephant Parade, but on the way into the park I was rather taken by this statue of Emmeline Pankhurst and the fact that someone had laid flowers by it.

Emmeline Pankhurst was leader of the British suffragette movement, which helped women win the right to vote, and turns out she died on 14 June 1928 which may explain the flowers at this time.

8th June 2010

After the excitement of yesterday I seem to have developed a bit of a summer cold and so this is my drink of choice today....

7th June 2010

7th June 2010 - my birthday and I was a very lucky girl today, with lots of nice presents, cake, dancing and dinner :) here are all the cards that made it through the post in time.

Introduction

A while ago I met someone who was mid-way through a personal challenge to take a photo every day for a year. Looking back now I can't remember why they were doing it and what they were planning to do with all their photos, in fact to my shame this lack of knowledge may simply just be because I never even asked.

Fast-forward to a couple of months ago and I was trying to think of new ideas for blogs having finished writing about my half-marathon challenge and being somewhat lacking in inspiration for new baking blogs to write. 'Wouldn't it be nice to document the highs, lows and mundanities of my life in pictures?' I thought and so the idea of posting a photo a day for a year was formed. I wanted to start on a special day and since the beginning of the year had long since gone when I had the idea, I decided that my birthday would be good date to choose instead.

And so, today the 7th June 2010 my new blog is born....