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Over the weekend a new work by Banksy appeared on a wall outside the Post Office sorting building in Newman Street near my work.

There’s no tag, so it’s possible it’s not by him but it certainly looks like a Banksy and the fact that, according to the Mail, it required three stories of scaffolding to be erected makes it audacious enough to be his. After all, this is the guy who hung a smiley faced version of the Mona Lisa in the Louvre.

More pictures in the gallery.

Last Wednesday we had lunch at 30 St Mary Axe, otherwise known as the Gherkin. Designed by Foster and Partners, it is the second tallest building in the City and one of my favourite London buildings. For years I’ve been meaning to see inside on one of the London Open House days so I was excited when Kathryn managed to book a table for lunch at the exclusive restaurant at the top of the building. The restaurant is a private dining club and so is not open to the public.

The very top of the building houses a bar with an incredible view. The effect is so stunning it is hard to describe. It really is at the top with nothing but a cone of glass above. This means that unlike most skyscrapers, the building cannot house the lift equipment at the top so a standard lift goes to the 34th floor and then you have to change to another lift that pushes you up to the 39th. This is the restaurant floor and then a marble staircase leads up to the 40th floor bar.

Unlike the day before the sun was shining and we could see all the way from Canary Wharf to Battersea Power Station and beyond. Check out the pictures in my new SmugMug gallery.

Wilma stayed with us on New Year’s eve and she was a very well behaved little monkey. In the morning we went for a walk along the river before Jonathan and Louise collected her.

In the afternoon we had our traditional Afternoon Tea on New Year’s Day, although this year it was at the Lanesborough as the Savoy is closed for a year for refurbishment.

The Lanesborough turned out to be excellent. We had a table by the fire and the scones were particularly good. There is simply no more civilised way to see in the New Year.

Here’s to an exciting 2008!

On the weekend we went to a CCO party at Hywel’s place and, it being (nearly) the 5th November, fireworks were involved.

Alan had originally planned to bring just a few sparklers along but once he got to the firework shop he couldn’t resist purchasing a small arsenal of rockets, roman candles and something that looked like an anti-tank mine. Sanchia also brought some rockets along so there was no shortage of things that go bang.

We were a little nervous about setting off these things in Hywel’s fairly small decking at the back of his house, especially the ones with directions to light the fuse and then retire at least twenty-five metres away. But the ghost of Guy Fawkes was smiling on us and it turned out that Dylan was a qualified fireworks technician so everyone sat back and let him run the show. He assured us that they only say twenty-five metres in case the thing tips over and starts strafing the onlookers with white-hot pyrotechnic stars but it was ok because we were putting them in a big pot filled with cat litter.

It was awesome. Especially the anti-tank mine. And by awesome I mean, you know, terrifying.

I’ve decided to put on another Austral Sinfonietta concert. A break of nearly five years must be long enough to dull the memory of the stress and expense these things cause.

The concert is on September 6 and I’m at that scary stage where things have been booked, money has been paid but I’m still not 100% sure I’ll even have a full orchestra on the day.

All the previous concerts I’ve done have been at St Paul’s Covent Garden, mainly because they were so much cheaper than anywhere else in central London. Some time in the last few years they must have realised this and they have put their prices up. So the concert is going to be at St James’s on Piccadilly instead.

Actually, so far it seems to be a bit less stressful than before. Maybe this is because I’m older and wiser.

Or maybe it’s because Kathryn is doing most of the organising.

After five years, I have decided to consign the old site design to the archives and move frogcake.net over to Wordpress.

The old site worked ok but it wasn’t the easiest to update with new articles or pictures and until yesterday the RSS feed was updated manually by hand! It was as I was incorporating a new RSS class into my site that I realised it was time to either rewrite a whole chunk of code, or move the site across to a more professionally built product.

It was interesting looking back over the last eight years’ worth of posts and seeing how my attitudes (and writing style) have changed.

Back in the summer of 1999 we were a couple of young Aussies just off the boat. I seemed constantly surprised by the scale and cost of everything and I remember we were literally down to our last £50 when we both managed to get jobs (we used to share a ready-meal to save money).

Over the years we’ve been to most parts of the British Isles and a fair chunk of Western Europe as well. We’ve been to the west coast of Ireland and the north coast of Scotland. We’ve seen castles in Wales and the Pyramids in Egypt. We’ve strolled through Central Park and cruised down the Grand Canal in a gondola.

We’ve seen Mozart at the Coliseum, Strauss at the Royal Opera House and Beethoven at Glyndebourne. We’ve been to the Last Night of the Proms and seen the Medici Quartet play in the Reform Club on Pall Mall.

I’ve conducted concerts in St Pauls’ Covent Garden and Kathryn has sung in the choir at the Royal Hospital. We’ve recorded Beethoven with the Corinthian Chamber Orchestra and sung Rachmaninov with Collegium Musicum of London.

We got married, became British citizens, I got an MSc and Kathryn works for an architecture practice that has had more influence on the London skyline in the 20th century than any other.

We are both a bit older and wiser now but London is still an amazing, fascinating place to live. Looking back on what we have achieved, having arrived in the UK with not much more than a couple of suitcases, I’m actually rather proud.

A Northern bottle-nosed whale swam up the Thames on Friday and made it about as far as Battersea Bridge. This morning I went to have a look and I took some pictures.

This is supposedly the first time a whale has been seen in the Thames since records began for this kind of thing but I saw on the news an historian from the Museum of London said that it has happened once before in the 17th century. Then, as now, thousands of people flocked to the river to catch a glimpse of the creature. It shows how attitudes have changed when you consider that then, they harpooned the poor whale but today rescuers have managed to catch the whale and are in the process of dragging it back out to the estuary.

It’s great living in central London. There’s always so much interesting stuff happening on our doorstep.

The No 19 Routemasters won’t be growling past our windows much longer. According to the London Bus Page, the last Routemaster will pull into the Battersea Garage on 1 April 2005.

This is just one more in a growing list of routes that have been phasing out their Routemasters over the last year. By the end of 2006 there won’t be any left.

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like Routemasters. Sure they are noisy and bouncy and they leak when it rains, but they have character. They are so quintessentially “London”. Like black cabs, Big Ben and Buckingham Palace.

The Routemasters are fifty years old this year. They come from another time. A time of Pea-soupers. A time when people weren’t as concerned about safety. Try introducing a new vehicle now with no doors but just a big gaping hole at the back where people can jump on and off at will. And there isn’t anything quite like that thrill you get as you leap onto the deck of a moving Routemaster, clinging to the pole, secretly thinking how cool you must have looked.

And what will happen to all the conductors? They are all slightly mad in their own unique ways. What will happen to them? The guy who gives a commentary of the central London bus stops. The man with the oversize hat to contain his huge dreads. The old bloke who seemed to speak in words he had made up himself. What will they do?

So the other weekend I decided to take a few photos of them before they went the way of the Concorde. They are in the gallery.

Also, I have decided not to post any more geeky comments on this site. If you are into that kind of stuff you will be able to find it on my other website,www.sharedmemory.net.

It is the British Grand Prix this weekend at Silverstone. There are plans to bring a Monaco style GP to London and to promote this idea there was a parade of F1 cars down Regent street on Tuesday night.

Working nearby and finishing at 4:15, I thought it might be cool to wander down after work and have a look. By the time I got there at about 4:30 Regent Street was already lined with people four-deep. So I stood around for a while staring at the same empty road as half a million other fans. Occasionally some security people would walk past. There was not a car in sight.

After about an hour of this, the crowd had grown even more and I was comforted by the fact that if all the blood were to drain to my toes and I was to pass out I wouldn’t actually fall over. Having run out of lamp posts, people were now scaling the scaffolding in front of a building site in amusingly reckless ways. The crowd, strangely bored with standing on one spot looking at nothing, voiced encouragement, pantomime style, as a tubby fellow had a go, exposing a builder’s cleavage on the way up.

My spirits lifted briefly as the safety car roared up regent street. Unfortunately, no F1 cars followed.

Fifteen minutes more of this and I gave up and headed for the bus stop. There were flashbacks to Millennium Eve as I was trapped by what seemed like a thousand bodies on all sides. Eventually I made it to my bus stop and after waiting for a bus for about forty minutes, I decided I may as well take some photos of what I could see as I had lugged my camera in especially. By this time I could hear the F1 cars and assumed them to be somewhere in the middle of the crowds. Piccadilly Circus was bursting with people. Not only were the roads overflowing, but it appeared the buildings were as well. A large number of people were actually on the roofs of the buildings lining Regent Street.

Having given up on the buses and Piccadilly Circus tube being closed, I headed for Leicester Square tube station. It was there I found all the buses and jumped on an exceedingly slow 19 that took the most diverted route imaginable. Not only did it not link back up to its normal route until it turned on to Battersea Bridge, but it didn’t stop once and if I hadn’t leaped off at the traffic lights I would have finished up at the Battersea depot.

So, I didn’t actually see any cars. But hey, I got to stand around a lot and take some photos of a whole bunch of people. Yay.

Well, Matt should be landing in Cairo right about now. I hope he packed some sunscreen. I checked the weather: 37C. Yuck.

He was originally going to fly to Cairo from Algiers, but decided to swing by London when an earthquake changed his itinerary. Unbeknownst to me, he had been in contact with Kathryn and they had hatched a plan to surprise me on my birthday.

We had just returned from tea at the Ritz (photos here), an experience I thoroughly recommend, and as I walked through the door I was greeted by a voice which intoned, “Good evening.” Needless to say I was somewhat surprised.

That night we had dinner at Wagamama in Covent Garden. Matt paid for that. The next morning dawned bright and blue, and by a stroke of good fortune it was a bank holiday and I had the day off. So we went to Bluebird for breakfast, alfresco style. It was lovely. Matt paid for that too.

After a hard day’s shopping we had dinner at Pizza Express at the end of our street. Yum, pizza. Matt paid.

It was great timing, really. I had a few days off, as did Kathryn, it was my birthday and the weather was bloody marvellous. We had a great time and were sorry to see Matt go.

There are pictures in the London gallery.