Last day in the office!

Loving the *free* Christmas (either Pork or Turkey) dinner with all the trimmings...if you had the time you could eat it in the canteen on a proper plate with drinks and crackers etc. but I took it back to my desk in a takeaway box (still fantastic) as it's my last day in the office this year (bar a tiny bit of working from home) so I had a few things to finish off... ;)

I feel a bit guilty talking about the *huge* giveaway in reception happening at the same time that I stumbled into...it was like a free black-friday scrum for staff...*astonishing*...Not sure how I'm going to get everything home!

In summary - *This* is how you do the week before Christmas - I've never seen anything even remotely like it anywhere else I have worked in all my long years!  So God Bless you current employer...and here's to many, many more years to come! <:0

The Tower and the Shard

...Ancient and modern... ;)

Update - Urm...guess I'll have to investigate what's going on with these stupid flickr watermarks later on... :(

Ho Ho Ho...Christmas Party Aftermath...

So, while all those who attended the Christmas party last night are creeping around their homes as quiet as mice (not having made it into the office as yet, if at all) - all those of us who didn't are here enjoying the *huge* free breakfast laid out (I'm guessing) *primarily* to soak up their (sadly absent) woes - a multitude of sticky cakes, croissants and pastries, a legion of bagels (largely salmon/egg/cream cheese related but some ham and cheese affairs) and a horde of *hot* muffins (sausage and egg, egg and mushroom or bacon and egg from the looks of things, but there were so many I gave up going through the piles)...yeah, I took a proper tummy-full...mountains left for the casualties (although they will probably all be congealed and cold by then - he says, licking the liquid egg yolk from his fingers)... ;)

Update - Can this be true?  A *mountain* of McDonalds has just arrived in the office also...I'm not going to need to eat for the rest of the year at this rate!!

Southwark Cathedral Carol Concert

 

Okay, it's Christmas now!

Picked up the Christmas TV guide for Flyingpops (in my bag ready for the trip home)...

...and if you didn't already see on Flickr, I wore a completely over the top Christmas jumper (etc.) for charity on Friday (which went down extremely well) -

- and then *today* the work is picking us all up from the offices in Wapping, loading us all on to coaches (at 11am-ish) to go to our big Carol Concert in Southwark Cathedral (next to the new offices) and then super secret Santa on Thursday (which is my last working day before Christmas day)!  There is absolutely no doubt about it...It's CHRISTMAS! ;)

Will post some pics from the office Carol Concert later on if I get a chance...!

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!

How does this work...

...as a reliable delivery method to kitchens in central London?  *Surely* - someone or something is going to want to take advantage, even if it's just a cheeky urban fox or a gang of unruly pigeons?  I'm only talking about Southwark here (it may, or may not, happen elsewhere)...but it's a rather tempting proposition that everyone blindly parades past every single morning...is it just some sort of a moral test of one's self? Certainly, there would be a fairly easy answer if one were down on one's luck...then it would just be the tiny matter of finding some way of cooking up 3 pounds of bacon, asparagus and mushrooms on the South Bank in the rain...

The Thames this morning...

...shot from the middle of Tower Bridge...sometimes it's nice when you miss the shuttle bus... ;)

No Legolas! To your bed!

You are *not* in the Hobbit and you blooming well know it...! Bad Elf of the Woodland Realm! I'm *very* cross with you...! >:(

London in the Fog

Quite amazing views today (trying to get into the office early, best option being to walk again - oh well) - First up - More London Place to the North East...

More London Place to the South West (you can normally see the Shard in the gap in the middle - no chance today)...!

London City Hall (and the fountains full of frolicking children - in more merciful weather)...

Approach to Tower Bridge (heading towards Dunwall Shad Thames)...





...and some of the boats in St Katherine Docks...Just need a Ripper Murder now...hehe... ;)

Update - a few of these pics made it onto The Times Facebook feed... ;)

Tower Bridge Closed to Traffic...

A very rare occurrence, unfortunately caused by a road traffic accident on the south bank (which no-one would wish for), but an unusual opportunity presented as a result, to walk across Tower Bridge, in the middle of the road, in the middle of rush hour (at the start of my commute home last night)...

The only real way to get to London Bridge (with any sense of urgency) was to walk, everywhere else was gridlock or chock-a-block...I'm pleased I took the walking option...quite beautiful... ;)

8,9,10,11,12,13

http://i.imgur.com/l4ujT3P.png (Well - 08:09:10 11/12/13 anyway)... ;)

Salfords School Nativity Play!

By Order - No pictures of the kids on Social Media (of course)...!  But no harm in putting up a picture of the incredible hard work that obviously went into making the stage - and of course Thomas in his amazing star costume - The "star" of the show (geddit?)... ;)

He even had a speaking part - delivering it perfectly (and nice and loudly too)...quite how the staff managed to teach the kids all those songs and dances I will never know!  Amazing! :)

Reigate Christmas Fayre 2013

Quick Video highlight reel from the weekend (mostly Santa arriving in Priory Park via helicopter)! ;) Oh and we can't miss this one - Thomas coming down the Helter Skelter all on his own - He actually held up his hand to stop me at the steps at the bottom and said "NO DADDY - JUST ME - I CAN DO IT" (at this rate, Poppy is going to be skiing down Everest by the time she is four - the amount she is boiling with will to push past him at every turn!) -

Loads more pictures in the (growing) Christmas 2013 set over here... ;)

Christmas Tree is up!

Kids were *so* excited when they came down this morning to find it (they had no idea) all lit up and in the corner of the living room! ;)

Quick reminder to self to re-hook up the curtain tonight, looks like I must have trod on it last night bringing the tree inside! ;)

So cold today!

...and the train was delayed by a points issue at Gatwick...Brrr!  Still, I got to watch the sun come up over Royal Earlswood Park (which was nice)... ;)

The Thames at Wapping...

...the Thames Path to be precise...on a murky day... ;)

Yay!

Yum yum Chilli Dogs!

Oh and BBQ spatchcocked chilli chicken on the side... ;)

Office Christmas Tree is up!

Whoops, missed the main one in the other office (a bit less higgledy piggledy!) -

Greater London...

Yes, getting there, I think! ;)

Going to see Santa...!

Okay, bear in mind I'm still getting used to this new way of shooting...but here are a couple of Zoe highlight reels from the weekend...!
First up Reigate Garden centre -

- then Chessington Garden centre -

- (I need a few more dedicated stills in the middle of the "zoe"'s I think...we shall get there!  Now to tidy up my telephone (it's basically full!) using my free new 23Gb storage on my dropbox account (phew)!

Update - Wow, typed in my password on the phone and it did it all automatically...!  HTC One = amazing... ;)

Zoe, zoe, zoe...

...yeah, so I'm still trying to work out how best to use Zoe...you can do this sort of thing...(it's an automatic process, but from the looks of things they only stay on the server for 700 days)...I really wish you could upload the excellent slideshow (there may yet be a way I haven't discovered), but when I had a look at the files on my storage card this morning --over the weekend-- I took 5.1Gb of Zoe "pictures"...this is just *way* too much to use for routine purposes, finding space for all the Canon shots is bad enough, no way I can cope with that sort of volume of files...!  So I'm going to have to prune very carefully and Flickr I think...

There was also a rumour of a load more dropbox space for getting this telephone, so I'll have to look into that also...humph... :S

Update - Ah, what I am after is actually called a Zoe "Video Highlight", I'll have a play and get back to you... ;)