Twelve Months Twenty-Four Photos. Numbers One and Two - January

So, January 2013 wasn't great, there was some family stuff going on which involved some journeys to my parents which the winter snow didn't help. When it came to travelling down there the travel was at the whims of the flash frost. Saint Katherine's Docks in the snow is slippery as hell, those cobblestones are extremely treacherous. I'd heard about The Honesty Shop through the Facebooks a day or two before, the drivers were taking it all around London. They were 'selling' various Fair Trade and independent traders tat, I think I dropped some coins in the Honesty Box but didn't bother taking anything.

At the end of January we had the big Shard Open Days. It was interesting to get a different perspective on a city I'd been doing so much walking around in, I was following streets from above and remembering when I'd walked that way. What is it about the human desire to go to the top of high places and look around? Poor old Westminster Cathedral with it's tower and creaky lift, once it must have been worth going up there but now so many of it's views are blocked by nearby new tower blocks where the workers nip up to the roof for their cigarette breaks. At least The Shard won't have that sort of problem for a while.

My own suggestion would be that, unless you're going in the Summer and feel lucky, take your time queueing for tickets rather than pre-booking, you don't want to go up there in bad weather or fog and so not get a good view.

Twelve Months Twenty-Four Photos. Numbers Three and Four - February

Well, people had made a baby, so I got introduced to them in February, even if they spent most of the time asleep. This has been the closest I've been to the entire growing process beyond the first-hand experience we all get and it's been often fascinating if occasionally alarming. In my walking of London I was largely concentrating on the west side of my map, Notting Hill and Westbourne Grove, where these two photos were taken. The latter, like Maida Vale later on in the year was bland, Notting Hill had a certain faded glamour, like a movie starlet some forty years past it's prime, but who looks their best in Winter?

Twelve Months Twenty-Four Photos. Numbers Five and Six - March

I've only just noticed I didn't rotate the second picture before I put in on Flickr. Oh well...