Christmas Market and big wheel, Leicester Square.

Up at 5.45 so that I could catch the 7.02 to Victoria. I'd planned the morning with what seemed like plenty of time but South Eastern Railways conspired to prevent me from getting to the conference venue in Whitehall until 20 minutes after the advertised start time of 9.00am.

The train was late arriving at Bearsted and after Bromely South was apparently following a late running train in from, moving slowly from amber signal to amber signal eventually pulling into Victoria at 8.44 instead of 8.23, a delay 23 minutes.

As there was the  customary crush at the entrance to the Underground my colleague, who had been waiting at the station, and I decided to walk to Whitehall, then it came on to rain. Had the train been on time we'd have walked in the dry.

The conference itself was really, same old, same old stuff as I'd last been doing in Greenwich over 4 years ago. Apart from a new website curating resources and links on E-safety in schools there was nothing startling.

The conference finished at 1.00pm so we walked to Charing Cross so she could get the Underground to Euston for her train back to Manchester. I the walked a fair way trying to find the Nespresso store in Regent's Street, which I eventually did, then walked back from there, along Piccadilly, across Green Park, past Buckingham Palace back to Victoria.

The journey home was punctual and uneventful, arriving back at 16.01.

Time for a walk before dinner, then peeled and salted the last batch of pickling onions ready to be bottled tomorrow.