Villiers Street

From my desk I could look out of my window through the fanlight of Gatti's Music-Hall entrance, across the street, almost on to its stage. The Charing Cross trains rumbled through my dreams on one side, the boom of the Strand on the other, while, before my windows, Father Thames under the Shot tower walked up and down with his traffic.

Rudyard Kipling

A grubby, interesting, diverse, and shadowy little street that connects The Strand with Embankment Place. It was here that Rudyard Kipling briefly lived; here that I cashed in the betting slip for a winning horse that my father gave me 35 years ago and which was enough for a grand night out; here that TSM and I, holding hands on one of our early dates, were shocked by the Evening Standard billboard announcing the sudden death of the Labour leader John Smith; here that The Dizzle danced with Dutch tourists on New Year's Eve; and here today where I went for an afternoon's discussion about the latest twists in the story of the NHS with a leading firm of accountants and management consultants who wanted to pick our collective brains.

I did a fifteen minute photo challenge for myself to see if I could capture the spirit of the place. I was quite pleased with the results. A typical melange of London wealth and poverty, gilding and rusting, lofty architecture and down and out dirty. And corners like this - unintended art you might say, the photograph as found object.

Other than this interesting afternoon - I worked and I cooked and I cleaned. And I had a long pole delivered...