South Bank at home time

In London all day at the Royal Society for a meeting on scenario and future planning. I learned a few things I didn't know, including that Lady Thatcher once worked on the team that created Mr Whippy ice cream.

Another was that the society was once caught up in a controversy over the shape of lightning rods. Benjamin Franklin advocated pointy ones but King George III insisted that blunt ones were more effective. There was opposition to the whole idea of lightning rods from some who thought thunder and lightning was a form of divine punishment.

The ringing of church bells was thought to ward off demons responsible for the lightning. Bad idea. In Germany, where church leaders were particularly reluctant to install conductors, some 120 bell ringers were killed and 400 church towers destroyed in the first 33 years of the 19th century before the authorities saw sense.

Before the Second World War the Royal Society HQ in Carlton House Terrace was used as the German embassy and there's a swastika motif on one of the wooden floors, hidden now under the carpets.

I walked back to the station via Piccadilly Circus and the Royal Festival Hall, blipped here as a woman hurries by. One thing I like about his shot is the frame within the frame. I've changed it from the B&W version I put up first to contrast the warmth of those inside with the chill of the evening for those of us outside.

As to the future, who knows?