KCL

Today, PhD student Y and I visited academic friend S at King's College London, where he has recently taken up a lectureship. Since I hadn't had breakfast, the first thing we did was go to have a coffee and cake in the courtyard of Somerset House, which is right next door to King's. It was very pleasant sitting out in the sunshine. 

S has an excellent knowledge of the maths underlying Y's research topic, so it was good to talk to him and for Y to get some well-chosen reading. After a quick lunch in a nearby fish restaurant, I gave a seminar to a dozen of S' colleagues , and two seemed to be genuinely interested. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon working and chatting in S' office, before Y went off in a successful attempt to get a late, cheap ticket to see the musical, Hamilton.

S and I had dinner in a Thai restaurant near King's with developer F, and his girlfriend S, whom we all know as she did a PhD in our group (and is now doing a post-doc at UCL). After a pleasant evening, I returned to Notting Hill via a constitutional walk through central London. Tonight's stand-out Christmas decorations were on the Dior shop (see extra).