Places of worship

The dome of St Paul's Cathedral is overshadowed by the buildings of The City. The physical places of worship for the modern religion of finance. As it turned out, just as much a matter of faith as that practised in Wren's memorial. And when faith failed, so the market collapsed. Leaving us all with the burden. I do wonder where the money went. Although so much of it wasn't real, we are now all left with a very real deficit and the prospect of real cuts. I'd like to see someone produce a balance sheet for the national economy over the past decade. Someone must have got rich.

Which is all some way from the reason I am in London. Here with two other students and a tutor for the Fujifilm Student Awards. The thirty or so of us on the shortlist were invited to Penquin's offices on the Strand, up on the tenth floor of the old Shell Mex building. A very familiar building with its iconic clock face. The room where the ceremony was held had a balcony overlooking the Thames, and was just below the hands of the clock.
Sadly none of the three of us won the competition to produce a cover for the book At Swim-Two-Birds by Flann O'Brien.