"Don't look at me, I'm having the time of my life - or something quite like it..."

What a difference a change of scenery makes. Returning from one great European capital to another, and struggling tno a) motivate and b) re-acclimatise myself back into the dull old rhythm of work'n'life, there has at least been the consolation of new office surroundings.
Swish'n'swanky office surroundings at that, after a move from nondescript Surrey Quays to hip and hustling and bustling Kensington, where you can't move but for tripping over the Liberty shopping bags of a flurry of ladies who lunch, or an army of revellers heading decisively, if somehow daintily, for the next trendy bar target in a seemingly never-ending soiree...
Er, okay, so my timing's been a bit off so far - namely, working the night shifts all week, so missing out on the free drinks for a 'welcome-to-the-new-place' partay, in the same way I'd been denied the hospitality of the 'goodbye-to-the-old-place' occasion...
But it will be nice to be feeling a little more integrally part of West End civilisation, an uplifting blend of greenery and glitz...
And it has been a gentle pleasure, to be getting the taxi home each night this week in the small hours, and be casting gradually-closing eyes over such homeward-bound even-in-darkness delights as Marble Arch, Hyde Park, the Royal Albert Hall and the Dorchester, St John's Wood and the Abbey Road crossing, and finally all the way along the cosily-familiar Finchley Road, than, er, the less-than-inspiring (after repeated experience, anyway) sights of the Old Street roundabout and the Holloway Road, less glass, more concrete...
Can't help but suspect I shouldn't be looking quite so scruffy myself, mind...
And in future, I'll have to keep an eye out for this:


(The earlier, less eye-catching picture is taken from this retelling of an incident from a very different-looking Kensington.)