I'm just so...

...in love with this view of London right now.

The Monument

When I went to London back in September the Monument was one of the places I planned to go as it's where Edie gets kidnapped by the Minotaur. But alas, it was closed, which made Anthony (not so) secretly relieved as he hadn't fancied climbing all those stairs.

I've been up there once on one of my London trips with Dad and I will get up there again on my next trip to the Big Smoke.

In the meantime this view will have to do, and it's pretty damn good.

(and yes, it does look a little Eye-ish at first, but it passes...)

My dragon...

...is on the TV.

When we went wandering about London in September to take pictures of the statues from Stoneheart/Ironhand/Silvertongue, one of the statues I needed to find was the Temple Bar City Dragon.

Here it is as photographed by me.



Here it is in the rather fabulous BBC trailer for... City Season. (Pause it right at the beginning to see the same shot)



Too much to hope that some sensible person had chosen to televise Stoneheart. One day maybe...

This evening...

...has been a relaxing one.

I have finally caught up with reading all the lovely blogs captured in my Google Reader. I also found some delightful new blogs after playing with the Black Boxes widget a little more. Plus I went delving back into the archives of one new discovery and read some things that really rang true for my life at the moment. So I'll be thinking on those a bit more.

I've tatted about with my sidebar a little, and added a hopeful something at the bottom of my blog.

I also finally added notes to my blog header picture on Flickr, so if you ever wanted to know what anything was in that shot you can now find out. (Added bonus - if you go to the next item in the photostream you get to see live action kitties being funny and cute).

My statue photos are still very much a work in progress but I have a day off tomorrow so will do some more organising then.

Oh dear, watching that video has given the little darlings ideas, WWIII has just broken out in the hallway - I'm off to break it up.

You may remember me...

...raving on about Stoneheart and Iron Hand by Charlie Fletcher over on my old blog.

Well the third book, Silvertongue is technically not published yet, but my ordered copy turned up at work last week.

Oh. Oh. Oh.

It was brilliant.

It pulled all the threads together in the nicest way, even if one particular one came completely out of the blue (but I adore it, it was a perfect conclusion).

It has made me even more want NEED to go wandering around London to find the statues that are such a huge part of the story.

Now as I said in the other post:

I've managed to find some photos of a couple of them, The Sphinx and The Royal Artillery Memorial, but I want to see all of them. I want to see the Grid Man, the clock where they hide, the statue of Icarus and the lair of the Minotaur

I've managed to track down the Minotaur in his lair, find the Icarus in his cage and see the Last Knight of the Cnihtengild all in one place, this nice pdf of a City of London leaflet (which is a bit of a bugger to load).

I've also discovered (via Google Book Search) an amazing book called Public Sculpture of the City of London (Public Sculpture of Britain Volume Seven) (link goes to the Icarus page), which I am absolutely going to have to get from the library!

New "characters" from Silvertongue include the Queen of America (part of the Albert Memorial), Hodge, and Bulldog; Plus the Knight of Wood and an unnamed but helpful character holding a quill who George finds in Southwark Cathedral after being sent there by Richard the Lionheart.

So when I go to London I shall be trekking from Hyde Park down to Southwark (and beyond as there's a statue named as The Bosun and Jack Tar that's even further downstream) in my quest to find them all.

I'd better wear some sensible shoes.