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...

Widgets are very, very...

...distracting!

Lovely Caroline has a new blog widget for her beautiful new book Black Boxes.

<---- There it is! (possibly down a little bit too)

This is a brilliant widget because:

1. You get to go and visit loads of blogs that you may not have been to before.
2. Loads of people come and visit your blog!

However this is also a very bad thing because:

1. You get to go and visit loads of blogs that you may not have been to before - therefore you spend all your time reading so that when,
   
2. Loads of people come and visit your blog - all they get to read is a post from me saying I'm busy and not actually writing anything new (plus a scary Maths post).

So thank heavens for the Google Reader. Everywhere new that I end up I am adding to it (in a new folder called Widgetness) and everyone new that comes here and comments gets added too!

This way I still get to read lots of lovely new blogs and meet lots of new people, but when I decide to have one last go on the widget before bed, I can just add the new blog and read it when I have time.

I now have to go and read some of the 178 posts (!!!) that are waiting for me in Reader, so I shall leave you with a picture of some of the planes that hang from the ceiling at the Imperial War Museum.



(I am working on the rest of the London pictures, but you might get to see a few this week...if I can tear myself away from the widget!)

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.