I had been up very late the night before, having attended a networking event in Hemel Hempstead and decided to take a swift look at some of the shots before going to bed, ending up by not doing so till nearly three in the morning. Waking at six-thirty five, I realised I could make it to London with enough time to take the Tube to Leicester Square, walk round the corner into Shaftesbury Avenue, pick up my iPad that very fortunately had been found by the QParks car park attendant a few days back when I had been photographing at a Casino and after that getting back on the Tube to reach Old Street station where I was due to meet Catherine at around nine.
I was unaware that the message I had sent in the early hours suggesting I had been unrealistic in my timings had meant that Catherine had taken me at my word, as she missed the later message that said I was back on schedule! So despite my being at Old Street at four minutes past nine, it would be considerably later before Catherine would make it! The plan was for her to meet me and take a wander through the streets of Clerkenwell to visit various showrooms taking part in Clerkenwell Design Week. This was to be a far more joyous three-day-week than the ones I endured back when this area of London was my milieu.
I therefore walked into Clerkenwell on my own to get the feel of the atmosphere and see who was participating this year. Along the way, before reaching Whitecross Street, I took out my camera having just witnessed a scaffolder taking poles from the back of a Lordy and passing them up a ladder to his mate at first-floor level — it caught my eye because of the flourish with which he took the pole from horizontal to vertical with a flourish worthy of a highlander 'tossing the caber'! Another passer-by and myself exchanged amazed comments as we passed as we had both witnessed the same action! I did record another few shots that recorded the sequence again, but the man did not have the same energy in subsequent tosses! These shots were for myself and do not appear in the gallery, but did get me into the swing.
In passing Whitecross Street, I texted Geoff Dann whose studio is at the top end of the street, to let him know where I was as we planned to meet up later. Opposite the ex-Colour Company building was a London bus decked out to display wooden floor tiles, and I got into conversation with a man inviting visitors to their mobile showroom for a morning drink of tea or coffee and learned he was into equestrian photography but was interested in improving his skills, so we chatted awhile, and I said I would take some shots inside the bus, but await the arrival of my daughter before accepting his offer of a drink.
The call came through a few minutes later and I headed back towards the station to meet Catherine and let her know I had a coffee ordered for her! This was a very civilised way to start the day. We chatted and formulated very loose plans of where we were to visit and were soon on our way, the only sad shame from our point of view was the dismal light and occasional drizzle, I shall let the gallery of pictures tell the rest of the story, accept to mention that we were both definitely going to pay a visit to Zaha Hadid's Gallery to pay our respects.
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