Do they know its Christmas time at all

Christmas has passed at the time of writing this, but as ever I am a catching up. I dont know whether its because I try do so as much of my Christmas shopping online, but I didnt seem to be exposed to so much Christmas stuff and it seemed relatively subdued. I even managed to completely avoid the latest band aid record; like some of the artists that declined an offer to perform, I chose to donate in other ways.

Anyway having justified the title of the post, its time to get on with it; two sets of images from different days and different parts of the city, both from half an hour or so breaks from the office. First up is Mansion House Street, a small stretch of road directly in front of the Mansion House; the home and office of the Lord Mayor of London.

A short distance from here down Queen Victoria Street is Bucklersbury. The image below is taken at the building site for Bloomberg's new headquarters. When the previous building was being built, the remains of the the roman Temple of Mithras were found. Progress was not impeded though and the temple was relocated to a street level roof of a car park (of all things), Now they are on the move again and will be relocated back to the original location. Hooray. There are some more details at the guardian.

From here I moved down onto Cannon Street and some of the roads off it. When I first entered Salters Hall Court I was completely uninspired and decided to come back another day, However on walking up the next parallel street to it, St. Swithins Lane, I came across a garage entrance to the court and noticed this silhouetted woman.

I continued up St. Swithins Lane, before heading back to the office.

A couple of days later I had another short break from the office, this time filling in some of the streets around St. Bartholomew's hospital. Newbury Street was not very inspiring, and the best I could do was to frame someone in some scaffolding.

Next stop was Bartholomew Place, a small courtyard of sorts, but with a charming looking picture framers.

Across from here is Bartholomew Close which then leads to Middlesex Passage, a twisty turny alley. I spotted a couple of hospital workers here on an unofficial smoking break who would have made a great photo, but they refused to have there photo taken as they shouldn't have been there,

Also off of the close is Bartholomew Passage, which is very short and does not present many photographic opportunities.

I then backtracked a little and onto Kinghorn Street, where the rain had produced nice shiny reflections on the pavement.

My last shot of this area was of Cloth Street, which I had been down several times previously without managing to take a shot. I got one this time, but its nothing to write home about; if the scaffolding looks familiar its because the shot was taken from the end of Newbury Street, the first image in this post.

I then headed back to the office, but via a long route, down to St. Pauls tube station and onto Cheapside, before going down Foster Lane, were I shot by my favourite image of the two days.

From here I walked along Gresham Street, which I had photographed previously, but my eye spotted the steps outside the building below, which made great lead-in-lines.

My final image of the day and this post, was taken later that afternoon, from my office as the sun was setting. It was a lovely sunset and made a nice image.