reset to London co-ordinates

I suppose there comes a point when I need to post another straightforward London picture. The type with a bus and a taxi in it.

A sort of punctuation that the holiday type gadding around is coming to a close for a while and more normal work type things will resume.

We've actually had a few trips around different parts of London over the last few days. One day I was back on the Air Line - which I discovered others had thought was some sort of hoax, although I can vouch for its authenticity, having made four trips on it now.

I know it is supposed to be a sensible way to cross the Thames, but it is also a good tourist type trip, especially if coupled with a look around the Dome and maybe a trip along the river on one of the fast Clippers.

Suffice to say we've done all of these things over the last few days, including noticing the changes at the Dome for the Paralympics, which was all signposted and had various entry gates ready for use.

Across at Royal Docks there were more gates and systems linked with the ExCel centre, and I must admit at one point to getting confused at a roundabout that had been coned and nearly started to go around it the 'French' way.

Oops. But I do know I am back in London.

Really.

at the top of the dial

London's preparations for the various upcoming events continue. Yesterday I was around Waterloo and noticed quite a few people in demonstrable finery (morning suits, top hats, ladies in fine frocks and big hats).

Of course, they were on their way to the races - I suspect that some will not return in quite such composed conditions.

That event neatly precedes the Wimbledon season and then the home stretch towards the Olympics, with the parallel Cultural Olympiad festivities also kicking off right now.

Yesterday's Metro and Stannit both had wrap-around adverts from British Airways saying "don't fly" - which did make me smile. The premise is to stay in London and support the teams during the games.

The trick with all of this will be to figure out how to do it without turning into a tourist. London is a great capital, but there's a need to be careful and not get sucked into the mainstream tourist vortex.

I'll confess this happened to me briefly a few weeks ago, when we'd selected to go to a particular show which turned out to be truly awful. I don't recollect blogging about it at the time. It was not one of my finest decisions and we decided to leave after about 20 minutes.

It's that dilemma about having booked to see a show and then not liking it. Do you stay because you've paid or leave to get the time back? We left and decided that the show in question was a crass money spinner designed to extract cash from the gullible (oops).

So I'm hoping that there are not too many of those type of events in the run up to what will be a peak number of visitors to the capital.

Like many tourist rich cities, there's a sort of two tier economy between those that work and live in the centre vs those that are on a short vacation. I'm equally aware of this when I'm in other countries and don't have time to tune into the right frequencies.

So I guess I'll be just slightly more alert as the city gets remodelled for the next few weeks.