Occasionally I have to get up early. This is not early as my prepare the breakfast pack the lunch feed the children stop the argument peck on the cheek don’t forget your briefcase get into the SUV and drive the little sods to school smug married colleagues would call it, but it’s early enough for me.

It usually coincides with my having to be in London for the day.

Like, for instance, today.

It’s not bad, actually; the routine involves setting the alarm for 0650h, being out of bed by 0705h, and hitting the shower immediately to get the mental turbo-boost going; coffee, breakfast, e-mail download, radio, rsync, cats, ironing, dressing, and I am out of the house at 0830h, well before “normal” for me.

Well before my brain has normally kicked into gear, even.

Sidebar: I swear that the extra overhead of parenthood must be more than compensated-for by having two people to share the load, although I suspect that the husbands (at least) to whom I tell that at work, don’t believe me. I reckon they have it easy.

Disembarking at Waterloo I noticed nobody checking tickets today, as instead a striking red-headed woman in a long fitted purple greatcoat and black flowing slacks swept down the platform – and I bounded up the stairs to change for the one stop to London Bridge.

The latter is an interesting station – a mixture of City/Finance, Alternative and Industrial Revolution Heritage which you notice as you pull into the station. A bird-of-prey AroFish stencil decorates the hoarding by London Bridge Walk (see previous posting) and (more curiously_ a bunch of art students or similar were decorating the footpath, settling down on blankets in the middle of the London Bridge – each one bearing a digi- or video-cameras:

Them: “Quick! Get a picture of this one! Look, here he comes!”

Noticing the cameras and the excitement, I extracted my IXUS from my purse, thumbed it into life, and shot from the hip “Lomo-style”; after all, “turnabout is fair play”…

Me: “So you’re ‘Watching us, watching them?’ …”
Them: “Something like that…”

…so I may soon be starring in someone’s final-year-project.

Then, the office. I got to hang out with some of my favourite customers – people who take security seriously – but for brevity I can summarise the next seven hours as “coffee” and “meetings”. I bailed at six.

Standing on the bridge under a grey and orange mottled sky, I mentally tossed a coin: turn left, downstream, to the bright lights, bars, and restaurants filled with giggling gin-soaked PAs and take-themselves-too-seriously brokers, or right, upstream, through the market, along the Thames and back to Waterloo.

Nope; home was and is more of a draw than interchangable Emmas and brylcreemed Crispins. I traded them for the joggers – both male and female – who bounced along Bankside, evidently trying to get it off their thighs as evinced by their New Year’s Resolution, new and motivational running-shoes.

A selection of stencils – one Banksy, another Arofish, and a Nova – decorated the bridge footings and river wall; the tide was out, and the beach looked quite inviting until you thought about it for a bit. A bow-tied and tweedy “academic” type ran over to his likewise friend, touched him on the arm and asked “Have you read that biography of Hubert Hart? It reminds me of our days at Oxford…”. Past the crowds, near the RFH, a restaurant’s back door was ajar, and presented an opportunity for a sneak-peek… and yet another tragic bundle of flowers decorated a railing near Waterloo.

The British don’t do death very well nowadays.

I got a bagel, jumped the train with 30 seconds to spare, and avoided the stench of booze from the passengers of the return train.