I was delayed leaving for work this morning by a minor plumbing emergency (water gushing out of a waste pipe inside the bathroom instead of outside down the drain), but by the time I did get to the station this was the sight that greeted me. One of those misty mornings that seems to shroud the dawn with an air of mystery.

Once on the train I was totally distracted by a hilarious conversation with an old friend that lasted the whole journey into London, in which he persisted with a ‘grumpy old man’ tirade against all modern computerised devices, while I gently goaded him about his hypocritical love of electricity, television and ATMs, just to keep things moving along! All thought of the mist had disappeared by the time we reached St Pancras, along with the mist itself in fact.

The only hindrance to travel then was having to fight through the hoards of people forced to walk to work because of the Tube strike, which meant that getting buses or taxis was rather futile because the roads were already getting totally snarled up. And it’s amazing how many of these unwilling pedestrians discoverer that places they had always imagined were miles apart because they only think of them as dots on a Tube map are actually much closer together than they had realised. Not that they’ll walk it from now on. As soon as the strike is over they’ll be back on the Tube. Only to have to walk again next week when there’s a 3-day strike!