Back in the saddle

Well, today (Sunday) has seen my first skyscraper seeking jaunt for a while. As I don't have internet at home at present (I'll be uploading this to the blog at work on Monday) I can't double check when exactly the last one was, but I think it was roughly at the end of May.

Since then a lot has changed:

• The Willis Building has been finished, more or less. I took one last photo of the uncompleted spine of the building in May/June, and that's now been glazed over. But the hoarding is still up and the artist's impressions of people milling around the entrances in the sunlight look like being a distant dream. Also an improbable one; my photographing of the building has been an ongoing challenge as it's pretty much permanently in the shade.
• There are several new buildings shooting up, or having builings knocked down to make way for them, including:
  
  • One behind the Broadgate centre
  • One by the old stock exchange (which itself is almost completely reclad in glass)
  • Demolition of the building where the Bishopsgate tower will go
  • Ditto for the Heron Tower
  • Reglazing and extending upwards of a building by St Botolph's without Bishopsgate Church. (Karen tells me that St. Botolph is patron saint of travellers, hence his presence near each of the old gates to the City)
    
• There is now a tower crane where the Shard of Glass is to be built.
• Monument and The Royal Exchange are both surrounded by scaffolding for cleaning.

And finally, skyscraper chasing is a tiring old business, so I bought some cakes for sustenance. The cakes I opted for were Tesco's finest carrot cakes with a cream cheese icing (very nice indeed). It has become something of a cliche in this day and age to mock serving suggestion pictures on packaging for being obvious (eg. the words 'serving suggestion' emblazoned across a picture of jelly in a bowl on the packaging for some jelly), but the carrot cake packaging has truly excelled itself.

It gets the obviousness down to a tee - put the cakes on something - but then, looking at the picture more carefully, it appears to suggest that you take a bite out of the cake then spit it back out on the plate before offering the cakes up for serving.

I am of the fairly strong opinion that this is a crap serving suggestion.

PS - thanks for the welcome back messages.