I wish I’d had this information when I arrived in the UK: TNT’s letter of the week was all about how to get an NI number. It took me three years to get a National Insurance number in the end.

I keep meaning to try this:

Just another Friday night in (south) London:

I’ve just been reading the second verse of the British national anthem. I wonder if they’ll ever use it again?
“O Lord our God arise,
Scatter her enemies
And make them fall;
Confound their politics,
Frustrate their knavish tricks,
On Thee our hopes we fix,
God save us all! ”
Source: BBC
(Updated because I’d said English, not British)

What’s your nearest tube station really called?

How could I not mention the whale?

“Two bus drivers whose vehicles were targeted in July’s London bombings, have returned to work two months on.” BBC

We’ve just had the last bank holiday weekend of the year. I went to drinks to give someone a surprise sumo suit on Friday, a birthday picnic in Regent’s Park and an after party on Saturday, then lay around in the park reading the papers with friends, lunch at a Filipino cafe with a pretty garden, home for a nap then out for Belleruche and more birthdays on Sunday, then Hyde Park on Monday. The weather was lovely all weekend, perfect for lying around in parks.
I’ll have lots of photos to put on flickr at some stage.

Waaah! The BBC weather site forecast for today is “Last of the summer heat.”.

It’s Thursday. That never used to mean anything in particular, but it does now. You see it in the faces of bus commuters and in the looks exchanged when someone late to a meeting explains that their Tube line was closed, or their Tube terminated early.