Tuesday 22nd December

On one of my daily wanderings around Spitalfields I found an ornate shutter holder (I'm sure there is a technical name for these things but if there is I don't know it) that had been dressed up with elf ears and a santa hat. When I turned into my street and looked into the windows of Wieden + Kennedy I saw that it was a part of a series of interventions that they had been doing locally as part of an advent calendar for their window. It turns out that they were the culprits behing the bike wrapping as well. This is another festive offering by Wieden + Kennedy, this time in a park near Spital Square.

Monday 21st December

Today was one of the longest days of my life, waiting for a phone interview with ACCA at 9.30pm. I felt like I used to as kid on Christmas Eve, waiting for it to be dark so that we could begin to open our presents. This is what my desk looked like 5 minutes before the phone rang. It didn't matter how many notes I had, there was nothing that could have prepared me for an opening question like: "Ok Annika, I need 500 dead trees by Monday, what are you going to do about it?". Soon to be followed with: "Great, so now that the trees have arrived, we've realised that they've come with leaves still on. We need them without leaves. What kind of problems could we incur by having to remove the leaves ourselves?". Somehow, especially considering my answer of 'is this a joke question?', I don't think I'm going to be relocating to Melbourne anytime soon...

Sunday 20th December

The flower market again, to meet Sophie and Daisy for a midday breakfast.

Saturday 19th December

This morning was spent shopping for food for the Christmas party at Kate's that evening. Eventually, after trawling through the depths of Dalston and stopping in at many butchers, we bought some beef off a lovely gentleman with a stall on Broadway Market. He ascertained how much we needed with the question: 'Rugby players or intellectuals?'. 'Intellectuals' was Kate's resounding response. He laughed and said: "I once asked a great hulk of a chap that question once, to which he replied - 'Can't I be an intellectual as well?'".

Friday 18th December

Miroslaw Balka's installation at Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. A blacker than black abyss that you enter having no sense of where the walls are, or where the structure ends. Unless of course the girl in front of you is wearing white.

Thursday 17th December

Tonight I went to Stoke Newington to have dinner at Sarah's. Her blinds were drawn and so it wasn't until we ventured out to get a second bottle of wine that we discovered it was snowing.

Wednesday 16th December

Absolute Vintage is directly across the road from my house. I think I went in there more when I didn't actually live in London than I have the whole time I've been in this flat. Overpriced second hand clothes and terrible Christmas windows to boot.

Tuesday 15th December

This morning I went to the Museum of Childhood to help Kate and Rohan install Roh's photographic exhibition of Bethnal Green at Christmas. The museum culled a photograph Roh had taken of this shop because apparently it contained "sexual innuendo deamed inappropriate" for kiddies. It is currently sitting on top of a bookshelf in the kids craft area where it will no doubt be forgotten until uncovered by a diligent cleaner. Roh's shot didn't have any of the underwear visible, just the Virgin Mary, with the neon sign above her reading: 'Treat me gently, I'm a Virgin'. I took a photo of the same shop on Bethnal Green Road on my way home. You can't see the neon very clearly because of the morning light. At least no one can cull the photograph here.

Monday 14th December

Laurie left for the airport early this morning, leaving me with a new slide for my window. We had bought them from the man at Beedell Coram on Sunday, who charged us per slide according to his personal taste. The ones he liked the best were priced at £4, some were £3 and those that he thought inferior he was willing to sell for a bargain £2. A slide of Lord Nelson cost the most "because everyone wants a bit of Nelson". No rewards for good taste then.

Sunday 13th December

Columbia Road was busier than usual this Sunday with everyone buying Christmas trees. My attention was drawn to this man unloading his trees from the truck, not least for his calling to the gathered customers: "Come on! I'm not just going to stand here like a fucking turd".

Saturday 12th December

Oxford Street is hellish at the best of times. Especially at Christmas. Three people cursed at me when I obstructed part of the footpath and momentarily stopped a stream of pedestrian traffic to take this photograph. I was just happy to have a photo of the skyline without any terrible Christmas lights in it. Jim Carrey turned them on this year. Did you know that? You do now. Are you the wiser for it? No. But these clouds are cool right?

Friday 11th December

This morning we went to Borough to fill ourselves with cheese samples. I doubt this man thought he would make somebody's photo album when he put on his flourescent jacket this morning.

Thursday 10th December

Laurie has come to stay for a week, sleeping on the side of my bed that Raoul has vacated. This morning she set off early to see Anish Kapoor as the exhibition is in its last days. I didn't want to pay the entrance fee again and so instead wandered the streets of Soho. I like how banal and docile the Windmill Mens Club looks in the morning sunlight.

Wednesday 9th December

There are so many bikes decaying on railings in London. The wheels go first, then the seat, then the handlebars, until all that is left is a frame, melting onto the pavement. This one is across the road from my flat, humorously wrapped in Christmas paper. It has been like this for several days now and every morning as I step over it on my way to Tescos, I am amazed that it has survived for this long.

Tuesday 8th December

Tonight I went to Kate's house to sit in front of the fireplace with a cat on my lap and eat stew. This is the view of her street walking up from Jesus Green. After dinner and after dark it seemed a good idea to go to the Royal Oak for a late night mulled wine. We had three in nearly as many minutes. I never want to drink mulled wine again.

Monday 7th December

You never know what you'll find in a London canal. Most of the time I'd suggest you'd be better off not knowing. This seemed quite innocent in the scheme of things. But sad as well somehow.

Sunday 6th December

This pub is without a doubt my favourite I have found in Britain so far. The only way to reach it is by foot, bicycle or boat, which, as one of the staff members told me on my first visit, 'proves very difficult if we ever need an ambulance'. It seems to keep sporadic opening hours, and the night before I took photo this we had come down on the off chance it was open and found ourselves thrust into the midst of the local Christmas party. There was stew and cider and music in a barn. The first band, consisting of two middle-aged men called Hugh and Joe, sung songs Joe had written about his first wife, 'when I still loved her'. The second band's lyrics referred to gypsies, apples and birds. 'Anyone would think I was on drugs' the singer joked. I'm not convinced he wasn't.

Saturday 5th December

I took this at the Natural History Museum in Oxford. I like the relationship between the skeleton of the dinosaur and the skeletal frame of the building's roof.

Friday 4th December

Today was my fourth and final shift at Seizure. It's probably worth noting that this picture was taken a month or so ago, I had forgotten my camera today. Now the leaves have completely fallen, slowly rotting in puddles around the courtyard.

Thursday 3rd December

I live four doors down from the Golden Heart pub above a red Thai restaurant called Rosa's. Surprisingly, I don't actually go to either very often. The corner this pub is on is usually the corner we get to when we stop an ask: 'Where shall we go for a drink?' and then keep on walking. But I feel very attached to the place, and to the characters who drink there, and to the eccentric landlady who runs the place with a iron fist. They have put mistletoe up around the bar, and Christmas trees out the front. It makes the whole street look very festive. Now that I finally have my Scrabble board I think I may go there a bit more often.

Wednesday 2nd December

There is something about rainy winter days that just makes you want to take shelter in a pub with a Scrabble board. Unfortunately, I didn't own a Scrabble board. Ollie and I set off on foot in the pursuit of one. It took us three hours of traipsing in and out of shops in Spitalfields, Moorgate and the City before we found a travel Scrabble in the Waterstones at Leadenhall market. On coming out of the market we passed the Lloyd's building and stood watching suited insurance brokers going up and down in the exterior lifts.

Tuesday 1st December

The last train home from Caledonian Road after visiting Hannah and Lee for dinner. Bellies full of paella and white wine.

Monday 30th November

This photo makes me feel cold. Anish Kapoor's Tall Tree and the Eye in the Royal Academy courtyard.

Sunday 29th November

With only two days until the onset of Winter, Autumn is being packed up and discarded.

Saturday 28th November

An itemised list of all the clothes I wore to invigilate at Seizure today:
- a thermal top
- a cashmere jumper
- an arran wool jumper
- a down jacket
- a handmade woollen scarf wrapped around my neck three times
- woollen tights
- denim jeans
- explorer socks
- leather boots
- gloves
- beret
and I was still freezing.

Friday 27th November

With £2.10 in my pocket saved for a hot chocolate to warm me up when I couldn't feel my toes anymore, I set off today to see where my feet would take me. This is the view over the Thames from Temple. It was nice to see a body of water, even if that makes me sound like a homesick Australian.

Thursday 26th November

Today was grey again. I met Raoul for lunch in a funny Italian restaurant in Soho with a picture of Mick Jagger sandwiched between the owners in the window. We figured if it was good enough for Mick... Inside the restaurant you really felt like you could have been in Sicily rather than central London. This scene however, on the way back to Raoul's office, is just so quintessentially English to me.

Wednesday 25th November

Today the sun came out for the first time in what felt like weeks. Something about this scene interested me. I think it was the abundance of scooters. I took this photograph minutes before a job interview during which, in response to the question of how well I worked within a team, I blurted out "I don't mind taking orders" and then laughed. I've really got to learn to be more articulate.

Tuesday 24th November

Today I went to Liberty and imagined all the presents I would buy people for Christmas if I actually had an income. These are the gaudy Christmas decorations up in Carnaby Street. I felt like I had stepped into an Austin Powers film against my will. The deer was the only redeeming inflatable. Pity that you can only see its feet.

Monday 23rd November

The man who owns this junk shop on Brick Lane seems to only be open on quiet days. Never ever on a Sunday when the masses infiltrate the East End. He seems to live in a caravan inside his garage of a shop. When I went in he was sitting in his caravan peering out at me through the back window. I desperately wanted a photo of him but was too scared to ask. The mirror out the front with the no-smoking sticker plastered across it cost an extortionate £60. I'm not sure that he gets too many buyers. Hence, perhaps, the caravan.

Sunday 22nd November

When I was finally freed from the shackles of my bedroom we met Jade and Chris at the Albion for a Sunday brunch. No one was leaving because the weather was so vile outside, and so the line to wait for a table curled around the entire shopfront. We spent 45 minutes in the queue looking out the window and cursing the London weather. I spluttered all over the cupcakes and gingerbread men on display, but no one seemed to mind.

Tuesday 17th November - Saturday 21st November

I didn't really think that swine flu existed until I got it. This photo covers the 5 days I spent quarantined in bed with only Jack Kerouac, a thermos and Twin Peaks for company.

Monday 16th November

I have no explanation for this photograph. On a quiet backstreet in East London, miles from a duck pond and at least a block from the nearest bakery, on a street with no trees and thus no wildlife, I found this: a small pile of bite-sized bread.

Sunday 15th November

Look at this little girl in her Converse sneakers and casually draped fur jacket. See her nonchalant expression, her suspicious eyeing of the coins in the busker’s bucket. Look at his concentration face, the synchronized tilt of his pompom, feet and knees. Look at the shit for sale on the footpath, the man tangled up with the dog in the background. The faces and races and fashions that make up Brick Lane on a Sunday.

Saturday 14th November

When rubbish bins become rubbish at Hyde Park.

Friday 13th November

Quite an eerie picture for Friday the 13th. These people were on Brick Line mysteriously handing out flyers for the Identity Project (I looked it up - it is an exhibition at the Wellcome Collection). All the passerbys were totally bewitched by these people with their blacked out faces, with everyone rushing to take a flyer in the hope of learning more. This east end hispter stopped to have a friend take her photo with them, and screamed in protest when one man put his black hat over her perfectly asymmetrical haircut. Head to toe in black she could easily have been one of them.

Thursday 12th November

Tonight we went to see an amazing site-specific performance put on by Shunt. It was in an old tobacco warehouse in SE1. I love in London how you can be on an otherwise completely bleak corner, and then a few metres down you'll find an alleyway like this. On a clear night it would have been lovely in this courtyard. There were ping pong tables and giant chess boards, a tiki bar and deckchairs. But in the rain it just looked like a scene from Doctor Who.

Wednesday 11th November

There is nothing remarkable about this photograph. But having a bath for the first time in three months was.

Tuesday 10th November

Today I started a new internship at Art Review Magazine. I had done my hair nicely for my first day, but when I got off at Farringdon, without an umbrella, the sky opened onto me. I pulled the the hood of my new winter coat over my head and trudged my way through Clerkenwell to their office on Sekforde Street. There is something kind of clichéd about pictures of autumn leaves on a glistening pavement, but that is honestly about the only thing I saw on my journey there - I couldn't look up for the rain.

Monday 9th November

Trust the sun to come out on the morning that we leave. One last breakfast of laughing cow cheese on dry, pre-packaged toast is all that is between this photo being taken and us boarding our Easy Jet flight home.

Sunday 8th November

Today being a Sunday made it particularly difficult to navigate our way around Venice. Restaurants that we normally used as reference points were closed, leaving streets of sealed doorways and shuttered windows that all looked the same.

Saturday 7th November

This photo is from an exhibition by Hong Kong artist PAK Sheung Chuen, which was, together with the Icelandic Pavillion and a film by Ulla van Brandenberg, one of my highlights of the Biennale. This particular work was called 'A Travel Without Visual Experience', for which the artist had travelled to Malaysia with his eyes covered, as if he were blind, for the entire journey. He took photos of all the places that he went to in order for his "future" eyes to view the landscape and sights at a later time. The photographs that he took form the only reference for the artist of his time in Malaysia. For the Biennale, these images are hung in a blacked out room, making it impossible to see the images unless you take your camera with you and blindly photograph Chuen's photographs for your own "future" eyes to view when you return to the daylight outside.

Friday 6th November

Today we arrived in Venice to a sky the colour of pearl. When a little bit of blue appeared, the locals rushed to put their washing out. That evening it rained, as it would rain every evening for the duration of our stay. Either the Venetians are very ambitious trying to dry anything outside in November, or this is purely for the benefit of all the tourists in town with their digital SLRs. And there are many of them.

Thursday 5th November

This was such a barbaric looking shelter in an otherwise serene park in Pimlico. I went there to hand deliver a job application to the Tate. The man at front desk wished me good luck as he pointed me in the direction of HR. The woman at HR grunted once, nodded, and pressed the buzzer to let me out again.

Wednesday 4th November

Today Sarah and I had at date at 11.30am at the Market Cafe on Brushfield Street. She said she would come a la Sophie Calle, which I took to mean she would be in disguise. I thought about wearing Raoul's black wig from Halloween but decided against it. Sarah thought about wearing oversized sunglasses but then realised she would just look like a person sitting inside wearing oversized sunglasses in November. When we met we looked just as we always did. But it was still fun.

Tuesday 3rd November

Oranges and lemons,
Say the bells of St. Clement's

You owe me five farthings,
Say the bells of St. Martin's

When will you pay me?
Say the bells of Old Bailey.

When I grow rich,
Say the bells of Shoreditch.

When will that be?
Say the bells of Stepney

I do not know,
Says the great bell of Bow

Here comes a candle to light you to bed
And here comes a chopper to chop off your head
(chip chop chip chop the last man's dead)

Monday 2nd November

The first view I ever had of London was of Liverpool Street Station, as I imagine it must be to many travellers stepping off the Stansted Express.
Now it is my local station and has become, like so many things in London, something that you now take for granted when you once thought it wonderful.
Today I took a different walk to the station and came upon this statue by Botero. I love the feel of her round, cool feet, and the way that everything in the distance - the construction cranes and railway arches - look tiny in comparison to her gargantuan seething self.

Sunday 1st November

Today was miserable, it poured all morning and Raoul and I were nursing Halloween hangovers. For some reason we thought that a visit to Ikea would cheer us up. Ikea is a wonderful place for picking up things you didn't ever realise you were missing from your life, like cheese-slices and pickled herring. I have been to Ikeas in four different countries and I love how the suburbs they are in feel the same no matter where in the world you are. This photograph was taken of the Tescos 'Extra' across the road from Ikea. Also another great place for spending money on things you don't really need.

Saturday 31st October

I spied this man through the window of an apartment block just off Sloane Square. He reminded me a little of my own (much more alert) Farfar who, throughout my life, I have always seemed to meet in hotel lobbies and apartment foyers. I felt a little guilty about capturing this man in such a vulnerable state, so an hour or so later I went back to check on him. A teenage boy 20 metres ahead of me beat me to it by knocking loudly on the glass window and running off down the street. When the man awoke abruptly I was the first person he saw, smiling at him through the window.

Friday 30th October

The couple behind me, as I took this photograph at Borough Markets, were squabbling about whether these were partridges or pheasants. The man, who was on the partridge side of the debate, ended the argument with the words: 'silly woman'.
Clearly he was the silly man.
But I didn't want to intervene.