On Friday morning I left home at 7.15, exactly the time I used to leave to trudge into my office. I had a much more enticing destination: the Ancient World Breakfast Club.
The Serpentine Gallery pavilion is still under construction but this summer it will be dwarfed by a giant, red, floating mastaba across the road on the Serpentine in Hyde Park.
The re-building of Dresden is almost complete but, as in any city, there is a continuum of regeneration. A bridge over the Elbe is closed to traffic for reconstruction and some bomb sites have not been rebuilt.
People say “what goes around comes around”, EM Foster says “only connect” and Anthony Powell wrote Dance to the Music of Time to make the same point at somewhat greater length; a saga with which I struggled a bit early on, but once WW II came along I was hooked.
We have seen griffon vultures wheeling high above us. They look quite small at such an altitude but in fact have a wingspan of more than eight feet. It would be exciting to see one close-up but that seems unlikely.