(Apologies, this update is considerably delayed, but with good reason)

The last of my Monday off should have been a glorious affair. Streamers, guest speakers and maybe even a fireworks display should all have been present…

Alas, in reality i spent my last Monday shuffling between various opticians. Trying to sort out the mess optician A left me in after providing me with an incorrect prescription which I had optician B use to make my glasses. The case is still unresolved… (Guess what i did on Saturday). I also tried out contact lenses for the first time, a rather uncomfortable experience… But this post has not been delayed to tell you whether or not I like contact lenses! Hell no!

The fact of the matter is I have not been entirely forthcoming with you, loyal reader. For you see, I actually had the entire WEEK off! The plan was to fill it with all the things I had meant to do with my Mondays, like go to London Zoo, and the Tate, and the many coffee shops of the east end… But alas, at the last minute I was informed my impending move out date had been pushed forward to Thursday and I realised that I needed an extra day off for Florida, which fell to Friday. My week of hope was dashed as I had to dedicate time to packing, cleaning, phoning, planning, shifting and working.

Perhaps some things are just not meant to be done. That said, I did manage to find the time to visit Kew gardens, and in my opinion, autumn is definately the season to visit in:

One of these images has been used in a blog post over here by friend Kate Matlock who’s trying to get back into the habit of updating regularly… aren’t we all!

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There was no one big structured activity for this Monday off, but lots of little ones. The day felt really long as a result, but in a good way.

First up, i worked a little more on the site from Mysterious Monday. It’s coming along nicely. And that’s all i have to say about that…

Next i went to the opticians to get a long overdue eye test and pick out some new frames (yes, i went to specsavers):

After they were picked and paid for there was a spot of lunch and onto the bowling alley for an hour or two.

Finally, to round off the day, i checked out “Up” the latest offering from Pixar. A heart warming tale about balloons, a grumpy old man and a fat kid. It was nice enough…

So that was my Monday, not hugely exciting, but a nice Monday nonetheless

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It was a very dire day in London this Monday, raining, spitting, drizzling or misting on and off for the whole day.

I attempted to make the most of it by taking pictures of people anyway. Unfortunately there weren’t really a huge number of people about thanks to the weather and the rain wasn’t torrential enough to be particularly interesting on its own.

Unpreturbed, i decided to fall back on an indoor activity and visit the pop-up Central Perk off of Carnaby street. This is an imitation/replica of the coffee place from the friends series. They happen to be giving away a free coffee to anybody willing to print off a voucher and wait in line. While i was happy to print off the voucher, the waiting in line was not so compelling. It extended well out of the door, round the corner of the shop next door and about halfway down the next street. You’d have to be quite a friends fan to wait that long. I am not, so instead i went to Starbucks to read blogs and write emails.

I’m considering changing the title of this blog to “Stuart goes to Starbucks”.

Some more shots from the day:

More on flickr.

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This Monday I woke up and did some research.

Then i bought a domain, and did some more research.

Eventually i went to Starbucks, something i never do, but the lure of £5 for all you can eat wifi in their cafés (and anywhere you can get their wifi signal…) was too great. So i joined their loyalty scheme and sat, doing more research. I suspect their reasoning went something along the lines of “Dammit, we promised apple we’d start kitting up our stores with wifi for apple fanboys. How can WE make some money off all these routers…”. Given their footprint in central London i think every Londoner should take advantage of the deal. AND what better than to mooch off starbucks wifi than TV? A cleverer chappy than i has written a program that lets you view 44 uk tv channels using VLC player: Check it out and enjoy it before they inevitably block the hole.

Eventually i went back home, and started work on the domain. Not much to be honest, just trying out a few different… things. I was surprised to see the DNS go through so fast.

So that was my mysterious Monday. Watch this space…

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For the next few weeks i have taken Mondays off work. I have every intention of doing something vaguely interesting or productive with this time, and not let it degrade into lounging around watching youtube videos.

This Monday was the first and i started by waking up late. Not the best way to begin, so i decided to walk from Waterloo to Tower Bridge, camera in hand. The intention was to climb The Monument, something i did when i was a toddler but had not repeated since. I didn’t actually take that many pictures (or at least that many i was happy with) but nonetheless, monument was climbed, so a tick is placed in the ‘do something vaguely interesting’ box.

They’re upgrading the London eye with new pods. They’re only doing one at a time though so it can still bring in the mula.

The Monument.

Looking West, St.Pauls dome amongst the scenery.

Looking down the 311 steps. They charge adults £3 to climb stairs. Quite ingenious.

I think the guy on the left was a photographer (he started fiddling with lenses after he was done with his ice cream) and this was the prep for a shoot.

So that was that. Worryingly i have no plans for next Monday… am open to suggestions!

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