Day 51: History of a view

I'm up on the top floor sorting out some work stuff but I did remember to grab my camera too. Nothing like a spot of multi-tasking! Of all the views we have, this is possibly my least photographed but it's a sunny, Spring day and I'm looking back towards our old home(s) around Warping, near Tower Bridge. In the foreground Hay's Galleria which I used to visit when I started in the city. I had a customer at Cotton's Centre and the small gallery of shop nearby gave me flashbacks to shopping in the US and that's probably due to the Christmas Shop. I think I experienced year-round Christmas emporiums and shops to with a very distinct mono-theme (like rainbows) for the first time on Pier 39 during a fabulous childhood family trip to San Francisco. We stocked up on candy canes, tin mail boxes, apples, pears and heart baubles and it was a revelation to us. Christmas shopping in summer, weird! And I still have those red ornaments, but now they hang on a black Christmas tree.

I've worked in seven buildings during my career here (one twice), so six separate buildings, and three are captured in this photograph though they are hiding behind other buildings. The buildings in Thomas More Square have greenhouses on the roof, our was the smallest. St Katherine Dock I 'lived' in twice, in two different companies, after I moved to the joint-venture. We stayed there until the wrecking balls came as it was well overdue for a major refit. Great location horrible building! We then moved to a nicer building not do far away but an awful location, on a main road with our nearest neighbour being a lap-dancing bar and on the edge of a little estate where you'd spot drug deals going down from the meeting rooms.

I can understand why our customers love admiring the views, pointing out old places of work, favourite pubs, ancient stomping grounds, the rooftop where that party was and perhaps that tryst. I'm lucky my desk is in the middle of the building, far enough away from the windows to not be distracted all the time. But when I wonder around, especially on the higher floors, I'm drawn to the glass and drink in all that we survey.

Posted with Blogsy