Today marks the end of my first 3 months doing this project, which I think is pretty good – not a single day dropped so far! I spent the day in Central London on a training course, taking place in an old converted clergy house next to a church near Old Street. I took a few photos of that, but this view on my way home seemed like a nicer shot. It was just up near Liverpool Street Station, looking out towards the Gherkin. The juxtuaposition of old and new buildings struck me as kind’ve cool. But what do I know?

I had another afternoon off work today, so Robert and I headed to Reading’s Toys’R'Us to browse their wares. Robert took a bit of a tumble down the stairs at home this morning (I don’t think he’ll be walking down the stairs wearing sunglasses again for a while!) but he coped with it like a true soldier – we picked him up, checked for bumps or damage, and within 5 minutes he was happy as Larry again. So I wanted to buy him a bit of a treat to make up for it – and Toys’R'Us is the best place I know for treats!

After walking round following Robert’s windy path for half an hour, he settled on a ‘Timmy Time’ playset which he simply wouldn’t put down, so we went for that. He’s not actually opened it yet mind you, so who knows whether it’ll be any good!

I was wondering past Sam’s Brasserie again at lunch today, and decided to try my arm and peer through the door, to see what was going on. They wouldn’t let me take a photo inside, but it looks like the TV show being filmed here – the aforementioned ‘Re-invention’ – is a bit of a business renovation series. Other Tamar team members have reported seeing Mr Rick Stein outside doing pieces to camera a few times (Stein owns the restaurant, I believe) so I guess we’ll soon find out what is going on. I might try to sneak a look through the entrance inside our building tomorrow, see if I can get a better look! Yes, my life really IS that exciting…

If you’re a regular reader of this blog / project, you’ll remember that Mother’s Day in the Elliss household involved a very large box of cake decorating equipment, as well as some tubes of lovely icing. Well, today was the day when we finally put them to the test – the results of which can be seen above. The best one you can see up there is probably the flower on the far right – that was one of Sara’s. My favourite was the one with the iced-gem effect, right at the top – I did that one! Can you guess which one Robert had the biggest hand in? And yes, I do mean that literally…

Being the weekend, it once again fell to me to do more DIY, as is the trend at the moment in our household. Still working on the kitchen, a trip to Wickes was in order this afternoon to buy more kitchen sealant – and for some reason I decided to take Robert with me. What is usually a finely-honed, 20-minute in-and-out routine became almost an hour of chasing Robert around the aisles, picking up paint tins he’d dropped and generally stopping him from getting in to too-much mischief…

Today I went on a roadt-rip ‘oop north’, with my trust pardner Milly. We were heading up to Birmingham to meet with a client, and had decided to drive rather than take the usual train – just for a bit of a change really!

The photo above was taken at the Warwick services on the way back – another example of stellar parking from some moron. I had to stop and take a photo, I was that amused.

After the very late night that was last night (thank god I’m boring enough that I don’t do that very often!) and the 4 hours of sleep that followed, I was pleased to remember that I had booked myself a half-day holiday today. So I got to spend the afternoon with Robert, while Sara was working at a parent’s evening at school – some “boys time”. Both of us were pretty knackered and not feeling our best, so we didn’t do much – by 6 o’clock we were both tucked up watching Waybuloo on Cbeebies. Me on the sofa, Robert on his little chair clutching a saucepan.

No, I have no idea why either.

My Year in Photos – March 24th – “Roger WHO?”, originally uploaded by henweb.

Tonight I was lucky enough to have tickets for the first major Suede gig since 2003, when the band split up. Reforming exclusively for the Teenage Cancer Trust, the boys were performing a retrospective of some of their greatest songs to a sell-out crowd in the Royal Albert Hall.

Not only was the gig itself BRILLIANT (see below for a video), we all had our names down for the aftershow party as well. Admittedly the amount of celeb-spotting to be had at the party was pretty limited – I spent the first twenty minutes trying to figure out who one particularly gigantic fella was (turns out it’s TV producer and presenter Richard Osman – brother of Suede member Matt Osman).

But there seemed to be a ripple of excitement when the fella you can JUST about see in the photo above walked in – turns out it is Roger Daltrey, of ‘The Who’ fame… I must admit I didn’t actually recognise him myself, and actually got mildly less excited when I realised it WASN’T Timothy Dalton from James Bond. Hey ho, I’ve never claimed to be a musical genius…!

Suede @ The Royal Albert Hall – So Young / Metal Mickey from Henry Elliss on Vimeo.

After a day of very few good photo opportunities, I passed this randomly abandoned shoe on the way home from work, walking back to my car. It seemed so odd, I just had to take a photo – it makes me wonder what the story is behind the shoe. It looks like such a smart shoe – how do you lose a shoe like that? A grotty trainer, or a child’s shoe I could probably understand, but I now have a picture of a smartly-dressed business man hobbling round Chiswick.

Either that or somebody has been trying to recreate the excellent children’s story “The Smartest Giant in Town”… I didn’t stop to check whether there was a family of mice living inside. If it’s still there tomorrow, I must check…

The trendy wine-bar / restaurant next door to Tamar HQ – Sam’s Brasserie – had been closed off and covered up this afternoon, in what is fast becoming a common occurrence near our offices. Apparently they were filming a pilot for a new BBC TV Show – I think they said it was called “re-invention”. Just opposite Sam’s is the Barley Mow pub, where they regularly film scenes for TV shows including ‘Love Soup’, so this isn’t as strange a sight as it might be in some places.