Back in Australia, I enjoyed three weeks of sunshine and beach. Only when I came back to London did I realise how quickly I had tanned. Once I had put on my foundation for my first day at work, I looked in the mirror to see a white face attached to a brown neck!

Just kidding, it wasn’t that extreme. In certain light, though, the difference in skin colour was noticeable.

Joan at the beach

I heard a skid, then a loud thud, angry car horns, and three different sirens.

There is a big smash at the intersection near my flat.

Now there is an ambulance and a crumpled red car parked on our curb. It is flashing blue into my bedroom window as I am trying to sleep.

Around 7:30 AM, I thought I heard the clip clop of horses. I crossed my bedroom and looked outside to see a herd of horses walking on the large road in front of my flat.

There were about thirty of them in neat rows of three. The horse in the middle of each row carried a police person, who also held the reins for the horses either side of him or her. All the horses were brown.

I watched for the minute that it took to get across the main intersection. The ‘clip clop clip clop’ is a lovely sound in the morning.

I have since seen this early morning parade of horses another two times. It seems to happen around once a month.

It had rained and rained the night before and the puddle had returned. This puddle is an obstacle that regularly shows up to ambush me on the way to work.

Whenever I spot it, I loiter at the edge, waiting for a break in the traffic so that I can dash past it. It’s a good three second sprint so it has to be a large break in the traffic.

This time, the puddle was bigger than I had ever seen. I waited and waited. No cars paused, no break appeared.

Suddenly, there was a lull. It wasn’t much of a lull but I figured it was the only chance I would have. I went for it.

I had almost made it when a taxi cruised into the frame. Immediately, I flattened myself against the fence bordering the footpath, cringing in anticipation of the deluge.

A second passed and there was no deluge. I was surprised. The taxi had created a wave but it was going slowly so the wave was small. Grateful, I straightened my dress and returned to the middle of the footpath.

‘I’m sorry!’ came a faint call. I looked around. The taxi driver was stopped at the traffic lights and had rolled down his window.

He leant across the passenger seat and said again, ‘I’m so sorry!’ He looked upset.

‘Oh! It’s okay!’ I said as reassuringly as a I could.

It was an unexpected moment of London kindness.

In London, I see autumn leaves on a scale you don’t get in Australia. In some places, I walk shin deep in red, orange and brown leaves.

London’s neighbourhoods are beautiful right now. However, I do feel sorry for the street sweepers. During the rest of the year, they’re clearing up litter, dog poop, pavement pizzas and cigarette butts. Now, on top of their usual duties, they fight an unwinnable battle with leaf litter.

The sweepers fill their rubbish carts with red, orange and brown, and the next day, the trees have re-layered the roads and footpaths.

The sweepers’ only respite is winter, when the branches of deciduous trees are exhausted and bare.

There is one other thing about the leaves that makes me worry.

You see, when leaves fall and naturally decay, the nutrients go back into the earth. At the same time, carbon dioxide is released. This doesn’t contribute to climate change because when leaves grow back in spring, the tree re-absorbs the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

What I worry about is that all those leaves collected by all those street sweepers will go to the rubbish tip. This must happen because the sweepers are still picking up litter. No one is going to separate the leaves from the litter.

In a rubbish tip, the rubbish is stacked in layers and capped every night so that the rats and pigeons don’t make a mess. This means that organic material like leaves have no oxygen. Instead of decaying (aerobically) and releasing carbon dioxide, the leaves will decay (anaerobically) and release methane.

Methane is a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. Over the next two decades, this methane released will trap 72 times more heat than carbon dioxide. Even after a hundred years, methane is still 25 times more potent than the same amount of carbon dioxide.

I wonder if anyone else has been thinking about this.

‘Hello, mumble mumble…’

That’s what it sounded like. I turned around and saw a man grinning widely, walking behind me on the footpath.

‘Hello,’ I replied and kept walking.

‘Mumble, mumble…’

Huh? I took out my one of my earphones and looked at him, puzzled.

‘Are you going home?’ he repeated.

‘Yes.’

Oh not, he was a weirdo. I put the earphone back in and kept walking.

‘Mumble, mumble…’

Again, I took an earphone out.

‘Where do you live?’ he asked.

I considered my options.

‘I’d rather not say,’ was what I settled on.

I jammed my earphones back in and continued at the same steady pace. I didn’t turn around but could feel him drop away.

The family living in the flat next to ours have a large white fluffy dog. While I washed my breakfast dishes, I watched the boy play with the dog in the concrete square at the centre of our block of flats.

The dog looked frustrated. It was darting here and there but no more than two metres at a time because the boy was holding tightly onto its leash. I guess the boy had no option, as there is no gate to our concrete square. An unleashed dog could have run away to the wild open streets of London.

I remember seeing the boy play with the dog a few month ago. He threw a stick. The dog stood beside him, apparently confused. Only when the boy faked a sprint towards the stick, did the dog start running towards it. The dog skidded and made three attempts at picking up the stick before success.

This incident made me realise that the dog, though large, is actually quite young. A big puppy.

I also didn’t know that dogs aren’t born with the instinct to fetch.

In the first three months of the dog coming to live amongst our flats, he barked and barked. The family would frantically shush him. Soon, they too were barking. I couldn’t walk past their front door without setting off a canine and human symphony.

I think the dog has learned. I can now walk by and two-thirds of the time, the dog would watch without a peep.

Some mornings on the way to work, I see the family out for a walk with the dog. I hope they go out every day, even twice a day. It must be hard for a big dog living in a two-storey London flat.

A couple of times a month, I take the coach to Oxford. London-door-to-Oxford-door, taking the coach takes around two hours.

Travelling back to London one weekend, I had a dream run home. The coach trip went smoothly, arriving at Baker Street London in 75 minutes.

Within a minute of waiting at the Baker Street bus stop, my local bus arrived. The local bus carried me all the way to my home bus stop without stopping once. This is very unusual as this is well-patronised bus route.

Then as I walked home from the bus stop, every pedestrian crossing flashed green for ‘walk’.

With such a series of good fortune, I was home in less than 90 minutes.

When Tube workers went on strike in June, I was completely unaffected. Once again, I rejoiced in my living arrangements, particularly the 20 minute walk between home and work.

There was one aspect of the strike that did cause a twinge of envy. The London Cycling Campaign ran ‘BikeTubes’ over the two strike days. Experienced and novice cyclists joined together to travel en masse along designated routes, thus forming the cycling equivalent of a tube line.

I live too close to work for any of the BikeTube routes to be useful, which is a shame because I really enjoyed the one crowd cycling event I’ve been on.

The BikeTubes were so successful that they are now a permanent fixture on Transport for London’s calendar. Cycle Fridays allow new cyclists to experiment with riding into work in the safe company of trained marshals from the London Cycling Campaign.

Last Friday as I waited to cross the road to get to work, I saw a BikeTube of people go past me. It looked fun.

Two weeks ago, Daniel visited us from his base in Amsterdam. Daniel and Damjan are ‘foodies’ and I like food, so we booked ourselves into Gordon Ramsay’s flagship restaurant on Royal Hospital Road in Chelsea.

We spent five hours there (7pm to 1am) on a Tuesday night. The artistically plated dishes were full great flavours and textures. The wait staff read our minds.

Daniel has a review and photos on his website so I now direct you there…