Christmas in London

A gathering of colleagues, 12 to 6pm in a pub off Kingsway. Pint of Winter Warmer, followed by venison sausages and chips, then on to Bombardier. Outside, low gold sunlight of nearly-the-shortest-day gradually degraded to artificial light silver through the afternoon. Snow not to be seen, unlike most of south-east England.

Most of the world's known problems were solved, many unknown problems were reviewed, with a planned follow-up meeting in late December 2010.

Cologne Christmas Market

My first blog. It's about Cologne Christmas market, a topic I know very little about. I expect this trend to be a theme of my blogging career. Well, I had Kangaroo and Camel in an Asian? fusion restaurant for lunch so I was not surprised to be offered Krokodil kebabs in the market in the evening. Resisting the temptation to go for a trio of tasty but tough bits of respectively jumpy, spitting and downright dangerous animals, I went for Lengalenga instead. I have a lot of time for rice and spinach, never caused any grief to anyone. I think it's from Africa, as was the Krokodil, unless they have started to be more common on the Rhine now.