Dear Readers, this morning I decided to catch the bus from East Finchley down to Islington where I do my pilates (and I’m not sure if a more middle-class sentence than that was ever written). It was the most glorious day, after a week of rain, and I am always awestruck by the view as you head down from Archway towards the City. I didn’t have my camera, so these images are from my (ancient) phone, but hopefully you’ll get the idea. First up, St Pauls Cathedral and the Walkie-Talkie coming into view through the grubby bus window in the photo above.

This is a very complicated junction (the bus is heading towards central London and Holloway) but does anyone else think that this looks like a man standing on one leg while balancing a brick on one arm?

And then there’s the Shard in the distance, which looks ridiculously out of scale with everything else in London, at least at the moment.

The spire of St John the Evangelist church comes into view – at the moment there’s an enormous Christmas Tree ‘plantation’ popping up in the grounds, which will no doubt contribute to the traffic problems of the area.

But what I’m really loving are the leaves, like these yellow specimens close to the junction with Seven Sisters Road.

And how about these at the Nag’s Head junction? Everything really was illuminated this morning, in a last hurrah before the wind and the rain blow the leaves into mulch. And now, for some much-needed stretching and bending, after a week hunched over a computer.