A garden in the sky

In the last 20 months alone, The View From The Shard, the Orbit in the Olympic Park, and most recently, the Sky Garden in the Walkie Talkie have all opened, giving Londoners a chance to look down on their city from a variety of angles, like a queen ant looking down on her anty subjects scurrying around the streets below.

Having ticked the first two off my list (I love a view, I do), Sunday was time to hit the concave monstrosity that is the Walkie Talkie. The Sky Garden is completely free to visit, although you do have to book well in advance. For the more sophisticated skygoer, there are bars and restaurants up on high, but if it's a good old-fashioned nosey around you're after, a free ticket is more than adequate.

A quick hop through airport-style security (because really, what self-respecting building doesn't have airport-style security these days?) and a lift ride later, we were standing in the Sky Garden. Three floors of rainforest-style greenery, rockeries and glass windows over the city.

Many of the plants and trees have a bit of growing to do yet before they reach their full potential, but it's easy to see what the planners were going for. Think Eden Project meets urban jungle and you're just about there - the only thing missing is a hummingbird or two flitting from tree to tree.

From one giant to another...a view of The Shard just across the river from the outside viewing gallery

The garden is spread over three floors, the highest part of the viewing gallery facing North, with much of the view blighted by the cluster of skyscrapers in the Square Mile (the Gherkin, the Cheesegrate, the Heron Tower and co.). Turn 180 degrees and there's an outdoor viewing gallery over the South side of the building, looking down onto the river and beyond.

Some tall ships were faffing about on the river while we were there, so Tower Bridge kept opening.

Now for something that's been bugging me ever since. Many of the trees are already fully grown, several feet high with branches sticking out every which way. The garden has only been open a couple of months, so presumably these trees were already a decent size when they were planted. How did they get them up there?  Some of them are too big to fit in the lift. Nature dictates that you can't take a tree apart, then but it back together once it's in situ, not successfully anyway. So how did they get them up there? Answers in the comments please.

Wishlist: Handbags

Ladies of London, you've been doing a sterling job on the handbag front recently. Barely a day goes by when I don't encounter handbag envy of some sort of my journey to or from work. This coupled with the fact that my bag broke spectacularly a couple of days ago has led to me looking for a new gear carrier.

Normally I go for a slouchy bag, perfect for my everything-including-the-kitchen-sink mentality, but at the moment I'm feeling the love for boxy and structured bags, as you can see from my selection below.

                       

The central bag. from New Look, is my absolute favourite (also available in black, directly below. although unusually for me, I prefer it in pink). I love how it's simple and elegant, but not completely boring.

Also unusual for me is the hot pink option at the top. Also from New Look, the thing that puts me off is the combination of black and brown; if the handles were black, this would be a definite contender, but as it stands, there's too much going on.

The Ted Baker option in the top left is divine, but is sadly now sold out (yeah, we're gonna pretend that's the reason I'm not buying it...nothing to do with the hefty TB price tag).

The other three options are all River Island.

A New Year trip to Primrose Hill

Happy new year, dear reader. May 2015 be an absolute hoot! I'm feeling pretty chuffed because I've already managed to do one thing I wanted to make a point of doing in 2015, going up Primrose Hill.

Early for work this morning, having trudged through an ankle-deep layer of Strongbow cans in Camden, which gave way to an ankle-deep layer of Asti bottles as I rounded the corner into Primrose Hill (how the other half live...), I decided to seize the moment to climb to the top of this hill which I've heard so much about.

As first impressions go, it wasn't a great one. A massive clean up operation was underway to get rid of the absolute mess left behind by revellers last night. Several council vans and men in flourescent jackets were making headway on the layer of rubbish coating the side of the hill. I got speaking to a couple of locals who were out walking their dogs and they were stunned by the mess; they'd never seen it this bad after New Year's Eve before.

Still, I can see how such a place could be attractive with a little less mess and a little more sunshine. One to return to at a later date, me thinks.