Well it was late morning when I heard a tremendous clap of thunder. That was odd, because it had finally dried out after days of on and off rain and I was looking forward to a few clear days. (hah). Anyway, I hadn't seen the lightning, but you don't have to when you hear thunder that loud. You know it was a big lightning strike, probably close.

 

So I'm back about my business when I hear the rain start. I hear it because we have a baby monitor in the study on the ground floor with the transmitter in Alex's room up on the top floor. His room has two skylights, so the rain gets quite loud. This, however, was louder than that because it wasn't rain, it was hail.

 

So I'm staring out onto the patio looking at a massive hailstorm thinking I should take a picture of the ice bouncing off the table when I hear another noise, a loud roar. But it wasn't thunder - it didn't trail off like that. It was getting slightly louder. It didn't sound like anything I could recognise but the only logical explanation was that a very large vehicle was coming down the mew (4b) really fast. I even got up and went into the kitchen to see if I could catch any commotion.

 

But that sound eventually trailed off and I went about my day.

 

This afternoon I discovered that all the fuss was about a tornado that touched down a few streets away from here. There's even some silent video.

 

The red star is where it hit and caused damage. I live on a street off of Formosa in the bottom right of the map.

 

This is actually my third close encounter with a tornado and I'm wondering when I'll have statistics on my side here. I shouldn't have to deal with any more at this point, right? The other two were in Massachusetts - one in Medford and one in Stockbridge.

Sex sells. I guess you know that already. I can pretty much guarantee that this poster, currently showing in multiple locations in every Tube stop in London, would not see the light of day in the U. S.

 

 

I mean, it has a giant erect penis in the middle of it. This is the tamer poster, by the way. The ones on the platform have a much larger picture of this dude, and let's just say it looks, um, larger than life.

So I'm shopping around Marylebone High Street on Monday when I see a sign leading into the Grotto Passage. Having nothing pressing, I follow the signs until I get to this, the last one. I have to confess, I really wanted to see the smoking engine room, but alas, the arrow lead to a dead end.

 

 

If anyone knows what was going on in the Ossington Buildings that day, please let me know.