Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 10th October 2016

It’s 3:28pm on Monday afternoon, and I’m waiting for Francis out the front of my building. With me are my laptop, my camera, and a copy of Grayson Perry’s Playing to the Gallery.

Other tenants of the building keep walking by and giving me odd looks; it’s cold, and I’m sitting on top of the structure that houses the bins for buildings inside. Also, none of these people know who I am, other than maybe a manifestation of the one of the people they’ve heard in apartment three.

I am completely aware of how insane all looks, but I don’t care. Between 3:20 and 4:20pm, Francis is going to bring me the clothes airer I’ve been waiting for since last Thursday. I never put so much mental energy into a clothes airer before now; come 4:20pm I never want to think about it ever again.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 6th October 2016

These are our boxes. There are many like them, but these ones are ours.

Today, I felt the cold indifference of waiting for an Amazon delivery to arrive. To begin with there were these two boxes, which strangely arrived at exactly the same time. Then there was silence; just the boxes and I.

So I decided to do the logical thing available to me at the time, and take many photos of said boxes utilising different lighting options and focal points. 

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 28th September 2016

As you leave Finsbury Park station to head to our apartment, you pass a store dedicated to selling merchandise for Arsenal Football Club. I found this novel when I first saw it, joking that this resolves the eternal expat dilemma of working out which club I'm supposed to support. The penny didn't quite drop though that this would also mean that I would be living at Arsenal Ground Zero, and that I can hear the reactions to bad umpire calls from our living room.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 27th September 2016

Since a trip to Europe last Christmas, I've banging on to any one who'll listen about the cortado. A simple enough concept - an espresso shot with the same amount of warm milk - but somehow this just isn't a thing in Australia. That said, given that the rest of the world has only recently discovered that the flat white exists, I'll just chalk this one up to regional differences.

While running errands across town, I was reunited with the cortado courtesy of a small coffee shop embedded directly into the entrance of Gold Hawk Road Station. It was a joyous experience, even if I've chosen to memorialise this with a rather bad photograph. 

It really was a great coffee though.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 26th September 2016

Despite all the changes going on at present, mostly I've just been getting on with things since arriving in London. I buy groceries, cook meals, even the odd bit of dry cleaning. But every now and then I'm caught off guard by something distinct to our new home, something that you just wouldn't come across back in Sydney. 

Like this can, for example. This is a can for Tate Modern's house lager, featuring an illustration by Peter Saville, who amongst other things designed most of the record covers for Factory Records. No matter how many times I think about this, I still smile every time.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 25th September 2016

This is the Ikea at Tottenham. We walked here from Finsbury Park. It seemed like a good idea at the time. I took this photo as we made our approach, mostly out of relief.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 24th September 2016

This is the back of a pavilion set up for designjunction, part of the London Design Festival. Inside the pavilion were all manner of expensive treasures to enthral people and make their lives better. I took plenty of pictures of such things, but many of these were reference shots for the purposes of looking something up later. 

There was something about the lines in this shot that interested me; everything's just a little out of whack, and the vectors in the two foreground structures don't lead you anywhere interesting. It's all kind of a mess, but then you see the polite little signs reminding you were the fire exits are.

What I like most about scenes like this is you're not supposed to look at it, let alone think about it too deeply. No one wants to consider the idea that a fire may break out inside, but if it did, and you were looking at the right part of the walls, well, you'd know what to do.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 23rd September 2016

Drifting on the Thames out the front of Tate Modern is a giant cube adorned with (what looks like) illustrations. Atop the cube is a lone figure, still and unmoving as the cube's barge moves slowly with the tide. It's beautiful, and I have no idea why it's there.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 22nd September 2016

In the two days I've spent in Finsbury Park, this sign has loomed above ominously as I head into the Tube. At first I thought the sign was a relic of long-passed neon glory days, but standing beneath it is a living, breathing bowling alley - Rowans Tenpin Bowl.

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 21st September 2016

Being from Australia, I know that hurling stones at other countries' tabloid newspapers is not exactly a fair sport. However there's something distinctly English about seeing the headlines of every newspaper dominated by the divorce of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. 

I've spent most of my first 24 hours in the UK staring at my laptop and getting my head around things. All the while this photo, with its unfortunately placed crease, stared back at me. For what it's worth, also today Tony Blair decided he should be involved in less scrupulous business interests, and the Labor Party decided its members should adhere to stronger social media standards so that they can stop being so damned mean.

For those playing at home, the bakery that supplied the chocolate croissant does a pretty solid flat white. The croissant itself was also pretty tasty, and I can see many more of these in my future. Good news for blood sugar levels.

Still, it's sad for Angelina and Brad, isn't it?

Daniel used to live in Sydney but now he lives in London: 20th September 2016

Some very good friends of mine are posting a photo a day on Tumblr in order to document their journeys living overseas. Always being one to jump on a bandwagon, I thought I would also give this a shot.

Historically, declaring to do something for a sustained period of time has mixed results for me. What makes me think this might work this time is a genuine desire to take better pictures. Another has generously helped in this cause by providing me some sweet prime lenses to play around with.

The image above was taken with one of said lenses, immediately reminding me that there's a reason people use these primarily for portraiture. This is the view out of window where my partner and I are currently residing. I'm still getting my head around living somewhere with less trees and much more brickwork, but there is a quite sizeable park nearby - so that equation can be balanced after I recalibrate from being jetlagged and work out what day it is.

Not So Topical

Some 18 months ago I said I would record a bunch of tracks within a month and release them immediately after that - I even published one of these tracks as a proof of concept, like this would somehow inspire me to actually do the thing I said I would do.

Somehow, perhaps predictably, this didn't happen as expected. However, after finishing the recordings I'd started last February, the resulting pieces of music were put on to Bandcamp under the banner of Topical. At this point, the music longer reflected any sort of commentary about anything happening at the time the project started, rather than a self-deprecating jab at the speed with which I finish things.

But it's done now, and you can listen to it above because the internet is good like that. And now that I've written a post that honours the completion something I've previous said I'd do, maybe I can properly move on to something else.