Sunday 13 January 2013

Birds, Beasts and Fire-breathing Dragons...

One of the joys of my job is that although I work in an office, it's not always the same office. Take last week for example, on Thursday I found myself working in a building just along from here....


A pretty good location to spend a day, that. In the interests of making the most of a day when I was being paid to be somewhere anyway, I decided to pop out for a wander along the river at lunchtime. I used to work further along the river to the East - at North Woolwich, and absolutely loved the opportunity to see Old Father Thames on a daily basis - although there the view was the Thames Barrier and the Woolwich Ferry, where I was today it was quite different...


It was a nice surprise to see one of these almost as soon as I started walking...


A Cormorant - enjoying his view of the London Eye! (And who can blame him, it is a rather splendid view!)

Surprisingly there were other creatures to be found as well...some not so surprising alongside a river I suppose.....


Fish feature heavily along this stretch of river, decorating the lamp standards on each side of the pavement -


Slightly less to be expected was this...


Isn't he splendid? This can be found on the gates of the Inner Temple, one of the Inns of Court, and is just a short way along from a similar emblem for the Middle Temple - another animal, a Lamb this time, although no photos of that one I'm afraid.

Of course if we're after mythical creatures, you'd have to go a fair way to beat this one...


This is the emblem of the Corporation of London, and a pair of these wonderful fire-breathing beasts can be found at the main entrances to the city, standing guard. What better than a dragon to safeguard the very heart of England's Capital, eh?

Robyn

4 comments:

dreamer said...

It's great all the details you "see" once you look through a lens. I wonder how many people walk past these every day and never really notice them.

Anonymous said...

Great photos. Dreamer is right. Was it Ansel Adams who said that photographers dont just look at the world they see the world or something along those lines.
I know that when I have my cameral I see things that I might normally pass by.

I am really looking forward to my office moving to the city as walking along the Thames is one of my favourite things to do in London.

Wendy said...

Hello - living in Essex, London is on my doorstep, too. I love your photographs of the mythical creatures in the heart of this commercial city. It just shows that it's possible to look at London in many different ways.

Robyn said...

Dreamer - I know, I did get some curious looks from some people, but equally, I then saw one of them stop and have a good look at the next lamp-post along!
C - I love to go out actually looking for details in things - fascinating what you see, and yes, you can't beat a meander along the Thames!
Wendy - I'm going to bookmark your blog for reading as it looks really interesting! I love London - I was born and grew up there so although I'm also now living in Essex, I still consider myself very much a Londoner.