Annual London trip

This week, I had my annual trip to London for the Gartner Enterprise Architecture Summit. The last few years have seen a decline in the budget available to me for this trip so this time I was staying at the Kensington Close Hotel, in a single room that you couldn't have swung a cat in. Gone are the days of the Park Plaza (where the conference is held, just across Westminster Bridge) or even the Washington Mayfair, with the fine walk across Green Park and St. James's Park, past Westminster. I keep wondering if each year will be the last one I attend.

I didn't do much sightseeing. The weather was poor, so apart from a stroll along the South Bank on Tuesday lunchtime I stuck to the commute between High St. Kensington and Westminster, attending the conference and eating in Kensington Whole Foods. I watched Arsenal relegate Wigan in a pub (on TV) and that was about it. At the conference I did a video interview which was novel. I didn't have sight of the questions beforehand so was having to think of soundbite answers on the spot, which was a challenge. Will I end up on the cutting room floor or did I advertise Gartner's services sufficiently well to make the final cut? Who knows? The conference itself was fairly dull, with little to advance my thinking. The opportunities for networking weren't great either, as the show floor is quite narrow with vendors hemming you in on each side. Plus there are a lot of continental Europeans and Scandinavians in attendance so finding someone from a relevant, UK organisation to talk to becomes a bit of a lottery.

Marie and Michael left this morning, after Marie had made her fourth batch of "curny buns". Sean had asked them to be made while he was reading in bed because he likes the smell of them baking. It is a smell that is very reminiscent of Ardilaun.