Pink Sauce

Like last year, I spent some of my Christmas day morning cycling in central London, taking pictures of the eerie deserted streets. This year, the expedition was made all the more easier by the lovely Kenny Farthings aka Boris Bikes. No need to borrow a bike for a flatmate I no longer have. Click here to view this year's batch (Elephant and Castle, the Southbank and Covent Garden mostly) and here for last year's (Westminster and the West End).

It's the end of the calendar year and with it comes a strange need to stop and take stock of the year gone by. This impulse is augmented by that melancholy and contemplative Sunday evening feeling most of us seem to experience. Tonight I am sitting on my six-month old sofa, looking at the lovely urban view I am sharing with you below. And I look back on 2010... A year ago at this time of year I was in the last throes of the Christmas session with the London Gay Men's Chorus (my 15th season with them - eight years). After three performances at the Cadogan Hall at the beginning of December, and an invitation to the Mayor of London's Choral Service at Southwark Cathedral, we only had a few performances left on the stage of the Royal Festival Hall as guests of Sandy Toksvig's show, before packing up the tinsel for another year. This year, I wasn't part of the Christmas show, having taken the season off after the summer concert at the Roundhouse and a visit to a defiant ...