"Magic Bus" - Who, 1968

Things got a little hectic once I got home from my London trip earlier in the week, and I really haven't had a sec to blog until today. So I apologize for the delay in telling a little story. Hopefully, it'll be worth the wait!

Remember that I posted some photos back on the 31st, taken from my hotel in Greenwich? One of them was a photo of a double-decker bus. I've put a small copy of that same photo here on this blog item.

Well, I also made that same bus photo the "wallpaper" on my work laptop on Tuesday night. I change the background image for the Windows desktop from time to time, just for variety. I liked the colorful image of the London bus.

As I was setting up for Wednesday's training class, one of the catering staff (whose name is also Janet, by the way) glanced up at the projection screen just as my laptop's image popped up. And it was my laptop's Window's desktop showing on the screen, as I hadn't yet opened the PowerPoint presentation. She suddenly said, "Hey -- is that a 177? It IS a 177! That's my bus!!! You have a photo of MY BUS on your laptop!"

She asked me where I'd taken the photo. I explained that the bus was going down Greenwich High Road Tuesday evening, outside my hotel window, when I took the photo. Janet asked what time I'd taken it, and then she strained her eyes to see if she might be on it. But she didn't think so.

Meanwhile, the other catering woman came into the training room about this time. She exclaimed, "What a good photo of a bus!" She seemed to stop to think a second, and then she added, "Why did you take that picture anyway? Why did you take a photo of JUST a bus?" And with that question, Janet once again said, very loudly, "That's MY bus! I could have been on that bus!"

Anyway, it was a very funny start for the day. Who knew that my bus photo was going to generate such an amusing reaction within the catering staff at the venue!

This is the same Canary Wharf venue where I've previously had such great views of the Millennium Dome, the Thames Barrier, etc. During Wednesday's lunch break, I realized that one of the rooms on the west side of the building was unoccupied. I've never been able to snap any photos from that side of the building before, so here are three of the ones I took at that time...and you can click on any of them for a full-sized version.

Looking west, from the 33rd Floor of the Citigroup Building in London's Canary Wharf, taken at full wide-angle.

Zooming in, if you look closely you can see London landmarks like the London Eye (at least the top of it) and Tower Bridge.

And still zooming and shifting the view a little more to the north, you can see some more of the City of London and West End landmarks. It's also interesting to get such a great view of the traffic up and down the Thames.

Janet