We walked out to the beach: the tide was high, the weather bleak:-

I am writing to wish my readers a Happy Christmas!

I have been asked if I plan to continue my blog in my new life. The answer is yes. It has become a little bit more intermittent, only because it has had to become less architectural as I have run out of things to document on my journey from Stepney into Piccadilly and the move to Hanover Square is not going to change my working environment very radically.

The New Year approaches. Will Theresa May fall on her sword if, as still seems probable, she loses the vote for her version of exit ? Or will she win by a narrow margin as MPs face the worse prospect of crashing out of the Union without a deal in place ?

I certainly don’t remember eating turkey with so little confidence in what the future holds.

The river was in full flood this morning: the volume of recent rainfall and winter tide:-

It’s a long time since I’ve walked across the Warren – an area of wild and bleak, grassed over duneland, where it used to be easy to get lost, although now it’s well signposted.

I walked first downriver towards Abermenai:-

Then, I doubled back across the Warren:-

Until it began to get dark:-

I had always assumed that the churchyard of St. Dunstan’s, which I walk through nearly every weekend, was a creation of the post-war, when I thought the tombs would have have been moved to allow for the erection of temporary prefabs. But I have just learned from a tweet by Alice Rawsthorn that I was quite wrong. The churchyard closed for burials in 1854 and the tombs were moved between 1885 and 1887 to allow for landscaping by Fanny Rollo Wilkinson, who, after training at the Crystal Palace School of Landscape Gardening and Practical Horticulture, was appointed honorary landscape gardener of the Metropolitan Parks and Gardens Association, as well as working for the Kyrle Society which brought beauty to the lives of the poor. I will look at it differently in future, as a Victorian amenity rather than a bit of slum clearance.

It was my last day at the RA today: my desk has been cleared and is now no longer my desk (it’s the Secretary’s desk, designed as if for an official in the Indian Empire); there were a small number of people still working as I did a last round to say goodbye; then I handed in my staff pass, rather battered with a photograph showing me younger and fresher faced, as I was eleven years ago. More than a sixth of my life, I thought, as I walked through the courtyard for the last time as a member of staff.

Next stop, Hanover Square.

One of the things that the RA has always done well is celebrate Christmas (well, of course, now it does everything well). I remember my astonishment when I first arrived to discover that much of the inventiveness and creativity of the staff was devoted to making costumes based on an exhibition From Russia, which at the time hadn’t happened and was under threat of not doing so. I went as a Russian general. This year, the Christmas party doubled as my leaving party and I had the infinite sadness of watching a short, but brilliant film of my doppelgangers everywhere in the RA. No more. My office has been packed up. My intray has been emptied. All that remains is for me to return my outfit to the National Theatre costume store and say farewell.