London!

We arrived in London on a Wednesday night and stayed until Sunday, and I had the theme song to The Bill stuck in my head the whole time. Everything was over-the-top British and exactly what you think of when you think of London. You don't just see the odd red double-decker bus—the roads are packed with them. And red phone booths. And black cabs. And daleks. My favourite London building by far is The Gherkin, which appears unexpectedly between normal skyscrapers, at least when you're new to London, which I was.

Tanya and I weren't there to see the things that make London London. We were there because my sister Anna Madeleine was there! She has some of her incredible artwork in the Insight Radical exhibition, in which artists respond to the science of free radical chemistry. Her work is just amazing. If you're in London this month, go see the show.

Detail of one of Anna's pill portraits. Each fake pill was 3D-printed in plastic then painted.

Together we wandered the streets of London. We walked through Brick Lane to see the street art. We shuffled through the crowded markets in Portobello Road in Notting Hill. We moseyed along the Thames. In parts of the city I was reminded strangely of Sydney, in a way that I haven't been able to properly identify. I don't think it was just because usually when I see Anna I'm in Sydney. Of course, London is actually totally different from Sydney—Sydney has no Gherkin, to its detriment—but maybe there is something about London that people brought to The Rocks a couple of hundred years ago.

This crane was in need of a bit of a lift.

The phone booths are classic but they also really smell.

Being in England we had to try some of the local food and drink that was on offer. It was in this spirit that I tried Pimm's and lemonade, which is apparently a classic thing to have of a summer afternoon. It's like a mixture between a fruit salad and a lemon-lime-and-bitters, with iced tea added, and then a good dose of gin to finish it off. We also used the opportunity to have a proper curry, a proper coffee, and some real English tea, thus leaving warm ale and fish and chips to try next time.

As always in an unfamiliar city we walked a lot, but we also caught the tube to dive under the city, coming up later (for air) at some new location. The tube is loud and hot and humid and incredibly busy with commuters and tourists, but it is also efficient and fast and we never had to wait more than a few minutes for a train to turn up. The tube is another world under London. CCTV cameras watch silently. The whole time there are announcements being made over loudspeakers, repeated catchphrases in a constant and maddening push to remind everyone of anything that could possibly go wrong. "In this hot weather, tube users are reminded to carry a bottle of water". "If you feel unwell, don't board the train". "If you see anything suspicious, report it!". And always, always "mind the gap, mind the gap, mind the gap please!". Londoners worry a lot about gaps. In such a big city it must be quite a strain, but I guess it keeps dentists employed.

A highlight for me was going to the amazing (and free!) museums and galleries on offer. We went to the Science Museum, where we saw the original Apollo 10 command module, burnt and blackened from reentry into the atmosphere. It is tiny. I find it hard to imagine what it would be like to hurtle through space and back to earth strapped into that miniscule tin of a thing, while the atmosphere did its best to slow you down and eat you whole. After this we moved to art and visited the Tate Modern and the Royal Academy of the Arts, both of which were absolutely chock-a-block with impressive works.

We had a wonderful weekend catching up with Anna and later our friends Soph and Sim, and seeing as much as we could of London in such a short time. But it is a huge city and we will be back - after all there's still warm ale and fish and chips to try!

Humped zebras in London

A new type of helicopter seed