Around Oxford Street/Regent Street, 6th December 2008

It was a day of balloons. They were everywhere. I missed a few and didn't care. By the end I was so ballooned out that I wondered if I could ever take another one again - I mean, what could compare? The fleeting and scarce glimpses that have been my sustenance over the past three and a half years have been rendered farcical by today's glut.

It started like any other day. A red escape, the top one, flying low over sunlit buildings in central London, snapped happy as a rare treat. But it was a mere taste of things to come, an amuse l'oeil before the feast of sightings. The roads were closed and pedestrianised to entice out credit-crunched shoppers, and balloons had been pressed into their usual decorative service. The UK must now be in the grip of a helium shortage. So many festooned streets and shops that I suppose countless escapes were inevitable. I wonder how far they flew, on the icy wind?

So my memory is hazed by weight of numbers, and these are lumped together for convenience. 6th December 2008: Balloon Day.