Clapham Common, 28th April 2007

It had been a hectic and chaotic day, but a few drinks in the afternoon sun overlooking the Common helped to relax us. We were wandering across the Common to the bus stop to head off in search of food when I spotted this one, a relic of the teeming crowds that had filled the Common until the Sun dipped below the fringing buildings.

Bayswater Road/Hyde Park, 15th April 2007

Hyde Park was absolutely heaving on the hottest day of the year so far, most doing exactly the same as me - drinking with friends on the grass. And on my way in I saw this one trapped in a tree. It clearly had enough helium in it to make it float, but its freedom evidently didn't last long before it was caught in the net of freshly-leaved branches of a large London plane tree.

It was lush in the park, everyone was in high spirits, and this one raised mine even higher than they would have otherwise been. But only a tiny bit.

Henry Dickens Court, St Ann's Road, 12th April 2007

If you believe the papers, London's estates are teeming with feral knife-wielding kids who'd sooner stick a blade in a teenager than buy some chips. How true that is remains debatable, but evidently bursting stray balloons wasn't high on the to-do list of the assorted bike gangs and Staffie owners milling around the streets that evening. Not while I was passing anyway.

New North Road, Reigate, Surrey, 1st April 2007

You have to love coincidences. I tell one other person about this, he looks out of his window the next morning, and guess what?

"If you didn't live in London, I'd suspect foul play"

Grand Union Canal, from Great Western Road, 11th January 2007

And this is the last one I've seen, at the time or writing/uploading, so it's been nearly three months. Now that I've set up this blog I hope my brain will be permanently pre-primed to notice them and that future additions will be more regular than over the last 21 months. I won't post unless I have a new photo.

I never expected it to come to this when I took the first few, or indeed the one above. I was prompted to create this site after reading in the Guardian Guide (31st March 2007) of a site called London Daily Photo. To the author of that site, and especially to his lucid instructions on how to do this, I doff my cap and raise my pint. I don't know this man, but I share his enthusiasm and I am very grateful for his unbidden help.

Shepherds Bush Green, 6th January 2007

A rather sorry example in the gutter on a wet winter day. Night dark at 5ish, when this was taken; the kind of night when summer seems a strange and fanciful concept.

St James's Road, 7th October 2006

I had barely noticed it before I saw the child, who entered rapidly from the right. Whether he was running to pick up a loved one that got away, or to pop one found on the street, I don't know. If the latter he didn't pop it within earshot.

Ladbroke Grove, 13th September 2006

Again, I remember nothing about this one. I only got the location by enlarging the photo and thinking where I'd have been at that time: another walk home from work. Then I recognised it. Looks different with leaves.

St Ann's Road, 5th September 2006

Blurred because I was in motion; the curve of the yellow line makes it look distorted but that's how it's painted. The speedwalking kid in the background adds an element of motion to this that is missing in most, and that I didn't realise I was missing until this.

Tavistock Road/Portobello Road, 28th August 2006

It will survive longer tucked behind an advertising board (I feel sure there's a technical term for those things but I don't know it). I doubt it lasted the night, but it probably outlasted me - a few punches served in the cafe we were sat outside did for me totally.

Oaklands Grove, 19th August 2006

When I uploaded this I'd forgotten where it was taken, but I had a rare moment of clarity a minute ago - it was taken in the street outside my flat, in which I had been for just two days. A cheery welcome back to W12.

Yellow again too - given this, July's one and the one from 2nd August last year, you could almost say that people preferentially pick yellow balloons in high summer. Or that people selectively squash dull-coloured ones when it's bright.

Vanston Place/Walham Grove/North End Road, 29th July 2006

Spotted near home one very hot, bright summer day. Its yellowness was apt - the gunmetal one would have looked incongruously bleak with the Sun blazing so.

From the London Eye, 24th June 2006

This is the only shot I have so far of a wild balloon in flight. As is likely obvious, it's also the only shot taken with my proper camera, rather than the one on my mobile phone. From the Eye's enormous field of view I could follow this one for ages, and watched it from nearly ground level on its journey upwards and eastwards in the hot wind.

Taste of London Festival, Regents Park, 17th June 2006

I was ludicrously drunk when I took this. The Taste of London festival was ended as a food event by an early visit to the cheese hall, in which we each ate a cat's body weight in various cheeses, ruining our appetites and thus making it more of a drinking than eating affair. This sorry semi-flated example seemed appropriate. Great day though.

Holland Walk, Holland Park, 6th June 2006

Trapped in the leaf-softened branches it lived a fair while, but once deflated after a few days it just looked like it had been intentionally placed there, gibbet-esque, as a warning to other balloons: "stay in the hand, for you'll live longer there than in the wild".

Not that they can see or think. I didn't want to slide into pathetic fallacy but I've done it there. Hey ho.

Location Unremembered, 23rd May 2006

I like this because the balloon looks like the point of an exclamation mark. I remember nothing more about it.

Knivet Road, 25th April 2006

Almost too easy - this was in our front garden. Plainly, we didn't care for our front garden much (or the back one, to be honest: it required a machete and native guide to reach the back wall). It was a pleasant surprise to arrive home and find this, not least because it's a gunmetal balloon. Who has gunmetal balloons?! PlaneEasy, apparently. I approve, whoever they are.

Oxford Street, 22nd April 2006

Along with exclamation mark and in flight above, this is my favourite doomed balloon shot in terms of its visual appeal. I'm not a "proper" photographer, and anyway the nature of the subject makes the balloon photographs urgent and unrehearsed. But I like this shot as a photo as well as for other reasons:

1) It was the first time I'd taken such a photo in front of someone I knew since it became a project. After so long it was good to get it off my chest, and it led to...

2) It was the first balloon whose doom I heard. I'd not got two sentences through my explanation before a loud pop indicated its demise, and I turned around to see a child skipping away from a tattered piece of rubber. dS/dt>0, I guess. No I wasn't sad - it's only a balloon - I was just glad I got it in time. It could have happened many times before, but I always have my mp3 player on when out alone so any other pops would have been drowned by that, and I'd never know to look back.

I usually hate Oxford Street on a Saturday but this made it a bit more beautiful.