Off Delancey Street, 4th September 2010

Gold trapped by green railings opposite my favourite pub in Camden, this was a welcome spot before a welcome pint.

It was a doomed advert for The Money Shop (cash for gold!), a sure sign of recessionary times. Three years ago I'm sure the balloons said things like "No deposit! 120% mortgages available here!", and they were made of actual gold.

Leighton Grove, 30th August 2010

If the last few were far from home, this could scarcely be closer. I'd just stepped out to the shops when a passing child shrilled "I've just found a balloon!" to her mother, and lo, she had. Her mother was pushing a pram carrying a younger sibling, and clearly didn't want to turn the entire caboodle about to pick up the discard, so I had a second or two to crouch and snap, while the young family looked on nonplussed.

On most such occasions, when I return the balloon has gone or burst or most likely both. This time, surprisingly, three warm late summer hours later, it was still sat in the same spot, as if it were a Koons metal sculpture, immune to wind and pricks.

River Thames, near Royal Windsor Racecourse, 29th August 2010

My own first for a while, having lived on unexpected generosity for weeks. This was not as far from home as the last, but a different world nonetheless - snapped departing a lock on a bank holiday weekend pootle down the river on an old schoolfriend's family's riverboat. We were heading back at this stage, having passed through the same lock far more sober and with a functional boat some hours previously. In the inter-lock time it broke down mid-stream while under my erratic and uncontrolled charge, and had to be towed from its ersatz mooring to a riverside willow to a real berth, before we could coax its hot engine home.

The sun shone on our lunch, our repairs and this photo. In between each, it poured cold and hard.