We are spending a couple of days in an apartment in Docklands with a relative of Tigger’s.

The early part of the day was spent collecting said relative from the railway station, having lunch then filling in time before we could access the apartment by going on a bus ride. I felt no particular inclination to record this part of the expedition in writing or photos until we reached Greenwich.

Here we made a visit to what was originally the Millennium Dome and is today an O2 centre.

Above is what I am tempted to call a street in the O2 because it looks very much like a high street in a small town, except that instead of the sky, there is a canvas roof covering the whole site. This gave me the curious sensation of being an extra on a film set.

This is another view from inside the dome though I don’t think it does it justice. In the centre is a sweeping staircase, flanked on either side by an escalator.

The yellow legs on the right, looking like something from a set of a film of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, are part of one of the twelve supports holding up the roof.

A partial view of the Dome from outside. It is a peculiar structure and I cannot imagine what possessed the architects to design it. The huge roof is suspended by cables stretched from the aforementioned legs and I can’t help wondering if it might one day collapse.

This is a more general view of the area which has plenty of open space.

I took this to show the tops of some of the supports holding up the canvas roof. In the foreground is a long glass canopy covering the path from the tube station to the O2.

While waiting for the bus out, I photographed this now historic vestige. Properly called gas holders, they were popularly called gasometers. The iron skeleton that is all that is now left originally contained a drum that rose and fell as it was filled with gas and this was used by consumers.

The gas, of course, was “town gas”, that is, gas made from coal. When the UK changed over to North Sea gas, the gas holders lost their purpose. By this time, however, they had come to be appreciated for their historic value. Some are now listed buildings while others have been modified for new use or incorporated into new buildings.

We changed buses in Poplar where I took a photo through the railings of All Saints Church. As the style might suggest, it was built in the early 19th century (1821-3).

We eventually arrived at Crossharbour and gained possession of our apartment.

This is a quick panorama of the lounge and kitchenette. Not that you can see much detail because of the small scale.

Having made the acquaintance of the apartment, we went out to do a little necessary shopping at the nearby ASDA store.

Darkness had fallen giving this view of the docks with lights reflected in the water.

Some of the buildings are monstrously big, like this cylindrical blot on the landscape. Docklands no longer fulfils the purpose of its name, being given over to office blocks and luxury apartments.

Another memento of times past: these three cranes that once loaded and unloaded cargo ships from all over the world, stand silent and still. Sealed and immobilised, they remain as monuments to an era that is gone for ever.

The docks remain, but no ship can access them now because, even if the water were still deep enough, which I doubt, the entrances are blocked by new roads and bridges. All that sail on these waters today are coots, swans and visiting gulls.

Yesterday evening I went for the long awaited consultation with my dentist. He had been on holiday during the mini-drama of my toothache described in my previous posts on the subject.

He sat and listened attentively while I told the story. In this opening gambit, I refrained from detailing the other dentist’s dire prognostications regarding the ultimate fate of that tooth, preferring to let him reach his own conclusions. He knows my teeth, so to speak, better than a stranger coming upon them for the first time.

While I pretended to relax in the chair, he took an X-ray and while this was being developed, had a good look around my mouth.

He then showed me the X-ray and outlined his conclusions. Happily, these are much more optimistic than those of the other dentist.

Despite having an unusually deep filling, the tooth in question was sound. The problem was its proximity to its next door neighbour which favoured the trapping of extraneous matter, giving rise to the sort of infection that I had just endured. Work will need to be done (I won’t bore you with the details) which will settle matters for the foreseeable future.

Being of an anxious disposition, when things go wrong, I tend to think the worst. This time, to be fair, the stand-in dentist had encouraged my pessimism. It was a relief to find that the situation was not as bad as I had come to imagine. So it was that, as I bade my dentist goodbye, I heard myself say “Once again, I leave happier than when I came.”

Quite so!