Date

3 July 2024 10:29:29

Location

Hackney Downs, London

Country or Territory

United Kingdom

Name

Sasha Engelmann

Satellite

NOAA-19

Radio Callsign

M6IOR

It is another grey, misty and cold-ish day in London. I spend the morning working and take a brief break to capture a satellite image. A curly haired black dog tackles me and rolls around on my laptop as I am mid-pass. His owner looks mortified but as soon as I say it's not a big deal he becomes interested in my antenna, and it turns out he used to be an engineer, working with Radar. We don't speak long. Later in the afternoon, I see the weather from the seventieth floor of the Shard (a sneaky birthday-week adventure with T, who has wanted to go to the top of the Shard for years but is always too anxious of the elevators). We rise sixty floors in what feels like five seconds, our ears popping. At the top, T and I carefully approach the knife-edge, holding on to the metal beams for reassurance. After a few minutes, though, we have our foreheads pressed against the glass gazing in every direction. A stranger offers to take photos of us. Though the view might be more stunning on a sunny day, the changeable clouds and shifting rain are spectacular, and we try to time how long a rainy cloud takes to pass over London. It sort of dissolves rather than making it the whole way. There are only a few other people, and so plenty of space to circle all edges and study all perspectives. Descending, we go on a hunt for an ivy-coloured wall on an old building at Kings College that we could see hidden a few blocks away from St Thomas' street. Once we find the wall, we spend a few minutes admiring the density of the ivy, its even spread and growth over red brick, nearly engulfing the entire building.

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