Bomb Shelter

I passed this place on my walk to Camden Market last weekend. I knew this unusual-looking building had to have some kind of history, and after some Googling I learned that it's the Belsize Park Deep Shelter, built during World War II to shelter Londoners during bombing raids. Photos of the interior and a diagram of the whole facility can be seen here. Most of it's underground, obviously. You never know what's beneath your feet in this town.

More recently it has been used by a company that specializes in secure storage of business records.

And speaking of business records, my blog came in handy yesterday at work. We were trying to figure out why a certain missing book was checked out to one of our library accounts back in early March. I looked at my blog to see what was happening then, and realized it was the day of our Drop Everything and Read promotion. We finally figured out that the book had been put on a cart and taken up to the high school for student use during that event -- and it never came back.

This is one of the reasons I keep a blog. I have a terrible memory, but if I record the little incidents of my days, it helps me figure things out when questions arise. (It's also part of the reason I've kept a journal since childhood, though the blog is much easier to search.)

This mystery plant has appeared in our garden. We didn't intentionally grow it. I thought it was a foxglove, but then it sent up this long stalk with a weird, fibrous-looking flowerhead. It turns out I was right -- it is a foxglove, and in fact I think it's the only one we've got this year. But who knew their early flowers look so strange?