I’ve not added a post for over a week becasue I have been visiting a friend in South Korea and have just arrived home with some seriously hardcore  jet-leg and a suitcase full of madness. It seems so different here – muted and ordered. There’s none of the chaos of a modern Asian city and the low-rise buildings and Victorian architecture in London seem so old and solid. What struck me in Korea was that most of the utilities (cables, pipes etc) are above ground and that coupled with the omnipresent fascination for incongruous buildings styles and crazy neon signage means that the average street-scene is a visual menagerie of pupil-mashing details.

One tiny thing that especially caught my eye from getting off the airport bus to the moment I left, is the plethora of styles used in fire-inlets. These little pipes are used as dry-risers on buildings by the fire brigade to distribute water to different floors in the case of fire. Normally, in the UK we tend to keep these sort of things behind a little door or out of view through fear of being vandalised or getting litter shoved in them. But in South Korea, they seem to be revered objects – often being painted bright red or with polished chrome heads on them. I developed a little bit of a fancy for them whilst I was there and took any opportunity (much to the chagrin of my mate) to dawdle and take a souvenir snap of one or two of them.