It happened again last week. A few months ago I apologised for the lack of a Sunday post due to problems with the website. It was very slow and was going up and down, and the hosting provider was telling me the problem was something that I knew it was not.

I had some help from a brilliant web design and support company (Toast, who can be found at this link if you ever need any help with website support and design – they are really good). Sorting out the database, caching improvements and a number of other changes had the website working well again.

With almost 12 years of posts, 14,500 photos and images and over 2 million words, I am surprised it lasted as lonmg as it did without some in depth maintenance.

But then it happened again.

Last week, the website went down, and was down for two days. It was different this time – it was completely down. Not slow, not intermittent, just down.

I contacted the hosting provider. Their first response was that it was loading just fine for them, and it was a problem with the SSL certificate (the bit that puts the padlock symbol in your browser, encrypts the link between you and the website, is preferred by Google etc.)

This sounded ridiculous, as if the certificate was the problem, I would have still been able to access the website.

Once this theory was knocked down, they were still telling me it was a problem at my end, as they could access the site without any problems.

After much effort trying to prove to them it was a routing problem (sending copies of traces showing the connection was failing in Germany (where the site is hosted), just before getting to the site), and asking several times for the problem to get escalated, then after about 9 hours I got an update from someone who actually knew what was going on.

A really weird issue, and nothing to do with my website.

My website is on a shared server (I cannot afford a dedicated server), and another website on the shared server was getting lots of strange traffic, so to prevent any problems this might cause to the server, the hosting provider cut the routing to the server from the rest of the Internet, which explained why their support team could still access as they were on their internal network).

This went on for just under two days, and then the website came back online after they have made routing changes, and presumably sorted out the strange traffic to the other website.

So all good.

A day later it went down again.

I bypassed their first line support and went back to the team who knew what was happening with the original fault, and a quick response was provided, that the server needed emergency maintenance. No idea why, whether it was connected with the original problem or just an unlucky coincidence.

Later that day, the website came back online.

The whole experience reminds me of a quote from a customer in a former employment “Sh*t happens, it is how you deal with it that counts”, which is very true, and first line support should not see it as their role to deflect all problems back to the customer, but once you get to someone who knows what is going on, you have some confidence that it is being managed.

Anyway, this has been a very longwinded way to explain why there is no new post this week – I simply ran out of time.

I am though going to do something I promised myself I would never do – repeat a post.

So for this week’s post, I am going back 10 years to November 2015, and look at:

Autumn In The City

Whilst the majority of my father’s photos came to me as negatives, a number were printed, and of these some had the location written on the back. As well as the location, a few are also specific about the time of year as the photo reflects how London appears as the seasons change.

For this week’s post, I bring you two photos on which my father had written the simple title “Autumn in Finsbury Circus”.

Both were taken early in the morning and show autumnal light shining through the trees, with the first autumn leaves on the path. There are two photos, one showing a woman pushing what looks like a pram, whilst the second shows a man starting to sweep the fallen leaves:

I suspect that he had taken these photos either for exhibition or competition at the St. Brides Institute Photographic Society as they have a more composed quality rather than the straight forward recording of London’s buildings and streets:

To try and find the location of these photos, a day off from work last Friday provided the opportunity for an autumn walk around London.

Finsbury Circus is much the same today, with one significant exception being that it is a major construction site for Crossrail with the centre of the gardens in the middle of the square being used for access to Crossrail and sections of the path that runs round the perimeter of the gardens also being closed.

If I correctly located the buildings in the background, they were behind part of the closed off path, however parts that remain open provided the opportunity to show that not too much has changed (if you ignore the major construction site to your left):

The layout of Finsbury Circus was established in the early 19th Century, with the office buildings we see today being built over the following century, with some redevelopment continuing today.

As one of the few areas of green space, the gardens were very popular with city workers, with a bandstand and bowling green occupying part of the centre of the gardens. A small, temporary bandstand remains today. The gardens at the centre of Finsbury Circus will be restored after the Crossrail works are complete.

The main entrance to the Crossrail construction site which currently occupies much of the gardens in the centre of Finsbury Circus:

Walking in central London, there are very few indicators of the season of the year. Apart from temperature and the times of the rising and setting of the sun, it could be any time of year. The natural indicators of whether it is spring, summer, autumn or winter are few and far between.

Taking inspiration from the title of my father’s photos, I thought it would be interesting to take a walk through the City and look for any other examples of where autumn can be found in amongst such a built environment.

The weather last Friday at least was very autumnal with strong winds and alternating between heavy showers of rain and clear blue sky (although in fairness that could be English weather at any time of year).

There are very few green spaces left in the City, the majority that remain are usually associated with a church, either still remaining or one that was lost in the last war, and it was to one of these that I headed to after Finsbury Circus.

This is the garden that occupies the site of St. Mary Aldermanbury. a church that was heavily damaged in the last war, not rebuilt and the remains shipped to America (see my first post here). Just south of London Wall at the corner of Aldermanbury and Love Lane.

A heavy rain shower as I stood in the garden, and a strong wind blowing the fallen leaves up against the far wall:

The next stop was the garden that occupies the graveyard of the church of St. Anne and St. Agnes at the corner of Noble Street and Gresham Street.

This garden occupies a relatively small space, however some mature trees reach up to the sky in amongst the surrounding buildings, with the leaves starting to turn to their autumn colours:

Walking to the end of Gresham Street, then turning up St. Martin’s Le Grand I came to Postman’s Park. At this time of year, the sun does not reach above the buildings to the south in order to shine on Postman’s Park, so the park spends much of this time of year in shade that appears to be made darker by the sunlight on the surrounding buildings. Many of the trees here had already lost the majority of their leaves:

Walking out from Postman’s Park into King Edward Street and I was back in the sunshine of an autumn day:

Heading south from Postman’s Park to one of the larger areas of green open space remaining in the City, the churchyard of St. Paul’s Cathedral:

Here plenty of mature trees can be found around the eastern half of the cathedral and their autumn colours looking spectacular against both the stone of St. Paul’s and the sky:

From St. Paul’s, it was then a walk down Cannon Street, Eastcheap and Great Tower Street to Trinity Square Gardens. (I did miss out the garden at St. Dunstan in the East as the sky to the east was getting very dark and I wanted to get to Trinity Square before another heavy shower of rain).

This large (for the City) open space also benefits from a lack of tall buildings to the south so the rare combination of a City garden that also gets the sun at this time of year.

The pavements showing the signs of recent rain. Overhung by mature trees, the pavements will soon be covered by leaves:

The old Port of London Authority building in the background with the new memorial to Royal Fleet Auxiliary and Merchant Seamen who lost their lives in the Falklands Campaign. The mature trees around the edge of the gardens just starting to change to their autumn colours:

My final visit was to the churchyard of St. Olave in Seething Lane. A small churchyard just catching the last glimpse of an autumn sun, with leaves on the trees starting to fall:

It was a fascinating walk through the city on a typical autumn day with extremes of weather from heavy rain showers to clear blue sky. Even with the amount of building there are still places were it is possible to observe the changing of the seasons and retain contact with the natural cycle through the year.

I fear though that with the ever increasing height of buildings in the City, these valuable survivors of the natural world will be spending more and more of their days in the shadow of their surroundings.

Normal service should hopefully be resumed next Sunday.