Every September the annual Open House London event takes place and this year the dates are 17th & 18th September 2005. Over 500 buildings are opening their doors to everyone and turning the capital into a living architectural exhibition. And it's absolutely free! Last year, the Beetle and Padmassana braved the cold autumn air and set off to see if we could get to go inside the famous Gherkin – the tall, glass clad bullet shaped building. It could have been the early hour, or the lack of copious amounts of coffee, but coffee, we could see the gherkin but could we find it? It took an age to get there! By the time we got there, around 9.45am, the queues were breathtakingly long, as Padmassana's photos show.

So, instead, we went to the Bank of England and we joined a guided tour there. It was excellent! Believe it or not, the site of the Bank of England, which has been located in Threadneedle Street since 1734, covers a massive 3 ½ acres – who would have thought it! We moved down a very majestic staircase to some beautiful state rooms downstairs and through the gardens and up again to the rooms that are used to hold meetings with visiting officials to discuss monetary policy. The tour ended in the Bank's museum which is fascinating and includes a gold bullion bar, encased in bullet proof glass, of course, which Padmassana had a go at lifting through the specially designed hole for people to touch the bar. You can visit the museum any time and it is free of charge. The museum is open Monday to Friday, 10.00 – 17.00, Christmas Eve, 10.00 – 13.00 but is closed at weekends and on Public and Bank Holidays.

After the Bank of England tour, we visited one of the livery companies near Smithfield market and after a fry up at the Beetle's favourite 24/7 greasy spoon café, we headed up to St Pancras and joined a tour run by Arups, the consulting engineers responsible for building the new ST Pancras train staton which is to be the new home of the Eurostar as well as a new and upgraded train station for regional trains.

All photos are by Padmassana. We are looking forward to this year's Open House and maybe this time we'll be better organised to go and visit the Gherkin!

If you'd like more information about this years' event, then take a look at the official website, which also runs other architectural tours during the year: https://www.openhouselondon.org.uk/

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Trade Aid is a UK based charity aimed at poverty alleviation in Southern Tanzania by creating educational and employment opportunities for the local community and assisting in the development of a sustainable tourist industry in Mikindani. As part of this, Trade Aid take on volunteers to work with the local community. Tim Crouch is one of these volunteers and her he writes about his experiences in the beautiful coastal town of Mikindani. For more information on the work that Trade carries out, see: http://www.tradeaiduk.org/

As the sun sets over Mikindani, the smoke sits in the valley and the sounds rise; after another day in paradise I can't help thinking about the overload heaped upon my senses whilst in Tanzania. The sights can always be captured by camera and many of the most delicious smells can be recreated in the kitchen buts it's the sounds that make Mikindani so special and it's the noises that will stick most in the mind. Words can only scratch the surface of the overload Mikindani places upon the sense of hearing.

The day always starts early in Mikindani and with it so do the sounds. At first light you hear the scraping, scratching noise of women sweeping, invariably just out side your door, a sound that rarely stops before it has accomplished its two aims of cleaning the street and waking Mikindani's inhabitants. Only after this sweeping has woken them up, do the cockerels start to crow. Being in Mikindani, you are never far away from some livestock, be it cows, goats or chicken and so you never feel far away from the farmyard. There is a theory circulating Trade Aid in Tanzania that animals in Tanzania are bred not for their meat (there can be none more gristly on earth) but for their capacity to break eardrums.

The first real human voices come following the early morning school bell, a rock hit against the redundant rim of an old car wheel signifies the children's long and noisy walk up the hill to school. During the day office work is accompanied by the dulcet tones of the women next door calling their various kids for various reasons from various corners of Mikindani. When the children finish school in the afternoon, again accompanied by a ring of the school “bell”, the noise starts off as a distant cheer and culminates in a crescendo of young voices shouting their delight at returning home after a hard day in the classroom. This shouting just puts them in the mood for some more shouting when the games start during the afternoon, a din that doesn't stop until early evening when again the various mamas call their various offspring this time purely for the reason of feeding time.

As you walk out to the road you are hit by the same diesel fumes encountered the world over but the amount of noise produced by such a tiny volume of traffic is a phenomenon unique to East Africa. The combination of decrepit engines and wildly elaborate horns produces a sound that will eclipse anything produced in a New York traffic jam.

As we sit down to dinner the call to prayer from the mosque chimes in for the fourth and therefore penultimate time that day. After dinner we walk down the hill with the food for the dog, the fourth resident of the Trade Aid house to the sound of his whimpering at the smell of the leftovers we are carrying. Just as we lay in bed trying to get to sleep the women of Mikindani have one last blast this time to round up the men of the town before allowing all of us to slip off until the next day when the sensory overload will start all over again. I for one will miss it like crazy.

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