The Queen, different angle, Prince Phillip on right

Immensely enjoyed the Olympics opening ceremony last night and early this morning. As I had cycled home from Bloomsbury Square last night, I passed the "God Save the Queen' mural on New Oxford Street, which I hadn't seen before. It laid the ground for the sequence in Danny Boyle's Olympic opening ceremony in which James Bond (Daniel Craig) and HM QEII parachute into the Olympic stadium from a helicopter. Breathtakingly audacious wheeze - and nice to hear that it slightly nonplussed commentators on Chinese TV.

Earlier in  the week, I had spotted a Mary Poppins mural on a building en route to a lunch on the Regent's Canal with Jo Confino and Caroline Holtum of The Guardian's Sustainable Business website, then a blizzard of them fell from the skies in the Olympics opening ceremony, putting to flight the forces of darkness.  Turned out I had pipped Jo to the post with my coverage of Sustainia -- amazing such clashes don't happen more often.

St Paul's Cathedral popped up on my horizons a couple of times this week, first when I walked to and from the latest Unilever Series exhibition at the Tate Modern, this time featuring the work of Tino Sehgal, and encountering Robin Niblett of Chatham House part-way across the Millennium Bridge. Also encountered Jo (Confino) for the third time in the day, having kicked off with the lunch, then both gone on to judge a Caydoo competition for photographs on sustainability in London at The Hub, and then here again at the Tate Modern. Lovely to walk back across the Millennium Bridge after the event and see London, including St Paul's, illuminated.

Then the next day Amy, Sam and I were back at St Paul's for a fascinating meeting with Bank Sarasin, which is where I took the photo above of a wonderful painting of the cathedral during the Blitz. Also love the Emily Young head just outside the door to 100 St Paul's Yard. I adore her work.

Much of the week has been spent on the next phase of our Breakthrough Capitalism program, which took a big step forward on Friday -- albeit I had to get to a semi-suididal state of mind before I could break through to the next landscape of opportunity. Creativity and innovation, as Danny Boyle signalled in his opening ceremony, is rarely a straight line from A to B, indeed is often the result of bruising experiences with the defects of the status quo ante, from which intriguing elements of a more desirable future quo begin to emerge.