Once a year, Chelmsford goes slightly strange, as the high street, the public squares and the park are taken over by streetdiversions. This time around it was yesterday.

Streetdiversions is an annual arts and performance event that packs out the town. The council ships in an impressive range of performers (a lot of them with more than a hint of Frenchness about them) to – literally – perform in the street, and it certainly pulls in the crowds. The high street was so packed it took half an hour to walk from one end to the other, passing clusters of busy spectators gathered about the performers.

The most recognisable among them are the Cone Heads, who have become a bit of a trademark act, appearing every year and usually fronting the event’s promo material. They wander around the town with gaping mouths, cameras slung around their necks, taking pictures of the crowds.

Beyond them, there are fire-breathing, mechanical horses, giants, a medieval guard who snares unsuspecting passers-by and parades them up and down the high street in a hanging metal cage, a band of bugs, a family covered in pigeon droppings, a blue recycling bin that trundles down the street randomly spraying passers-by… It was a bit cruel, trapping an old woman with her wheely trolley against a sign outside Debenhams.

The day closed with a fire festival in Bell Meadow, visible across the river, with clouds of burning gas so hot and so bright we could feel them from 20 metres away.

Streetdiversions takes over the high street once a year. No word yet on next year’s date, but it’s one to keep an eye open for.

It’s not often you get the chance to climb a building you’ve admired for a long time, so when an invite came through for drinks at the top of the Gherkin I wasn’t going to pass it up. I took pictures of this building when it was still being built.

Getting in is a bit like getting on a plane. You need photo ID for starters, and then have to pass behind the security desk and through a metal detecting arch while your bag, coat and belt trundle through an X-ray machine.

Once you’re inside, you take the lift to the 34th floor, leave your bags and take another lift up to the 39th. From there you head up a curved staircase to the floating platform of the 40th floor for some truly awe-inspiring views of London.

The sun was going down as I arrived and soon all the city was illuminated and laid out below us. St Pauls and the London Eye one way, Tower Bridge and the Tate another, Docklands off to the East, and all of them threaded along the curve of the Thames.

There are so many views in London that knock the London Eye view into a cocked hat. The top of Centre Point is pretty impressive, but the Gherkin and the BT Tower, neither of which is usually open to the general public, really put it to shame.

Sadly my camera wasn’t really up to the job of recording the view, or even the rather flash surroundings of the Gherkin itself, with its polished floors and the stunning tall dome that arches up above your head.

Suffice to say, though, that anyone who gets the chance to spend an hour on the 40th floor really should. If it ever comes up again, I’ll be there in a shot.

It’s not often I feel inclined to write about a cafe, but this is a worthy cause. We went walking in Galleywood today, down past the posh houses and out by the common.

Galleywood common is well known – locally, at least – for having once been a horse racing course. A lot of the white wooden barriers that ran along the edge of the track are still there, and you can see the path that the track cut through the trees and around the church.

The race course was operational from 1770 until the Second World War, but one of the few buildings remaining from the latter part of that time is a brick-built hut, which once formed part of the grandstand. The grandstand has now gone and the hut is the Galleywood Heritage Centre. This consists mainly of a large empty room that can be hired out and a small room at the back with local photographs.

Crucially, though, it also has a little kitchen with a serving hatch where the do teas, coffees and cake and it’s all so cheap. We had two teas and three scones between us and it came to £3.25. I’m sure nobody would have questioned it if it was a couple of pounds more than that.

It’s all wonderfully low-tech, with a couple of volunteers standing behind the counter and the cakes, all of which looked home-made, covered with tea towels to shelter them from the sun.

Quite apart from the price and the fact that it’s a registered charity, we’ll certainly be going back as it’s one local cause that really does deserve better support.

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The third and final book in the Moneypenny Diaries series sees author Kate Westbrook (herself a contrivance) come to the fore as a far more prominent character in her own work.

The trilogy (parts 1 and 2 reviewed here and here) is a supposed account of Moneypenny’s life in a James Bond-era Secret Service. Running through the sixties, they have a charming authenticity to them, both in the scenes that they paint and the language Westbrook has adopted.

Westbrook, a fictional Oxbridge lecturer, received a crate full of her aunt Jane Moneypenny’s diaries at the start of the first volume and over the space of three books published edited highlights, annotating them by dropping into the narrative here and there with her own thoughts and research.

Books one and two were superbly plotted and genuine edge-of-seat reads, largely because Westbrook’s own appearances were brief, allowing Moneypenny herself the space she needed to fight Russian agents and swoon over Bond.

Volume three – Final Fling – is split more or less in two, with the diaries taking up one half of the book and Westbrook’s own somewhat more muted adventure the whole of the second act.

Something is missing, and I think it’s the atmosphere. The 1960s universe in which Moneypenny’s story is set is so brilliantly written that a modern-day equivalent, no matter how skilfully constructed, could never feel so colourful or exciting, which is a shame as I’d been hoping for a cracking end to the series.

It’s still worth a read to tie up all the lose ends, close off the story and explain, finally, how Moneypenny died and how the diaries found their way to Westbrook’s study. Its slightly flat ending, though, has left me wanting to head back to the first volume again and re-live some of Moneypenny’s finer monents.

Price: £17.99 (£12.59 from Amazon)
ISBN: 0719567807
Pages: 288
Publisher: John Murray