Wednesday June 2nd
For the past few days, since we returned to London from Scotland, we have been doing very little.
We have been enjoying Fritha and Anthony's company, going out to dinner etc.
On Sunday we drove out to Beckenham in Kent where Fritha and Anthony's house is. Barbara hadn't seen it before. And we checked out the local golf course which is just down the road, and the Kent County Cricket club literally across the road from them. The house itself backs onto another cricket ground with a beautiful white painted club house and bar with chairs on a long veranda. You can see yourself sitting out there on a summer's afternoon, watching the match and sipping a pint, and occasionally clapping a well played hit. We drove then to find somewhere for lunch and found the town of Faversham. The place is quite large and busy but in the centre, just about every house is Tudor style and carries a plaque of some sort. Some relate to Henry the Eighth, another is reputed to have played host to James the Second when he was on the run.
We enjoyed a pleasant lunch in an Italian restaurant before turning again for home.
On Monday we drove to Heathrow to collect Fritha's golf clubs, which I had organised to send through a freight company.
The business of signing papers and paying agents' fees was just boring but the trip to and from the airport was like a half day tour of the city. We followed the Thames upstream out to places such as Vauxhall, Pimlico, Cheyne Walk and bits of the city we wouldn't otherwise have seen. We passed the Battersea Power Station, an architectural icon of the thirties, now a listed building but in a sad state of repair. And we passed through areas that until the 19th century would have been out in the country, but have now virtually been swallowed up by development.
Then yesterday Barbara and I took the tube to the Barbican area which lies right alongside the old walls of London city. It was a wet and fairly miserable day but we wanted to visit the London Museum. We did go there in 2008 but it has been expanded and refurbished since then. It's a museum devoted to the history of this city and has exhibits, including pre historic remains, that date back to Roman times and way beyond. You really need to spend a couple of days there to see everything properly. There are Roman relics, Saxon relics, mediaeval relics and plague and great fire relics and so on, right up to the 50's,60's and 70's. There's fashion stuff from Elizabethan times and Mary Quant, the mini-skirt and Rastafarian gear, and even a replica of a
Lyons Tea Shop with a waitress in a white starched apron and a white starched head band, serving tea and scones off those three tiered cake stands. I actually remember going to a Lyons Tea Shop in 1957.
Last night we dined at home with Fritha and Anthony and today we are packing for home. We have to be up early tomorrow to get out to Heathrow by 9.30am.
So that brings this blog to an end. We'll be back home in Emerald by the weekend, and perhaps a week after that we'll address the big question.
Where will we go next?
