London - Abbey Rd, Harrods

"That crossing" in Abbey Rd. Studio
is the white building behind. The 28IF
Volkswagon was parked on a then
narrower footpath in front of the studio

Oh boy, did we get the real London today. After light rain during the night, most of the late morning through to late afternoon it was tipping down in oversized buckets and driven by a determined wind which grabbed your umbrella from your hands in gusts that were twice as strong as the wash from a passing truck.

That's not to say it was all bad.

In the morning, after an unintentional sleep in, I led the way back to St John's Wood. That's where I found Lords Cricket Ground waiting for me earlier in the week. This morning, Sue and I were aiming to avoid one of those "so near but so far episodes". Research since my Lords visit indicated I had been very close to Abbey Studios and the infamous pedestrian crossing which was the subject of perhaps the most iconic album cover of all time: the Beatles walking over a pedestrian crossing on the cover of the last recorded Beatles album. (Note: last recorded, not last released. "Let It Be" was recorded before Abbey Road but was released afterwards)

The rain was light but annoying by the time we got there and the live webcam mounted outside Abbey Studios at 3 Abbey Rd, St John's Wood, picked us up as we arrived at the corner. The webcam is live but points nearly 180 degrees in the opposite direction to the famous photograph. The photo was taken on a rare day when all of the Fab Four were at the studios. By that time, they were barely functioning as a group and hadn't played to a live audience in two years. They were destined to never play to a paying audience again. A photographer had sat about ready to take the cover shot but in the end was given only ten minutes. He hastily arranged for a passing Bobbie to stop the traffic, put a step ladder in the middle of the road and snapped the shot, without the benefit of a digital camera to review it and the deed was done.

When we arrived, Sue realised why I had been so distressed at not understanding the importance of my location a few days earlier. I had crossed the double angled crossing at a three way intersection and turned right to walk to St John's Wood Station. Had I walked left instead, less than ten metres, I would have been on the Abbey Road crossing!

Abbey Road Studios where
James Taylor recorded "Fire & Rain"
in between Beatles takes for "Abbey Road"

As always with such places of cultural reverence, there were already people beside and on the crossing, with their friends trying desperately to get run over by standing in the middle of the road and ignoring traffic. Most of the cars and buses which arrive at the crossing know the story and cut pedestrians a lot of slack but many of the tourists present this morning seemed rude and inconsiderate that this is still someone's suburban street.

Thanks to Marcus Wilson (Tamworth), I was aware of the live webcam and had alerted family to both it and our arrival. Sam organised a phone hook up and we were able to share the moment with them, making it immeasurably more special but it left me with an aching hole that won't be sated until I can hug each of them in a week or so. The silly buggers laughed and giggled as we crossed a few times, striding out, as Sarah described it, "like two rain-soaked hobbits". I even managed a silly jump or two.

After signing off from the kids, I took a few photos of the front fence which is stuffed full of messages to the Beatles in all sorts of colours and with all sorts of promises and descriptions which give substance to images of screaming faces from the sixties, who long since discovered what they were screaming about and what to do about it. How many Englishmen must have continued to be laid on the Beatles rebound is anyone's guess but I'd be happy to suggest most of  their girlfriends and wives have scrawled suggestions on these walls since. As I took photos, Sue got herself ejected from Apple Studios - apparently the signs on the fence, gate and front door telling her not to enter didn't convince her she shouldn't go in.

The big security guard inside the door had more success but not until after Sue had argued with him.

Chased, thrilled and excited at having made a family connection, we made our way to St Pancras Station to purchase our tickets for the trip to Dover in the morning and have a dry run at where to go.

Into town then for Sue's excursion to Harrods. It was pouring by the time she kissed me goodbye and was swallowed up by a world neither of us belong to, nor regret abstaining from membership. I walked through heavy rain, armed with an umbrella and a stout coat until I found a pub. Guinness and steak and ale pie and a room full of people to watch was enough for me. I ate, drank, wrote and was merry.

Back at Harrods, Sue started out with confidence but was soon struggling. Her clothing didn't inspire much affection from the staff and she began to find the prevailing attitudes of staff and customers of the nature which we in Australia delicately describe as "up themselves". By the time she rang to say she'd had enough, my pie was gone and a third Guinness was under destruction.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

Back together and with the rain still hammering down as the last part of the afternoon started, we gave up on plans to visit the Tate Modern which would have meant a walk through the rain of about a kilometre. To cap it off, when the train arrived to take us close, it was sardine capacity and another crowd pushed on. No thanks. We went back home to Gloucester Road and had a coffee at a local restaurant.

Packing tonight and leaving here at 7:30am for France.

London - Churchill's War Rooms

Big Ben

Sue woke feeling well, after fears that she would deteriorate over night. Unfortunately I barely slept, the next week weighing heavily on me. Regardless, the promise of rain tomorrow got us out on a cloudless Saturday.

Walking up the stairs from the Westminster tube station, the first thing we saw was Big Ben. We had emerged right across the road from the tower clock. Its such a beautiful building and the decorations above the clock are as ornate as anything we saw in Paris.

Our destination was one of our last three must do's for London, the Churchill War Rooms. Located below Whitehall, the rooms were used throughout the second world war but intensely for periods when London was under the sternest attack from the Luftwaffe. When Churchill began as Prime Minister in 1940, England was already in trouble after the previous Prime Minister - Neville Chamberlain - had been duped into believing Hitler had no intention to conquer Europe. Churchill was already 65 and a veteran of being the cabinet minister responsible for the armed forces in the first world war. He was a decorated soldier, an author, an orator of note and a member of parliament for thirty years. Add to that, a credible painter who took to the brushes when suffering from depression during WWI.

A war headquarters was set up under the government buildings at Whitehall, protected by a steel reinforced six foot slab of concrete poured under the existing building and designed to withstand a 250 pound bomb. Modern experts say it would never have performed its role with success but in the event, it was never tested.

Communications, map rooms, dining, sleeping and conference rooms were all installed under the watchful eye of Sir Hastings Ismay, using a technique commonly used to repaired the hull of damaged ships. Huge rough cut timber props (30cm sides) were jacked into position under similar suspended roofing timbers and then held by triangular bracing timbers and 25mm x 450mm bolts. One in place, walls were lined and heavily braced brick and stone walls were constructed to partition rooms.

Churchill lived and worked down there, spending much of his legendary 19 hour days pouring over maps and in meetings. A special room which most of the staff thought was the only flushing toilet in the complex and therefore reserved for Churchill, was in fact a transatlantic phone hook up with President Roosevelt of the USA. Despite the need for his security, Churchill would regularly leave the bunker and go to the top of the above building - right at the heart of London - during air raids and watch his city be attacked. It was from his office in the war rooms that three of his most famous and most rousing speeches were made via special outdoor broadcast facilities the BBC invented for the purpose.

The amazing map room

The map room - the central nervous system of the entire complex - has become famous for its authenticity. The week after the war ended, the lights were switched off, the doors closed and neither were left untouched until the late 1970's, when the locks were removed and the rooms opened. Then, as now, the maps, the papers on desks, the push pins, telephones and coloured wool lines strung across the maps, are all still in the place they were when left. Apart from adding lighting and a few dummies in uniform for effect, what you see in the map room is how it was nearly 70 years ago.

Each room had its own entertaining and informative commentary from a hand held, easy to use device(included in the admission price) and you are invited to take all the pictures you want.

Five years ago, the adjunct of the Imperial War Museum, added the Churchill Museum to the underground complex. Its a very modern display space with subdued lighting and many different interactive displays about Churchill's life. There is a certain degree of honesty in describing him from the time he was a boy through to irascible old age. The recent conclusions that he was more than a sufferer from depression and almost certainly had bipolar, jumps clearly from the information available. His mood swings were legendary. He was an author of many books and good enough to win a Nobel prize for Literature in 1953. He was an artist of some ability. His oratory was probably matched only by his greatest adversary, Adolf Hitler. His ability to problem solve was both ordered and careful and then equally reckless and without consideration. He could be harsh and generous within moments. He slept little, drank as much and as well as any man with a frequent thirst and professed a great passion for his wife of more than fifty years, Clementine.

His naming of his depressive side - the Black Dog - is now recognised throughout the world as the standard, but just as clearly, he was always happy at the sound and resonance of his own voice. "We are all naught but worms," he once said, quickly following it with, "but I am a glow worm."

Cometh the hour, cometh the man but without the illness, its doubtful any man might have had the capacity to beat a foe who was better equipped and rendered twice as mad from non-selective sexual activity whereever he could get it. The next time you think of bipolar as a quality which might make you have doubts about the suffer, think of Churchill.

Downing Street

While your at it, you'd best consider that down here in Australia, making a stand against Churchill's desire to keep our Australian boys from returning to defend their country against the Japanese flooding through New Guinea, was John Curtin.

He was also a member of the bipolar club! Between the two of them was America's FDR ... and you guessed right ... like Churchill and Curtin, FDR fought bipolar mood swings all of his life.

By the time we left the War Rooms, the afternoon was well past halfway, so instead of heading across town to the Tate Modern Art Gallery, we walked up Whitehall and stopped at Downing Street. Heavy security, with Police armed with automatic rifles but never the less, happy for us to take photos. We watched a reporter file his report live to camera from the main gate and I had a chat with one of the coppers. He was telling  me how the force is hurting after the shooting of two unarmed policewomen earlier in the week. Coming from a community which has undergone the same shock, I expressed sympathy.

Nelson took the high road,
I took the low

Down Whitehall a little further was the Horse Guards Parade, which seemed open to the public so we wandered through the parade ground, watching a besieged guard keeping a strait posture and face as woman tried to kiss him for photo opportunities. He would have only had to fix bayonets to scatter them.

We eventually made our way up to Trafalgar Square, with many of the roads still closed following the running of the London Marathon. People were all over statues and a seething mass of them were populating the forecourt of the National Gallery. We got some snaps of Nelson, who, for the record, had a longer column than the Duke of York but then he lost ten thousand men.

Retreating, we walked up to Leicester Square - familiar territory by now - and caught the tube back to our digs, stopping for a meal at our local and an abbreviated chat to some new chum Americans who had arrived in London today. They seemed expert enough without our assistance.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

I'm certain we will leave London knowing that there are things undone owing to circumstances which over ran us but, so what if we can reflect on the things we have done and their significance to us.

London: Lords Cricket Ground

For Sue, this trip was very much a case of emptying her bucket list ... a list which she began writing as a 15 year old student at Armidale High School. As she sat watching slides of Paris in Art classes, she made mental notes, suddenly attentive to something other than those cute boys who had been the only reason she could find for being happy about after moving from the sun and surf of Yamba to the heavy pleated skirts of an Armidale winter. Each slide added another entry to a list she promised she would one day action by going to Paris.

In the first three weeks of this trip, she stripped the list bare and with interest.

Thanks to Sue, I shared desires some of her list spoke of, namely the Musee d'Orsay and its Fort Knox of impressionist painters and the glorious curves and representation of the human form in the Musee Roddin.

Despite being able to share these riches, my own list had them at position three and four. Today, I attended to number two and fulfilled the missing leg of a promise I made to mates during the heat of backyard cricket, even before I reached long pants. Admittedly, I claimed I would play on all three of Sydney, Melbourne and Lords, something I can confidently recognise I have failed to do. At the time, I had only ever been to the SCG, watching Doug Walters score those historic twin centuries in February of 1969, the memory of which eventually found its own place in the museum at the SCG.

Instead, I have watched glorious deeds too many to name from the boundary in Sydney and done tours in, around and under the SCG so often, I would be happy to substitute as a tour guide. In my thirties, I finally added Melbourne to the list, touring the ground with my Dad. Today, I completed the third leg, nearly fifty years after bragging to my playing companions between overs of a Test at the LCG.

It was a overcast day: rain threatening but unlikely to arrive until the evening. Sue was to share the event in much the same way as I had stayed at her elbow at the Louvre but, at the last, she had gone to bed with a cold which treated her badly during the night.

Reluctantly, I left for the tube station by myself.

Members Pavilion

After first returning to Charing Cross Road, carrying the ball that I had dropped yesterday - our London passes - I switched tracks and arrived at St Johns Wood for the walk to the WG Grace gates on the southern side of the ground. The vibe started spreading over me as I walked up to the ground museum, behind stands which don't impose like Melbourne or Sydney but still keep the ground hidden. After flashing my pass at the front desk and removing my jumper to reveal my colours - my official Australian supporters shirt - I dove into the memorabilia. There was the hand-stitched bag made for the blessed little urn that grown men will fight over in less twelve months, at this very ground. Nearby was the first World Cup, sponsored by Prudential but not enough insurance to provide an England win. Won twice by the West Indies and then by India, it was discarded in favour of a replacement trophy. Bats belonging to Geoff Boycott, Bradman, Viv Richards ... WG's cap ... well, this would be a forever list, so I'll leave it there.

Eventually, we were called to order by Graham, our tour guide and showed the little urn itself. The age old debate about the Ashes never leaving Lords surfaced but I let it run, even the claim that the MCC is simply following Ivo Bligh's - the original owner - instructions. He  raised the doubt some people have that what we were looking at was a copy and went on to say that the urn had gone to Australia in 1988 for the bicentenary and a few years ago because Richard Branson made the price right. It was then I expressed doubt that the real McCoy traveled on either occasion and was met with a rye smile.

The media centre

The visit to the Long Room was, for me, the best moments of the ninety or so minutes we were under guidance. So many ghosts rattling the silver wear and a soft hush of boots walking over carpet and the same hush as members stilled their conversation to allow Bradman to pass between them like a flanneled Moses. On the wall at the back the room, a quartet as famous as any: Jardine, Bradman, Miller and Hutton. Across the players entrance from them, Pelham Warner and Gubby Allen, the Australian by birth and one of five fast bowlers who toured with England during Bodyline but the only one who refused to bowl it. Many stories on that wall alone.

The guide chose to declare his disbelief that a young lad in our party from South Africa not only didn't recognise the Little Bugger from Bowral but had never heard of him. His father was declared negligent, admittedly in a friendly way. I took exception to the naming of Bradman as the greatest batsman of all time and when challenged to name an alternate, had no hesitation in declaring my innings on Tendulkar, a selection the Indians in the tour delighted at.

We inspected the visitor's dressing room and spent some time dissecting the honour boards. I wasn't aware but "The Colonel", Dillip Vengsarkar, is the only visiting player to score three centuries in three consecutive tours. Australians feature strongly on the boards, this being a happy hunting ground for the Aussies since WWII, despite losing here last time. Graham Smith has the highest score at Lords but it was generally agreed, even by the South Africans present, that no one knew how!

The slope on the ground is obvious from either end and stands out when you take photos down at ground level.

The media centre stands out like that part of a dog which suffers the most during spading. Mind you, apart from the Members Pavilion, the rest of the stands are plain and undistinguished and frankly inadequate by the stands of modern stadium grandstands but then, this isn't a stadium and never will be. In Australia, we make arenas but England have small grounds to fit gently into their landscape, often controlled - as Lords in - by old clubs who own their grounds and therefore set their own agendas. No flags or musical instruments at Lords but you can bring your own food and either four bottles of beer or a bottle of wine. The dress standard has been relaxed everywhere except the Members Pavilion and Lords even allows women into areas previously reserved for more that 150 years for men.

The retractable light towers 

At least they had the sense to put the modern media centre at the opposite end of the ground to the Members Pavilion. That way, at least, both can never be in your line of site simultaneously.

We finished with a visit to the media centre and then below it, were given the chance to walk onto the ground. The young Sarth Efrikan did so, with his father promising a greater scope to his future cricket education. I declined to transgress the turf. I hadn't earned the right.

Lovely tour and as I purchased my England cap - odd choice I know, but it looked good on me - I knew I had sated a thirst, closed the last side of that boldly stated triangle of promises and ticked the second number on my bucket list for this trip. Two, three and four are now completed.

Despite all of these considerations, the SCG is still a better ground and its tour more interesting, more informative. I may have walked about the home of cricket, the place where Father Time looks down the years and affirms the game and the single place which has influenced the game more than any other, on and off the field. Even last week, in a committee room which shares a wall with the Long Room, England's selectors dropped Kevin Pietersen.

It was great but Sydney is greater.

Home for a late lunch at the local - the Stanhope Arms in Gloucester Rd - and short walk around the neighbourhood with she on the sick list, in order to convince her out of any further activities for the day.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

Maybe tomorrow.

The remaining part of my bucket list? The number one item?

Bringing Sue home happy.

London - Red Bus Tour, Blood Brothers

St Paul's Cathedral

We took advantage of some of our purchased treats today, starting with bus tours of London.

Leaving from Gloucester Rd (100m away), we took a route which goes west from the centre of London and includes all of the main museums. Reaching Picadilly, we swapped to the original tour and were treated to three hours around the city... on a tour that was planned for two! Roadworks and a huge traffic jam ate up the additional hour as the weather got cooler on the open top double decker. By the time it finished we were freezing.

Despite this, the second tour was an excellent way for us to make decisions about what we want to see more off. Westminster Abbey, St Pauls Cathedral, Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament and even the more modern buildings such as the Shard and The Gerkin were very impressive but unlike the prominent building in Paris, many are crowded out by their surrounds which detracts greatly from the magnificence of their architecture.

We stopped between Picadilly and Leicester Squares and as a last resort, had afternoon tea at a certain Scottish restaurant which proved too much for Sue.

Breaking our West End duck

We caught the train home and after an hour, caught it back again for dinner in the West End. It was a restaurant too good for the likes of us but the food was good and the service outstanding. We walked the remaining two hundred metres to the Phoenix Theatre and settled in for a production of Blood Brothers.

To say it was fantastic would be to master understatement. We knew the show - having seen Chris in it in Tamworth - but it still didn't prepare me for the ending. I had become so enmeshed in these boys lives, I cried as the last ten minutes of the second act ran down and sobbed as the boys died. Shredded, absolutely shredded I left the theatre in tears. The best production I've ever seen.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

After beginning its current run at the Phoenix in 1991, it has shown continuously there since - more than ten thousand performances and the third longest running musical in West End history behind Les Miserable and Phantom of the Opera. I'm sad its ending but glad I saw it only a month before it finally closed. This present cast loses nothing to the famous players who have occupied roles in the past and their performances both individually and as an ensemble were superb.

Home without incident on the Tube.

London

Bummed out for the day. Slept in and then spent hours on the internet. Both so exhausted from the relentless pass of the tour.

Would you believe we bumped into a couple from South Australia who had been on our tour around UK? Just walked up the same street in opposite directions!

TODAY'S PHOTOS

Went to the pub for lunch - The Stanhope Arms in Gloucester Rd - about 1:30pm and came home about 5:00pm ... oops!

The apartment is lovely. It up in the loft of the building which means we don't have any views but its fully self contained and we can unpack for a whole week!

Watching TV, a luxury we haven't had for a long time.

Sheffield to London

Sue & Nessy at
Anne Hathaway's cottage

After 15 days, we returned to London after flipping through Wales, Ireland, Scotland and England, mostly for one night stands and early starts. It would be easy to find the things wrong with touring life, if only for the fact we are so attuned in the modern life to whinge. Several people on the tour had succumbed to this mode during the tour and seemed numb to the places and people around them. I guess it's hard to step outside your comfort zone and sustain your happiness.

Nothing's perfect. Fact. I had a few days myself when I was in doldrums land but then, I have a few more peccadilloes than most to tame. In the end, those including son Chris and mate Baz who encouraged me to look out the window, probably had it right.

We engaged with this tour to gain an overview of the UK, not to see everything and sit opposite Eddie Maguire as the resident expert. That's what we got. Into the bargain, we met some nice people, some of which were on the tour, some serving in pubs and shops. I took lots of photos and gathered one or two stories which will end  as poems in print. We laughed a lot, had a memorable birthday banquet in a medieval castle, listened to glorious Welsh singing, watched remarkable Irish dancing and listened to pipers in Ireland and Scotland ... and then there was the scenery. We feel we have had the best of all of the nation states which make up the UK and that includes the weather (even the rain and wind in the Scottish Highlands).

You make your own luck but given the past fifteen years and it's constant coastline of hidden rocks which has tried to sink us numerous times, being here is the achievement.

Shakespeare's birthplace

The last day of the tour was lots of driving separated by two hours at Stratford-on-Avon, the birthplace but hardly the home of William Shakespeare, a writer of some note. Will was born here and is buried here but in adult life, spent most of his time in London (from 1585), acting and writing. His plays are widely considered the best of all time, many of them lampooning the carrying on of royalty and the infamous treachery associated with power and position. Despite this, he became a darling of the well to do, the Lords and Ladies. Meanwhile, his wife Anne Hathaway, lived a simple and largely ignored life in Stratford, raising their three children and it wasn't until 1613 that he returned to live in Statford at the age of 49. He died three years later a few days short of his 53rd birthday.

There has been much written and said about his life and lifestyle and even the authorship of his writing. Many good cases have been put that perhaps others such as Francis Bacon may have penned some of the work but as it will never be proven either way, its hardly worth worrying about. The more likely conjecture is that Shakespeare was bisexual and entered into same sex relationships with high profile admirers who effectively cuckolded Anne. His burial in Holy Trinity Church, Statford and not in Poet's Corner, Westminster Abbey, is said to further suggest a dissfavour with Crown and Church. His grave features a warning, written by the bard himself, that the removal of his bones from their gravesite will incur a curse. Perhaps that put them off?

The markers for Shakespeare's links in Stratford are obvious. Apart from his grave inside the Holy Trinity Church, in the chancel before the alter (2 quid to see it), his birthplace is right in the heart of town (12 quid to see it) and Anne Hathaway's cottage (15 quid to see it, even though the original was burnt down by an arsonist in the 1960's). Everywhere else, tudor style buildings abound and just about every shop has worked the bard into their name. The theatre for the Royal Shakespeare Company is by the Avon (previously noted as meaning "river") and not far from that, the Black Swan/Dirty Duck pub is on the shores of the River River.

The Dirty Duck

We stopped at the pub for lunch. One bar (The Dirty Duck) contained signed photos of actors who have spoken Bill's words down the road at the RSC headquarters. Dame Judy Dench was at the door to meet us ... well, she had just stepped out for an M & M (the Broccoli's pay well), so her portrait did the welcome instead. The other bar (The Black Swan) was decorated in the same early dingy, low ceilined, stained wall style that you come to expect from British pubs. Rather fetching really. We ordered lunch and a few drinks (me a Guinness, Sue a Pims and lemonade) but lunch was distressingly slow, despite ordering it 55 minutes before we had to be back at the coach.

Someone else ended up eating it, as we couldn't be late again.

The afternoon was a long few hours into London and the ultimate break up of the touring party. We had previously thanked both director and driver but did so again with a genuine warmth, grateful for their experience adding to ours.

Tower Bridge

We had only a two hour turn around, before heading out to dinner and a cruise of the Thames. The dinner was pleasant, with Kevin and Amanda from our tour and the cruise of the Thames which followed, was spectacular. Big Ben, the parliament buildings, The London Eye, The Globe Theatre and especially the Tower Bridge, we very impressive on this autumn evening where the rain waited until we were back in our transport before smearing the windscreen. It was an awesome way to end the tour, especially with new friends. We are determined to look them up when we are back in Oz.

 Despite confusing the cabby (don't call them taxis), we managed to get home to our digs, a very nice three room serviced apartment just below Kensington Gardens in the inner west of London. Both cab driver's we struck last night were brilliant.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

We intend to be bums on the first day in London. So sick of being on the go! Sightseeing day off.

Tomorrow night, Phoenix Theatre on Charring Cross Rd for "Blood Brothers", a West End production and a chance to see how bloody talented our Christopher really is.

Day 25 - London

Peter Pan

For Sue, France has always been Mecca, so the last three and a half weeks have been pay back for all those times when children were screaming and husband was annoying and she was wondering why the hell life had worked her into a corner.

For me, the UK provides the same repayment. It is the land of my ancestors, the first 25 years of my cultural experience and the home of cricket (England invented it, Australia perfected it). My uncles always talked to me of Hobbs and Larwood and Wally Hammond. My Auntie told me tales of the Mother Country and came back talking like one of them. She was so badly affected by her first visit to England as a young thing, travelling by boat on her own in the early sixties, that the scaring left a bloody plum in her mouth that she still can't spit out.

Coming here, is walking the streets of dreams. Because it was the journey Aussies took in the sixties when I was an impressionable lad, it became the place I would need to go. I thought, with all seriousness (no matter how great the delusion) that it would be in the company of other strong men in green caps but I have eventually and reluctantly had to release that dream for other youngsters to hold and cherish. My chance is served up as shepherds pie and washed down with warm ale while I turn 56.

Our leaving of Paris was protracted. Up at 6:30am for a 7:15 departure to Gare de Nord, the international railway station in the north Paris, leaving almost two hours to kill before departure ... or so we thought. Passport control and bag checks and the like used up the first hour and boarding the last 30 minutes, so we weren't bored. As always, we had the longest walk to find our carriage, No 1. The only thing left in front of us was the driver! We joined the platform beside car 17 ...

At least there were elevators this morning and not several sets of stairs. Both of our bags have been pared back but they still take some maneuvering. Will lots of help, we had everything stowed and began our rush to England. Our only day of rain in Paris was just starting as we left. For once, we became bored with the scenery ... and not just in the 20mins that it takes to cross under the English Channel! Sue read an English newspaper and I listened to music until moved to draft a new poem by watching a fellow passenger.

Our arrival at London St Pancras Station was heralded by a cockney voice instructing us to "urry along please an' 'ave ya pauseports ready for the governa up the end." No mistaking where we were and how nice it was to be be back among our language again. We had loved being immersed in French and Italian and Russian and Polish and several other languages during the previous four weeks but there was something comforting about having your native language around you.

Lunch in an English pub

We are staying only one night in London, rather strangely not at the hotel our tour is starting from but from memory there was a good reason for this but what it was escapes me. Instead, we are staying at the Corus Hotel on Bayswater Rd, across the road from Hyde Park. It a nice room but there are so many things wrong with how the place works. It appears to have a high number of Russian staff so perhaps it is Russian owned. Anyone who has owned a Russian car knows how good they look but how badly they corner and brake. We waited two and half hours to be given a room, after being told we were a priority - the last hour sitting in the lobby and ignored. When we finally got our room we were downgraded, two of the three lifts didn't work and we had to move cleaners gear in the hall ways twice to negotiate the corridors to our room. There is now a long wait to ride the lifts but eight floors of steps don't encourage alternatives. To cap it off, house keeping tied up the lift for twenty minutes this afternoon moving gear down to the laundry.

Whinge over.

Had lunch at "The Pride of Paddington", typical English pub fare. Sue had bangers and mash, I had a steak and ale pie and a pint of the local warm ale. Brilliant! Actually, didn't go much on the local brew, served at room temperature. For a second, I was offered a Fosters ... "thought you might prefer it cobber" ... but declined, informing the barman that Fosters was in England because Aussies don't drink it at home.

After we settled in, we went for a walk in Kensington Gardens. At the gates to Kensington Palace (in the park), a moving tribute is gradually being mounted for Princess Diana. The 15th anniversary of her death was this week. It was all heart felt stuff. It was the small tributes which we especially poignant. A single flower with a hand written note saying just a few words was among the most powerful.

We wandered along the Long Water, a lake divided by the Serpentine Bridge which also marks then end of the gardens. The water on the other side of the bridge is called the Serpentine and the park becomes Hyde Park. Beside the The Long Water, I stood with Peter Pan, a statue JM Barrie himself donated. It was lovely walking through large and small paths and watching established families and ones literally in their infancy playing on a late Sunday afternoon in this wonderful open green space virtually in the heart of London.

He was gorgeous,
rabbis not withstanding

The highlight was spotting our first squirrel! Of course, they are plentiful so it wasn't long until we had acquired multiple squirrel sightings. Sue carried on like a pork chop, making the Skippy noise in order to encourage one to jump on her hand until the fairies arrived to take its place. You won't be surprised to find out each squirrel ignored her. Kangaroos, koalas, sugar gliders, black cockatoos ... have all reacted the same to the Skippy noise. I dare say Bengal Tigers may be the only ones interested.

We walked back to the hotel in that other English tradition, mizzle. Its annoying but it brushes off.

TODAY'S PHOTOS

Off to the pub for tea and then back to the hotel, where a bloke is playing piano and singing. His advertising says he specialises in Dylan. We shall see!