Here we are waiting to take off on our flight from Gatwick to Glasgow. It should have taken off a couple of minutes ago but it came in late (from Basel) and people are still boarding. This gives me time to write a quick blog post. Our last day in London has been very pleasant. We went for a tour of the Royal Courts of Justice with Cat; unfortunately Ally was too busy at work to join us, he had hoped to take a half day of holiday. The tour was very interesting although it was interrupted by one of the tour members fainting - luckily one of the duty police officers outside one of the court rooms caught her before she hit the floor. We had lunch in a wee Pret A Manger then Cat went off to view a flat and we headed to Piccadilly where we bought tea and chocolates in Fortnum and Masons and browsed in Waterstones before taking the tube back to St Paul’s. We had time for a last quick drink in Madison. Ally’s new office is right beside St Paul’s so we had a quick look over there from the roof terrace but we couldn’t see him at any of the windows! Soon it was time to retrieve our case from the Premier Inn and to take the train from Farringdon Station to Gatwick Airport.
Friday 29 October 2021
Thursday 28 October 2021
Diagon Alley
Wednesday 27 October 2021
Abbey and Palace and Globe oh my!
Tuesday 26 October 2021
Hokusai at the British Museum
Today we had our traditional breakfast in Prêt à Manger in lovely Paternoster Square, then walked to the British Museum, which we have rejoined in the anticipation of a few visits to London over the next year.
We went to the Hokusai exhibition and were gratified that, as members, we were allowed just to swan in even though it was fully booked. I enjoyed the exhibition very much; it consisted of 103 very intricate and beautiful brush drawings, so detailed and amazing. The drawings were intended for an encyclopaedia to be called “The Great Picture Book of Everything” which was never published (if it had been, these drawings would have been destroyed as part of the print-making process) and covered many subjects such as animals, birds, Japanese legends, stories of Buddha and more. He was such a great artist. His famous work “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” was also on display, of which the British museum has three versions - I didn’t realise (until today!) that it was a woodblock print and that the versions differ according to how worn the woodblocks were by the time each print was made. There were originally about 5000 but many have been lost or damaged over the years.