Something in the Air London

Sundays are a great day for having a long breakfast and just hanging around. We really should have gone for a walk or just sat in Hyde Park or popped off to a museum I suppose, but we've done a lot of that of late, and a day of nothingness seemed quite appropriate. Actually a day of nothingness was substantially overdue.

Of course when nothingness comes with a bottomless of broadband internet it turns into somethingness, so while one read, and two went out for coffee and a bit of respite from the old folk, the other found himself knee deep in gigabytes. By mid afternoon new operating system, updated GPS mapping, an application or two which may or may not prove helpful in time, a new system startup burned, everything backed up in triplicate and the absolute sense of a day completely gone with nothing to remember it by.

We did have an appointment down Regent Street early evening though, to see what the nice people at the Apple Store could do with Shell and Jules' old black computer. As it turned out, they didn't quite know either but if it wasn't going to be inexpensive they promised they'd do nothing which seemed like a reasonable compromise.

As we walked home we did notice that something was definitely awry in old London Town. In quiet backstreets of Paddington the friendly Bobbies were dressed to kill.

"Strange", we thought, and ambled home through the leafy dusk.

Clearly they knew something that we did not, but we didn't give it a second thought.

(Note: in the interests of staying within the bounds of the anti terrorism act, the photograph is from another day and another location!)

Toy Museum London

It was Saturday, but we all slept in as though it was Sunday. None of this places to go things to do people to see stuff. We'd all done quite enough of that for one week thanks very much.

Eventually we stirred and decided among ourselves that we really should get out and about, so we took a vote among ourselves and followed Jules curiously to the other side of town. As events panned out in the next day or two the "other" side of town, the one where one imagines that just below the surface, evil lurks round every corner, was to become international news. It's safe enough in broad daylight just before Saturday lunchtime of course, specially when one finds oneself just before lunchtime at the Museum of Childhood.

We'd heard reports, or to be less diplomatic, Julian had heard reports that it was pretty cool, stuffed full of toys of all kinds.

I suspect that we to a person would agree that while it was indeed stuffed full of toys some of which did have a certain charm.  The museum really amounted to a comprehensive albeit apparently semi haphazard collection of old toys stuffed into glass cases.  How very fifties!

Some of the items in the collection were quite new, many not, and one of them dates as far as anyone can tell from 1,300BC, which makes it quite old,  but in terms of display and presentation I suspect that we all felt there is probably nothing that a small environmental catastrophe wouldn't do to improve the whole thing.

Fortunately for the collection, sadly for the presentation, toy museums don't seem to be high on the looters' list of things to do for now at least, and days later the much needed catastrophe has thus far failed to materialise.

Have they really gone?

There's no way of describing the vacuum that is created when a bunch of people with whom one has been confined for a few weeks disappears in to thin air.

When one of the people concerned is a little over one year old, the silence in that void is absolutely deafening. For an instant, when the shuttle arrived to transport them away, we were sad that it had all come so abruptly to an end.

Then were at a loss, constantly checking beneath our feet an over our shoulder to ensure we weren't about to step on her.

Even the statue of Physical Energy in Hyde park seemed to have stopped mid salad to check that all is well.   By tomorrow they will be back where they started, and with just a little effort, we will be winding back to a far more sensible cruising pace.

It will be quiet though.

It's a bit tiring really. London

Feeling decidedly as though yesterdays plan had been a good one until we changed it, we left the tourists head off with their guide to see the rest of London.

 Not for us another mad uncivilised dash around the place.

A gentle walk for groceries, an hour or two playing with Uncle Julian's Jenga blocks and a couple of long sleeps seemed to be a perfect solution to passing a bit of time in company with one's grand daughter.

She in turn thought exactly the same as her elders, and when we eventually woke it was barely in time for tea.

We had decided that arriving in London before the shops were open would be a good thing, as it would allow the reunited sisters to belt around like mad things catching up on a few years of separation while we could simply spend another relaxing day in the company of Miss Lilly.

In coming to that conclusion we probably hadn't taken into account that after a long day of exploration we'd have to leave our hotel at a terribly indecent hour, in darkness during a heavy storm, and by the time we'd travelled as sub-sonic speeds for a couple of hours, we'd feel as though we'd been travelling for a week.

For reasons that seem difficult to explain even with the benefit of hindsight, with Miss Lily dressed in her English finery with her new Guard bear we diverged from our plan.

For reasons inexplicable except that it seemed like a good idea at the time, we accompanied the intervening generation across Hyde Park, past the Serpentine and the Albert Hall, past the Princess Di fountain onto double decker buses into the City itself, around Fleet Street and Covent Garden, through pubs that had last been renovated in the seventeenth century, past cathedrals and towers and spires, via most of the places on the monopoly board.

I'm glad Shelley had decided there was no point in trying to take them to see everything on the first day.

The Madding Crowd Paris

If a day running around with one's children in Paris is a lot of fun, a day without them, left in the care of one's granddaughter is even better. We walked and walked and walked did. We and Lily, to places she may not have thought to visit on her own.

While her parents were dashing about trying to fill the gaps in yesterday's overview, we were ambling through parks and gardens, past docks and homeless people living in tents under bridges, well away from the beaten path of the tourist coaches.

Occasionally we'd pop into the Metro and pop out somewhere completely unexpected, for the better part staying clear of the throngs of summer tourists who seemed to be hanging from every monument, or if they weren't hanging from, hanging round making zany poses for the benefit of the camera. Two days in Paris is a lifetime too little we concluded, and steeled our resolve to bring the boat and spend more time here next year, a lot more time.

Crushed Paris

A day spent as a tour guide skimming over the major attractions of one of the world's most beautiful cities in perfect summer weather offers many highlights, wandering along the Seine, a stroll up the Champs Elisses, a climb to the top of the Arch de Triumphe, a sit in the shade of the Eiffel Tower.

The second best I think is the look of intense fascination on the face of a one-and-a-bit year old, when one crushes a soft drink can underfoot. This of course was carried out with some flair by the grandfather, ensuring a satisfying "crunch" accompanied each deft move of his size elevens, in one swift move reducing the can to a mere fraction of its former volume before disposing of it thoughtfully.

The highlight of the day though, was Miss Lily's continuing efforts thereafter to reproduce that crunch on every leaf, cigarette butt, lolly wrapper or chewing gum dag she came across.