Leaving home yesterday evening as the sun was setting and the moon had risen, made me wonder whether I will stay up until 2am on Monday morning to see the lunar eclipse. Sleep has been in short supply for the last few nights as the dog has been unwell. Our train was late into London last night and we had to get up early so that James could get to the course he was attending on time. I may have to wait until the next lunar eclipse. Once he was at Imperial College I had a coffee and waited for the V&A to open. I had not been in the museum for many years and had a ticket for their exhibition ‘Shoes: pleasure and the pain’.

Sadly no photographs were allowed inside the exhibition but it was a great display of shoes throughout the ages and on their construction. Every so often someone would exclaim ‘I had some of those’. I assume they were not referring to the antique Egyptian, Chinese and Indian footwear. Afterwards I looked at some of the other exhibits including European Fashion from 1750 and an installation by Barnaby Barford called ‘Tower of Babel’ It is composed of 3000 individual bone china buildings, each measuring 10 – 13cm tall and depicts a real London shop.

It was such a fabulous sunny day that I decided I had had enough of museums and decided to head for more open spaces.

Eventually, after getting past all the tourists outside Harrods, I spotted some deckchairs for hire by the Serpentine in Hyde Park and sat there watching the world go by. This included a new sport not seen previously. People wearing wheeled narrow boards somewhere between roller skates and skateboards in size were propelling themselves along with Nordic walking poles. Selfie sticks were also everywhere and the park was very busy. Soaking up the sun, reading and watching the birds (magpies, geese, swans and pigeons) passed a couple of hours without any difficulty.

Later I met up with James and now the only decisions are where to eat tonight and what to do tomorrow.