Farewell, London, 1 November

Swans in the Round Pond at Kensington Gardens

Today was our last full day in London and we went our separate ways to do the things that each of us wanted to do before leaving the city for Paris. Virginia went to Knightsbridge and I went to the Victoria and Albert.

Bruce's day:

I always find the V & A a fascinating place ranging as it does from the most sublime of exhibits to the most ridiculous. This year there were a number of fascinating exhibitions including one on the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was made even more interesting since Virginia has been transcribing documents concerned with the contributions that New South Wales was planning on making for the great show in the Crystal Palace. In addition I particularly wanted to have another look at Tippoo's Tiger; a mechanical device which says much about attitudes toward the British in India in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The placard in the V & A describing the exhibit tells us,

The life-sized automaton of carved and painted wood represents a tiger devouring a prostrate European in 1790s dress. A crank handle operates two mechanisms to move the man's jointed arm and simulate roars and groans. A flap in the animal's flank conceals an organ keyboard stops and pipework. The casing suggests South Indian workmanship, while the works are of European origin. Musical toys were popular in contemporary Europe and many Indian rulers also collected them. The model belonged to Tipu Sultan, 'the Tiger of Mysore', an inveterate enemy of the British, who knew him as Tippoo Sabib. It came into the possession of the East India Company following his death in 1799 at the battle of Seringapatam.

Virginia and I had agreed to meet at the Orangerie at Kensington Palace for afternoon tea and while the distance from theV & A is not great, the works on the underground, meant that a number of lines and segments of lines were closed, making it something of a job to get to there. What would normally take about ten minutes on the tube wound up taking more like three-quarters of an hour. Fortunately I arrived with some time still to spare and spent that taking pictures of Kensington Gardens.

Virginia's day:

On a wet Sunday tourists tend to congregate at Harrods in even more spectacular numbers than usual. I took one brief glance in the area of Harrods Souvenirs, immediately changed direction and headed upstairs to women's fashions. I've been looking for a new winter coat in Hobart for the last several years without success. Not surprisingly I found a range of options at Harrods priced from 500 pounds to my preferred model which costs 1,000 pounds. I think I may have to wait for the sales or continue wearing my beloved 20 year old, relined George Gross and Harry Who coat!

I did the shops, as they say, Harrods, Harvey Nics, etc. then walked up Knightsbridge to Hyde Park Corner then turned left up Park Lane to Marble Arch (more than my 10,000 daily steps I think) then picked up a bus along the Bayswater Road to meet Bruce at Kensington Palace.

It has been great for me to be "home" this week and I have enjoyed every minute of it even after 40 years in the "colonies" there is still this pull every time I arrive back here. Strangely I feel physically better here than in Australia - probably psychosomatic, but there your are...

With impeccable timing we met on the steps to the Orangerie and had afternoon tea before returning to our room and beginning the process of packing for the next leg of our trip; Paris.

The Orangerie, Kensington Palace