Monday, November 17/2008

Barbican Library internet and check the terminal for the Cyprus flight - terminal 5. The Tunis flight is from Gatwick. Leaves us just time to get to Hanover Square for the Gresham College free lecture. This is the church that Shelley got married in, a pretty square church with balconies on three sides. Paul and Jill are there already and we join them. The lecture is on what makes people happy and is given by a visiting professor of psychiatry. It's interesting, informative and quite witty. Gresham College in the Inns of Court has a wonderful and varied series of free public lectures which Jill and Paul put us on to. A tradition of free public lectures that goes back over 400 years.

Then we realise we're quite near Farm Street. Farm Street is often mentioned in literary biographies as a Catholic centre and I'm curious. Turns out to be a lovely little neo-Gothic church with beautiful vaulting and stained glass. It's officially the Church of the Immaculate Conception, run by the Jesuits and familiarly known as Farm Street - a treasure tucked away in a quiet corner of Mayfair.

By bus to Trafalgar to pick up our new debit cards. Then up Charing Cross Road where we find a small French dictionary at Blackwell's - unaccountably but happily half price (£2.25). By now it's raining so umbrellas out and home.

Last of the spaghetti for dinner. Jenny calls to chat. She is to take two more weeks off work and has decided to go to Cumbria and visit Jane.