Walk up Haverstock Hill, which becomes Rosslyn Hill and then Hampstead High Street, full of little shops and cafes and bakeries. Then turn down towards the Heath and past Keats' house. It's only open afternoons and this is still moroning, but entrance is a bargain - £3 for concessions, which allows admission for a year.
Down to trafalgar Square in the afternoon. J sits in the warm sun - along with many others - in front of the National Gallery while I go into Canada House. They're staying open in the afternoon again and letting people make telephone calls so I call Dorothy to say we're flying back thorugh Calgary with a 3 hour stop, so she's going to come out to the airport.
Along Oxford Street. We stop at John Lewis to look at the Itouches and netbooks. More interesting, they're demonstrating a new 3-D tv. A small knot of people gathers and we put on the glasses. Quite impressive really. Forty inch screen for £1800 ($2700). But of course there's not really much to watch on 3-D yet. what we do buy, somewhat to our surprise, is 10 m of downproof cambric to line the duvet ticking, as we salvage the original feather duvet that Joe's mother brought with her from Germany. I've seen the material online but never live, so to speak. We come home to find a tall thin man accompanied by his dog, whom he introduces, rescuing a couple of fancy dress hats from the bins. He's a little abashed, but they were on the very top and scarcely dusty - one black top hat style and one gold sparkles. We have to agree that it would be a shame to waste them. In fact the next time we're out I'm pleased to see that the red sparkled one has been salvaged as well.
We meet Flora and Alexander at Rosslyn Hill Chapel - really walking distance from us, though we take the bus, as it's door to door. Alexander is delivering a fortepiano for a concert tomorrow evening, a beautiful instrument that he and J move in across the crunchy gravel on a small wooden dolly. The church itself is larger than it looks from the front - 19th century stone with stained glass windows - two of them by William Morris and Burne Jones. It's Unitarian but with strong evidence of Christian heritage.
The fortepiano delivered, and the young pianist, a Ukrainian girl, left practising, we head off to find a spot for dinner, stopping almost immediately when Alexander sees an Italian restaurant, Carluccio's, which has a famous chef. Chicken liver pate starter (or mushroom soup in A's case). A has calf's liver and the rest of us pasta - j with tomato sausage sauce and F and I with seafood. Nice Montepulciano as well. A good little bonus with our delayed flight, this chance to see A and F again.
JAWORSKI TRAVELS