Thursday, April 7/2011

The temperature yesterday must have been something like 23 - and sunny. Lots of vitamin D absorbed. Today is nearly as warm Nineteen or twenty but warmer in the sun. First down to Buckingham Palace in order to see the Canadian War Memorial in Green Park. It needs major repairs, which Canadian Veterans Affairs has agreed to as Conrad Black, who had been seeing to its upkeep, stopped paying as he hit other difficulties. However the workmen there now explain that the pumps for the water that runs over the surface are rusted out and need replacing - seems relatively poor engineering for something created in 1994. The replacement is on hold now, though, and it's being cleaned up so that it looks presentable during the Royal Wedding festivities.

Then we set out to sun ourselves walking along the south bank, perhaps as far as the Tate Modern or even the Globe. But we get just past the National Theatre and as far as a sign advertising south bank events where we see that the BFI Cinema is offering a showing of Anatomy of a Murder free to people over 60. So we go. Queue for returned tickets and are lucky. It's a large comfortable theatre and there's an intro by a Duke Ellington expert (re the soundtrack). Lovely afternoon. It`s really too nice to have been indoors, but tomorrow should be sunny as well.

On the way home J and I get separated - for the first time ever on the tube. Must have happened on the escalators at Waterloo - and we never do figure out how. The standard arrangement is that the one who gets on the train gets off at the next platform and waits - but this assumes that one person has got on a train and then the doors have closed before the second person boards. There was no clear plan for a situation in which both of us claim "but you were right behind me on the escalator and then you vanished!" Separately we check around the escalators, get on the train, alight at Westminster and check the platform, and then take the next train to Swiss Cottage - where J is waiting for me on the platform. Mystery unsolved but happy ending.