Tuesday, November 4/2014

Meet up with Jenny outside the National Gallery, a good meeting spot because it's central, there's a large portico in front allowing shelter from rain if necessary, and there.'s plenty to enjoy if one arrives early. We are a bit early and watch not only the crowds but also the "statue people" - the mime artists with metallic body paint who perform or permit photos in response to donations. We head over to St Martin in the Fields across the road where there's coffee and lunches in the crypt. Coffee and catch up conversation. And two hours later emerge to dark skies (in part because it's now late afternoon) and rain. Abandon plans for walk in park and separate for our trains.

Opposite Charing Cross Station discover an open umbrella abandoned on the pavement. Does have a small hole, but serves well to take us down to Embankment and then home from the tube. Gains and losses on umbrellas must be about equal, including the one J was given at Sainsbury's in Finchley Road when he asked if his had been turned in and was told no, but he might as well have one of the long term unclaimed ones. On the whole, though, while numbers may be equal, there is probably a bit of a decline in quality. The best of them, found on the tube shortly after we left one on a bus, we ended up leaving subsequently on a bench in Paphos. Tonight's find is carefully dismantled by J, ever the tinkerer, and the structure of its frame duly admired, but it really isn't worth salvaging.