First stop Starbucks. Largely because we would otherwise arrive at the Baron a little too early. Double virtue of letting us know we are genuinely awake and getting the day's wifi fix - email, newspaper opeds , etc.
Out in the late afternoon to reacquaint ourselves with our street. Initial look suggests that the difficulties of the pound have had little effect on high street prices. Pick up 250 grams of cherry tomatoes for 72p ($1.22 CAD). As well as loose fair trade bananas from Waitrose, where they're 76p a kilo - equivalent to 58 cents CAD a pound. (Yes travel good for mental arithmetic).
We're heading back down Queensway when we hear a siren behind us we turn instinctively and then laugh. This is the city - there are always sirens. But this is a wee bit more than that. We start by counting six large fire trucks and police rescue vehicles, but that's just the beginning. We lose track of the number of responders, but a seemingly endless stream of police cars and emergency vehicles pour in, with attention centred on the Bayswater tube station, which has closed to the public but is being entered by numbers of flak jacketed police. Lights still flashing but there's no smoke and the fire fighters are just standing around observing. No one seems to know what is going on but it seems enormous. Bomb threat, hostage taking? Surely a suicide on the line - which is, regrettably, not an infrequent occurrence - doesn't tie up that kind of police resources. A man working at the food shop next door but one seems unconcerned, and suggests that there is often a fair bit of drama that ends up sound and fury signifying nothing. And, in support of his thesis, there has been no attempt to reroute the usual crowds of pedestrians walking on the pavement in front of the tube station and despite the congestion caused by emergency vehicles normal traffic is still crawling along Queensway. And no mention on the six o'clock news.