Bye bye London

Last Thursday I managed to get to see my Auntie Win, who lives in Cornwall but was up staying with my cousin Rob for her 89th birthday. She is still going very strong and looking fantastic so I am hoping I have a good share of her genes. I travelled out to Chesham, at the end of the Metropolitan line, and nearly 2 hours across London with a few changes. We lunched in the village and had a walk around the park, then watched Wimbledon as the weather was, as it has been for ages, fairly unpleasant. So that was a good day. Otherwise, it has pretty much been the TV keeping us amused with non-stop Wimbledon, in fact not really non-stop, more like on-off with all the rain. It has been the wettest June on record and is meant to continue to rain for a while. It's not too warm either, hovering around 20 most days, which isn't great for mid-summer. If the rain continues my great plan of seeing the final on Sunday just before I go will be messed up entirely. On the middle Sunday they don't play so we watched the Concert for Diana at Wembley, (on TV) which was interesting, all 6 hours of it! Anne was keen to see it as the ballet were doing a sequence from Swan Lake and that went well, and we got the backstage gossip about all the other acts from Anne's choreographer friend. Only a few days now and I will be going from 20 degrees to 40+ in Dubai so I'll no doubt be moaning about the heat next posting. I'm hoping they downgrade the 'severe' procedures in place at airports at the moment after the recent problems. At least it was good news this morning with the release of Alan Johnson which has been continuing big news over here for the last 3 months. I made the most of my time in this part of the world by going over Kensington Palace the other day. I can walk there from here but have never actually got around the forking out the cost of entry, but thought I would and it was quite interesting. They are building a whole lot of flowery sculptures, put together with help from the public, all around the park too. I'm off to take a bag of clothes I won't want in Dubai to my Lord in Windsor tomorrow, then lunching with cousin Sue in London. Perhaps I won't be able to blog from Dubai. Rebecca and Andy are having problems with their site so if I disappear for a while I hope it is just that.

Kensington Palace and one of the sculptures in progress