Day 3 Tuesday 17th

This morning I walked a circuitous route to the Victoria and Albert museum. I arrived just after it opened at 10 ( Most things seem to open at 10 – shops , museums etc). I got a map and sat down to have a coffee in their coffee shop – in a lovely restored old ornate place with hugh ceilings – and tried to decide how to approach the floors and floors of interesting stuff. The museum’s map has a page with a little drawing of 1 thing that they have selected from each of the 80 of so rooms . Fair enough. First though I went to a special exhibition of men’s clothes from the Tsar’s of Russia from the early 1700’s to Nicholas II – the last. Before Peter the Great’s time, Russia was isolated from the rest of Europe but after him they followed some of the European fashions. The first few cases were displaying Peter II ‘s coronation clothes and other ceremonial clothes and ordinary clothes . He ruled from 1727 to 1730 when he died at the age of 14. They were beautifully embroided. They showed everything – cotton undershirt, waistcoat, overcoat, cotton stockings followed by silk stockings, cotton pants followed by silk breeches. The exhibition show looser garments for house wear but they were still beautifully embroidered . By the time of a few tsars later, they wore a military uniform for their coronation and they were not as sumptuous. The tabards that the heralds wore made up for it though as did the livery of the coachmen – all their jackets were quite fancy. The uniform that Nicholas II wore was quite plain but they had on display what they described as his coronation mantle. It was a cloak 7m long, weighed 13kg made of silk brocade and (mainly) ermine. 897 ermine were used. 3 of these mantle were made – 1 for him, 1 for his wife and 1 for his mum – that’s a lot of ermine. Also on display was the specially made chasuble that the officiating clergy wore. IT was the custom for different regions to send the new tsar a ‘presentation cloth’. Several of these were shown with their different embroidery styles.

After that I started my search for the ‘gallery choice’ . It was a poor idea because I kept getting distracted. The first room was one of fashion. I found this amazing dress that Vivian westwood designed ( the gallery's choice) but was just as taken with a traditional hunting outfit for an Englishman. It was made in 1996,. The same brown slightly checked woolen material was used for the beautifully cut waistcoat with lots of button, proper jacket, overcoat and trousers. I cannot remember whether the beret was too. - to go traipsing around in the wood?? ? Any one room had enough amazing stuff to keep you interested for an hour. After a while I had had enough.

Then I walked to Kensington Gardens to look for the Elfin Oak and take some photos for a friend. I was hungry, had looked at the map several times before, knew that Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park were next to each other , could not find the elfin oak on the map on the noticeboard but could see a café marked with an info booth next to it so I walked there, had some lunch and then walked on ( the info booth was closed) – trouble is I had forgotten that half of the green space on the map was Hyde Park and not Kensington Gardens and had walked into Hyde Park. Never mind. I eventually found this tree but it was surrounded by wire mesh and was hard to take photos of. I am coming to the conclusion that English people donot walk much. Maybe they do for a specific occasion – like a ramble- but not normally. Several times I have talked to people about where I am going and they have said – but you have to take a train – I have said I’d walk – they say it’s several km . Hmm. Several people who I asked initially where this tree was seemed surprised that I would contemplate walking. I measured it on a map – instead of walking 1.2km I walked 3.4km – no big deal in the scheme of things – but a silly mistake – most of my silly mistakes come when I’m hungry ( it’s easier to blame mistakes on low blood sugar than senility) .

I decided that I deserved afternoon tea. I caught the train back to South Kensington where I had seen a nice looking French Patisserie in the morning that people were having breakfast/morning tea at ( it was about ¼ full then). Because of the circuitous route I had taken in the morning, it took me a little while to find the place. It looked rather full from the outside but I thought I’d try and went in. I got hit ( it felt almost physical) by a wall of noise – No way – out I went. I wandered around a bit looking for something else with no luck so went to Sainsbury’s(over the road from where I’m staying) and bought a muesli muffin. I spent many minutes looking at the packets of chocolate biscuits but was strong. What I should have done was buy one of the lovely little things that the patisserie were serving to take-away.