Friday 27 March Creatures and Borough Markets ( unrelated)

For the first day in a while I set off with a definite plan. Silly move. I got to St Paul’s (by tube – quicker) only to find it closed for a service. After St Paul’s I was going to catch a bus to Waterloo station to go to the wool shop and browse in their books. I thought I’d walk instead ( about 3 km) and take some photos. The first half was along the river. The first thing that took my fancy was a rather unpleasant looking fish wrapped around a light pole – OK, see how many creatures I could find. I found 7 in a bit over 1 km – 3 different fish, a camel, a sphinx, a dragon, a winged 4 legged creature.

After crossing the river I had a nice cup of coffee at an Italian place. I wonder if sometimes my Italian would be easier for them to understand than my Australian. Waterloo station is confusing. Yesterday I walked around 3 sides of a rectangle, today I managed better but was 1 level higher than I wanted to be – looking over the roof tops of the shops.

I pottered in the wool shop for ages and bought a book of patterns. The shop is quite small but there is a table in the middle. 2 nights a week they have ‘bring your knitting and chat’ night which several places in Australia I know of do, but this place , called I Knit, had a grog license and sold wine, beer and spirits. Tea and coffee too.

I then walked through an area with a lot of council flats and ordinary shops to the Borough markets – apparently the best market for food in London. These were wonderful. I met my niece and she showed me some of the places she shops at, we had a drink at a nearby pub where Brigid Jones Diary was filmed, we had a lovely lunch at a Spanish tapas place, we went to an amazing cheese shop and a few other places.

Then I came home. There is a great variety in tube stations. Some of them are quite claustrophobic. I was on an escalator a few days ago going down ( a long way) quite steeply to a lower level and I reckon a tall person could have touched the roof – or that is what it felt like. I made the mistake of taking my hand off the rail to look at the time and felt funny. This afternoon I had to change lines at Westminster station. This was much more open. I had 3 escalators to go up – not quite as long as the unpleasant one, but you could see them all at once and others too.