Groundhog Day

I'm finding myself retracing steps and revisiting places quite a bit on this trip. Yesterday (Monday) was almost a carbon copy of the last Saturday of the 2010 trip, except without Spooner and Malcolm. I was on my own for the day while Spooner got his hair cut, bought Wellies and made other preparations for his upcoming 3-day expedition with his students to an organic farm in Hampshire. So, I spent a chunk of time at the V&A, then walked up Exhibition Road to Hyde Park, visited this year's Serpentine Pavilion (ho-hum) and the Serpentine Gallery, and then walked up to Bayswater Road.

At the V&A, I saw a great exhibition called The Power of Making, which was all about crafts taken in new directions with incredible results. I also saw parts of the Medieval and Renaissance galleries, wandered through the ceramics gallery in search of an Ai Weiwei exhibition that hasn't started yet, and saw the (free) photography part of the (not free) Postmodernism exhibition.

Lunch -- a cup of lovely roasted veg soup -- was the best part of my stop at the Serpentine Pavilion and Gallery. There's a retro Citroen van, converted to a snack truck, sitting outside the gallery. I'll have a photo up at some point, but meanwhile you can see this one by my mate Malcolm.

Speaking of my photos, here's the story: there's an open wireless network at Spooner's flat, but I can't connect to it because Tony (the owner of the flat who is now traveling around the world for a year) has set it up as a LAN and he has to be here to allow new computers to be part of the LAN. I don't really understand it, but it means that I have to use Tony's desktop computer rather than my netbook, and I'm reluctant to dump all my photos from my camera onto his computer. So, my posts will go unillustrated until I'm home. So sorry to disappoint my faithful readers, but you'll just have to come back here at a later date.

In the evening, Spooner and I went up to the Almeida Theatre in Islington to see Tracey Ullman in a new play. She hasn't been on stage in London for 20 years, and I had high hopes that she'd chosen something really fab for her return. But it's not. I'm no theatre critic, but I know a crummy play when I see one. 'Nuff said. We did have a very nice pub meal at the Charles Lamb before the show, however.

Expenses:
£1 for map of the V&A (yes, they charge for this now)
£3.50 soup and roll at the Serpentine
£9 meal and a half pint of bitter at the pub

22,483 steps
8.87 miles