London morning

Thunder and rain pelting down signalled by a cool breeze through the window. So welcome!

Determined to like London again,I went for a wander yesterday morning... the idea was to just follow my feet. I took the first bus that stopped for me down into Woolwich, passing a particularly grim looking funfair on the Common. This was the one advocated to me last year by an urchin, who took pity on me and the drooping flowers I carried for a friend. You pay a flat fee for this funfair, which includes Europe's largest travelling theme park, and then you can have as many rides as you like. I can't help wondering if the boy was  wrong... maybe going on the rides is free but you have to pay if you want to leave. I didn't approach it; it had the unmistakeable menace of Cthulhu country even in bright sunshine. I found myself at the Thames Barrier, which looked serene and lovely, passing some Elfrida Rathbone society mosaic and finding myself facing a series of water inlets full of loitering koi carp. Cormorants, swans and gulls relaxed on the water, and a tall ship sailed by. And that was all.

Wedding photos have landed!

Oliver has done a grand job. Love and Marriage suit larians very well, unlike his lady bride who seems incapable of looking anything other than petrified/tearful/crazed!  What on earth is wrong with me? But then, perhaps mine is a gimlet eye when it comes to these things... I somehow start looking for all the ones not to show Mum, like the one where I am slouching tum forward, or the several where it is apparent that I haven't put the elastic holding the hat under my hair. But these mistakes will be considered irrelevent compared to what the groom referred to as my 'Spanish Chanel'  chic and  what Mum will call a big hat with a strange dress. The termagent will, I hope, laugh her head off!

We did skype the wedding, they both got to see me on the day so there will be no massive shocks for Mum. But that doesn't mean she  won't find plenty that would have been better had I listened to her. She was besotted with a beaded Downton abbey style mud pink dress, and will never believe it wouldn't have been better than red and black stripes.  We will compile an album for her so that when she is done observing how the outfit should have been straightened down between every photo and how I probably needed higher heels, she can move on to wondering where I got the idea that a honeymoon meant basic camping in a place full of dangerous animals with naught but a watering can between me and losing my peerless-hygiene-since-birth certificate.

But the truth is, the photos are full of friends and family and lover-become-husband with his shining smile, and yes, even me, all of us happy and gorgeous.  I didn't want photos, don't like them at all. But these will do as a keepsake, he was right to insist...

And if they're so bad, how come I keep looking at them again and again?  :-)