We woke in the Wellington Hotel on the morning of the second day to well steamed up windows. That is to say the double glazing units of the primary windows, rather than the panes of the secondary glazing. But I am pleased to say that we had not overheated during the night; the system had worked, despite our not having spotted any way to control it.
Down, in my case, to a substantial breakfast. BH went for something rather healthier, sticking with two eggs - properly poached - and, I think, avocado on toast. Avocado being something that I very rarely eat myself - and never have done. Not sure why, but I think it is something to do with the texture rather than the taste. Or perhaps the brain thinks that the combination of the two is inappropriate?
To be fair to my health, I did start with some slices of pink grapefruit - a new to me way of serving the stuff, which I usually take by the half. But the slices did well enough, as did the small dried figs I took them with.
We also had a lot of screens round about; it was, after all, a sports bar. But from where we were sitting, they were not intrusive.
I did not go out for a newspaper, despite, for once, there being places to buy newspapers within very easy reach, so we talked about the day to come instead. The first possibility to be discarded was a visit to a new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery. The second was to simply walk across the road and take a train to Epsom. Instead, it being a bright sunny morning, we decided to walk to London Bridge and take a train to Epsom from there.
Noting in passing that we were sat in chairs which I had last used in the margins of a visit to Windsor for some royal event or other, a visit during which I remember meeting some below stairs members of the Household in an old public house near the castle. Also passing slots on the pavement reserved by chalk marks for particular camera teams. Also passing the barracks of the First Battalion of the First Foot Guards, presumably a very serious outfit in the class hierarchy of the army. Search of the archive fails to turn it up, so it must have been before I left the world of work.
Despite all the stairs, we had not brought our stuff down to breakfast, so up the stairs to collect our stuff and admire the wall decoration above the bed head. I think both pages and pins were real, albeit knocked out in some workshop. I thought it rather neat, although not to the extent of remembering the names of any of the books involved.
We also noticed that they do not bother to paint the roofs of London buses red anymore. Partly, I suppose to save on the red paint, but also to allow the bus identification to be painted black on white on the roof, in the way of a police car. Or, for that matter, a Sainsbury's delivery lorry - for which last, see reference 9. But who is going to read these numbers? A satellite, a police helicopter, a drone?
Houses behind the hotel, presumably built for the working classes, rather like those of Romsey Town in Cambridge, although these ones were a good bit older. Million pounds a pop now?
Onto the Bernie Spain gardens, last noticed at reference 2. BH was very impressed. And I did manage to activate Google Images on this occasion.
Onto the embankment, where we had lots of joggers, male and female, all shapes, sizes and speeds. But the groups were generally uni-sexed rather than mixed. One supposes that they live in the flats that have sprung up all over this part of London and maybe some of them are health workers from Guy's, not far away at all. Maybe they jog between Guy's and St. Thomas's as need arises, the two hospitals being part of the same team these days. A team which also, as it happens, includes Harefield.
A couple of bench sits later and we were at the replica of the Golden Hinde, where we found a street cleaner who like to decorate his barrow with found children's toys. Rightt we have a heritage tree stump, we thought oak gifted by somewhere in Kent, with most of the tree having already been used for restoration work.
My rather careless snap of the stump did not include the label, so clearly a job here for Gemini. But one on which, for once, he went badly, if plausibly, astray.
His first effort was that the tree was one of the Preston twins and that the timber had been used for deadeyes and blocks - for which I dare say elm is very suitable. Deadeyes can be seen at reference 4. However, it is clear from reference 3 that this stump is not one of the twins, being far too small.
His second effort was hawthorn, specifically the unusual hawthorn described at reference 8. Gemini even goes so far as to talk of its two-foot diameter.
I then turned up the story at reference 7 which was much more the sort of thing that I vaguely remembered - wind-fall oak from East Grinstead. And his third effort was quite a decent story built around that.
But a reminder that Gemini will still make stuff up with a straight face, rather than admit that he has not got enough to go on. Odd though that he seems to be able to find out stuff about the right answer - after you have told him what the right answer is. Maybe he only digs deep into his datastore when pushed: too much demand on the servers to be doing that all the time.
Onto a busy Borough Market where we bought two small rabbits from the fish stall. To which I shall return in due course.
Plenty of foreign tourists, some young people who looked as if they had come up from the estuary part of Kent. Including two more young ladies in full war paint - for which it seemed a little early in the day but one can only suppose they knew what they were doing.
A couple of street trees more or less opposite the old Guy's hospital, looking well in their spring clothes in the bright light of the middle of the day.
And so to London Bridge Station and home to Epsom.
PS 1: mastic based trim does not always look as neat and slick as intended.
PS 2: my million pounds a pop was a bit wide of the mark. But one and a half seems rather a lot. How many people are young enough and rich enough to want to pay that for that?
PS 3: note for the record: there is a snap of the ticket entitling us to a 15% discount should we visit the Wellington Hotel again. Presumably in the reasonably near future - although some vendors are a bit careless about turning these promo codes off.
References
Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/little-case-first-day.html.
Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/korean-lights.html.
Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Twins.
Reference 4: https://www.brighton-hove.gov.uk/news/2019/elms-helm.
Reference 5: https://www.classicboat.co.uk/articles/sir-francis-drakes-golden-hinde-restoration-and-reconstruction/.
Reference 6: https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/shipshape/projects/golden-hinde-london.
Reference 7: https://www.instagram.com/p/DMGA8bVTalJ/.
Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glastonbury_Thorn.
Reference 9: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/07/horseshoes-preliminaries.html.
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