We were really lucky in London … the weather was warm … but not that warm that I would swim in the Serpentine in Hyde Park. It didn’t seem to bother this mad guy though!

As you can see the spring flowers were really pretty. London is looking great and I find that it has moved back into “one of my favourite cities” catalogue. I firmly believe that it has come into itself in the last ten years. That is a pretty stupid thing to say probably, because it is hundreds and hundreds of years old … but the food has improved out of site, it is really clean and they are even managing to clean up all of the old buildings. One thing that really stood out to me this time was the architecture … there are some amazing buildings in this city.

This duck had a great spot in a fountain in Hyde Park.

It was great seeing Tilda, Hooz and Claud. It was also good to meet Claire, their other flatmate. It worked out really well staying with them up at Islington. It is a great suburb and very close to the city. Claire went away on holidays so we moved into her room after a couple of days and it worked out perfectly.

John managed to go and haggle a guy down in price buying Hooz a bike that he found on Gumtree. He also bought a TV for them … so he was kept amused doing that for a couple of days. Unfortunately, I caught a really bad flu on the flight over from Barbados. I had people coughing all around me and knew I was in trouble. So that slowed me down a bit. Although there was actually only one day when I didn’t go out … I slept all day and night.

The first night we arrived we went to a fabulous pub nearby for dinner with all of the kids.

We managed to catch up with Chris Boshier, Marcus and his girlfriend Emily and Greg Pearce. All very interesting people.

Tilda and I went to the Vogue Festival on the Saturday. We went to a great forum on Fashion versus Style. It was interesting because they were all so into vintage and the importance in creating style.

We also had our hair done and makeup done and then had photos taken.

One of the great things that we did was have a half hour chat with the Beauty Editor … a beautiful Nigerian woman. She was fantastic and kept singing the praises of Australian beauty products. Tilda asker her about her career path … she started out as an accountant.

We also ran into the Publisher for Vogue who Matilda spent a week working with when she first hit London as a temp. He was a lovely elderly statesman.