London

We had our second dance lesson - real keen to keep these ones going till we get to be as good as Fred and Ginger (yeah right!!).  Jane and David are putting down a dance floor in their new house and have invited us for regular practices.  With some good models to follow things might get better.  Marianne came for dinner, and we took her for a tour around Bristol and had a entree picnic in the park near the suspension bridge - nearly in the dark but a lovely balmy night. Harry and Paul fixed our little car and Paul then came round for dinner another night.  So, the weeks are getting busy.  On Saturday we went to London to see Rebecca and Nylan and after lunch at the Chinese markets we caught a tube to Notting Hill to experience Portobello Market. It is one of the most famous street markets in the world - and thankfully we caught it on a 'not very busy day'. We wandered the stalls, firstly the expensive antique ones and then the not so expensive ones and ended up at the Travel Shop where Hugh Grant met Julia Roberts in the famous film (last time we saw it was at Mike and Becks in Sydney when we took Mum for a holiday).  The carnival is held in August - and I can imagine the chaos - I would love to go - but since I don't like crowds probably won't - apparently there are 20 miles of stalls, 40 sound systems, hundreds of food stalls, and over 40,000 volunteers looking after 1 million carnival goers.

In the evening we went to 39 steps, based on the 1935 thriller directed by Alfred Hitchcock and based loosely (very I would say) on the novel by John Buchan.  If you enjoyed Spamalot (like we did) we could recommend this one - we laughed alot (that rhymes with Spamalot by the way) - a spy novel taking the mikky out of the Scottish accent - just as the locals do to us. Its the same old story, man finds himself embroiled with lovely spy who is killed. Man escapes from police and boards an overnight train to Scotland dressed as a milkman. He sees the police searching the train and learns from a newspaper that he is the target of a nationwide search. He hides from the police by kissing the indignant passenger (female of course), jumps from the train onto the Forth Rail Bridge (been there) and escapes. He stays the night with a poor crofter, is chased by the police and arrives at a professors house (who is really a baddy). Narrowly escaping death (the bullet is stopped by the farmer's hymnbook, left in a coat pocket) he goes to the local police who don't believe him. He escapes again somehow becomes main speaker at a political rally and caught again... and the story goes on... and on... and on...We didn't do much on Sunday, sleep in, shopping and cooking for Jane and David (vegetable korma was rather good even if I say so myself!!).