No Popemobile here, alas.

My husband wanted to come too. That meant leaving the house later than I had planned, and climbing the hill much more slowly. Even so, we got there on time – but the Pope got there early. We missed the whole thing. A bitter disappointment.

Mary Lou, the best I can do for the Grand Old Duke of York is the Wikipedia entry. I thought we knew who he was (George III’s second son Frederick, I guess) but apparently there are rival candidates.

Before getting back to the happier topic of knitting, I had better run through the rest of our London adventures, for the sake of completeness.

The Fakes show at the National Gallery was a bit of a disappointment, with slightly patronising labels. “Can you spot the difference?” sort of thing. We also saw the annual Portrait competition that day, around the corner at the Portrait Gallery; and – an unexpected treat – a little show of Frederick Cayley Robinson, upstairs at the National Gallery. Recommended.

The next day we polished off Sargent and the Sea at the Royal Academy. We expected to be bored, and were. They also have a little show of Flaxman’s illustrations to Homer. T’riffic. We skipped Tracey Emin. Then we wandered around the commercial galleries, which I always enjoy doing. Agnew’s new premises are a real come-down, as if they had moved into a council house; but the stock is still high-quality.

Friday was the V&A for the Raphael cartoons and tapestries, and that was exhilarating. The tapestries were interesting enough; it was the chance to look closely at those cartoons again which transformed the day. Then we went on to the latest Saatchi gallery, not far away. It is located in the old “Duke of York’s Headquarters” off Sloan Square. We thought of the 10,000 men – but I couldn’t even tell you which Duke of York had his headquarters there.

On Saturday Rachel took my husband to Postman’s Park while I had my Starmore day.

And on Sunday we went to see the dinosaurs at Crystal Palace. Wow! I was expecting a lone Tyrannosaurus in a field of patchy grass. What I got was this:


They were the first dinosaur sculptures in the world, and pre-date Darwin by several years. Modern scholars sneer at the reconstructions, needless to say. Three Wikipedia links in one post is unusual, but they deserve one. Here is Rachel with my husband:


The new VK arrived yesterday, brightening an otherwise rather sour day, and knitting proceeds well. I am past the half-way point on the Amedro shawl border, and near the first heel of Matt’s socks. Tomorrow I’ll talk about knitting.