Saturday started grey and unpromising. It was to get worse before it got better. Also, Esther realised that it gets cold in the South of France in winter, cold enough for a winter coat to be necessary. This meant that she neglected to take hers with her when she moved there.

My first task on Saturday was to post it to her, airmail.

Kids, they sometimes amaze me just how they manage to survive so long.

Take Alastair, for instance. I met him on my way back home wearing my best walking fleece. It rained in horizontal sheets soon after and he and it got drenched. I was not pleased as I needed to wear it on Sunday.

Louise and I caught the train to Charing Cross only to find all trains were diverted to Cannon St. No problem, it is a short tube ride away.

We were going to visit the Cortaulds Institute, but were short of time so went to the National Gallery by Trafalgar Square instead.

I prefer it to the Tate Gallery. One of my favourite paintings there is the execution of Lady Jane Grey. It may seem macabre, but it captures the emotion and terror of the situation in such a moving way. It has to be seen in the broad canvas to really appreciate the effect. Lady Jane ruled for about 9 days before she was displaced by "Bloody Mary," eldest daughter of Henry VIII.

There were some loan exhibitions from other collections which were worth seeing. One from Christchurch College, Oxford, had three remarkable paintings. One by a Dutch artist of a middle-aged woman was a great study of character. Another was unusual in that it showed an everyday scene in the interior of a butchers shop. The other, by John Riley, was a study of a scullion (lowest of the male servants) who actually worked in Christchurch. Both were painted in the late 1600's. "The Scullion" is one of the most remarkable works I've ever seen. It has a wonderful realism and the character has such familiarity I could almost swear I know him.

It is always so humbling to see such masterworks.

After all that we felt hungry, so we went to Chinatown and just for a change went to Gerrards Corner, a new Chinese restaurant. The food was good and they give the biggest portions we've ever seen in a Chinese restaurant. It was a bit expensive though. A bottle of Beaujolais Nouveau cost us £12.00.

After that we wandered through Soho and Charing Cross Rd looking at antiquarian bookshops and a second-hand print shop, which quite frankly, has a better selection of prints for sale than either the Tate or the National Gallery bookshops.

Our main objective for the night was the Arts Theatre in Great Newport St. We booked to see Mike Leigh's play "Ecstasy." Well, I was ecstatic when the lights went on. On a bed lay a naked couple. All I can remember of him was that he was wearing socks, she wore nothing at all. The play turns around the desperate existence of the girl, Jean, an Irish immigrant living in a Kilburn bedsit. The bedsit was everything one of those god- awful places can be, right down to the brown peeling wall-paper, folding screen doors, Baby Belling cooker and shared toilet.

Jean has spent the last few years picking up men who use and beat her.

Then one night, her married friends and an old flame who is a real nerd, come to her flat for a drinking session.

The evening starts awkwardly, but as the drink flows, all the characters really come alive. Her friend's husband, another Irish immigrant, was especially funny. He told how one Christmas eve he went to the pub and forgot to get the turkey until it was almost too late. The only one left was 29lb (13.05k) in weight. He took it home and exclaimed "There I was, with a turkey the size of a f.....g pig, it was that big, you could stuff it with the Baby Belling."

He also raised a stifled snigger around the theatre after returning from one of his many trips to the toilet. There was a small wet patch on the front of his trousers. Some of us know how it got there.

The play ends with the nerd and Jean alone in her flat. He sleeps in the armchair and she sleeps in her bed, after very obligingly undressing again.

Sunday was bright and beautiful, so we wasted little time in getting out to the country. This time we descended on Otford, a village with a long high street full of the most gorgeous buildings of many architectural styles. The village once housed the Romans and was a favourite stopping off place for the early Archbishops of Canterbury. The ruins of the Archbishop's palace are still there. Our walk began alongside the river Darent and followed it's course on the ancient water-meadows of the valley. It passes a golf course (blots on the landscape) before coming to Shoreham, another picturesque village, which has the Darent running through it. Samuel Palmer lived in The Water House, by the stream and painted many landscapes around here, some of which hang in the Tate.

There are few deciduous trees which still have more than a handful of leaves, but they are still colourful and graceful in the changing light.

After leaving Shoreham, we climbed above the village and trekked back along the "Terrace," a long famous walk which gives a panoramic view of the whole valley as far as the Greensand Hills beyond.

The sun actually got quite warm and the mud began to get soft and mushy. It was hard going then, but we descended to the valley into more mud and crossed the old flood plain back to Otford. No tea-shop open, so we went back to Bromley to get some food shopping and home to another episode of Thackeray's "Vanity Fair."