On our way into London on the train we chatted to an American woman here with a school group and also staying out of the centre, so they were getting good at the underground as well. They had been to the show 'Wicked' the previous day and today they were going to the Globe Theatre, London Eye and then another show in the afternoon. Even I thought that was intense.

The first stop in London today was to visit St Clement Danes Church . There has been a church on the site since the 9th century. It was not touched by the Great Fire of London but was in poor condition so was rebuilt by Christopher Wren, with the tower added in 1719. It received a direct hit in the Battle of Britain on May 10 1941 and all that remained were the outer walls and tower and the pulpit (designed by Grinling Gibbons) which had been moved to St Paul’s. It was abandoned for over 10 years then re-consecrated as the RAF Church in 1958, following the design of Christopher Wren.

On the floor at the entrance is a rosette of Commonwealth Air Force badges and the floor then has squadron badges in slate set into the floor. Of course, we made a point of finding Ted’s 214 squadron badge. There are various books of remembrance in the church with the very long list of names. On the wall was a list of all VC holders from the RAF and it included Trent and Trigg who are commemorated in Nelson. The WW1 ace Ball is mentioned also. He went to school with John’s grandfather (Poppy). The altar and the organ were donated by other airforces. We finally looked at the Victory Tapestry which is on the wall above the South Stairs. It has 7 panels but I especially liked three of them. The 3rd panel is dedicated to the RAF and represents The Battle of Britain. The 4th shows the church in the middle with the top showing happy children evacuees while the bottom showed scenes of London at war. The 5th is the most finely worked and honours the Navy with scenes of Dunkirk and Malta .

We finally took photos of the statues outside (Bomber Harris and Dowding) and also of the church. This is hard to see from behind the trees. There was a lovely print of the church taken from the top of Australia House for sale but no price was given so I assume it was expensive. John left a donation and we also bought a couple of items they had on sale.

I picked up a leaflet about the Nursery Rhyme. It says that 2 churches claim to be the St Clements as there is also one near an old market called St Clement Eastcheap. However this St Clements was a waypoint for cargo when boats moored nearby to avoid city harbour dues. A toll in fruit is likely to have been charged. The local primary school visit each year for a short service after which the children are given an orange and a lemon (a ceremony that began in 1920).

We then walked back to Trafalgar Square to see the statue of the Kiwi Keith Park only to find it was no longer on the 4th plinth. We should have realised as we had seen the ship (‘Victory’ displayed in a bottle) that is there on the visit yesterday without realising it was the replacement.
 
We also had lunch and found the information for a cache. This involved us finding the Charles Dickens Coffee House in the building where we worked for a number of years. We then took the underground to Oxford Circus.

We walked down Regent Street to revisit Hamleys, the 6 floor toy store (5 floors and a basement area) . John loves this store and the enthusiasm of the staff displaying various toys. It was especially festive as we discovered it was celebrating 250 years of operation.

We stayed mainly on the top floors where ‘boys toys’ where being displayed and he couldn’t resist buying a radio controlled UFO. I was very tempted by some of the jigsaws of ‘fun’ London scenes but in the end decided that it was too much effort to take one back. We also found a cache in this area. It was very appropriately one of a series based around Monopoly and was the Regent St cache. There are others for all the various streets.

We then took the underground again to Harrods. We stayed mainly in the Food Court and shouted ourselves afternoon tea. John had a cream tea and I had juice and a pastry. They had a couple of posher afternoon teas at 22 and 28 pound per person which looked lovely but were more than we were willing to pay today. Margaret had told us how much she loved the Krispy Kreme doughnuts that are now sold in the store so we bought a dozen to take back. I also bought a couple of fruit tarts (which were a bit disappointing) while John spent a pound to spend a penny. He did this last time, and this time was told by the bathroom assistant that he may wish to partake of the particular face splash – chanel#5 of course!!

We returned to Acton to meet Christian (Margaret and Don’s son) and Ali, his partner, who arrived this afternoon. They are moving to London for an unknown amount of time, depending on jobs, flats etc and will be staying in Acton until they are sorted. Fortunately they can use a spare room of the landlords while we are here as there is a couple of nights overlap.

We had pizza for tea, then sent the ‘young ones’ to bed as they had flown from NZ with only a 2 hour stop in Hong Kong. Then Margaret and Don introduced us to speed scrabble. They have a set with extra tiles and we used this for the game. Margaret was the champion – John managed one score of -10 but then came second in the second tournament (we played until one person had over 1000). It was ‘stressful’ but fun.