Weather, money, and fashion

Friday's excursion was to the Fashion & Textile Museum in London. The fashion princesses both thought it sounded like a great idea. The museum was small, but nice. The current exhibit was "The Little Black Dress", featuring about a century's worth of gorgeous examples. Both girls were enthralled. I enjoyed it as well. Afterward, we ventured into the Borough Market next to the London Bridge train station. Wow, what a treat for the senses! Every kind of produce, fresh baked goods, meat, seafood, cheese that you can imagine - and more. The girls had some ice cream and we brought home some great bread as well. I would love to live near a market like this. I'd never set foot in a regular grocery store if this were available to me!



Okay, I'm not sure that I'm supposed to be saying this, but - YOU CALL THIS SUMMER??? I know that our perspective is a bit strange, since normal for us in the summer is up around 100 degrees, but honestly, it hasn't cracked the 70 degree mark since we've been here! I'm sure glad that I decided at the last minute to pack jackets for us, as we've needed them at least part of every day. I do enjoy the fact that I'm not walking all over creation in 100-plus heat, but I could do with about 75 or 80 instead of 65. (Yes, I realize that I'm supposed to be thinking in Celsius, but it just doesn't immediately register with me - I even click on the "show this information in Fahrenheit" button on the BBC Weather site. So sue me.) I'm hopeful that there will be a summer here eventually. School is still in session here until mid-July, so that's probably a good clue when summer is likely to begin.

We did have a gorgeous day yesterday. The sun was shining all afternoon, so the girls and I went to a playground at a lovely park a couple of blocks from home. The girls even let me take some pictures of them while we were there.


May I also show you why I'm slow at counting money? Here is the assortment of change that we deal with. There are eight different coins, instead of the four that we usually deal with in the U.S. (yeah, I know that we have half dollar and dollar coins, but mostly we use pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters). The coins in this photo are: top row - one pence, two pence, five pence, ten pence; bottom row - twenty pence, fifty pence, one pound, two pound. See how small the one pound is? And the two pound is just about the same size as the two pence. Counting this has proven somewhat challenging. I really notice the absence of a "25" in the counting. And we don't deal with "2"s at all in the U.S. I'm learning, though. I even counted out £4.50 today for a clerk without holding up the line!