Where to go with a visitor from Australia ...

(especially in the weather we've been having)? Fortunately, he's an ex-Londoner and had his own ideas - so in the last few days:

we've walked along the river from Richmond to Kingston and found a heron without any apparent fear of humans



we've had a cream tea at the Mudchute City Farm (highly recommended - not as a genteel, tablecloths and lace doilies social experience, but the scones and jam are to die for)



we visited the Royal Festival Hall to look at the new panoramas opened up by the refit


we got caught in Friday's torrential rain, went into the V&A for an hour or so, emerged into bright sunshine and visited Prince Albert



From there, we went on through Hyde Park



We came across the Serpentine Gallery and were intrigued by the current exhibition of Hreinn Fridfinnsson. I'm not that good with conceptual art, but I liked the play of reflections, and the inside-out house. The Guardian pronounced itself "baffled but strangely moved", which is about as much as I could say.

And we went to Portobello Road market, not buying anything.
I nearly bought an old edition of Jacob Faithful by Captain Marryat, all about a hard upbringing in Victorian London, and full of moralisms that would produce the opposite reaction today: Locomotion was not to her taste - gin was (attagirl!)

So much all for free: what's not to like about summer (even this summer) in London