A quick & easy journey to High Street Ken. tube, via Wimbledon, and out into Bill's, now known to us as a result of their having opened up in Epsom (see reference 2). Tea and toasted tea cake quite good, although I did suspect the tea cake of having passed through a freezer at some point in its life. Not sure about the loud presentation of three full sized but well used jam pots and did not like the loud music. Staff friendly and foreign, with one of them spending her morning hand-writing messages onto paper coffee cups to be handed out to passers by. A lot of rough finish timber and rough finish cement incorporated into the interior design. The same red peppers on strings as we had had at Epsom.
Quick visit to the Oxfam shop where we managed one small purchase, an ancient version of 'Anna Karenina' involving Vivien Leigh.
Onto Leighton House, mainly to see the exhibition of Victorian art loaned by a rich Mexican and some of it once owned by a rich gas works builder made good. His crowning glory was the first Aswan Dam, to the opening of which he took Alma-Tadema (a precursor of Russell Flint) along in his baggage. A nicely got up exhibition, with a handsome display in the first floor gallery extension of Alma-Tadema's 'The Roses of Heliogabalus', complete with smells provided by Jo Malone (which BH learned from yesterday's desert island discs actually to be a subsidiary of Estée Lauder).
A lot of the paintings, a good proportion involving scantily but decorously clad young ladies, were of indifferent quality, but interesting to see nonetheless. A rather silly picture of a string quartet got up in ancient greek togs. But there was some good stuff too - including, to my mind, the roses.
We then strolled up through Holland Park to take another look at the Japanese garden with its living art and fish pond. Plus very fat & tame squirrels, one of which saw fit to try and climb up my leg in search of the grub that large two legged animals are supposed to distribute. Plus peacocks, some of which are illustrated. We were amused by the amount of 'do not' signage: proper old-style local authority attitude to the punters.
Much dithering over lunch, but deciding in the end against pub grub at the Windsor Castle in favour of regular grub at the Notting Hill Pizza Express. Very reliable chain, which has only once failed us, at Worcester Park, one week-day lunch time.
PS: a thought on the way home was that maybe we have got it all wrong about middle class Victorians being so prudish that they hid the legs of their pianos. Maybe it was more that they were so sex-obsessed in their before-pill era that they needed to control their exposure to things which triggered sexual thoughts.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/st-volodymyr.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/a-visit-to-bills.html.
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