Wednesday 8th and Thursday 9th June.

Didn't do much of anything these last couple of days, but have wandered around the shopping precinct in the village of Southfields yesterday, and I took a walk around the block Goose and Liz live in...about four miles at a rough guess.
Goose had told me of a strange habit the poms have; when the sun comes out after a week or two of relatively cloudy weather, they take their clothes off and sit in the sun. He's right. I saw it yesterday. As I walked through the park I could see a couple of young women lying in the middle in bikinis, and a fella sitting on a bench at the edge wearing just shorts and a singlet.
And that sun was very HOT!
And he was very WHITE!
They're all three going to be very sunburnt today.
(Although I couldn't see the women clearly enough to note if they already had a tan or not.)

Goose had mentioned too that several houses in the area had been bombed by the Germans during WWII, and had subsequently been rebuilt. Once I knew that; I could pick which ones they were, and by pacing out the length of the 'new' (circa 1950,) 'blocks' could guesstimate how many homes had been destroyed.
In one 'block' a total of fourteen homes had been destroyed - and there were two more blocks of a similar size in the immediate neighbourhood.

Today, Thursday, we took the Underground (except it's not underground out here,) out to Wimbledon, the next-but-one stop on the line. I'm not a great fan of cities; they're heartless soulless places full of hustle and bustle, with everybody either running around like chooks with their heads cut off or they're trying to syphon money out of your pockets.
But we wandered around for four or five hours and came back to Goose's place.
What is this life,
if full of care;
we have no time
to stop.
And stare.
You can't stop and stare in a city; you'd get run over. By either a pedestrian, a pram, a car, or a coach.

Something I have noted in the UK is that they're well in to renewable energy, with literally acre upon acre of large solar panel 'farms'. As well, there would be many thousands of wind turbines dotted all over the place. Even Orkney had its fair share of them.

And we're headed for home to-morrow. Not looking forward to the flight; but I am looking forward to my own chair in my own house, with an ashtray and a beer on my own table beside me.
But it has been fun. We've both had a ball.

Bloody gorgeous.