In keeping with our schedule of day in, stay in, day out, we spent our one day in Benicia packing for departure and then were brought by Scott, who’d earlier in the summer driven the truck

to the Springs,

to SFO and a BA 747-400 [not shown].

From there it was Winnemucca and points rather further beyond,

reaching Heathrow Wednesday morning [blearily in my case, as I’d had too much wine

and too little sleep] to connect with the car Rick sent which delivered us to Hampstead

where after a bit of milling around with our fellow-traveler Sandra [just in from Chicago, Illinois],

we visited the Heath with Tycho [as seen above in ‘find the Border Collie]’, rested and then joined in a festive mostly family meal [daughter Beatie being in town from L.A. with her fianceé Nick for an exhibition they are doing at the V&A] plus Donald Kerr, a librarian from New Zealand researching the elusive Reverend William Ardern Scoults, which wound down as recent arrivals and exhibitionists alike wended their ways to their beds.

Next day, late arising, saw another venture onto the Heath, a sore-footed subsequent walk to

Hampstead town, pasta Bolognese, and uneven sleep through a night of wild winds and

splattering rains which were gone

by morning.

Rains in abeyance we detoured past the diminishing remains of Christo’s oilcan “Mastaba”

on our way

to  the V&A

for a tour of Beatie’s

as well as certain Constable oil sketches [not shown], the cast gallery of sculptural replicants

after which Rick left to collect some old books while Sandra Linda and I went for nourishment

before more wandering, random and otherwise,

[“Angels Adoring the Security Camera”, below]

before finally out into the brilliant afternoon and up to the

Hills of Hampstead for another round of drinks and eats…Saturday, having spectacularly

failed to adjust to the time zone, we ruefully woke barely before noon to belatedly breakfast

and wetly walk the Tycho on his Heath

and back, wetly.

Venezia Ahead:

Expect Delays.