A WALK IN THE PARK

After too many Xmas extravagances, New Year and a trip to Venizia the time had come!!

10,000 steps per day I am advised will turn me from an elephant into a gazelle!   So, Az bought me a stepometre?   Totally unnecessary I was later to discover because Shelley-Anne announced that the iPhone I was carrying in my pocket apparently under HEART will, and has been ever since I owned it, been counting every step I have taken and left rude remarks when I have taken insufficient!    Who knew?

This tree could do with a bit more walking.

The only way to prove that elephants do not turn into gazelles was to start the ten thousand torture almost immediately so headed for Hyde Park on Sunday morning at roughly 8.30 am having become disturbed by the weight of not only myself but of my Sunday newspapers.  

What greeted me was a very windswept scene of hundreds of migrant fowl sitting on the edges of the Serpentine waiting for the tourists to come out with their bags of food.   Wonderful cloudscapes and the sun, or the rain arriving for the morning.

 

The Sunday Mail has done 16 pages on why Meghan is an idiot and how the Monarchy are fighting to stave off anhilation after one of the younger sons of Diana chooses to become pussy whipped and want to lead a life of being Woke with all those awful Hollywood money-makers whilst using their royal titles but not doing any of the slog that our 93 year old Queen does every day.  

Had a quick word with Diana about her son not behaving too well and mourned the fact she wasn’t still around to maybe have some influence.   Sadly she probably is missed by Harry and her death is the reason for his looking for a strong woman to tell him how to lead his life.   Mind you, she would be the last person he should ask, she was even more off the wall than his new wife.

 Two geese surveying the new snowdrops.  Spring is not far away.

Didn’t particularly want to plod off into a windswept and very grey morning but what greeted me once out and about with the joggers and wildlife just about one kilometre from our flat in Belgravia I realised how much time I waste on bed and newspapers.

Don’t think these boys will get quite as many customers today as our Gondoliers did in Venice!

 

Knightsbridge Barracks seen from bridge opposite Serpentine Gallery.

Great clouds.

Beautiful Grey Legged Geese came honking in from the estuary East of London.

I could have picked them up and put them in my handbag.

They know their reputation has gone before them and also that the Queen will defend them if necessary.

Mahonia scent filled the whole park.

Looking from Hyde Park up to the Serpentine Gallery.

As I walked I remembered that one of my friends regularly swam in the lake and did so almost every day of the year, winter and summer.

Pulled out my mobile and just as I was opposite the swimming club I called her and ten minutes later she called and said, “Where are you?”   I waved and stupid as it might sound, she waved back from the other side of the water!

I had not planned this but when it happened it lifted my newly invigorated heart, full of about six thousand paces, and we walked and talked for the next hour about her maybe new job in Italy and her swimming in open water, etc. etc.

SA has a house in Todi and may be coming to live close by in Tuscany to work opening a new hotel.   She is one of the most highly regarded PR ladies in England and if she accepts this new assignment it will be a great feather in the cap of her new associates.

A couple of years ago she competed in a race across the open Straits of the Bosphorus  and came Second.   What a woman.   She asked me if I would like to join the Serpentine club but I think I will wait until the weather improves!!

Here she is.   Shelly-Anne and Otis.   It costs twenty-pounds a year to join the Serpentine Swimming Club and SA swims most days.   As we walked everyone in the park seemed to know each other and it has opened a whole new picture of life back in London should it become necessary!!!

Gardener’s des res.

 This will be more colourful in two months time.   Full of spring flowers.