Third day in London

Third and last day in London and a bit muddly. First we drove up the road until we found a couple of churches: we decided on the Methodist one. At first thought there wasn’t going to be anyone there, but in fact it was quite full - and it was a fairly new building. And talk about welcomed. We hadn’t even got out of the car before an elderly couple who’d parked in front of us came up and greeted us, talked about New Zealand, told us about collecting NZ postal items, and gathered us up. Inside it was the same; people didn’t just say hullo, they actually spoke to you, both before and after the service. It was Remembrance Day and at eleven o’clock the radio was turned on for a few minutes and we listened in to the service (with the Royal family) at the Cenotaph. The rest of the service consisted of various people talking about their war experiences, and especially the many people who hadn’t necessarily served at the front but had been back-up workers in various places: firemen, voluntary constables, nurses and so on. They also had communion which was good, as we haven’t been to many services in England where there’s been a communion (except last week as well!)
We were going to go to the movies after lunch but it took too long to get there so we went right into London central again and pottered around a bit. Celia wanted to get some of the artificial snow from Hamley’s (not Hambley's as I think I wrote previously) - you add water to it and it grows to ten times its original size. The place was still abuzz with people, far more than in most of the other shops along Regent St. (Though when we came back along the street later in the evening, the streets were packed again.)
We couldn’t decide what we wanted to do so in the end we got on a bus and went for a ride. Wound up at the Albert Hall and found that there was a concert on in the evening at 6.30. And there were tickets going at a reasonable price. So we bought some, got back on the bus, went and had something to eat (Celia had a little snooze in the café!) and got the tube and bus back again. (The joys of one day passes.) The concert was wonderful - I’ve written about it in more detail on myother blog.