A Bit Quiet

To be honest London seems rather deserted, perhaps Londoners are just doing what they always do, and ignoring BB, Blistering Boris, and running away on holiday. We slunk out to Somerset House yesterday, and were delighted to find it mostly empty, despite being (a very congenial I imagine) home to all things Brazilian for the duration. You can sit in the courtyard and think you are on holiday, a rarity here. Meanwhile there is a very well produced and free show of photographs of the Rolling Stones there, mostly culled from the tabloids, but very well hung. Funny what a bunch of herberts they really look like in the original. If I was worth $100m and was the subject of a show like that, I'd be up till five in the morning celebrating for sure, you'd feel it was kind of miraculous. Considering I last saw the Stones thirty years ago and they were old then, it probably is.
Today I popped my nose in to The White Horse in expectation of hoards of Olympic bunkers off. Not at all, quiet as a mouse in there. On the tv there was Roger Federer looking just about as disinterested as he could get, then getting rained off, so there were shots of nice old couples tucking in to packets of Werthers Originals under umbrellas and of young girls scratching their arses. You can't blame those legions of cameramen really.
Fears of avalanches of human traffic down the Roman Rd (predicted by the council) have not materialized. What a surprise. I'm glad the fish stall didn't invest in extra tables and chairs.