London, Day 3

Much better day today - kids finally fell asleep around midnight last night (late, yes, but still better than 3am), up at 10 this morning. Breakfast in what has become our regular cafe in the park, then on to Wimbledon for our first look at the house since our trip in March.

It seems smaller than I remember.

The kids were singularly unimpressed by either the house or the Wimbledon area at large. "Boooring," was the extent of Caroline's review of the town, though she did manage to find a few flowers and leaves to pick. She also noticed that our house is "'tached together with the other houses". It wasn't clear whether this was a positive or negative comment or whether she was merely making a factual observation.

Had a bit of a wander through the back streets of town, still like it, though it's really not at all as pleasant a place when the weather's grey as it was in the brilliant sunshine in March. It will definitely be an adjustment for all of us to be living in such crowded conditions.

But we soldiered on, to the highlight of the day, the Morden Hall Show, which is a sort of country fair in one of the parks near Wimbledon. Apart from being about the most expensive carnival I've ever been to $3.00 for 4 minutes on a trampoline and $4.00 for a carousel ride, in addition to the $30 to get in), it was actually a pretty nice event, I thought. In general, both the people attending and those working at the event were pleasant, polite and helpful. At one point, a couple of 8 or 10 year olds accidentally knocked something out of Michael's hand as they ran past him and one of them actually came back and picked it up for him!

There were also beer and Pimm's stands scattered around the place, which made for a really festive atmosphere. If you don't know what Pimm's is (I didn't until a few months ago), it's some sort of low-strength liquor which they mix with "lemonade" (actually 7-Up) and to which they add strawberries, lemon, orange and cucumber (of all things). It's really yummy and quite refreshing.

The best value-for-money attraction of the day, though, was the butterfly tent, in which you paid 50 pence (half a pound, or around $1.00) to go into a tent filled with all kinds of butterflies. Caroline loved it and, although the butterflies scared her a little, she picked up a number of them and generally had a great time. Unfortunately, most of the butterflies had broken wings by the end of the day, so she was a deeply concerned about their health and well-being. I didn't really have much in the way of comfort for her on this point, as I'm fairly certain that butterflies don't regrow broken wings.

The kids are back to their on again-off again sleep routine. The least little noise sets them off. I wonder if they'll ever sleep right again...