Saturday outing

Promising spring-like day (sunshine and blue sky - I've missed you) and public transport that worked made getting to the V&A a pleasure yesterday. I decided against taking the tube and took a circuitous bus route - I had time and the chance to sit at the front on the upper deck - to the museum. It was lovely just to see the daffodils and crocus in flower in Hyde Park and watch the tourists peddling enthusiastically alongside the park on Boris bikes. They've been a wonderful addition to London and I'll summon enough courage eventually to have a try. Just not on Hyde Park Corner, I'm sure most of you will understand that that's best done by bus. South Kensington as lovely as ever with enticing scents of croissants and sugar and a visit to Patisserie Valerie was the second pleasure on the way home.

We did the exhausting slow museum shuffle round the Cecil Beaton Royal Portraits exhibition taking time to gaze at each photograph and read each label. All clearly explained and hung at the right height - museums don't always get that right, so it's good for my neck when they do. This is a crowded exhibition, but no-one rushes you through and those that want to dash in and out can. After visiting the exhibition, I realised that I'd never read a serious Royal biography as I've never felt the need to do so. I picked up a copy of Marion Crawford's The Little Princesses from a charity shop and gave it straight back. A little too sugary for my tastes and a bit fawning. However, this is the Jubilee Year and all sorts of books are being released. I'll need to study a few blurbs and see what catches my eye.

Wonderful Waterstone's Piccadilly on the way home yielded a signed first of Joanna Trollope's The Soldier's Wife, so I treated myself to one copy and stored up a list of 'will read soon' novels. If it helps anyone else, they do have loads of signed copies in stock. I wish I could afford every book I like the look of, but I'd be out of business if I tried that.