Trafalgar square above and Admiralty Arch at the entrance to the Mall below. It was quite, too early for the tourists.
The photo above shows the 'Fourth Plinth, empty for many years until Marc Quinn's controversial white marble statue of nude Alison Lapper the 8 month pregnant thalomide victim was erected. This was apparently removed in October and a new sculpture by Thomas Schuttes built of specially engineered glass in yellow, red and blue, which collects the light, reflecting it through the edges. It's called Model for a Hotel 2007.
What pigeons will do to the material is not quite clear.
17, Carlton House Terrace the home of the Mall Art Galleries
Prue and me in Trafalgar Square
Prue outside the Gallery and inside the Gallery beside her painting.
Her painting 'Off Woman' had been done at a 'Life' class she had been able to take while I was in Canada and I hadn't seen it except for on her web site. We found the painting and it had a reserve price of £250.00p on it which surprised her and puzzled us. So being nosy I asked what was the significance of the reserved prices as many paintings didn't have one. Apparently there had been a bid on the painting in the local exhibition in Thorpe Hall before the painting came to London. But the best thing was the bid was now up to £300.00p and someone was still interested. Prue was delighted as the money was all to go to the Sue Rider Charity.
We spent an enjoyable hour or so looking around the three Galleries at all the pieces on display. There was several pieces I really liked but unfortunately I hadn't the funds spare to put in any sensible bids
After we left the Gallery we headed back to the Underground and crossed to Covent Garden. 
Covent Garden was very festive and buzzing with people. The Christmas decorations were just beautiful all white and silver. We found a restaurant serving good Italian food and had leisurely lunch before we hit the maze of interesting little shops and market stalls.
"Covent Garden was the name given, during the reign of King John (1199 - 1256), to a 40 acre patch in the county of Middlesex, bordered west and east by which is now St. Martin’s Lane and Drury Lane, and north and south By Floral Street and a line drawn from Chandos Place, along Maiden Lane and Exeter Street to the Aldwych. An ancient footpath called Aldewichstrate (‘Old Farmstead’s Way’) issued from the west gate of the City of London at Fleet Street and Drewerie Lane branched off here to the north..In this quadrangle bordered by a thatch covered mud wall, the Abbey or Convent of St Peter, Westminster, maintained a large kitchen garden throughout the Middle Ages to provide its daily food. Directly to the north the monks also owned seven acres known as Long Acre, and to the south, roughly where the Strand Palace Hotel now stands, two smaller pieces of land known as Friars Pyes. The monks of St Peter’s Abbey cultivated orchards here, grew grain, and pastured livestock, selling the surplus to the citizens of London. Their records for 1327 report that the entire harvest of apples, pears, cherries, nuts, grains and hay fetched £12. Over the next three centuries, the monks old ‘convent garden’ became a major source of fruit and vegetables in London and was managed by a succession of leaseholders by grant from the Abbot of Westminster..
These type of leases did eventually lead to property disputes throughout the kingdom, which the monarch King Henry VIII solved in 1540 by the stroke of a pen when he dissolved the monasteries and appropriated their land..
The next year, in exchange for some land in Devon, King Henry VIII granted both Friars Pyes to John Baron Russell, Great Admiral of England, and later the first Earl of Bedford. In fulfilment of his father’s dying wish, King Edward VI, bestowed the remainder of the convent garden in 1547 to his maternal uncle, Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset who began building Somerset House on the South side of the Strand the next year. When this political powerful noble was beheaded for treason in 1552, the land came once again into royal gift, and was awarded four months later to one of those who had contributed to Seymour’s downfall. Forty acres, that long fruitful rectangle known as ‘le Covent Garden’ plus ‘the long acre’, were granted by royal patent in perpetuity to John Russell, the first Earl of Bedford, at a yearly rent of £6 6s 8d (£6.33)."
"In 1921 the government decided the buildings were obsolete and the location quite unsuited to modern motor transport. Years of debate followed with a plan to move it to St Pancras being killed in Parliament in 1927. The Utopian Abercrombie plan for London, prepared in 1943, suggested the fruit and vegetable market be moved to the outskirts of London. Still nothing was done, while in 1945, 300 years of exploitation of Covent Garden by the Russell’s quietly ended when the twelfth Duke sold the family’s last remaining property, No.26 James Street. The Covent Garden market had long since become an institution that never slept. The new workday started at midnight as the last buses and trains brought in the porters. Throughout the small hours of the morning lorries arrived from market gardens all over Britain, laden with crates of lettuces, mushrooms, and roses, potatoes from Norfolk, apples from Kent, oranges and lemons from the western ports. Some produce started the trip by air - daffodils from the Channel Isles (and Lincolnshire from Daves Step Grandfather) or anemones from France - and trains brought tulips from Lincolnshire and primroses and violets from the woods of the west Country to the main-line London stations. But everything ended up on a lorry crammed into one of the congested streets around the Piazza..At daybreak more lorries would turn up, loaded with the ordinary vegetables from farms near London - cabbages, leeks, carrots and more potatoes. Farmer’s stalls went up on the cobblestones of the Piazza, and by 7am the market was in full swing..
Finally in 1961, the Covent Garden Market act was passed. The following year most of the properties owned by the market landlord, notably excluding the Royal Opera House, were disposed of to a new public body set up by the government for £3,925,000. This was the Covent Garden Market Authority (CGMA) who controlled 4,000 workers and 340 companies and processed £70 million worth of fruit and vegetables and £10million worth of flowers each year..
In 1964 the Authority decided to move the market, wavered over alternative sites (one was Seven Dials, which had most of the same drawbacks). Eventually they chose Nine Elms in Battersea, where surplus railway land was available by the side of the Thames near the Vauxhall Bridge, Parliament gave its blessing in 1966..
This move closed the book on a history of agriculture trading and made way for the Covent Garden of today, still busy and sometimes still noisy but not with the drone of traffic but entertainment, laughter and the sound of people enjoying themselves. "
from the Covent Garden web site.
Leaving Covent garden in the late afternoon just before 'rush hour' we crossed via the underground once more to Kensington and spent some time wandering around Harrods Department store It's a long time since I have been in the store and some of the interior designs reflects the nationality and pretensions of its owner. I think If I ever had the good fortune to win a large enough sum on the lottery Harrods would definitely not be on my list of shops to spend in.
A Harrods window display.
By this time in the afternoon our feet were complaining, badly. So to give them a well earned rest we spent a little time in one of Harrods many cafe with a pot of Darjeeling tea and some Harrods short bread. It was nice but not special. It was a lovely day out but a relief to head back to Kings Cross and Home to Peterborough.
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