Well, I was supposed to fly on Sunday night, but Heathrow was iced-in. Monday morning held a visit to the airline office in Cromwell Road. 'You can try your luck on the wait-list tonight, if you go to the airport.' I was there with about 500 others in a long queue. Tuesday morning: back to the airline office and, success, a flight later tonight. What luck! I'll be home for Christmas.
In this part of town, and with a few hours to spare, I went to the Victoria & Albert Museum. This is such a treat - curiosity cabinets, western sculptures and tapestries, Asian artefacts and an exhibition of Buddhist sculpture in Asia. There were Buddhas, bodhisattvas and guardians from South Asia - Pakistan, India and Nepal - and from East Asia - China, Tibet and Japan.
The Indonesian temple of Borobudur, in Central Java, is apparently one of the largest. Every year, with chanting and lanterns, monks celebrate the birth, enlightenment and passing of Gautama the Buddha. The statues and reliefs are elaborately carved, the imagery moving from the mundane to the divine with the ascent of each terraced level.
Leaving the V&A, I caught the underground to Temple, and stood near the camel benches on the Embankment, apparently a reference to the 1916 Imperial Camel Corps. While I drew this cormorant, lunchtime joggers splashed behind me through the slush.
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