In which we remember Diana

Sunday is Mass day, which is, due to a certain British monarch whose name will remain unmentioned, a bit harder than one might think if one were to just look at all the churches littering the city, most with proper saint names, and then, off in the corner or down at the bottom, the little CE that means Church of England, and not Catholic after all. But they aren't unheard of anymore, for the English are no longer in the habit of executing men for the offense of being Catholic priests. So we poked around the internet a bit, and found that, in addition to Westminster Abbey, which is Church of England, an absolutely necessary tourist stop (which we aren't planning to go to), and quite pricy unless you have a letter from your C of E vicar, there is also a Westminster Cathedral, which is Catholic, not on any tourist tour, and completely free.

So, having figured out where we were going to mass, we had to figure out how we were going to get there, which we discovered was going to be a bit tricky on Saturday evening when we discovered the signs at the underground saying that "our" station was going to be closed on Sunday morning so that they could work on the tunnels. Options:

1. Figure out how to get to the Cathedral using some other means of transpiration, either buses or the overground, and make the 10:30 mass
2. Accept that the major accomplishment of the day was going to be going to mass, and go to the noon mass, which would mean that we could catch the train after it started running again at 11:00
3. Find a different church.

Well, we didn't really want to find a different church, though there are, in fact, lots of them, and a certain laziness meant that I didn't really want to figure out the other means of transportation, and so we ended up opting for the noon mass, and having a rather leisurely morning before heading to the Cathedral. 

After mass, we found a bus to take us to Kensington Gardens, and walked on in to the Diana, Princess of Wales, Memorial Playground. I think the kids mostly had fun, though I confess that I'm not entirely certain. There was a big ship that they played on, or rather, the younger two played on, because Sapphire promptly found someone to talk to, and they sat atop the cabin and chattered away. And they spent some time trying to leap from the back of one wooden sheep to the next; Ezio finally announcing that, since he'd managed to get one foot onto the last sheep before touching the ground on two separate occasions, that was as good as getting two feet onto the sheep once, and so he considered himself to have met his goal. We filled up water bottles on the way out, again discovering after having drunk from them that the water at the playground was not recommended for drinking. (Since we haven't yet felt any ill effects from any of the unrecommended water that we've drunk, I'm beginning to suspect that this is some sort of a racket to increase the income of the little food and drink stands all over the place.) Then, buses all the way home, where Blaise and the younger kids went up to the apartment, and Sapphire and I hiked up to the Waitrose, which had added an extra constraint to our day by closing at 5:00 on Sunday afternoon (and not opening until 11:00 that morning).