Anyway, so yesterday was forecasted to be beautiful. Whenever I see an unusually beautiful day coming up I try to get together with Eva. She was game to come down our way so that I could take her to my favorite spot in the Fells (a giant patch of conservation land near us where I often run).
This place was ablaze with autumn light and color. We, both with our cameras in hand, drunk it all in.
I’ll let the pictures try to share with you how beautiful the day was. Too bad they can’t capture the warm fall breeze, the smell of fallen leaves, the crunch of them underfoot. 
For our last Wednesday field trip into London I took Hazel and Charlie (sans Peter who my friend took all day and Emmeline who was in school) into the Portobello Road Market. Portobello Road is a huge open air market with everything from really cool (and probably overpriced) antiques to yummy produce to awesome street food to vintage clothing. I know it’s a little touristy, but it’s one of my favorite places in London. I’m just kind of a sucker for old stuff, I’m pretty sure I can blame my dad for that one. He took us there (and all other kids of antique shops) as kids, he bought me two silver candlesticks there for my 12th birthday, he bought an old English Letter Box and mounted it by our front door growing up, he is gaw gaw over old books, and clocks and furniture and hourglasses. You can pretty much guarantee that he’ll be tempted to buy anything proceeded with the word “antique” --- or anything that is featured on an infomercial (but that’s a topic for a different post – a post on how totally adorably idiosyncratic my dad is).
Of course Charlie was delighted to see that there was a café named after him. 
And they were delighted by this little tiny car. 
But most of all the kids were excited about all that old stuff around them. They loved looking at the old watches and clocks and art and silver spoons and real leather soccer balls. And most splendidly surprising to me? They LOVED the old books. They couldn’t get enough of them, especially the children's ones. I’ve always had something for old books, their smell, the former owners’ names written on the first page, their worn leather bindings. So, I was delighted to find that they were also enamored by them. Hazel picked out a book from the 20’s of old children’s poems. Charlie picked a absolutely beautiful Victorian children's’ book with a green leather binding called, “A Child’s Companion.” It is filled with poems and pictures and all kinds of instructions about lots of interesting things, how to build a boat, how to draw a horse, how to make decisions, how to behave. It has really funny stories about children who made bad choices and had to suffer the consequences. The illustrations are beautiful. It was pretty expensive so I tried to talk him out of buying it (they were using their own hard earned money) but instead, because he’s so darn cute he bargained the man down and only paid 6 pounds for it. I told him that it was the kind of book that little boys used to carry around with them to keep them entertained before the days of iPads and PSP’s. That hooked him (since he’s never had one of those) and he carried that book around with him for a few days. His little companion. 
We tried to soak in our last rides through the city. 
We met up with Jeff who brought in the little guys and did a little handoff so that Jeff could go and see the HMS Belfast with Charlie. 
