So long, and thanks for all the fish and chips

The booksellers of Charing Cross Road are very good and very expensive. Trans: I didn't find anything. Totally out of my depth. Not much Australiana, and what was there made me snicker at the prices. 50 pounds for a first edition of Patrick White's Riders in the Chariot?* It's a book that Australian booksellers always try it on with, at least a little, but wow. I should have brought a case of them with me. I talked to some dealers - I am already getting in the habit of talking to strangers, and will no doubt be talking to myself before long. Apparently the business of scouting - finding a bunch of books and carting them around to the high end shops - is pretty much dead in England as well. Everybody ebays these days.

Afterwards I went to the Victoria and Albert Museum, which was amazing, but boy I don't think I can take any more priceless antiquities. I went around really quickly past things that two weeks ago I would have stopped and gasped at for ten minutes. So today I went to the Tate Modern instead. Lots of great Miros; weird, weird building. The weather today has been pretty miserable - I've mostly been lucky so far both in England and overseas - and just now while walking to get my dinner I got totally drenched by a car driving through a puddle, much to the hilarity of a passing tourist. I swore and he said to me, in heavily accented English, 'Like movie!' and made a camera-clicking motion. Ha ha ha.

Off to Amsterdam tomorrow.

* Daryl would be irritated if I didn't add, pedantically, that it's not REALLY the first edition, as it is a little-known fact that his books were published first in the US, unusually for a Commonwealth author. (Booksellers, by common agreement, never mention this).