I have decided that whenever I think the food shops are too expensive, I should just go into the nearby Whole Foods store. I wandered in today and they make the Waitrose and the Marks & Spencer stores seem almost reasonable! It is a very nice, multi-level store and I always wanted to live near a Whole Foods (well, not always--I've only known about them for the last four years or so). However, after converting from pounds to dollars, I know this is just not going to become my store of choice, not in London anyway.

I am now a card-carrying member of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Library--a nice library that is conveniently just around the corner. After joining, and then waiting in a long queue at the Post Office which is quite a bit further away, I realized that I probably didn't have time to go to the Royal Academy, and that's when I ended up in Whole Foods. I had spent a somewhat lazy morning working at home and, with the change in plans, got back earlier than usual and was able to spend more time reading about all of the places I won't have time to see now! (I know it's crazy, but I can't help it.) If I had known, I could have at least taken my friend Ginger's suggestion in a recent email and gone out to Hyde Park and rented one of those deck chairs to read my new library book in the park in the sun. Oh well, it's supposed to be nice again tomorrow.

There are several storefronts in the neighborhood with photos of flats and homes for rent. We thought we were paying a lot but there were some advertised for 800 and 1,200 pounds a week, and then Gord noticed that one of them was listed at 15,000 pounds a week (which is over $30,000!). I thought he had misread the label, but no he hadn't. I bet whoever rents that can afford to shop at Whole Foods. . . .

Reading: Looking for Maya by Atima Srivastava