Temperatures were – 1°C at 9.37am, the car windows needed scraping, and it was 5 minutes later that it moved: There was frost everywhere (thawing slightly where sun was shining), it got parked at the station at 9.53am – where a Tardis Tanker was out on the road, and the ticket barriers were wide open – so we walked straight through; and up on the platform I started rapidly losing feeling in the ends of my fingers due to the cold. There was a bit of a wait until our train appeared; and it got moving at 10.22am: fields were frosty, there was a field of solar panels nearby, Google Maps showed me that there was a nearby milk shed, sheep were grazing in frosty fields, the posh robotic voice that makes announcements on these trains gave the ‘see it, say it, sort it’ motto just before reaching Banbury at 10.40am – and the train began getting stuffed.

Fields were flooded and frosty further down the line (very close to the M40 – and the sky was very blue); things got bumpy, people were clinging on to the overhead bars, fields of solar panels were amongst the farms and some bright sun was shining, my toes felt freezing, and building work was everywhere; Wembley stadium, massive warehouses, and a Jubilee Line train that was on the move were passed (and the robot made all the usual pre-arrival announcements) – and it was 11.44am when we disembarked. London Marylebone was busy, the bike racks were pretty packed, big signs dangling from the ceiling said ‘drink January dry’, the Oyster app on my phone refused to work, Mum revealed a second Oyster card she’d found, and I forgot when we boarded a Bakerloo line tube.

A girl wearing enormous and very pointy fake nails was doing her eye makeup while the train bumped around; face glue was on a small advert and Velo tobacco free nicotine pouches were advertised – and it was 12pm when we got off that one. More tobacco and vapes were advertised; I was trying to walk, photograph and write at the same time, it felt freezing; and on that street was a shop called Cicchetti, a massive Waterstones, The Dilly Restaurant, and Fortnum And Mason said on the windows ‘please excuse our appearance – we’re busy getting dressed’.

In the Royal Academy, Mum got a bit agitated about her tablet and the audio guide, a foreign accented woman calmed her down and agreed the Wi-Fi was terrible; we went through a little tunnel; and then there was a couple of big statues of naked muscular men (1 on a crucifix), and a couple of strange metal machine like ones that I didn’t have time to look at.

A bag search was done at a table (by a couple of staff wearing blue plastic gloves); and in a rather dark room further down the corridor were sketches of naked women cuddling babies, a painting (The Virgin and Child – by Raphael) of a fully dressed woman with a halo cuddling a naked (and clearly male) child; and one from the late 1400s was titled ‘An Old Man Wearing A Hat’. A huge rock carving was on a wall, and there was a sketch (called Leda And The Swan) of a woman who seemed to be trying to cuddle a massive swan; and the original version of the one that dangles from the wall of our staircase was pointed out to me. The next room had a sketch of the lower half of a man from the early 1500s (and a 21st century man in jeans and a jumper was stood in front of the sketch and appeared to be studying it very very closely), and a ‘seated male nude’ (I didn’t think he looked very seated – and thought he looked in the position of a discus thrower) (and Mum thought he was very muscular and the pictures would be good for studying anatomy)…

….then there were multiple ones of excited horses by Leonardo Da Vinci, others by Raphael…

…and it was 1.15pm when we made it out again.

Mum wanted lunch – and walked into The Dorfman Senate Rooms; in there, I was intrigued by the sound of bunuelos de gamba that was on the menu (and wanted to know what lemon allioli was)(Wikipedia says its Aioli, allioli, or aïoli is a cold sauce consisting of an emulsion of garlic and olive oil; it is found in the cuisines of the northwest Mediterranean), couldn’t remember if the menus were in Spanish or Italian, staff had t-shirts on with ‘#YesWayJosé’ on the back, and there were a few long twizzled bits of colourful paper on the walls. I was told Leonardo Da Vinci was an inventor and built an early flying machine called an ornithopter (but it never actually flew), and reminded that it took Michelangelo 4 years to paint the Sistine Chapel in Rome; and then food appeared: Mum’s involved a lot of mashed potato (and some cod and spinach), and mine were deep fried pom-pom sort of things…

…and I discovered they had a bit of a kick to them (due to their extreme spiciness). It was 2.20pm when we got up again (and I’d rediscovered the croissant that I’d forgotten was in my bag); in the gift shop were Original Duck Heads, a lot of felt things, bouncy eggs, flower presses, a lot of greetings cards, blank sketchbooks that said ‘My Artwork Is Terrible And I Am A Very Bad Person’ on the front…

…Borsari in various flavours, Leonardo Da Vinci aerial screw recreation kits, and ‘framed fragments’; then we left at 2.35pm (and it felt freezing outside).

To be continued…