Elephants and tennis and more sunshine....

The London heatwave continues much to everyone's surprise and there was not a single rain stoppage at Wimbledon - must be that centre court roof acting as a anti rain device! This week's blog focuses on the elephants and the tennis, with a street party and some Pride thrown in.

All the elephants that have been scattered around London for several weeks now were gathered together for a final parade before being auctioned off for the Indian elephant charity. I went down, as did so many other Londoners, as they were an irresistible sight. I've limited myself to just a few new photos but there were 250 to delight the snappers! The location was the old Chelsea Hospital which is famous for being the home of the annual Chelsea Flower Show but more famous for being the home of the Chelsea Pensioners. The hospital which was more a place of refuge for servicemen, was founded in 1682 by Charles 11 for veterans. It still does the same work for about 400 residents tho' has accepted a servicewoman (!) and the average age is 83 for these famous red coats that we can see out and about and on special occasions. It's a very large and grand site that you can wander round with a museum and shop so I've included one photo of one particularly impressive section.

Then it was off to Wimbledon as I'd been lucky enough to win 2 tickets in the public ballot for court 1 on the final day of the tournament. This meant we could get in early without joining the huge queue and spend time on Henman Hill as well as in our alloted seats. Being the last day the main event was on centre court but the Hill was great fun and absolutely packed and is a fun way to watch on the big screen - see photo. We then went onto court 1 to rest our weary bottoms (!) and saw the wonderful Martina Navratilova in the invitation doubles, and then Pat Cash in the invitation mens doubles - always good to see old champions at play. I love wandering around Wimbledon, Pimms in hand and we even caught sight of Nadal in the flesh as he waved to the crowds after his match.

Nearly forgot to mention Pride - a massive gay event which took over the centre of London with streets closed, amazing get up and huge fun being had - have a look at Trafalgar Square to see what I mean!

Just one more thing to mention is our annual street party. Where I live in Notting Hill we are in a cul de sac which has a little garden in the middle so each year the neighbours gather in it to catch up and have a few glasses of wine together. It's always great fun and makes London feel like it's a neighbourly place to live rather than the big beast it can seem like sometimes...

I'm off to USA for a couple of weeks so don't think there'll be any blogging until I'm back on 23rd so have a great time!

Bye for now, Sue http://www.itsyourlondon.co.uk/