My 1980 baby came to meet me at Victoria as I descended from the Gatwick Express.

What is more pleasurable than to see a familiar face and a pretty one in a sea of strangers?

We got into a taxi and the driver immediately started telling us his life story. “I became a father at 51,” he stated a propos of nothing in particular. The moment we showed some interest he went on to tell us how his wife had had several miscarriages “she was rehearsing you see” he commented. And the happy ending to his story is that she finally produced the heir to his little throne. We congratulated him. He was now 73 and his son was at University studying to be an IT engineer.

In the middle of this little bit of autobiography, as I was at the same time enjoying the sights and sounds of a beautiful sunny day in London, he produced a small photo album which we looked at, while he gave us a running commentary of the little family of which he was justifiably proud.

The following morning I walked over to the Victoria and Albert Museum to have a look at what was going on at my favourite museum. I love it because it is alive and kicking and not fossilised like so many museums.

I popped into the shop of the V&A, first of all as I could see that it had been refurbished and was now much more visitor friendly. It is far too expensive and I was not the least bit tempted to purchase anything at those prices. There are much better buys outside. However, I was about to buy a coffee mug – in fact more decorative than practical – for one of my nephews who loves anything to do with Britain. There was something gracious written about the queen on it but at £15 I let it go. An American who was also tempted but did not give in to this particular temptation, agreed with me when I commented that it was an absurd price.

So I went off to the Fashion section to look at Propaganda, an exhibition of JC Castalbajac’s fashions. Coats made up of teddy bears which, it is claimed, such luminaries as Madonna and Naomi Campbell wore instead of mink were beautifully displayed. There was also a sofa made of teddy bears, which I did not covet in the least. Just another dust gatherer to try to keep clean. This obsession with teddy bears, it was explained, was rooted in the fact that Castelbajac went to military school where he was totally deprived of toys. ‘Whatever’, as my young one invariably comments. He is a great creator anyway, even if most of the clothes exhibited are useless and cannot be worn in everyday life. How many occasions are we going to get in our mundane lives to wear an inflatable poncho (one of the exhibits) which also doubles up as a life jacket?

I enjoyed his Cahiers “I whant (sic) to become: ‘a doctor,’ ‘a lawyer,’ ‘an engineer’ with all of them struck off except that of ‘designer.’ He knew exactly what he wanted and followed his dream.

I have not yet understood why a Frenchman was keeping his notebooks in English and I have not had time to explore the possibility that his mother was perhaps English.

My notebooks are nothing but a series of lists, email addresses and phone numbers, columns of ‘things to do’ and boring shopping lists.

I felt at one with a shift silk dress labelled ‘La difficulté d’être’ with the following quotation from Bernard Le Bovier de Fontenelle (1657-1757) written on it: ‘Que sentez-vous Monsieur de Fontenelle?’ someone asked him, and the reply: ‘Je sens une difficulté d’être’. I concurred with this sentiment and would very much like to wear a similar dress.

Once out of the V & A I walked to Patisserie Valerie on the Cromwell Road to look at the cakes in their window and promised to return.

I did of course but more of that next week.

The news in Britain, as you must know, is dominated by Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott’s affair with an assistant, the now infamous Tracey Temple, who has a penchant for red leather trousers and possibly the nail salon. Temple had sold her ‘sex diaries’ of her two year affair to a tabloid newspaper. Her fiancé, a lorry driver, who says he discovered the liaison, because she spoke of Prescott in her sleep, sold his story to The Sun. They made a cool half a million between them but you really do wonder whether love had anything to do with it.

Dr Patricia Rashbrook and her husband made the news as she will give birth in July, when she will be 63. She already has two grown up children from a previous marriage. Is she being selfish, becoming a mother at the age of a grandmother, or is it nobody’s business? Frankly who knows and anyway who cares. It’s her life anyway.

We should have a similar campaign to that currently being run by the Federation of Wholesale Distributors, Save Our Small Shops Campaign. The event is designed to highlight the huge, but often unsung, contribution that sole traders and family owned shops make to their local communities Londoners are being urged to make an extra visit to their local store on a national day of celebration of independent shops. The gesture even if it involves spending only £1 will make a significant financial contribution to their survival as well as being a symbolic act of support, say organisers. National Independents Day is being celebrated on 1 June because, it is claimed, thousands of small shops are being driven out of business each year by draconian parking restrictions, soaring rents and the arrival of supermarkets. The scale of the problem was highlighted when Tesco announced annual profits of £2.2 billion and revealed its plans to open 130 new Express stores by the end of next February.

Malta would not be the same without our small shops. I already notice a dearth of haberdasheries. Let us support them.

Seven million Londoners face water rationing if the weather is hot and dry this summer. The mayor Ken Livingstone was urging Londoners to stop wasting water and said his family had stuck to a partial ban on flushing the lavatory for 15 months. ‘If it’s yellow let it mellow’, is his cry. My daughters and delicious son-in-law think it is disgusting and they do not intend following Ken’s advice.

One of my busy nephews, almost as delicious as my son-in-law, offered to show me round Alfie’s Antique’s Market on the Edgeware road where I had never been.

It is an indoor market and it has just been refurbished. I enjoyed the delightful stalls and touched several objects but bought none this time round because there was nothing really suitable for me. A vintage two-toned Chanel pair of shoes were a very small size and a kimono for loitering on the sofa was also too small. I shall return when I am there next.