The Victoria and Albert, where to start. The museum has a huge range of collections of European, Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Islamic decorative arts, totalling 4 million items. It has galleries for sculpture, glass, jewellery, church plate, armour, weapons, costume, textiles, musical instruments, wrought iron, stained glass, metalwork, ceramics, furniture, architecture, photography, British watercolour artists and much more.

Any visit is best made with a definite plan in mind. As the Islamic exhibition had a lot of new exhibitions and was being publicised heavily we made sure we concentrated on those rooms. Unfortunately the giant silk rug, so delicate that the huge glass case it lay behind, was illuminated for 10mins only per hour for its protection, and this failed to coincide with a 10 mins when my camera decided to behave.

The camera looked like a total write off (the lense mechanism decided it did not want to come out and play despite various noises to the contrary from within the machine); then Jackie came up with the novel idea of hitting firmly against the cushioned arm of a sofa we were sat on. After first making sure this was not a priceless antique sofa BANG and one working camera.. Well in a fashion it still has to be coaxed into behaving.
We had a go at designing prints for my new summer wardrobe. Here I am sending the final design off to Susan in Oklahoma. If you think the exhibit below looks a little out of place in the V&A by the way thats because its in the science museum across the road. We had to walk past it on our way and what man can resist having his photo taken next to the undercarriage of an Airbus (Keira Knightley is waiting for a picture with me at the side, but I told her, the wheels come first, and then the camera broke)