Garden of Earthly Delights (well, butterflies)

Today was my weekday day off, and with it being gloriously sunny and all, I was delighted to join The Godmother and W on a short jaunt to Wisley. Wisley turned out to be a huge RHS garden (which charged £9.90 entry - free if you're a member (joining up is a mere £49, and they push it like anything)). It was gorgeously sunny, and there were a surprising number of flowers out. It smelled like Spring. I took a few pictures to share so you don't have to pay almost a whole tenner to see it: 

Lemons! Not nearly as fragrant as the orange blossom

Arum lilies

The big fancy greenhouse was on a butterfly kick - there was a big, steamy glass box full of pupas for butterflies to emerge in, big, brightly-coloured boards of butterfly facts about the place, a video loop of butterflies emerging from pupas and a section of greenhouse full of butterflies zooming around all over the place. The queue was pretty long, there were old people everywhere and it was extremely hot and humid, but it was worth it. I only got a couple of pictures, as butterflies are apparently not that keen on staying still:

A yellow one

(There was a spotter's guide available (only 50p suggested donation) but there's no need to get anoraky about these things.)

A black and white one

 The clouds were coming out in force as we left, but the rest of today has been pretty nice too.

This afternoon (after a lunch of the greenest pea soup ever), I made it into London for a visit to Journalism School. It's been a very long time since I was last there; I felt a bit nostalgic! Tornado was very pleased to see me and amazingly happy to wave off my non-attendance. It turns out he wants me to ask the Letters Editor to come and give out prizes. Hmmm. 

I had a bit of an Incredible Journey experience getting home. The Circle line was shut, which was fine (for me, at least), except that the overflow was packing onto the Jubilee line with a vengeance. I had to get the Jubilee line in the opposite direction to the way I wanted to go, and get the Bakerloo. Then, when I eventually got to Waterloo, it turned out that something had happened at Surbiton (on my route home, in case anyone's still reading at this point) - the station announcements said it was a 'delay', the announcements on the train said it was 'a person struck by a train', and then the station announcements when I eventually got to Woking said it was 'police activity', and when I was at Waterloo, I saw two policemen and a man in a hi-vis vest interviewing a man on an empty train that had just come from that direction - which meant that the only non-delayed train in that direction was even more packed than the tube, and when they eventually announced the platform for the next train there was a stampede. I made it in the end, though. 

I'm exhausted again just from typing that! Goodnight!