London Wanderings - Kew Gardens, local stabbing and meeting up with Demi and Whitney at The Flat White

Another day with Jeantine at work, so we made our way by train to Richmond and had a coffee with Jeantine at the Butter Beans Cafe (Their Facebook page said - "a Kiwi creative, funky, rustic, chilled cafe in heart of Richmond. Super close to station.") . Jeantine was across the road at Thoughtworks and she suggested that if we go to lunch down by the Thames, could she bring her friend across to meet us. We bought some picnic snacks to take down to the nearby park by the Thames and met Jeantine's work colleague who had a New Zealand gym instructor and this poor girl (of Indian extraction) could not always make out what her Kiwi instructor was saying to her. Hopefully listening to our 'Kiwi speak' and my radio trained voice, helped her get a better grasp of what her instructor was trying to tell her.
It was difficult to tell whether our discussion of Kiwi speak would assist her for her next session at the Gym but hopefully it helped. After our picnic lunch Jeantine and her colleague went back to work and Barb and I headed off to interpret the bus stop guides and we hopped on a bus we hoped would take us all the way to the Kew Gardens, but after a couple of stops, Barb thought we were heading in wrong direction so we hurriedly got off and walked up to and through a major intersection and deciding that was wrong, we retraced our steps and headed off on a tangent that we hoped would take us to Kew Gardens. This road had buses going along it but sadly our timing was all wrong for being near a bus stop for when a bus should happen along. We did stop outside 91 Sandycombe Road attracted by what appeared to be a large spiders web covering some of the plants in their front garden.

Then another passerby said she thought it was a moth web and pointed out the caterpillars or larvae. I did some research later and came across this Daily Mail article about these moths. Wikipedia didn't have too much information on these moths but this link references the Daily Mail article.

I think we then went left into The Avenue across to Kew Rd and entered Kew Gardens at the Victoria Gate. We stopped outside the Palm House and like some other people there we chatted to, we decided to come back to the Palm House later and we found our way to the demonstration Beehive that had a guide giving multiple explanations of the life of bees and their importance. He even had people flapping their arms as if they were flying bees. There was also an option of walking up to the top of this demonstration Beehive.

Inside the Palm House - with more information from this Wikipedia Link

Admiring looks

Mother Nature's colourful delights in the Waterlily House which Wikipedia says is the hottest and most humid of the houses at Kew.
That photo time stamped at 3:05pm.
After admiring the variety in the Palm, Temperate and Waterlily Houses we headed off for a drink and snack at the Orangery, which according to Wikipedia, dates back 1761. It was found to be too dark for its intended purpose of growing citrus plants and they were moved out in 1841. After many changes of use, it was turned into the restaurant. As we exited the Gardens we sought advice on the best place to find the nearest bus stop and managed to ride all the way back to the Richmond train station and thus back to Ganley Court and found our recovery sit down was interrupted by the sound of a helicopter and police sirens at around 5:30pm.

This photo time stamped at 6:39, It seems we had missed a fatal stabbing near where we had walked back to Ganley Court from Clapham Junction. This stabbing was a brutal form of 'conflict resolution' and we got to meet the husband of the family next door (we had chatted to the mother and kids before), he had gone to Park to ask a policeman about what was happening. On the evening news there was mention of a stabbing but, not of this domestic dispute. The more significant stabbling related to a "19-year-old man being held on suspicion of murder after a woman was killed and five other people were injured in multiple stabbings in central London."
We were later to be interviewed by a couple of policemen going door to door to get information on our 'local stabbing' and it made me realise how costly such incidents can be with the health costs and time and effort spent in getting the facts and background. Gaye and Stu Andrews' son Mark living closer to the crime scene had to negotiate the cordon to get out to work in the morning and ID himself when he came back at night. I think the cordon was in place for around a week. We mentioned to our interviewing police that with any CCTV they would be examining, a woman seen in a blue raincoat was bound to be Barb. A 360 photo of Ganley Court We were at York Gardens end of Ganley Court, one floor up, where you can see the white car. The block past the rubbish bins was where the stabbing took place and a map of Ganley Court in relation to York Gardens and Clapham Junction. We were at the corner of Mewcomen Rd and Ganley Court.

After the excitement of that day, the following day with Jeantine again at work, Barb and I headed to the Jeantine recomended Flat White Cafe. It was interesting we were using Google Maps to get to this location and would leave the map open on the smart phone so that when out of wi-fi range we would still have a reference to what we were looking for. We were meeting up with Whitney Nuku, my cousin Jean Shortland's granddaughter and Barb's niece Demi Cope and both wanted to know the 'postal code' for the Cafe so they could find their way there.

Whitney is my first cousin twice removed on the Mankelow side and this cafe was reasonably close to her work, so she could easily make it in her lunch break.

Barb had thought about meeting Demi before this, while I was out bike riding, but wasn't sure of finding her way to Demi on her own. Demi was working evenings and managed forgo too much of a lie-in to make this rendezvous.