The Hive

After breakfast, Freya and I walk over the Thames, from Hammersmith to Barnes, for the children’s literary festival. We’re first in the queue for the 499-seat marquee on the green, and Freya can barely contain her excitement at the prospect of seeing Cressida Cowell. We’re seated front and centre, a few metres from the author herself. She talks for an hour about her childhood summers on the Hebridean island of Little Colonsay, which provided inspiration for her dragon books.

We queue patiently for the book signing, and when it’s Freya’s turn, Cressida is delighted to hear that we’ve travelled all the way from Oslo to met her. She asks her agent if she and Freya can be Instagrammed together, and they duly are.

In the afternoon we visit Kew Gardens. Steady rain commences as we arrive, but we enjoy ourselves nonetheless. We take in The Hive sculpture and the glasshouses. I finally get to see the pagoda which was pictured in a childhood book.

In the evening, we take the tube to Picadilly Circus, and walk to Chinatown for dumplings and a strange smoked-plum juice. It’s busy. Freya is wide-eyed and tired. I stop her falling asleep on the tube back to Hammersmith, and she’s soon sleeping soundly in our hotel room.