I had a particularly
vivid dream last night about pushing a pram around a council estate
in order to find a janitor who might repair a gangster's broken
doorbell. Were I unable to find the janitor, I and the pram would be
"dead like curtains". Being woken by the alarm came
as a blessed relief.
I went on the scales this
morning. One week of dieting again has shifted a couple of pounds.
I'm pleased about that. Twenty more pounds to go. I had a quick bite
of brekkie whilst Fudge barked incessantly. A burglar could smash in
the window and he wouldn't care, but he went mental because someone
came out of a house a hundred yards down the road.
And so to the station
where a dozen of us congregated, got tickets, and set off to London.
It would have been nice to have had seats together, but we weren't
that far apart, and we could holler down the carriage to each other.
I had this idea to use my scrat-nav to see just how fast the high
speed train did actually go, but the app didn't have a speedometer,
so I mucked about downloading one. We reached a maximum speed of 139
mph. I was impressed.
At that speed it didn't
take long to get to London, and from St Pancras (patron saint of
abdominal organs!) we walked through Kings Cross and posed for
photos at platform 9 3/4. I don't think we upset the normal people
too much. And we then moved on to Cafe Oz in the Caledonian Road for
a rather good bit of second brekkie. You can't beat a good fry up.
Once breakfasted we got
on with the main business of the day. Geocaching! Well.... not
exactly. We had gone up to London to have a look round the British
Museum, but the route from Cafe Oz took up past two caches so it
would have been rude not to have done them. And with logs signed we
were all soon in the museum.
From experience we know
that trying to do anything mob-handed is akin to trying to herd cats,
so we agreed to all do our own things, and to meet up in the foyer at
2pm. I set off with Chip, the birthday boy and the Rear Admiral. I
could have bought a guide book. But in a fit of inspiration I had a
look on the app store and downloaded the free British Museum app. It
was brilliant. A map of the museum, a guide book, detailed
information on many of the exhibits. And didn't cost a penny. We used
it to find where we'd been as we wandered round. We had this plan to
do the ground floor before meet-up, and the rest after.
We found we'd done the
ground floor stuff by 1pm, and Steve and the Rear Admiral fancied a
fag. You can't smoke on the museum grounds, so they stood outside the
Museum Tavern whilst me and Chip went inside where it was warm. And
where they did beer. A pint of "Old Peculier"
slipped down very nicely, and we then went back into the museum to
see more exhibits.
At 2pm we met up, and
Matt joined our contingent as we moved on to the Africa and Japan
galleries. We had hoped to see the Roman stuff, but that was closed
for renovation, which was a shame. Instead we giggled at the rather
dreadful haircut sported by one of the curators, and sniggered at the
ruder statuary until the late afternoon at which point we went back
to the pub to meet Terry.
It was good to see Terry
- we'd not seen him for ages, and we caught up over a couple of
pints. We then moved on to Covent Garden. Some moved there directly;
others (me included) went a little slower via three more
geocaches. One of which was one of the best I've ever seen. But I
can't spoil it by giving the game away here.
Whilst we were out we had
a minor disaster. As we walked there were lots of people giving away
free samples of their wares. I chose a lemon flavoured cube and to
the horror of the merchant I scoffed it before he could stop me. I
was not supposed to eat it. It was soap! Yuck! The poor chap giving
out the samples was horrified, and his relief was tangible when he
realised I thought it was funny. Fortunately the chap giving away
samples of pizza saw what had happened and fed me well.
And so on to regroup with
the rest of the party at the Essex Serpent for a crafty pint, and
then we moved on to Ed's Diner; an American themed diner. Rather
touristy, and rather cheesey. Some people would hate it, but I loved
it. Peanut butter milk shake and blue cheese chicken-burger. Very
nice.
Unfortunately, once we'd
had tea it was time to say farewell to Terry. We then made our way to
the tube and went underground back to Kings Cross, St Pancras and
home.
I'd eaten and drank far
too much today, but today was excellent. In previous years the first
Saturday in February has been spent at Dover beer festival. Whilst
I've enjoyed those events, today in London was better. Must go to the
wicked city again soon...
And, as always, there are
piccies
of the day on-line.
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