I slept reasonably well; I was conscious
of the fact the puppy was sleeping on the bed, and that did keep me from being
as relaxed as I might have been. She isn’t so much a puppy as a furry shark or
crocodile and I was expecting a fang-attack at any minute. But I dozed until
the alarm eventually woke me.
Over brekkie I had the obligatory
look-see on-line. Very little had changed overnight.
Jimbo and Stevey arrived, we settled the
dogs ("Daddy’s Little Angel TM" was coming to play later) and we made our way to the railway
station where we met the rest of our number, and soon we were on the train to
the wicked city.
We arrived at Charing Cross without
incident. Jim’s sciatica was giving him grief, so half of our team took the
tube to the museum; and half of us walked. We had a rather good walk through
London, we found the obligatory geocache, and after fifteen minutes we were at
the British Museum. Fifteen minutes later those who’d taken the tube caught up.
I don’t know London very well, but I’ve always had this theory that it is
quicker to get round the central bits on foot than by public transport.
We found a rather good restaurant over
the road from the museum where we had a spot of brekkie. A very good spot of
brekkie. And suitably fuelled we crossed the road.
The obligatory security check only took
five minutes, and soon we were in the British Museum. It’s a rather interesting
place but now having been there twice at weekends I think I’d like to go back
mid-week when it is not heaving with tourists. We were in there for about three
hours; we probably only saw about half of what was there. If we weren’t having
to fight our way through hoards of utterly bemused foreigners I might have had
a tad more patience.
Whilst there I saw something which made
me think. There has been a lot of controversy recently about whether or not the
burka should be banned in the UK. Should it? I don’t know. But I watched one
burka-clad woman go arse-over-tit down the staircase because she couldn’t see
where she was going.
We adjourned to the Museum pub over the
road where a pint of “Old Peculiar”
slipped down nicely, then we all wandered slowly back to Charing Cross. We went
via an old haunt of mine: “Forbidden
Planet”. Twenty years ago “Forbidden
Planet” was *the* place to buy
anything sci-fi-ish or geeky. Before the Internet the place was the best comic
and book shop anywhere. Nowadays the comic and book section is non-existent,
and the place is full of window-shoppers who were openly looking at the goods
on the shelves then calling up the items on the phones to buy them cheaper
on-line.
As we carried on I was stopped by an
American tourist at Leicester Square. Would I take a photo of him using his phone?
Of course I would, but I did tell him off for trusting a random stranger. I
wouldn’t trust my phone to any random passer-by in London.
Once at the station I bought a hog-roast
baguette, and then slept most of the way home. Compared to some of our trips to
London today was rather short, but I did find it rather tiring.
We got back to civilisation, said our
goodbyes, then we came home to chaos. I can always tell when my grandson "Stormageddon
- Bringer of Destruction TM" has been round to visit. We
cleared the mess, then took the dogs for a walk. I’d had a message that the
dogs’ worming treatments were ready to collect, and I’d confirmed with the vets
that the dogs’ worming treatments were ready to collect. We got to the vets to
find they had sold out of the stuff. I gently suggested that when they
confirmed they were ready and I said I would be along to collect them, they
might have put the stuff to one side. After all the tablets are a named
prescription. The nice receptionists blamed the system. Personally I would sort
out a better system…
"er
indoors TM"
boiled up some pancakes and set off to the film night. I devoured the pancakes
and set about ironing shirts. Something of an anti-climax after such a good day
in London, but shirts don’t iron themselves…
No comments:
Post a Comment