We were up for an early start as Nat had a Sunday paper round to complete before we left (Mum did it) and we had to be at Brockington college by 8.00am at the latest if we were not to miss the coach to Saddler’s Wells.
Well, needless to say (So why am I saying it? I don’t know why you are saying because if I don’t know one will know what it was that was needless to say innit) we were parked up and at the school gates shortly after 7.30.
As always I’d been unnecessarily called away from the lavatory we before I’d needed to be. There is no justice!!!
Nat an I were anxious to obtain for ourselves a double seat each and with a certain a mount of glaring and snarling we dissuaded anyone else from trying to sit next to us. If there had been a table I might have been tempted to follow Ben Elton’s advice for obtaining a double seat on a train and taken out and plonked my Willie down on it.
I listened to sundry podcasts and read my Kindle and Nat did similar. Deb and Hannah chatted (girls ah!) and the time shot by. A pleasant, but seemingly unnecessary, stop at previously unknown services was a surprise but quite why we stopped when we were little more than a half an hour from out destination still eludes me.
However it was opportunity to see a new an unknown stop and grab a Starbucks.
Shortly after we entered
London and were on our way to Saddler’s Wells. Along the way I snapped photos of various landmarks and uploaded them to WhatsApp and Dianne in
Florida. Next time, should there be one, I’ll snap the pictures in the camera application and upload later because the WhatApp app automaticall restricted the picture size.
We arrivesd outside SW at approximately 10:45. The kids were de-bussed and accounted for before being marched off for a ful day’s rehersal before the show started at 7:00pm that evening.
With Hannah safely taken care of I fired up the mapping application on my N8 and found the route to the
British Museum.
Note how I like to photograph PUBS because I can't afford to actually use them!!!
We made it there in about 45 minutes having gone wrong just the one time when I’d shut down the mapping application and we inadvertently passed the street we should have turned at. As a result of this slight oversight we arrived at the
British Museum from slightly the wrong direction but with no harm done.
At one point we passed a bus emblazoned with the slogan “Modern Science Proves That God Exists” (yeah of course it does…Doh)
which I presume was the believes answer to the infamous atheist bus add a few years back that, I believe, originated in
London
It was a beautiful day perhaps the warmest of the year and certainly the closest we got to a summer this year. There was bright sunshine and the temperatures were in the eighties Fahrenheit! Unfortunately Nathaniel hates heat and sunlight he wasn’t the happiest bunny. We passed the Museum Tavern on our way to the main gates and it was weird seeing it in the flesh so to speak as I’d been looking at it and the surrounding buildings only a few hours early on Google Maps Street view. It was like a strange kind of mapping Déjà Vu; actually it wasn’t but that sounded well cool innit.
Opposite the gates of the museum was the Starbucks café noted on google maps and I popped in to grab a few London Gift cards for Di’s niece Amanda (who works at Starbucks in Orlando and collects Starbucks gift cards from round the World) but the place was heaving with customers so we grabbed a handful later.
Before we entered the museum
Before we entered the museum we sat outside had something to eat and took a shed load of pictures. It’s certainly is an incredibly impressive building and I very much doubt we managed to see as much a 5% of the inside of it that day.
While it was awesomely impressive inside it didn’t fill me with the same excitement I experience when I visit the
Natural History Museum or
Science Museum. Perhaps if I’d been alone and had time to amble and take my time I’d have enjoyed it more. However, it seemed like every time I stooped to look and photograph Deb and Nat just kept on walking so I was always playing catch up and missed what was between the last photo and their current position.
Despite being an enormous building the place got hotter and hotter in part due to the body heat of the other visitors and partly because of the glass roof and the outside temperature and sunshine. Whatever the reason Nat was soon flagging, complaining about the heat and wanting to leave.
While he and Deb visited the gift shop in the central glass roofed area I did a quick tour around it, stopping for a moment to take a Chinese tourist’s photograph for her, before rejoining them and making our way outside.
We made it outside and while I took the opportunity to get a few more (a lot) photo’s Nat and Ded found them a wall in the shade to sit on. I joined them dumped the bags and while Nat cooled down went out of the gates grabbed the Starbucks cards and went and took some more photos of the local buildings and people. I managed to get a few nice pictures of the two local pubs but not the chance to grab a pint because, as usual, I was without funds of my own.
Note the strangely dressed pensioner sitting outside one of the shops. At first I thought he was a manikin until he moved!!!
I rejoined the others and was told we were making our way back to Saddlers. I was a little surprised by this news because it was only a little after 2:00 Saddlers was about 30 minutes walk away and we weren’t due to meet Deb’s parents until after 6:00. There seemed, at least to me, to be a slight between the time we needed to be back and the time we were going to be back. Whatever the reason, we started back, stopping only outside a tat shop for Nat and Deb to insert their heads into a cardboard cut out and for me to take a picture of them doing so.
Shortly afterward Deb to tripped over a curb stone and went sprawling down onto the pavement. While she tried to shrug it off, cover her embarrassment and carry on she was quite badly shaken and bruised the next day.
A kind passer bye rushed to help her up along with Nat and myself. Acrioss the road from here we stopped at an ATM got some cash and looked for somewhere cool to sit for a dring and/or something to eat.
Eventually we stopped at a pub serving Sunday lunch but upon discovering that lunch cost £12 a plate we decided just to have a drink and so I just had a pint of the local beer and they each had a diet coke so we only spent a mere £8.50 WTF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
After nursing our drinks for as long as we could(NB I think I was the only person at the bar that paid in cash everyone else used a credit/debit card!!!)we set off agian for Saddlers. Evetually we reached the garden area opposit the theatre where the Angel statue
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the area is named after is. We sat in the gardent for a while speculating on how people in the adjacent block of flats managed to get their niked up onto the balconies and how big the flats were. Passed the theatre was a
angel garden
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Cupcakes
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theatre pub tony blair
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indo china food
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boris bike do not put lids in basket
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saddlers
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charger
help stranger
wifi search
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inlaws
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balconey
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performance
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