We landed at Terminal 3 and found our taxi driver. Ava had booked a people mover for us. Getting to the car park was an experience I would have expected if we were in an airport at Karachi. We had to wait for 5 lift loads of people before we could fight our way in to the lift. Do these people not realise that if you stand in front of the doors the people in the lift, whose place you want, can’t get out?!! The car park was full of big shiny new Merc’s and BMW’s. Within half an hour we were having that longed for cup of tea (with custard creams), and acquainting ourselves with Eric’s nieces (3 and 5 years old) whom he had previously met but we hadn’t. They are gorgeous, blonde, blue-eyed darlings that could charm the monkey’s out of the trees. We had noticed lots of police activity as we drove away from the airport and found outt when we got to Ava and Henry’s that a car bomb had blown up at Glasgow airport, literally as we were coming in to land. The security levels here are at their highest and this became evident as we moved around London the next day; announcements on the tube about unattended luggage, bag checks on entering the art gallery etc. The rest of the day was spent catching up and having a nice meal, after we had walked to Tesco’s. I needed a toothbrush. After nagging everyone not to forget their’s I forgot mine!! Whilst there we bought Muller yoghurt and Hobnobs! When we lived in England Eric and I always had Hobnobs with our tea in bed on Sunday morning - a habit I was keen to re-instate for the next 4 weeks!
On getting Mia ready for bed Ava-Lee found she had chickenpox, apparently London has an epidemic of it at the moment. She doesn’t seem to be poorly with it. Maddie has been vaccinated against it, and all the rest of us have had so we can’t get it, or spread it on to others on our travels.
Yesterday we were tourists in London!
Alice was so excited to see a red phone box. She wanted her photo taken then fell about when she realised there was someone actually using it!
It was weird, London being, in one way so familiar, and yet so novel. We took the tube from Hammersmith (about 10 minutes walk from Ava and Henry’s) to Covent Garden where Katie, Eric’s niece and a delightful young lady, met us and took us around for the day. We watched street entertainers and strolled around the stalls at Covent Garden and then had a lunch at a tapas bar. I dived into a catholic church (just because I could) for 2 minutes of peace and to look at the ‘oldness’ of it. It wasn’t anything out of the ordinary but churches and old is something we want to try and do very often this month. It is one of the things we do miss living in NZ. We bought postcards of London buses and took photo’s. I loved it. Covent Garden is very familiar to me but I had forgotten how lovely, and plentiful, the pubs are. And how ‘English’! I know that’s a ‘Duh’ statement but true. There are vandal proof huge pictures dotted on walls around London in an effort to get people interested enough to go in to the art galleries. After lunch we went looking for Neal’s Yard, found it and discovered that the huge food warehouse I remember no longer exists as ‘they don’t do food’ now. From Neal’s yard we went down to 7 dials, a junction where 7 streets meet and there is an obelisk with 7 sundials on. Your homework is to find out why anyone would want to put 7 sundials in one place!? Katie was endlessly patient as Alice and I kept saying, ‘Oh I just want to pop in here’ at every shoe and bag shop. I had forgotten how phenomenonally huge the choice is! Amazingly we bought nothing. At one stall in Covent Garden I whittled 4 handbags down to one and sought Alice’s opinion before pulling out my purse. “What do you think of this Alice?” I asked expecting to be commended on my good taste. “Mom. I think I’d vomit if I had to wear that”!!!!! I just could not bring myself to buy it after that! A similar response when I showed her a pair of Air Wair Doc Martens boots, pink and covered in daisies. “Yuk” says Alice - and I so wanted a pair of them!
On then to Trafalgar Square.
Not at it’s best as it, and St Martins-in-the-Fields are being renovated. The church covered in cloth, and the square has construction fencing up all over the place. We passed the National Portrait Gallery which Harriette announced she wanted to go in because there was a picture of Jane Austen there, a sketch by her sister. It was tiny! We spent an hour in there feeling like tourists as we whizzed round. I hate that. I like to spend hours and hours in art galleries. I know nothing about art and pictures don’t ‘speak’ to me but I stand in awe of the talent of artists.
From here we took the tube home to find Maddie had a temperature of 40 degrees and Mia had recovered from the disappointment of missing a birthday party as she has chickpox. We laid in bed that night relishing the idea that we didn’t not have to go to work for a month, that we were really in the UK and life was very good.
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