Friday 7 September was a lay day for basketball. This meant that in theory, we had a day free to explore London. It didn’t happen.......
We had our best night’s sleep for the trip so far and were, well, just a little late in getting out of bed. When Gloria did manage to extract herself from the bedroom, we decided that doing our laundry was the highest priority as we had been away for a week and the clean clothes supply was rapidly diminishing. We were directed to a nearby laundry only a couple of hundred yards away.
Imagine this scenario –
We round the corner to see the laundramat sign. Almost instantaneously, the pub next door to the laundramat is spotted. The ladies accompanying me on this mission made an instant decision – guess what we are doing while the clothes wash and dry....and its only 11 am!
After the drinking laundry was completed, I journeyed to Paddington station in the hope of recovering the lost duty free – we discovered that the Heathrow Express has a lost property office there. Despite what the website says, it does not. All lost property is returned to Heathrow. Rather than travelling to Heathrow, I decided to ring them – another mistake. The fellow who answered the phone was Indian and I couldn’t understand a word he said. To make matters worse, the phone call cost 3 pounds and he said that there were no plastic bags with gin and cigarettes. He probably drank and smoked the lot!
When I returned, Gloria and I travelled to Harrods to buy bears and visit Tiffanys. We couldn’t find Tiffanys and despite the fact that we asked every policeman we could find where it was, we had no success. But there was a reason that the police didn’t know.
At the back of Harrods I could see a police car and 4 policemen. I made a bee line for them and when I arrived they looked a little uncomfortable when I started talking to them. There was a noise from behind me, and when I turned around to look, I discovered a bunch of hippies (long hair, unshaven and wearing cheesecloth shirts) holding banners saying “Free Assange” I was actually standing outside the Ecuador embassy where Assange is hiding – no wonder the policemen were not happy when I just bowled up and started chatting to them. However, in typical booby style, they were very polite and they all said that they did not come from here and that they did not know where Tiffanys was. I left them to look after Mr Assange.
That night saw another restless night in our little bed. Brunch on Friday morning was had at Camden Market where we saw one boat pass downstream and two boats pass upstream through the three locks located on the waterway adjacent to the market – Gloria had never seen this before, so she found it interesting.
After brunch Gloria and I headed into the city, this time armed with Tiffanys address. The men in blacks suits at the door looked at our attire with a quizzical eye, so we just window shopped instead. We made our way to Hyde Park to find tens of thousands of people – it was a very warm English summer’s day, it was Sunday, and there were people sunbathing everywhere. We will get back to Hyde Park one day – it looked a very beautiful park, but there were too many people there for us two to enjoy it. Mind you, we did enjoy the ice cream cone with the piece of Cadbury Flake stuck in it. Not good for the weight though.
After returning to the hotel, we ventured to the basketball full of expectation. The Bulldogs started well but could not sustain the effort and were eventually beaten by the USA for the bronze medal. There were a lot of shattered GB players and the coach was not happy either. We met Murray after the game and did not go to watch the Australian women's team and Canada play for the gold medal – by the time we left Murray, the game was half way through the 3rd quarter so we went to the pub with the GB players instead. This was a good choice because Canada defeated Australia and that would have been difficult to watch.
Next we travel to Switzerland, staying at Interlaken for 3 nights. Given the length of the journey, we will stay in Dijon overnight before arriving in Switzerland.
The best and worst of England –
6. Terrific English weather – it didn’t rain while we were there
5. Discovering a shopping chain named Primark – Chelsea assures us that she loved it too.
4. Marvellous staff at the hotel – extremely friendly and nothing was too much trouble
3. The volunteers at the Paralympics were just brilliant. So were the security staff.
2. The London police – for example, they allowed people to be photographed wearing their hats. They were helpful, polite and to be quite frank, a lot of fun. They gave us much cheek as they got and always had a smile on their face when you spoke to them. But you knew if you stepped out of line, they would have you....
1. And the best bit - a week of drinking, eating and laughing with Eily
The worst –
3. The small bed at the hotel
2. Losing the duty free
1. The worst - having to cope with the idiots that thought they were the police on the rail platforms. They could have taken a lesson from the police and security staff on how to deal with the public. It made what should have been a fantastic week far less enjoyable. However, there were some good ones...
