On Friday night, my friend Toby (of Coventry fame) turned up for our pre-agreed termly visit. I took a few photos, but owing to circumstances to be described either now or in the next blog (I haven’t decided…the decision will happen as I type) I am unable to upload them at present. They will follow.
Tom had a craving for Chinese, so after picking Toby up we decided to get one. Our favourite place to get them was closed for refurbishment, and as we neared Fulham Pools I noticed there was a takeaway right near the cash machine. After a small time of scanning the menu to see if the tried and tested favourites were there, we went in. It was a bit shabby, and there were a couple of customers of dubious mental health in the shop. This seems to be a tradition with Toby – everytime he comes to London we meet someone I have affectionately termed ‘a crazy’. While this may not be strictly politically correct (please don’t censor me, Pamela), I’m sure I could find another, less nice way of describing them and the term will have to do. After a long wait, which wasn’t quite an hour despite Tom’s argument that it was, we headed back home with a meal that turned out to be less tasty and way more dubious than any Chinese we have ever eaten before. We shan’t be using that one again.
On Saturday we all woke up very late – I believe by the time we were all out of bed it was 12 pm. We had made plans to get up at 10, but after a round of agreeing that it was very nice to have a lie-in for once, managed to make a hasty lunch of marmite sandwiches, apples and bananas. Toby and I set off and explored Westminster – I have plans to make a blog about this in my “Things to do in London” series, so won’t talk about that now. It was very nice (although Tom lied to us about it not being cold or rainy).
We got back, went shopping in the Sains for Pimms, meringue nests and cream, and headed home to make an asparagus and cheese risotto (thanks to John for the recipe!). It was going to be vegetarian until the boys realised this fact, and made me put bacon in it. We then made the meringue nests, munched them, then watched “Push” and headed to bed (leaving an almighty mess in the kitchen, which I’m sure the housemates had something to say about).
We woke up late on Sunday (again) and after a quick but thorough clean of the previous nights mess, Toby and I departed rather hastily to meet my mum at Paddington station. I knew she was arriving at 12, but she wasn’t picking up her phone, and I hadn’t checked the TFL website to make sure the tubes were all running. The consequence was Toby and I walked to West Brompton, got the tube to Hammersmith (which is the same walking distance from our house as West Brom) and then got the bus to Paddington. A wonderful waste of money, though I did get to teach Toby about the confusing system for the District line at Earl’s Court. We got to Paddington, looked around for mum a bit, panicked about the fact that she still hadn’t turned her phone on, and London is a very bad place to lose someone, then decided to head to the hotel she was staying at to find her there. On the way, she rang to say she was in the room…phew.
After meeting in the room and giving mum a banana, we decided to go to lunch. Despite the fact that I spent quite a lot of time around the area in first year, I don’t know where anything except the nearest Ask is, and we went there last time. We ended up back in the station for ciabattas and orange juice, then went back to the room and watched Murder She Wrote while Toby downloaded Hotel Tycoon onto his iPhone, after trying to teach me how to play some game which killed my wrists.
I eventually took Tobes back to the station, bought a load of facemasks for mum and I, went back to the hotel and we settled down for a girly night in. I wasn’t abusing the hotel, honest – mum had booked me in as well. My home for the next two nights is an incredibly small and expensive room in Paddington.
The rest shall be saved for my next blog, where I will describe my camera tragedy in more detail; I came to college to get some work done, and at 785 words this post is long enough!
yum.