Snagged......

Good Monday everybody :-)

What a nice weekend that was. Been busy hence no blog so do forgive me.

Friday night spent in London at a very nice hotel with an epic view of Tower Bridge. We went out had a wander around St Katherines Dock in the evening and then grabbed some food but it was really quite late so we ended up in a smoke house for Burgers and Ribs. You have to indulge yourself in these pleasures every now and again. Not exactly gourmet but certainly much better than the god awful TGI Fridays !!

Saturday we awoke to a glorious morning, drew back the curtains and let the sunshine in showing off the beautiful skyline over the South Bank of the Thames. Full breakfast was ordered the previous evening so was duly delivered to the door at 9:30am and eaten without care for crumb spillage.

Originally we were going to take the tube over to South Kensington but given that is was a good day and that we'd not really seen too many landmarks we (I) decided that we should walk the 5 or so miles from Tower Bridge.

Glad we did too, not sure my feet and legs are too happy about it even now but it was very enjoyable.

First place we walked through was the Tower of London and we saw the Ravenmaster by the gates. Wouldn't have had a clue who he was had he not just been on some kids TV program we'd literally just turned off prior to leaving the hotel.

I have to stop to have a mini rant about a certain section of the community here because why oh why do people feel the need to go jogging right through these massive tourist hotspots ?!!?!? They could quite easily avoid it but they don't because these people see jogging as an essential accessory to life. You know the types....

"What did you do yesterday?"
"Oh well after my morning run....10 miles.....or was it 2000 miles...I dunno it's all the same when you are a jogger like me...well anyway after my run I just chillaxio'd to the maxio'd"
"So you ran pointlessly for miles, knocking people over along the way then did nothing remotely useful for the rest of the entire day?"
"Yeeeeeeeeep"
"WOW you really must be an amazing person.............."

Onwards we go to the smallest city in the UK..........The City of London. Now I have spent quite some time in London working, mainly north London but I also had a spell working in Bishopsgate just after that horrid IRA bomb was detonated. It's here where I found out that I have Vertigo.....in reverse !!!

OK I'm not the greatest with heights full stop but I also really dislike standing at the base of tall buildings. When I look up at the them I get all goose pimply because they seen to impose themselves upon me like some really tall person bending down to peer into my face.

I did find however that this is limited to rectangular shaped buildings because I didn't get the same feeling for the building at 30 St Mary's Axe....Norman Foster's "Gherkin" of course. What an amazing building that is.

I'm guessing that because of the curvy nature if this building those claustrophobic feelings I get from the more regimented giant structures such as the neighbouring Natwest Tower seem to fade away to other more pressing questions such as how do they clean the windows on a curved building ?!?!?

Perhaps the highlight of this part of the journey was stumbling across "Brassiere Blanc" in Threadneedle Street. Raymond Blanc's City of London restaurant and definitely the next place on the list for something to eat. I'm certain we'd have eaten there right there and then had it have been open but alas it wasn't no doubt due to the square mile being something like a scene from the film 28 days later over the weekend.

No doubt all these wheeler dealers off slumming it at some summer music festival or winding down after a hard week of betting with the countries future at Daddies Wiltshire retreat.

Such an amazing amount of betting shops in the City of London too.........More Coral's than the Great Barrier Reef!!!

Anyway we did eventually make it to South Kensington but we did have to give the feet a rest so got a train from Piccadilly rather than trudge the whole distance in Zag Zag form.

A long long time ago, when I was still a schoolboy the Mother of my good friend at the time Sharon used to own a quaint little Sandwich Bar in South Kensington called Cromwells so I was quite looking forward to stopping there for a coffee but the bloomin place had gone, replaced by another Sandwich bar which had taken over the whole row of shops that I vaguely remember being there. Still SK does hold some very fond memories for me during those impressionable teenage years so regardless of the shop it's still nice going there.

I suppose it was about 1pm by the time we were approaching the Museums so decided that today we'd just visit the Natural History Museum rather than try to cram in both that and the Science museum in a few short hours.

I've been to the Natural History museum a few times but I really remember the first ever time. It was with my Junior School and with my favourite teacher ever Miss Lloyd (Who later became Mrs Dance) but I don't remember it for any of the exhibitions or artefacts. Me being me I remember it only for the packed lunch that we ate while playing around the bases of the columns that support the buildings east side! Even at that age food was always the number one priority.

So anyway we whipped around the museum taking in all we wanted. I suppose it's one of the good things about being semi-intelligent is that you can gloss over things in Museums because you already know full well why the artefact is there and you just want to see it.

After the Museum we stopped along Knightsbridge for some lunch. Found this charming little roadside restaurant that pulled me in with the promise of Dim Sum. Carley had never had this before so I ordered a good amount of different dishes and a cold bottle of Prosecco and we sat there eating away contently while watching the people go by, many of whom had the obligatory Knightsbridge accessory............The Harrods Food Hall carrier Bag.

Well enough was enough and we got ourselves back on the train and headed back to the sanctuary of Berkshire in time to attend my Cricket Clubs end of season bash. Was all very nice and jolly as you'd expect that was until we headed back to a friends house and went through his entire vinyl record collection until 7am !!! Loads of old wonderful tunes from SKA to Motown....Randy Crawford is just the best !!

Yesterday of course was just junk food, TV and Football Manager. Pizza Hut, documentaries on the BBC iPlayer and Watford finishing 7th in the Premiership just behind Man Utd finished the weekend off nicely albeit in a hungover fashion.

The snagged heading refers to the pub situation. My legal guys have gone over the copy of the lease which I have and have found many key points that are very ambiguous and some that have not been updated to take into account the newest licensing act bought in in 2003. Hopefully these will get cleared up shortly and we can once again get the ball rolling.

Toodlepipions....