Running a little behind with updates….

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As you might have noticed I’ve been a little slack with updates; this is because of nights. Well, that and actually doing things with my time when I’m not working, which makes updating somewhat less easy.

Anyhow, so here’s a bit of an update: Computers, still not working properly. I reinsalled OS X on the Hackintosh, but it’s still not happy (I can’t get it to recognise the network adaptor); the downstairs PC is still in the throws of disconnection frenzy; and the laptop is still sick. So, to appease you all, I’ve uploaded photos from the Laptop. My camera’s nearly full though; although I think I can get the photos onto the Mac, now it’s booting anyhow.

First up, from way back (excuse the lazyness) – here’s the Pari and Clare’s Wedding photoset. I have a vague feeling I posted about it at the time; either that or Kathryn did and I linked to her post :)

Right, what else? A while back we went to the VVOC and I got to meet the oldest Minor…

It actually made me rather fancy a lowlight mog, but first I need to get Rebecca sorted. We’ve got the majority of the payout from the insurance company and there *should* be enough there to do the engine (they didn’t pay for the engine, but I’ve decided not to replace some of the tools that we claimed for, because plan is move -> canada, and I’m unlikely to need them before then). I’ve also found a local motor engineer who looks like a proper old fashioned engineer, and seems cheaper than the big companies. He’s doing the unleaded conversion for Brick when he gets back from his holiday (well, the actual work on the head; I’m not sure if they do actual engine work, I may find out or may get my pet garage to do it) but either way we’ll be testing the quality of his work :)

Anyhow, the main purpose of the post was to update after meeting Lauril; one of Kathryn’s friends who stopped over on her way to Spain. We mostly had a relaxed Friday evening when she arrived – curry was eaten, films and TV watched and we all chatted… Saturday morning was a trifle slow, and Saturday afternoon was the world’s quickest tour of London. We did a slightly off-norm collection of tourist hotspots and at the same time doing totally non-tourist places. We also did them at speed, and as the light of the day faded…

We headed into London with the intention of getting lunch – quick discussion and we’d decided to head to Camden Market and get lunch somewhere around there – being as it’s not peak tourist season even on a Saturday that shouldn’t have been too cramped. Unfortunately we’d not bargained on the words that strike fear into the heart of any public-transport user. “Replacement Bus Service”. As we’d not really sprinted through our morning we were quite hungry – and in the end headed up towards Soho rather than endure the bus on a Saturday in London. This, it turned out was an excellent idea. We located a well reviewed little Sushi restaurant with a conveyory thing. After several minutes of embaressed European and American ‘uh-how-does-this-work-exactly’ness we managed to order food and then had some really very nice Sushi…

Having been well fed, and decided to leave Kink, Cake and Coffee for later we headed out in search of the Travel Bookstore (Stanford’s), making it there despite the alien invasion…


Stanfords is, I think, the oldest Travel bookstore in London, and is ace, quite frankly. Filled with maps, books and uh, more maps and books, oh and a very very large globe. While Lauril hunted for maps (and found rather a lot of them), Kathryn and I wandered about going ‘ooh, books’. Taking myself and Kathryn to a book shop is a dangerous experience limited only by the amount of money we don’t have. And even that isn’t always a strong restriction on the amount of books that we come away with.

Lauril managed to escape with less maps than she picked up initially, and rather more books than she initially picked up… Kathryn and I split the cost of a book – which I think is called Tuk Tuk to the Road. Having exhausted ourselves with books and maps we headed to CC&K, for our required dose of Coffee, Cake (oh, such good cake) and Kink. Sadly I can’t find the image I fell in love with the first or second time I went, now I actually have an excuse to buy the damn photo. Gah. The Coffee, the Cake and indeed the Kink were of their usual high standards and I’m very glad they stayed open. Somehow it makes me feel more like I belong in the city to know a awesome little coffee shop to go to.

We then headed down to Trafalgar Square to see Nelson on the Lions, there was the Journey (People Trafficking) display / protest in the square but the queue was waaay long, and knowing we only had this one day to show Lauril all of London, it didn’t seem like an great use of our day. If I weren’t on nights this week I’d’ve liked to head back see it before it disappeared off, but I’m on nights this week, which is somewhat unfortunate.

We got to be very touristy, which is quite fun; having lived near London for much of my life somehow I’ve never really done the Tourist thing. I’ve visited the museums, which is I guess, touristy? And I’ve been through most of the touristy places, but not really done them as tourist locations. Anyhow, we clambered up on the lions (you have to!), and took pictures…

We then made a headlong sprint down to see Buckingham Palace, which left Lauril rather disappointed. I think she said “That’s it?”. On the way there we passed the rather dubiously named Minstry of Justice; I paused a few seconds to take a photo of the sign – apparently the Security Guard was unimpressed, but we made our escape before he could say “No photographing public places”. It continues to make me worry where this country is headed; but hey. I don’t plan to be here that long.

We spent some time snapping shots of Buckpal, despite Lauril’s lack of impressedness; the fading light was quite fun to play with. I spent some time playing with the monochrome setting on my camera :)

Long exposures and water are also fun to play with…

We walked back through St. James Park; pausing to spend several minutes attempting to photograph big ben; the lightness of the sky and the darkness of the park some how prevented me from getting anything but blur. Even with propping my camera against things.

Having trundled through the park we found the London Eye glowing away…. very pretty it was too.

And then, on the way to find food we wandered through Trafalgar Square again and the protest was doing giant puppetry things which were incredible to watch. Had we not been hungry, I certainly could have stayed and watched for a long time.

So, then we sorted out Lauril’s need to try Ale; Kathryn and I partook in fine Cider (incidentally, aren’t pubs much nicer now they’re smoke free?), which was impressively effective mostly due to a lack of food – so we made good our escape and headed to EMM – where we had some shockingly reasonably priced food (there was such a lot of it).

And then we headed home…

’twas a good day…

I’ll write about nights some other time.

KateWE

Kate's a human mostly built out of spite and overcoming transphobia-racism-and-other-bullshit. Although increasingly right-wing bigots would say otherwise. So she's either a human or a lizard in disguise sent to destroy all of humanity. Either way, it's all good.