Yes, today’s one of those rare days when I’m writing original content. I’ve been reading a fair bit lately (well, one book, but reading it quite a lot) and we’ve also been watching Men In Trees / The L Word / Father Ted and the odd episode of Pushing Daisys. I’ve been watching House and Yes Minister as well, which just shows how little work you can get done if you really try.
I’ve been feeling though, the lack of creativity in my life. I don’t *mean* to watch TV when I come home, but quite often I’m just exhausted and sit down thinking ‘oh, I’ll just watch one show while I have some tea’ and the the exhaustedness which was following me home gets through the door and catches up with me. And that’s kind of it, I’m stuffed. There’s still plenty left to do around here, but we’re holding off on the kitchen until I’m less in debt. Plan is to tackle the two bedrooms which are (hopefully) just a touch of plaster and some paint. Somewhat less trauma than removing an entire concrete floor and having it relaid, a doorway bricked up, a new doorway opened and so on.
But in the name of doing something nice for a change (instead of, for example, sitting around the house reading stuff on the internet, watching TV or reading – all of which are pleasant enough but one does need a break, and it’s nice to get out with my beloved) we headed in to London.
The plan, such as it was, was to tackle some of the time-out treasure hunts, spend some time lurking in bookshops and get something to eat…Â
Kathryn had yet to see Foyles, and wanted to do so, and so after a nice little lunch in the Foyles Cafe we started our afternoon with a tour of Foyles. Yeah. See, we’re both slow in bookshops when they’re tiny. Foyles used to be the largest bookstore in the world; it’s probably still the largest in the UK. We entered the store around 2pm and left around 5, carrying only 2 books… The list of books we could have bought was huge; I could happily spend thousands of pounds there.
Which would of course, be foolish. When would I have time to read that many books? But hey.
It being slightly later than perhaps intended, we headed off to do the Literary treasure hunt. It wasn’t really a hunt, as such, in that they basically tell you exactly where what you’re looking for is, and what it is. And apart from a few slightly clunky bits of navigation, it worked well. It was, however, nice to see a bit of London that, well, I’ve not really seen since my childhood, despite being really very cold…
We also ran into a couple of people doing the hunt themselves, although they were doing all 5 and we – in the end – only did one (it was bloody freezing).
Having satisfied ourselves that CC&K would be open for desert we headed to Palm Court for dinner; supping on fine cocktails (well, one each) and eating fine food. Being rich would actually be quite handy.
Finally, we finshed the day in CC&K, and headed home to bed.
…then on Saturday we got a phone call in the morning – the wedding dress place we wanted to visit was open that morning – my mother was coming with the hope that we’d get to go visit it, and so we quickly made an appointment and headed in. It’s a weird experience being fitted for a dress. I’ve never been fitted for anything in my life, not by anyone else, and so being prodded and poked and squashed into a dress was quite a novel experience. But, the women there were great – they didn’t make us feel bad for not having much in the way of a budget; they let us try on loads of dresses, and my mum’s and their advice combined to get us two good possible combinations.
Obviously we’re going to try some others too; but that first experience was important – it’s quite unnerving to be in your undies in front of lots of people you don’t know who’re pulling you into dresses…Â And in the end it was quite fun; and Kathryn looked truly stunning. Even I didn’t look too shabby :)
We then had a chilled out day at home – sorting out music and french lessons for my mum and Parmita. Today’s been a chilly day; the snow falling steadily all mornind, but distressingly not settling even a little…. I’m hoping for more… but a peaceful day of paperwork and snuggling lies ahead.
