Ye Olde London Towne

Pussy cats, pussy cats,
Where have you been?
We've been to London to visit the Witchy.
Pussy cats, pussy cats,
What did you do there?

Well we arrived finally, over an hour late again - thanks to easyJet. They seem to be missing about 10min per flight per day, so if you get an evening flight the series of delays pretty much just gets dumped on you. Our flight home was over an hour late as well :-(
It almost seems worth buying real tickets with a real airline so that you fly on time, get fed and watered not to mention arrive at a decent airport.

Julia was nice enough to meet us at the bus stop, which seemed a lot further away from her place than it used to be. But we had a couple of drinks and played with the killer-remote-controlled-self-inflating-my-god-its-HUGE-airbed before crashing for the evening.

On Saturday morning (just) we decided to be highly civilised and after a brunch of crêpes we went for a wander in the park (Hampstead Heath):

Enjoyed a couple (or four) cleansing ales over a spot of chess and a quick round of pool:

Then it was off to our main reason for being in London this time round: Witchy's 25th Birthday - again ;-) Complete with the drinking, the stumbling home and the rowdy 3am singing:


Our hung over selves needed a slight culture fix so we went to check out Shakespeare's Othello at the Globe. This was pretty cool - though the skinny wooden seats do lend themselves to a brisk cushion hire business.

Sunday afternoon and Monday we hung around with Cat, Clive and Zoya. We also got to meet Clive's Dad Noel while we were there as he is visiting from South Africa.


A note from the wife's corner:
* Road rage (def.) - happens when a bunch of soon-to-be-more-drunken-louts cross a quiet little street in West Hamstead, and right at that moment some silly man in a 4WD does a right hand turn in their direction without giving way. This is followed by a number of loud and needless to say Umgangssprache (ie. common speech) remarks and some slapping of the above mentioned vehicle. At which point to everyone's surprise the driver stops the engine, rushes out of the car and proceeds to kick and hit our "vikingly" males (no names will be mentioned, but YOU know who you are). Of course our males "не дали себя в обиду" (ie. didn't let the little man show them who was going to be on top) and retaliated. All of this provided much amusement and education for both parties :) Ahh... boys will be boys.

A clarifying note from the husband's corner:
* Silly Twat (def.) - some fool who didn't even bother to get his license from a Fruit Loops box, cuts off a bus and so as to not get run down by said bus (as they are a bit biggish in London) goes for what he thinks is the soft option and nearly runs down some pedestrians in this silly little people mover otherwise known as a "girl's car". He didn't manage to hit anyone, and the only reason he managed to kick anyone was that some woman (no names will be mentioned, but YOU know who you are) grabbed onto some man's arm so that said man couldn't grab said twat by the not yet said foot and land him on his silly fat arse. Hopefully the silly twat has still learned that pedestrians, even in West Hampstead, are not the soft option ;-)