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Published: February 27th 2007
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Thursday
OK, arrived in London (on time) in the freezing snowy weather. I headed for Covent Garden, and got slightly sidetracked by a
large glass box taking up quite a lot of space, with many photographers clustered round it! It turned out to be
Richard Branson's Virgin Media "Launch Lounge". I went back out at lunchtime, and saw more frenzied activity going on - Branson was with "someone famous", who it took me a while to work out was 'Matt from Busted/I'm a Celebrity...', so I thought I'd take some photos too! Having wandered off to get my lunch, I came back and there was another celeb in there - took me a while then too, then he spoke - it was Greg Rusedki, playing with a
Wii (I first heard of one of these when I was half-asleep, and kept hearing people talking about playing with "wee")! There was lots of activity all day, but that was all I saw - although the papers (unsurprisingly) focused on
Dita von Teese the next day - to be fair, I think she had arrived in a horse/cart to put Branson into his box (I remembered who she was from a photo my housemate
Andy Stubbs had had published!
All traffic had
Took me a while to work out...
But it's Matt from Busted/I'm a Celebrity Get Me out Of Here winner seemed to be working OK, until I arrived at the
London Transport Museum in time for my appointment, to find that others had had trouble getting in. However, Museum staff are great, and arrangements had been made for someone else to help me, so I spent an enjoyable first morning looking through the poster database (it should be accessible from the website within 2007, hopefully) for WW1 and WW2 posters to use in a 5000 word chapter they are expecting to commission from me as part of an exciting (well, I think it is) book on
London Transport posters. In the afternoon, was into the LTM Library - small, but perfectly formed. Official commissioning and finishing of chapter will be noted on this travelblog, as I'll need to complete before travels!
Meeting with the lovely Justine in the evening, back to to 'the hood'/Stret-ham for a lovely "French Night" - in keeping with the travel theme (with also the lovely Matt, and more of their lovely friends)! So, what does a "French Night" involve... well it involves red wine, food with French ingredients (including Tarte au Citron and Eclairs - top French cuisine from... um - Sainsbury's I think!), and a dodgy French
And now for Greg Rusedski
Let's play tennis on the Wii... film. In this case
The Hussar on the Roof with Olivier Martinez... bets were laid as to how soon there would be nudity, as that appears to be typical. No one bet past 25 minutes, but it was, unbelievably - 2 hours and 1 minute... but appropriately gratuitous.
Friday
Friday was back in the Museum, back on the database in the morning, and back in the Library in the afternoon. A lot of interesting material collated and I have more ideas for the chapter. Back to the flat for an evening of chilling out and crashing out early (a couple of real day's work - it's tiring you know!).
Saturday
Saturday was more getting up late, chilling out with entertainment TV (most of which was on
Anna Nicole Smith's recent death. By the afternoon Justine & I thought we needed some fresh air, so headed off for a very challenging film
Music & Lyrics, with Hugh Grant stretching himself to the limit as an actor (as he had earlier commented on
Top Gear). We knew exactly what was coming, but it was the kind of 'cotton wool' we were both in the mood was - although we couldn't persuade Matt out - sending him off to buy
more lovely food (Matt/Justine are BRILLIANT with food - cooking, serving and eating it!).
Saturday evening we dragged ourselves off the sofas and headed for
22 Below, a Cocktail bar near
Liberty, which was a compact venue, but nice... had a couple of Vodaka/Cranberry juices, which were nice - and we managed to find a sofa in a corner to sit and chat and people watch, which was great fun. It was a friend of Matt's leaving do, so he continued to circulate! We took a great risk on leaving - leaving it to the last Tube... hearts beating as we raced for the train (well, not really!) - but we made it. BTW - if you've not heard of
Oyster Cards by this point - well worth getting. £3 deposit required, and then you re-fill them at the bigger automatic vending points (using the yellow touch points to recharge - along with money of course!). No hanging around queueing for a ticket, and the fares are about half the price... it was definitely useful that night as we shot through the entry gates!
Sunday
Sunday - always a day for lie-ins (why do you think I usually go to
22 Below
Estate Agents speak "compact but very desirable for the 'young professional' market. the evening service at Church?!)... out in time to head across to
Tate Britain to meet Chris (another lovely M&J friend), in order to go to the
Hogarth Exhibition, which was interesting.... although I am slightly odd in that I prefer to look at how the exhibits are displayed, and how people are looking at them, rather than at the exhibits themselves (although I did!)... not sure that anyone agreed with me that one of
Hogarth's self-portraits looked rather like
Ross Kemp! I DID do art at GCSE level, but since then my study of art has rather been in relation to graphic design movements of the early 20th Century for my
PhD thesis.
Into the
Morpeth Arms nearby for a bit of traditional pub grub (Beer, J20s, Chips - that kind of thing) - we did see some good looking food coming out, and the chips were good, but we were heading for
Oishii for some Chinese food later and wanted to keep the space - NICE food, I had chicken satay (yum!), quarter duck pancakes with Oishii salad (which was a bit too much actually)!
Monday
On the Monday, back to LTM, didn't realise til later in the day that LTM had
Tate Britain
For the Hogarth exhibition. closely avoided being in the
blackout zone, and had another productive day in the Library. Met with Justine for a hot chocolate round the corner (plenty of options for that in Covent Garden) at the end of the day, then headed back to Winchester. All round, a satisfying visit!
P.S. Is there a bet in this entry on how many times I can write "lovely" in one sentence?!
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