Grey-tinged London

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My memories of London are grey-tinged: gray buildings, grey skies and black snot. But none of that matters when there are plenty of things to do, friends to see and pubs to frequent.

Tim and Abi were nice enough to put us up for a couple of nights at their place in Balham. They introduced us to an English TV series called "The Inbetweeners", which follows the misadventures of four foul-mouthed sixth-form boys. George was impressed with how "realistic" it was, which I found a little shocking. Maybe British teenagers are especially vile - I'm sure Kiwi boys were much nicer. George reckons they were just pretending while girls were around. Anyway, George loved it so much we brought the DVDs back to New Zealand, and now all our expat-Brit guy friends are walking around using words like "clunge". Brilliant.

We went to a couple of museums we hadn't been to before. The Museum of London was interesting, it told the history of London city since before the Romans lived there. The Victoria & Albert was much bigger than we expected. The fashion section was cool, showing how fashions had changed over the years as new materials and techniques became available. They also had an impressive collection of jewellery. The Theatre & Performance section was my favourite, with a Shakespeare First Folio, models of stage sets and a fabulous collection of costumes. Definitely worth a look for anyone interested in performing arts.

We climbed to the top of the dome of St Pauls Cathedral and stayed on for Evensong. George loves church choral music, having sung with choirs for years. The singing was good, but having been forced to go to church when I was young, sitting through church services makes me bored and fidgety.

Near the Museum of London, we found a nice little park to have lunch. Along the wall of one of the buildings lining the park was a Memorial to Heroic Self-Sacrifice. It was very moving reading the tablets detailing the heroic deeds of ordinary people who had altruistically gone to the aid of someone in peril, and lost their lives as a result.

I had my first-ever Pimms & Lemonade with fruit bobbing around in it. I was told it was an English summer favourite. It was nice, but would have been much nicer at a garden party on a sunny day, rather than a dingy pub (staffed by a Kiwi, of course!) on a rainy London "summer" day. I got soaked to the skin running round Soho with my Kiwi friend Anita, searching for a restaurant that I think was just called "Bistro". We literally ran round in circles, but it was worth the effort as the food was fantastic. It was great to catch up, and hopefully it won't be years before we do it again.

With the wedding on Saturday, we couldn't afford to have a huge night on Friday. We met some friends of Tim & Abby in Balham and went to the Balham Bowls Club, a pub that felt like an old working man's club. The decor was shabby in a self-consciously cool way, but they made fantastic sausage rolls. The boys played snooker while the girls drank and gossiped, and I tried not to fall asleep in my chair (jet lag's a bugger!)

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