The boy and I went to London for the last day of Spring. We got the 12:30pm train to Moorgate and then changed on the Hammersmith line to Paddington, where we sat and had lunch in the Paddington basin. I had promised him, more for myself that we would find statues of Paddington bear, dotted around the place but, we didn't. It wasn't until we were well on our way to Hyde park that we found one in an unlikely place with 3 statues of paparazzi dogs. A rather unusual looking guy photo bombed my picture which aggravated me and there was nothing I could do about it. A decision was made to find TFL bikes but that came too late until we were at the top of the park, I had planned to hire them earlier so we could ride from the station but changed my mind, Lucas was unphased at this point. Once we reached the hire station a woman pulled up on a bike and docked it, I asked her if the bike was sound and she said yes. This turned out to be untrue, no bell, the cage rattled and it was noisey. It didn't matter.
We rode into Hyde park and played some games whilst riding, and passed the peddle boats, the problem being we were very far from a docking station, we stopped and contemplated the hire and then looked to see how far the station was away from us and it was too far, so we continued. We free falled down the Mall, saluted passed Buckingham palace and rode passed Green park. We docked the bikes at Westminster and headed towards the supermarket to get some drinks. In Parliment square was a rejoin the EU demo, so we went stood in amongst our brethren for 10 minutes to listen to a brief speech, then headed up Whitehall to Trafalgar. As we were forced to listen to a show tune demonstration going on in the square, it was loud and not our thing, we headed into Leicester Square to look for dinner. Neither of us were particularly hungry but Chinese was the only thing we could agree on. We found a really dodgey buffet and regretted it. It was the only blip on the day.
After wandering the streets of Soho, we suddenly by magic appeared in the M&Ms store, once I saw the price of the cups, Scrooge made an appearance and I promised Lucas we'd get them from a supermarket later. I missed out the onion rings we bought at Leicester Square, that was fun. The next order of business was to make our way up Shaftesbury avenue, with a stop a the guitar shops on Denmark street, a rite of passage for any guitarist and we replaced the missing string on Lucas' guitar.
We arrived at the museum of illiusions a little early but the kind guy let us in anyway. We were treated to an amazing array of wonderful visuals mind tricks and we spent a lot the time laughing and giggling at the fun and how silly we looked. It is well worth a visit, I am not going into any detail here.
My feet and Lucas' were killing us both at this point and a misunderstanding about visiting the London eye was had mainly because we headed back towards it. We only made it to Westminster bridge and I suggested we got on a couple of bikes and rode back to Moorgate to get the train home. When we arrived at the station, our train was waiting for us, we found our seat, Lucas listened to his tunes and I read my favourite book. The section of my book (and I had forgotten about this, it's been a few years since I read it) found our two main characters walking through Hyde park on a sunny hot day!!! Having gone past the section we had. What an amazing day, with amazing company.
Waking up on my 54th birthday, I went into the living to start the day with a coffee. Since it was my day, I chose to work on this website and do some coding and wrote the first section of this blog. Lucas got up and handed my lovely presents. Then we had breakfast, got ready and then left for our annual trip to jungle falls crazy golf. Lucas played the best game he has ever played with skill. I honestly thought for the first time he had beaten me. One hole he completed in 9 shots that sent his score rocketing. I won by one point which was dissapointing, I was hoping he had won. In four weeks we will visit Cornwall and play the Land's end course and he had better beat me.
After the game, we went home and then drove out to Southend. When we arrived, we parked up and headed to the pier to walk the longest pleasure pier in the world. At the end of the pier is a life boat station with a large bell. I rang the bell on the recommendation of some Ladies sitting on the bench nearby. At the shore, the arcade beckoned and we spent money our respective areas, Lucas the claw machines and myself, the bandits. Nethier of us won. We headed off to get some chips and then got the car to head east to the Harvester. There was still a lot of time to kill, so we went to walk along the beach and then play frisbee. Once we arrived at the Harvester, we were greeted by the manager and greeted was not the correct term, he was blunt and a word that sounded similar. Despite me producing evidence and confirmation of my booking, he had no record. We were seated at a table I didn't book, inside. We waited 20 minutes before the server came to take our order after I requested for this to happen twice. Then had to wait a further 15 minutes to get our drinks after I had to get up and ask. The food was average. Overall the weekend and the day was extremely fun and the company made the day.