Sunday the 23rd was another fine sunny day, and we piled back into the French tractor for another nice drive thought the countryside... Unsurprisingly we were off to another British country pub, this one in a village in the vicinity of High Wycombe, for a gathering of my lovely's mother's family and the largest gathering of my future in-laws so far. There were several special events to celebrate including recent arrival, a recent wedding, and of course a certain engagement.
It was great to see everyone and finally meet a couple more relatives who we had not been able to catch up with last time around. As always everyone was lovely and I feel very much like a member of the family already, albeit a slightly larger, less stylish, funny-talking one. A very nice lunch of roast and English ale was followed, naturally, by a walk in the outdoors... our large gaggle followed the path down out of the village with various dogs in tow (very doggy people these) and popped through a gap in a hedge and headed off across the open fields. In other parts of the world this would probably get you shot at by enraged farmers, but in the UK this is classed as recreation. It was a nice spot for a ramble though, and we watched as several gliders rode the thermals across the rolling green countryside, sharing the sky with numerous Red Kites, a stunning British bird of prey recently bred back from near extinction.
The day was over really all too quickly, it would have been nice to spend an evening or more catching up with everyone properly as they are a smart, funny and interesting bunch, and all characters. We will have to organize something longer next trip. Fortunately won't be too long until we can see some of them again.
Once back in Croydon we were hard pressed to decide on what to do for dinner... as much as the delights of local Croydon cuisine were inviting (actually there are some nice places in Croydon despite what some might say) we couldn't make our minds up re what we felt like. Eventually not being able to think of anything else I decided we should eat at Byrons at least once more while we could, and a quick check found one about 20 min away in a nearby suburb. It was getting fairly late, but we would make it.
After a considerable time winding through the residential streets of south London we got somewhere near where we were supposed to be, except that the interwebs pointed us to a very closed shopping mall. Confusion abounded between driver and navigator as we went into the deserted carparking building then back out, and spent a bit of time driving around the rather annoying one way system of central Bromley hunting for our dinner. Eventually we parked down the road and started walking around the pedestrian mall before turning back and trying the shopping complex... sure enough though all the lights were dimmed and shops closed the automatic doors opened, and in a very post-apocalyptic zombie movie moment we wandered through the dead complex and out the other side. There in a park area out the back we found several restaurants on a terrace including our Byrons. We got there just in time for the girl who appeared to be sweeping up to tell us they were closing in 30 minutes. More than a tad frustrated at this point we decided we didn't want to have to have to scoff our dinner and elected to look elsewhere.
There was still life in the place next door, the interestingly named and decorated 'Giraffe World Kitchen' which claimed to serve "international foods" and had a menu featuring a bit of all sorts from all round the planet. Apparently the founders travel the world and find things they like and add them to the menu. Or so the marketing tells us. I was somewhat skeptical, but we hoped at least we would find something to suit both of us. As it turned out, unsurprisingly, it was pretty terrible. And not just because the Eastern European, English language challenged waiter brought me the wrong meal, which I could not be bothered sending back, realizing that the right one was probably going to be awful anyway. I suspect few if any of the cooks had ever been to any of the places they were cooking food from, or possibly even had authentic versions of what they were cooking. Having worked so hard for our Byrons it was a highly unsatisfactory result. We decided to cut our losses and head home without dessert.
The next day was Monday, and we packed up our bits and dropped the rental car off and headed in to Mayfair, as already covered previously...
Sunday, April 30, 2017
Friday, April 28, 2017
Posts coming thick and fast folks
...hope you are keeping up. And photos soon! Eventually!
Speaking of Scroobius and sticking with a UK theme, today on the headphones is Ghostpoet who reminds me a little of Roots Manuva, which is a good thing. And he did some stuff with Massive Attack so he can only be awesome. And shortly some Burial because when in Rome... (Act Like The Vandals...) (Sorry, so many Obscure References they are writing themselves, I just can't help myself).
Where was we me li'il lovelies? So by now in recapping it's Saturday last, not too far back, and we are in Croydon. I am most proud of myself for leaving the flat (which, I am sure I mentioned, is the 2 bedroom place of dad-in-law to be that he used to live in when working sometimes in London) and walking to the train station without being even a little bit murdered, and catching a train waaaay across the big town to Earls Court. My companion meanwhile headed off to catch up with a friend recently moved to London. I was lonesome, but most happy to be attending the London Antique Arms Fair, held in the luxurious (erm...) facilities of the Ibis hotel.
The conference room of the hotel was packed with vendors from all over the country meaning a fantastic array of weaponry and some armour and other bits to look at... Unfortunately being packed with dealers obviously all the prices were fairly premium and there were not exactly a lot of bargains to be had. If there is one thing I have learned lately it is that dealers in antique and vintage stuff at the moment are riding a massive wave of profits from the recent surge in popularity of "old stuff" in general from many eras, and boy will they happily help any schmuck rid themselves of money. As I overheard one dealer saying to someone in conversation while I was in his shop "Oh don't ever listen to the bullish!t dealers spin to customers about being collectors and enthusiasts themselves, that is utter rubbish, dealers are only in it for one thing... their sole aim is not to generously help you, a fellow enthusiast, find a dream item at a bargain price, it is to tell you what you want to hear and take your money".
Among the items on sale were some very nice pieces but few I would call truely amazing... I would imagine any true gems go quickly to rich collectors and spend little time with dealers. One chap did have a nine barrel volley rifle that was the subject of much attention as they are pretty rare. He was asking £37,000 for it. I didn't bother to talk to the specialist Japanese sword dealers as those are of course worth moonbeams now. There were plenty of other bits for upwards of £10,000. Many lovely pairs of cased pistols in the £10k - £20k range... But again, these were not show stopping sets only average ones. I was certainly born rather a bit too late to be interested in this sort of thing, values across the board have soared in recent years. Guys who have been collecting since the 80s and 90s are now getting very rich off parting with their investment.
My personal items of envy from the show (ok I wanted most of the stuff at the show, but there are a couple of bits I certainly want in particular) were considerably cheaper than those mentioned above but dearer than I need to be considering. Funnily both were from the impressive stocks of West Street Antiques who we visited in Dorking. And as already alluded to, if you want that sort of stuff you need to find it in places like auctions, not pay obscene markups to dealers. The West Street guy was nice enough and good to chat to, but they trade off their name as a very well known and established dealer... If rich folks want to buy from them for peace of mind etc then good on them, but I am not paying them double what something is worth for that privilege. The hard part of course is finding that stuff before the dealers do.
I wandered back to the train and was again most proud of myself for managing to get THREE trains and tubes across town to Angel... Albeit with detailed instructions from my helper. Angel is, by the way, an area, not a person or indeed celestial being. Once reunited with my lovely we looked at more stalls and antique shops and vintage stuff. There was some good stuff, a lot of rubbish. Basically people will try to sell you any bit of stuff older than about ten years now and try to claim it is a classic vintage something somehow. We ended up looking for late lunch and finding Byrons which is a burger chain of unknown origins but their food was super good... Current special a Korean theme with Kimcheese burger and loaded fries and spicy Korean chicken wings etc... Washed down with a Salted Caramel and Bourbon shake... Great stuff.
From here we headed to Bond St where there was a half-hearted attempt by my lovely to find some shoes in aforementioned big stores for a special event...we eventually gave up and wandered Soho, visiting the pub George Orwell used to drink at, The Dog and Duck, and finding an amazing butchery selling ultra-high end cured meats including little cardboard cones of cubed offcuts. In this age of idiotic food trends and PCness it was heart warming to see a mother treating her kid to a cone of cubed meat. We got some too, it was awesome. Being Saturday, and I think World Record Day or something, the area was heaving with trendy people and there was a street party underway a couple of blocks over, so we found a quiet Vietnamese restaurant with a spare table for tea, and it was good. From there, various rail lines back to Croydon. Job done.
Speaking of Scroobius and sticking with a UK theme, today on the headphones is Ghostpoet who reminds me a little of Roots Manuva, which is a good thing. And he did some stuff with Massive Attack so he can only be awesome. And shortly some Burial because when in Rome... (Act Like The Vandals...) (Sorry, so many Obscure References they are writing themselves, I just can't help myself).
Where was we me li'il lovelies? So by now in recapping it's Saturday last, not too far back, and we are in Croydon. I am most proud of myself for leaving the flat (which, I am sure I mentioned, is the 2 bedroom place of dad-in-law to be that he used to live in when working sometimes in London) and walking to the train station without being even a little bit murdered, and catching a train waaaay across the big town to Earls Court. My companion meanwhile headed off to catch up with a friend recently moved to London. I was lonesome, but most happy to be attending the London Antique Arms Fair, held in the luxurious (erm...) facilities of the Ibis hotel.
The conference room of the hotel was packed with vendors from all over the country meaning a fantastic array of weaponry and some armour and other bits to look at... Unfortunately being packed with dealers obviously all the prices were fairly premium and there were not exactly a lot of bargains to be had. If there is one thing I have learned lately it is that dealers in antique and vintage stuff at the moment are riding a massive wave of profits from the recent surge in popularity of "old stuff" in general from many eras, and boy will they happily help any schmuck rid themselves of money. As I overheard one dealer saying to someone in conversation while I was in his shop "Oh don't ever listen to the bullish!t dealers spin to customers about being collectors and enthusiasts themselves, that is utter rubbish, dealers are only in it for one thing... their sole aim is not to generously help you, a fellow enthusiast, find a dream item at a bargain price, it is to tell you what you want to hear and take your money".
Among the items on sale were some very nice pieces but few I would call truely amazing... I would imagine any true gems go quickly to rich collectors and spend little time with dealers. One chap did have a nine barrel volley rifle that was the subject of much attention as they are pretty rare. He was asking £37,000 for it. I didn't bother to talk to the specialist Japanese sword dealers as those are of course worth moonbeams now. There were plenty of other bits for upwards of £10,000. Many lovely pairs of cased pistols in the £10k - £20k range... But again, these were not show stopping sets only average ones. I was certainly born rather a bit too late to be interested in this sort of thing, values across the board have soared in recent years. Guys who have been collecting since the 80s and 90s are now getting very rich off parting with their investment.
My personal items of envy from the show (ok I wanted most of the stuff at the show, but there are a couple of bits I certainly want in particular) were considerably cheaper than those mentioned above but dearer than I need to be considering. Funnily both were from the impressive stocks of West Street Antiques who we visited in Dorking. And as already alluded to, if you want that sort of stuff you need to find it in places like auctions, not pay obscene markups to dealers. The West Street guy was nice enough and good to chat to, but they trade off their name as a very well known and established dealer... If rich folks want to buy from them for peace of mind etc then good on them, but I am not paying them double what something is worth for that privilege. The hard part of course is finding that stuff before the dealers do.
I wandered back to the train and was again most proud of myself for managing to get THREE trains and tubes across town to Angel... Albeit with detailed instructions from my helper. Angel is, by the way, an area, not a person or indeed celestial being. Once reunited with my lovely we looked at more stalls and antique shops and vintage stuff. There was some good stuff, a lot of rubbish. Basically people will try to sell you any bit of stuff older than about ten years now and try to claim it is a classic vintage something somehow. We ended up looking for late lunch and finding Byrons which is a burger chain of unknown origins but their food was super good... Current special a Korean theme with Kimcheese burger and loaded fries and spicy Korean chicken wings etc... Washed down with a Salted Caramel and Bourbon shake... Great stuff.
From here we headed to Bond St where there was a half-hearted attempt by my lovely to find some shoes in aforementioned big stores for a special event...we eventually gave up and wandered Soho, visiting the pub George Orwell used to drink at, The Dog and Duck, and finding an amazing butchery selling ultra-high end cured meats including little cardboard cones of cubed offcuts. In this age of idiotic food trends and PCness it was heart warming to see a mother treating her kid to a cone of cubed meat. We got some too, it was awesome. Being Saturday, and I think World Record Day or something, the area was heaving with trendy people and there was a street party underway a couple of blocks over, so we found a quiet Vietnamese restaurant with a spare table for tea, and it was good. From there, various rail lines back to Croydon. Job done.
Yes that does say £25 per 100gm
How is Scroobius Pip
... Not on the list? Good grief I have been listening to him since 2006 or something
Actually has a bunch of the Obscure Musical Reference list dropped off at some point? It looks shorter than it should be for some reason....
Actually has a bunch of the Obscure Musical Reference list dropped off at some point? It looks shorter than it should be for some reason....
So back to the recap
Easter weekend was Cornwall and the lovely town of Falmouth which I mostly covered off last trip. A nice spot with some of the best weather in this part of the world. Quite a long way from most places but then that is part of the charm. Seaside and sunshine. What's not to like.
There is an ad for Icelandic yoghurt on TV. As you do. Also the subject of much conversation, shows called 'Peter Kay's Car Share' and 'Line of Duty' which are big things here currently. And baking shows of course. I see by funny conincidence that Mark Lanegan has a new album out tomorrow or next day, very well reviewed. Currently have a strong hankering for some Tom Waits who is eternally genius. And Tricky, I have not listened to Tricky in ages. I have not heard any good music since being here, haven't found a good radio station in our travels. I am not sure why I still occasionally click on YouTube links that they seem to think are somehow relevant to the music I like... I just wasted most of the time I was going to use to write stuff trawling through bad music. The Internet was and sometimes still is a great way for new artists to get their music out there, but by goodness you have to wade through a load of rubbish to find it. I got so caught up I forgot who I was going to Obscure Reference. So try some Flying Lotus, he is well talented. Personally I ended up listening to Minor Threat but that is not going to appeal to everyone out there. And I find Straight Edge people unbearably self important, elitist and ironically conformist, just like the people they claim to hate... Funny that.
If none of that made sense to you then ignore it and read on.
As mentioned we headed north on Tuesday the 18th and found some ancestors and nosed around house and church yard. Should really have thought to get in touch in advance and see if we could better look around the place but didn't know when or if we would get there. Church was unlocked so that was good, had a look inside.
Drove around looking at places the forebears would have kicked around and farmed and possibly visited. We ended up in the village of Rock, which is not something you get to say often... I thought the name would have an intriguing story behind it. It didn't really. 'Rock' is apparently derived from 'Oak' so I expect at some stage there was a tree of significance in the area. English: does not always make sense. In Rock we stayed with family, spending a lovely evening with grandparents-in-law and dinner at another very old pub. Next day via more family visiting we returned to Chichester... The day after that to Croydon via Dorking, while there we ate lunch in a cafe that was once the house of one of the original passengers on the Mayflower... He was a shoe salesman and apparently fairly well respected part of the community, and he moved out and took his wife and two kids over to America with the founding fathers, for business rather than religious reasons... Bit of a go-getter he was... Off to make his fortune etc. They all died fairly quickly thereafter, except his young daughter who grew up to be the ancestor of many famous US offspring. So happy ending for some of them I suppose.
Once in Croydon Thursday evening we quickly decided not to be in Croydon any more and jumped a train into town and revisited one of the rather good pubs in Borough Market for a couple of Guinness and cider, enjoying good people-watching in the busy after work drinking crowd before a rather nice seafood feed at one of the surrounding restaurants. As much as all my new family-in-law are exceedingly lovely and kind to us it was nice to have an evening together to catch up given it was now a fair while since I left home.
We hit the Tower of London Friday to avoid weekend crowds and while busy, it was not too bad given it was also school holidays. Another impressive and ancient place with the oldest bits also nearing 1000 years old. I was most jealous of their collection of shiny stuff including not one or two but forty heavy cavalry swords casually on display in a wall rack along with, obviously, many other things both expected and not... Like a 400 year old set of samurai armour good as the day it was made, which was presented to the King of the time by the Japanese ruler.
The Crown Jewels were of course every bit as impressive as you would expect. We ended with a tour by a Beefeater, the traditional Tower guards, all of whom are retired military personnel who must have at least 22years of exemplary service before possibly being lucky enough to be allowed to live and work in the Tower complex. Our guide clearly missed his calling as a comedian/actor when he went to the armed forces because his whole tour was extremely well delivered with many interesting anecdotes and had the large crowd laughing from beginning to end... Although from the overheard comments of the various Americans they were obviously somewhat taken aback by his blunt and sarcasm-heavy delivery. Which of course made it even better.
The Tower took a full afternoon even with a "short" 30 min queue for the Jewels (apparently 3-4 hours is not unheard of on a busy day), these things are worth doing properly. Looking for a handy place for a feed we found a popular Greek restaurant on the banks of the Thames, where we ordered a range of Greek specialties which were all delicious, and a bottle of a popular Greek wine which proved a good lesson on why to stick to Greek food and get your wine from elsewhere. Hilariously (?) we also found ourselves seated at a prime table directly in front of a Greek duo playing traditional tunes on guitar and mandolin (?) with a drum machine accompanying, meaning we had to yell almost our entire dinner conversation and effectively eliminating what little hearing I had remaining in my left ear. The staff clapped and whooped and dragged groups of women up to dance in circles to the tune from Lock Stock (Zorba?).. They were all very enthusiastic and the old man played his ornately inlaid mandolin with great skill, which was cool to watch, although would have been better to hear from about 50m further away. But the food was good enough to make it tolerable. We retired by tube and train to Croydon and sleep
There is an ad for Icelandic yoghurt on TV. As you do. Also the subject of much conversation, shows called 'Peter Kay's Car Share' and 'Line of Duty' which are big things here currently. And baking shows of course. I see by funny conincidence that Mark Lanegan has a new album out tomorrow or next day, very well reviewed. Currently have a strong hankering for some Tom Waits who is eternally genius. And Tricky, I have not listened to Tricky in ages. I have not heard any good music since being here, haven't found a good radio station in our travels. I am not sure why I still occasionally click on YouTube links that they seem to think are somehow relevant to the music I like... I just wasted most of the time I was going to use to write stuff trawling through bad music. The Internet was and sometimes still is a great way for new artists to get their music out there, but by goodness you have to wade through a load of rubbish to find it. I got so caught up I forgot who I was going to Obscure Reference. So try some Flying Lotus, he is well talented. Personally I ended up listening to Minor Threat but that is not going to appeal to everyone out there. And I find Straight Edge people unbearably self important, elitist and ironically conformist, just like the people they claim to hate... Funny that.
If none of that made sense to you then ignore it and read on.
As mentioned we headed north on Tuesday the 18th and found some ancestors and nosed around house and church yard. Should really have thought to get in touch in advance and see if we could better look around the place but didn't know when or if we would get there. Church was unlocked so that was good, had a look inside.
Drove around looking at places the forebears would have kicked around and farmed and possibly visited. We ended up in the village of Rock, which is not something you get to say often... I thought the name would have an intriguing story behind it. It didn't really. 'Rock' is apparently derived from 'Oak' so I expect at some stage there was a tree of significance in the area. English: does not always make sense. In Rock we stayed with family, spending a lovely evening with grandparents-in-law and dinner at another very old pub. Next day via more family visiting we returned to Chichester... The day after that to Croydon via Dorking, while there we ate lunch in a cafe that was once the house of one of the original passengers on the Mayflower... He was a shoe salesman and apparently fairly well respected part of the community, and he moved out and took his wife and two kids over to America with the founding fathers, for business rather than religious reasons... Bit of a go-getter he was... Off to make his fortune etc. They all died fairly quickly thereafter, except his young daughter who grew up to be the ancestor of many famous US offspring. So happy ending for some of them I suppose.
Dorking. Why not.
Once in Croydon Thursday evening we quickly decided not to be in Croydon any more and jumped a train into town and revisited one of the rather good pubs in Borough Market for a couple of Guinness and cider, enjoying good people-watching in the busy after work drinking crowd before a rather nice seafood feed at one of the surrounding restaurants. As much as all my new family-in-law are exceedingly lovely and kind to us it was nice to have an evening together to catch up given it was now a fair while since I left home.
We hit the Tower of London Friday to avoid weekend crowds and while busy, it was not too bad given it was also school holidays. Another impressive and ancient place with the oldest bits also nearing 1000 years old. I was most jealous of their collection of shiny stuff including not one or two but forty heavy cavalry swords casually on display in a wall rack along with, obviously, many other things both expected and not... Like a 400 year old set of samurai armour good as the day it was made, which was presented to the King of the time by the Japanese ruler.
Armour and swords and armour and swords and...
The Crown Jewels were of course every bit as impressive as you would expect. We ended with a tour by a Beefeater, the traditional Tower guards, all of whom are retired military personnel who must have at least 22years of exemplary service before possibly being lucky enough to be allowed to live and work in the Tower complex. Our guide clearly missed his calling as a comedian/actor when he went to the armed forces because his whole tour was extremely well delivered with many interesting anecdotes and had the large crowd laughing from beginning to end... Although from the overheard comments of the various Americans they were obviously somewhat taken aback by his blunt and sarcasm-heavy delivery. Which of course made it even better.
Much other old stuff also
The Tower took a full afternoon even with a "short" 30 min queue for the Jewels (apparently 3-4 hours is not unheard of on a busy day), these things are worth doing properly. Looking for a handy place for a feed we found a popular Greek restaurant on the banks of the Thames, where we ordered a range of Greek specialties which were all delicious, and a bottle of a popular Greek wine which proved a good lesson on why to stick to Greek food and get your wine from elsewhere. Hilariously (?) we also found ourselves seated at a prime table directly in front of a Greek duo playing traditional tunes on guitar and mandolin (?) with a drum machine accompanying, meaning we had to yell almost our entire dinner conversation and effectively eliminating what little hearing I had remaining in my left ear. The staff clapped and whooped and dragged groups of women up to dance in circles to the tune from Lock Stock (Zorba?).. They were all very enthusiastic and the old man played his ornately inlaid mandolin with great skill, which was cool to watch, although would have been better to hear from about 50m further away. But the food was good enough to make it tolerable. We retired by tube and train to Croydon and sleep
Wednesday, April 26, 2017
ANZAC Day London Part Deux... That's two. Yes, there is another one, below this one.
Mid morning we caught the tube one hop to Westminster and the houses of power. There was a ceremony described as a short wreath laying and open public remembrance at St Pauls which we elected to forgo due to timings. We found strong coffee and made our way to Whitehall where they were closing the entire main street to all traffic. Full credit to London, they don't do it by halves. Detector dogs and armed Police were prominent. We had tickets to the ceremony and wreath laying at the Cenotaph but timings were tight and we decided to watch from the barriers for a while. The queue to get in grew to the length of the street.
Timings were fairly tight to get the large crowd to Westminster Abbey and through security after the ceremony here, so having already done one wreath laying we decided to head there early.
Timings were fairly tight to get the large crowd to Westminster Abbey and through security after the ceremony here, so having already done one wreath laying we decided to head there early.
Security at Westminster was tighter again. Bag searches, metal detectors. Invite only (note anyone can apply online for pleb admission and if you are lucky you might be invited to attend) and showing passports. Many cops. We debated seating as the place was at that point mostly empty and picked a spot in the middle somewhere, unsure of where everything happened. For reference if anyone wants to go, most of it happens up the fancy end where only dignitaries and royals and important church folk go. If you get a seat where you can see up the aisle you might see some of it. But it's all on speakers and all the flash people walk up the middle to get to and from, so you see them, and the wreath laying on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, etc. Little known fact, every Royal bride who marries in Westminster Abbey, which is all the important ones, pauses as she arrives to lay her wedding bouquet on his tomb, which is in the floor at the main entrance, and all who enter must walk around. Kate was the last to do it, meaning a future Queen of England once again bequeathed her matrimonial flowers to the unknown lad lying there eternally at rest. Nice touch that. Well done you.
The ceremony was proper, undoubtedly one of the best of any ceremony I have been to for anything anywhere, and I have been to some. They closed the whole Abbey for most of the day, one of London's most pivotal tourist attractions and icons. We saw many a disgruntled tourist whining to security outside the cordon. Good job. Well done you. Being inside a 1000 year old church for a major and very special ceremony complete with The Duke of York, the Lord Mayor of London etc was really quite a thing. The huge pipe organ boomed. Fanfare Trumpters in red coat and bearskin played from high up in the soaring ceiling. You know when a military unit has a name like The Coldstream Guards that they probably didn't have it soft back in the day. The choir sang. Without a word of a lie the first time the choir started a brilliant shaft of sunlight came down through the huge stained glass window behind us and illuminated the crowd. I guess after my low key and largely solitary time in France and Belgium this was a welcome piece of fittingly dramatic and large-scale massed commemoration.
There was some of the usual talk of unity and peace and reconciliation of all the participants which was fine, a flag bearer carried the Turkish flag in with the others. But there was also a lot of talk of the ties that bind the Commonwealth and the Allied forces and of common faith and history and the need for a future where likeminded countries stand up for their own, not just some hazy ideal of everyone holding hands and tolerance and letting people do what they want. This was even, and most eloquently, from the Dean of the Cathedral, aka Boss Church Guy, who said in uncertain times remembering such things was most important. It was good. The Turkish Ambassador read the famous quote attributed to Ataturk when he said that the mothers of boys who died at Gallipoli need cry no more, for now they were also sons of Turkey, which I always find very moving. Children read prayers, there were Bible readings, hymns were sung. Proper.
Not sure what more to tell you, if you hadn't noticed I was pretty positive about the whole thing. After I shook the Dean's hand on the way out and thanked him for the proceedings we had a beer for all the boys at The Westminster Arms, a little pub of note just over the way, a place of historic politicking and intrigue.
We grabbed some lunch back in Mayfair while picking up baggage and then gapped it via tube & train back to Croydon, where we shivved some people for dissing us and checked in with our posse.
No, we packed up and escaped London via the kind taxi services of future Dad in Law, back to Chichester for yummy tea and some couch time. We were very sleepy. So ended ANZAC 2017 and many thanks to all the Aussies and Kiwis and Brits who made it possible, and indeed closed down a major bit of central London for it. Well done you. Proper.
We grabbed some lunch back in Mayfair while picking up baggage and then gapped it via tube & train back to Croydon, where we shivved some people for dissing us and checked in with our posse.
No, we packed up and escaped London via the kind taxi services of future Dad in Law, back to Chichester for yummy tea and some couch time. We were very sleepy. So ended ANZAC 2017 and many thanks to all the Aussies and Kiwis and Brits who made it possible, and indeed closed down a major bit of central London for it. Well done you. Proper.
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