It's not every day you get goosed by the left hand of Igglepiggle. No wonder I've got a smile on my face.
Anyhoo, apart from the missed trains, missed boats, malfunctioning trousers and minor tantrums (I can only apologise), our day out in London yesterday went without a hitch. Anyone who has even a passing acquaintance with our lives won't be surprised to learn that we failed to catch the 10:17 train to Victoria, but this time it wasn't our fault. Unless you blame me for choosing the one ticket machine which decided to break down just as I got to the front of the queue. By the time I'd got to the front of a second queue, our train was departing, and I was closer to a breakdown than the ticket machine.
But despite getting to London half an hour later than planned, we still managed to pack a lot in. It was a day of new experiences for Amelie - first time on a train, first time on a boat, first time running through the O2 with her trousers round her ankles - but she coped with it all remarkably well. Mostly by comfort-eating from the moment we left Brighton. Here she is asking for more sandwich before we'd even pulled out of the station...
That pretty much continued all the way to Clapham Junction. At which point she stopped eating long enough to tell us that she'd had enough of the train and wanted to get off. Possibly to buy more food. Fortunately we persuaded her to stay on just long enough to get to Victoria, where we hopped on a tube train to Embankment.
They do say that the streets of London are paved with gold, so once in the heart of our capital city, Amelie took it upon herself to find out...
It's ironic that she was so content to lie on the ground, because ten minutes earlier she'd told an entire tube carriage how unhappy she was at not getting a seat.
Anyhoo, we'd planned to catch the 12:07 river bus along the Thames to North Greenwich, and despite our late start, we made it to Embankment Pier with five minutes to spare. Which was handy as the queue for tickets was fifteen minutes long. I think there was some kind of hold-up while they taught the girl in the booth to speak English.
Naturally we missed the boat (that's the story of my life), but it was well worth waiting for the next one. I've not been on a Thames Clipper before, but it's basically a floating branch of Costa Coffee. The muffins were particularly good. And the views were spectacular. Here's Amelie cracking open the juice as we left Embankment...
... starting on sandwiches at the London Eye...
... pausing for reflection outside Tate Modern...
... tucking into an apple at HMS Belfast...
... choking outside Shakespeare's Globe...
... and doing her suckling pig face in front of MI6...
At least I thought it was MI6. It turned out to be just an office block. That's what you might call a lack of intelligence.
Anyhoo, after an enjoyable 45 minute cruise, we arrived at North Greenwich pier, and ran through the rain to the O2. There seemed to be a complete absence of signs to the Night Garden Live event, so we just entered the dome and started walking. Fortunately, having passed about fifty restaurants, one cinema and a rollerskating rink, eagle-eyed Am spotted Haahoos on the horizon, and made off at high speed...
I think that's what ruined her trousers...
2 comments:
Have you thought of buying train tickets in advance? I believe there's this new gadget called the internet which lets you do things like that. Mind you, you'd arrive at the station late then.
The trouble with buying tickets in advance is that you still have to queue at the machine to pick them up, so when it then breaks down and you miss your train, you're really stuffed because your pre-booked tickets aren't valid on the next one.
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