It's me in front of the world famous Big Ben!


You'll have to take my word for that, obviously. Lisa's always struggled with composition. I was hoping for a picture of myself with the clock tower, London Eye and Palace of Westminster. You know, something like this...


What I got was a photo of myself with some traffic lights. She had another three attempts, but to be honest they were no better. She managed to cut me out of one of them. Frankly if this was twenty years ago, we'd have wasted a whole roll of film. As it was, the only thing exposed was Lisa's shortcomings as a photographer.

Anyhoo, if you're wondering why we spent Tuesday afternoon wandering around Westminster instead of congregating in a mosh pit, it's because we had a coffee date with Big Sis. And she moves in more powerful circles than we do. We'd arranged to meet her in the area at 3pm, but due to our desperation to get away from the kids, we were actually in London by 1:45pm. So with an hour to kill, we walked down Victoria Street to Westminster Abbey, and I took some photos of Lisa pretending to be Pippa Middleton. Although her back was turned, so she doesn't know.

There was some kind of Sikh rally taking place in Parliament Square, which seemed like an odd choice of venue to me. Personally I'd have held it in Hyde Park and called it 'Hyde & Sikh'. But that's just me. They've held a few protests in London recently, aimed at the Indian government's treatment of Sikhs, so I like to think of it as a form of turban renewal.

Anyhoo, we successfully rendezvoused with Big Sis, and grabbed ourselves some coffee and muffins, before heading to St John's Gardens, where I suggested that we pose for a civilised and sensible group photo. They assured me they were smiling behind me, so I set the self-timer and tried to look normal...


Next time I'm standing at the back.

Sis could only spare us an hour or so out of her busy work schedule, but she put that time to good use by educating us about the five love languages, a concept which neither Lisa nor I were aware of. So it's a miracle we're still together. Having discussed all five at great length, I discovered that Lisa is either multilingual or needy, while I just felt relieved that none of them were poetry.

From there, Lisa and I walked back along the embankment to Westminster, which is where we bumped into the Thatchers, after which I took some photos of the tabloid press to see how they like it, and we caught a tube train to Hammersmith. Once there, we made our way to the Villagio restaurant, where we met our old friend 'C'...


The last time we saw C, Lisa was wearing the same dress but in pink (which is what happens when you don't use Colour Catcher), and C presented us with a hand-made quilt for Toby. At the time she was working on one for Amelie too, but it wasn't quite finished, so we gave her another six months. And she duly completed it on Monday...


I'm not sure how much you'd expect to pay for a patchwork quilt which took its creator almost a year to make and incorporates fabrics from both Europe and America, but I'd guess at slightly more than nothing. Which is what we got it for. Basically, C gave us an original work of art, and in return, we let her pay for her own meal.

But despite that obvious inequality, we had a lovely couple of hours eating Italian food and catching up on the last six months of our respective lives. I thought the food was nothing special, but the company was excellent, and well worth the price of admission.

So with our second meeting of the day proving to be a roaring success, I offered to take a photo of Lisa's happy, smiling face...


Revenge is sweet.