On Wednesday, either us or people we met did the following things- try to guess who was us and who were the unfortunate people we met
a) Spend 6 hours overnight, accidentally locked in the back of a van
b) Saw a photo/portrait of someone we knew in the National Portrait Gallery
c) Illegally Travel down a 200-step staircase, when there was perfectly good lift.
d) Brought a 10kg sack of potatoes instead of a pudding
e) Were 100 metres from where the M16 guy was found dead in the bath
f) Spent two hours on a train that had no power or light
The day began with an uneventful coach journey to London, spent discussing the 'Cat bin women' and doing the crossword (how dull are we....?)
We got to London, walked to Buckingham Palace, and saw those people in funny hats, and then continued walking along the Mall to Trafalgar Square. We went to both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery (getting them confused). There was some art including Van Gogh's Sunflowers. In the NPG, we were able to access on a computer the complete collection, even those not on display- to our pleasant dismay, the NPG holds a photo/portrait of...Chris Budd. We printed it out , and felt honoured to know a celebrity.
We then to Pimlico to meet that fine fellow, Jonathan Goddard. He now lives there. He was amazingly hospitable and seemed to have some sort of obsession with potatoes, despite this stilled cooked a very nice meal for us, which including wedges, but no potatoes (we think he brought them for the fun of it). Lively discussion ensued, and then will caught the underground to Liverpool Street, we got on the train to go to Harwich with the intention of going on an overnight boat to Holland. This is where things got interesting.
Ingatestone is a small town in Essex with population of 4500. We were there in a train for 3 hours. The train, powered by those overhead lines, had not power, had ran out of emergency power, so was in fact powerless and completely black. We missed our ferry. We were foruntate to have 15 or so other people in the same boat, (or rather more accurately, not in the same boat). We were then driven by coach to a three star hotel in Ipswich, which we arrived in at about 1:20am. We got up at 5:45am, and our amazingly posh and comfy room was wasted. Ths should have cost over 150 Pounds for both of us, yet this was paid for by the good people of National Express, who got us into this position. Luxury...!
Much Love from us ... we're in Amsterdam now...I will try and write about today's adventures, which are decidedly more dull. Out of interest...we did actually meet someone who was stuck in a van overnight.
AL
I'm not sure how often we'll be able to write mini-essays like this. They take time.
