Travelling Hopefully

Freestyling this one.  Normally I write a draft and then transfer the result with appropriate polishing and removal of stuff that could get me sued onto this blog.  However the opportunity to use a real live internet cafe couldn't be passed up so here it is.

The last couple of days could be broadly described as improving my mind should that decaying organism be deemed capable of improvement.  I have been to Covent Garden (essentially a shopping mall), the London Transport Museum and (with my sister in law, Kei) the Tate Britain art gallery and the Victoria & Albert museum.  It also rained.  Not much, just enough to interfere with my washing.

The London Transport Museum has a fascinating story to tell but in my view not really enough space to tell it.  As one can imagine, trains, buses and stage coaches make for rather bulky exhibits and tend to clutter the place up if you don't have a lot of floor space.  In contrast two things which don't lack for floorspace are the Tate and the V&A.  Guided by my own personal Virgil I strolled through the Tate marvelling at things I couldn't create and probably couldn't really appreciate although I certainly did my best.  There were a number of paintings of the eruption of Vesuvius and at least one of Armageddon and at one point I'm pretty sure I got them mixed up.  I'm going to blame the artist.  All of them were pretty good though.

I saw at a conservative estimate about a third of what was on offer at the Victoria & Albert Museum.  Next time I come to London I'm going to have to book a room across the road.  There was jewellery, statues and my personal favourite plaster casts of some of the most incredible pieces of architecture and statuary you have never seen.  They have a plaster cast of Trajan's Column for gods sake (cut in half because even the V&A doesn't have a roof high enough to contain the entire column intact) plus a cast of St George killing a rather small dragon.  Kei and I agreed that if the choice were ours we would rather be known as "the Dragonslayer" rather than "the Large Lizard Butcher".  It just doesn't have the same cachet.

We enjoyed a late lunch in Soho.  Or at least I did.  Kei drank tea and disclaimed any need for food.  I spoke to her sternly about eating until she threatened to feed me something at which point I shut up.  In her defence she did pick up a pork bun from Chinatown later.

I keep tripping over embassies.  Usually embassies from very dubious countries.  So far I have encountered the embassy for Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Sudan (it appeared closed) and Venezuela.  All of them in much nicer parts of London than one could really expect their nation to afford.  Competition for a diplomatic posting to somewhere like London must be intense if only because it provides access to decent shopping and a functioning hot water system.  Exactly how much diplomatic interplay can Equatorial Guinea have with Great Britain?  I would have thought an email address would be more than sufficient.

Drinks with my host (and ex boss) on Friday with my current boss (over here to sort out details for our upcoming merger with SJ Berwin, its been announced so I'm not spilling any secrets) and a couple of my soon to be colleagues.  Topics of conversation encompassed work, nail polish, work, idiot partners we have known, work and hawala networks.  That last one was infiltrated by a young woman looking for a cigarette.

I promised Hampshire but sadly I cannot deliver as I haven't gone there yet.  I'm actually posting more blog updates than I intended (its easy when you don't concern yourself with whether you have anything interesting to say) so that will have to wait for next time.  Still really haven't worked out wifi yet but hope I will before I leave behind the helpful folk in England who have supported me so far.

Sky is grey and feet are sore so wandering back to sit down, drink coffee and read.  Getting a kindle was a brilliant idea.  So far I have only bought two new books that I now have to cart around with me.