feel like i've been here before

It's a funny old month. With the prospect of going to London three weekends in a row, a friend exclaimed, "Blimey! That'll practically make you a Cockney". Well, hardly old chap, but it is excessive.

Last weekend we went there in a hurry because on Friday Mrs Dave and I had tickets to see Imelda May at the Royal Albert Hall. An excellent gig, Mrs Dave stayed awake all the way through unlike last time we went to see Mark Knopfler there a few years back.  That may be because of the soporific effect of some of his music (I thought I'd get in first) but Imelda was definitely in fine form. We stayed for two nights (in London not in the Albert Hall) and spent Saturday wandering around Kensington. After joining the queue to see the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, we walked up towards Harrods. We were rather suprised that practically every other shop was a cafe with large groups of men smoking from water pipes.  Times have certainly changed - I'm not sure what they were smoking but it all seemed very cosmopolitan. It seems I was the only person who found the Tuojiangosaurus funny (try pronouncing it) or maybe they'd all heard it before. I mean, why name a dinosaur that? Or perhaps something was gained in translation, haha.

On Sunday we went to the Whole Food Market in Kensington High Street just so we could shop like real middle-class foodies. It was rather spectacular, though. It just shows how easy it is for city dwellers to get hold of just about anything they want.  It also shows how difficult it can be for some of us to find certain foodstuffs when trying to follow flash recipes. Mind you, it's damned expensive. It's not just food miles being paid for here.

We knew that we had a lengthy journey home - East Anglia isn't well served by trains at the best of times.  We were expecting to get a bus from Liverpool Street but were a bit surprised when we were told to get on the train to Cambridge.  As it was leaving in about two minutes, we had to rush without thinking.  This is why we ended up sitting at the station at Dullingham.  I'd never heard of it before.  I don't expect to be there again. Well, we got home even later than we planned to but without too much fuss.  Just the mild panic of thinking it was going to take seven hours to get just a hundred miles down the road. A little different to Edward Thomas' experience at Adlestrop!

Tomorrow night Mrs Dave will be walking around London in her undies . . . well, wearing a decorated bra, anyway. She's doing the Moon Walk (insert own Michael Jackson joke here. I've probably heard it) for Breast Cancer.  As her sister now is unable to take part, I've volunteered to help out.  It would appear that I'll be litter picking all night (not in a pink bra, I might add), but it's all for a good cause.

Next week I'm back up to London yet again for the annual Film Studies marking conference.  Is it really that time again? Time really does fly. This year really does seem to have whizzed past - I'm finding it hard this year as the students just seem to not care about deadlines.  Or anything really.  The coursework will be a little late being sent off, though.  I'm still waiting for some of it - gone are the days like when we were young*.  If it didn't come in, you failed.  Now we just have to wait . . .

And wait . . .

* not a nostalgic point, by the way!