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The weekend
Monday, November 2nd, 2015 11:22 amNovember already, huh? And for today at least, it’s actually feeling autumnal: it’s seasonably misty and cool and there are leaves on the floor. The weekend was more like summer with rather shorter days, which I guess is just as well as my sister and niece were down in London staying with us for three nights.
We didn’t get around as many places as we’d hoped as my sister has a great deal of trouble with her knees (one is a still- healing knee replacement), so what walking there was, was very slow. Add to that the fact that neither she nor my niece seem to have the remotest idea of just how big London is, well…
Anyway. Among the highlights were a trip on the river bus and a trip to the theatre.
The river bus might not sound like much, but given the aforementioned mobility issues coupled with the need to get from Ilford to the West End on both the Friday and the Saturday, it is a very good way of seeing a lot of London sights without actually doing anything – and the view from the river tends to be rather better than that from buses or street level generally, where you are stuck in the canyons between buildings (though on the right day, in the right weather, that can have its charm, too). That went down very well, I think. On the Friday evening, we disappeared up to Leytonstone, and had a couple of drinks in the Luna Lounge, before taking them to what is probably Furtle’s and my favourite restaurant, The Olive for a Turkish meal. I think they enjoyed that, though it’s hard to tell: at times I fear that my sister is adopted, as she and her family all seem to be resistant to spices and flavour (Mum wasn’t so bad – she’d give most things a try, but Dad’s default was always “I don’t like it” even if he’d never tried something before (we always found the best way was just to feed stuff to him and tell him about it later). Certainly this was an issue when we ordered in a Chinese on the Saturday while we watched a movie and it wasn’t apparently, ‘as good as the choice at home’. I’ve had both and it is, so Ner.
Still, while I’m not sure what my niece thought of the Turkish food beyond finding the sausage too spicy, the halloumi not to her taste, not touching the bread and avoiding the humus and restricting herself to the grilled chicken (she wasn’t fond of the yoghurt and tomato sauce on my Chicken Iskander, either, so there wasn’t much flavour on the go for her.), I think my sister was pleasantly surprised.
On Saturday we went to see Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’, famous largely for being the longest running production in history (now in its 60th year). Barbie and Sarah enjoyed that, which is good. It was fun, theatre has to be truly awful not to be able to find something to enjoy, but I have to say that the plot wasn’t the strongest of Christie’s stories and perhaps because it was set in the early 1950s, there was cheese and ham in the performances in equal measure. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable, though I think now I’ve seen it, it can probably stay seen, for another few years, at least.
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As a completely unrelated side note (other than the fact it was this weekend), we have finally put the batteries in the cat flap so that we can unlock it and have it react to the chips in the cats’ necks.
The cats have been allowed out before, for short periods under strict supervision, but now we are letting them come and go as they please. At the current rate of in and out, I suspect the batteries will not last the full 6 months, but then, I expect that will calm down a little once the novelty has worn off.
It took a couple of goes to get them to work out what they were supposed to do, but they turn out to be surprisingly quick studies. Peploe? took a little longer to get it right, but I think that is more down to the fact that it’s a relatively snug fit for him to go through the tunnel. Once he got used to it, he was fine.
While they were denied access to the rest of the house beyond the kitchen as usual last night, they had the opportunity to wander outside to their hearts’ content but still come back in for the warmth of their beds and in theory, a snack, though they do tend to scoff the lot when it’s put out for them.
They were already outside when I got up and went down this morning, but it didn’t take long for them to come back in and bounce on Furtle, who was still snoozing in bed, having booked the day off.
We didn’t get around as many places as we’d hoped as my sister has a great deal of trouble with her knees (one is a still- healing knee replacement), so what walking there was, was very slow. Add to that the fact that neither she nor my niece seem to have the remotest idea of just how big London is, well…
Anyway. Among the highlights were a trip on the river bus and a trip to the theatre.
The river bus might not sound like much, but given the aforementioned mobility issues coupled with the need to get from Ilford to the West End on both the Friday and the Saturday, it is a very good way of seeing a lot of London sights without actually doing anything – and the view from the river tends to be rather better than that from buses or street level generally, where you are stuck in the canyons between buildings (though on the right day, in the right weather, that can have its charm, too). That went down very well, I think. On the Friday evening, we disappeared up to Leytonstone, and had a couple of drinks in the Luna Lounge, before taking them to what is probably Furtle’s and my favourite restaurant, The Olive for a Turkish meal. I think they enjoyed that, though it’s hard to tell: at times I fear that my sister is adopted, as she and her family all seem to be resistant to spices and flavour (Mum wasn’t so bad – she’d give most things a try, but Dad’s default was always “I don’t like it” even if he’d never tried something before (we always found the best way was just to feed stuff to him and tell him about it later). Certainly this was an issue when we ordered in a Chinese on the Saturday while we watched a movie and it wasn’t apparently, ‘as good as the choice at home’. I’ve had both and it is, so Ner.
Still, while I’m not sure what my niece thought of the Turkish food beyond finding the sausage too spicy, the halloumi not to her taste, not touching the bread and avoiding the humus and restricting herself to the grilled chicken (she wasn’t fond of the yoghurt and tomato sauce on my Chicken Iskander, either, so there wasn’t much flavour on the go for her.), I think my sister was pleasantly surprised.
On Saturday we went to see Agatha Christie’s ‘The Mousetrap’, famous largely for being the longest running production in history (now in its 60th year). Barbie and Sarah enjoyed that, which is good. It was fun, theatre has to be truly awful not to be able to find something to enjoy, but I have to say that the plot wasn’t the strongest of Christie’s stories and perhaps because it was set in the early 1950s, there was cheese and ham in the performances in equal measure. Nonetheless, it was enjoyable, though I think now I’ve seen it, it can probably stay seen, for another few years, at least.
As a completely unrelated side note (other than the fact it was this weekend), we have finally put the batteries in the cat flap so that we can unlock it and have it react to the chips in the cats’ necks.
The cats have been allowed out before, for short periods under strict supervision, but now we are letting them come and go as they please. At the current rate of in and out, I suspect the batteries will not last the full 6 months, but then, I expect that will calm down a little once the novelty has worn off.
It took a couple of goes to get them to work out what they were supposed to do, but they turn out to be surprisingly quick studies. Peploe? took a little longer to get it right, but I think that is more down to the fact that it’s a relatively snug fit for him to go through the tunnel. Once he got used to it, he was fine.
While they were denied access to the rest of the house beyond the kitchen as usual last night, they had the opportunity to wander outside to their hearts’ content but still come back in for the warmth of their beds and in theory, a snack, though they do tend to scoff the lot when it’s put out for them.
They were already outside when I got up and went down this morning, but it didn’t take long for them to come back in and bounce on Furtle, who was still snoozing in bed, having booked the day off.