Lovin' London

Oh, dear old London, how I love you! With your drinkable tap water, your effective but overcrowded public transport system, your lovely unbroken tarred roads, your range of food, drink, and places to enjoy both.

Yes, I am back in London. I had so looked forward to returning to civilisation, and to all the things listed above. However, I landed at Heathrow at 4pm in the afternoon. I had been travelling since 3am English time, and I was exhausted. I waited in the inevitable English queue for about an hour, finally got through passport control (after some suspicious looks at the Arabic stamps on the previous page) and made it to the Picadilly line. By which time it was rush hour. Within and hour of returning I was swearing at tourists standing on the wrong side of the escalator, shouting at people to let me (and my massive suitcase) off the tube before they get on, and generally just being cranky and hating the transport. Oh, how I longed for a 4x4 and some bumpy roads....

I survived though, and the next day was sitting eating lovely Japanese food in a trendy little restaurant overlooking the Thames. I sat chatting with a friend I havent seen since I left Cape Town about 3/4 years ago. Aside from the two guys and girl at the next table, we were the only people in the restaurant. We had a wonderful meal, full of little tasty things on little bamboo sticks, and discussing my friends failed marriage. Yes, I am not only old enough to have friends getting married now, but apparently I am old enough to have friends getting divorced. We decided however, that at the very least, they got to have a fantastic party at the expense of their parents, and his wife got to wear a beautiful gown, which so rarely happens these days.

He felt a little left out though. We decided that maybe there should be more situations where men get to wear beautiful gowns. This was the slightly hysterical and giggly conversation of about 15 minutes. Rising hysteria, mixed with food on sticks, and Japanese beer... I think its fair to say that the other table heard out conversation...

It was only after we had paid, and stood up to leave, that either of us paid much attention to the fact that although there were two guys and a girl at the next table, there were, in fact, no female voices. In fact, the girl (wearing a denim mini skirt, bobby socks, mary janes and with lovely long blonde hair) had a fairly distinctive adams apple.....

Yes, I am definitely back in London.