London

Current work: (er... a day off, but thinking about the Norway book)

Listening to: Badfinger (daughter and I are planning to hijack DH’s CD player)
Reading: Liz Fielding: Secret Baby, Surprise Parents (Fabulous book - very, very emotional. Liz always manages to get at least one moment in a book that hits me hard; this time it was with poetry which I’ve used in a very similar context. Superb characterisation, realistic romance and an ending that makes you cheer for the hero and heroine. Brilliant stuff. Highly recommended.)

26,954 steps; equivalent to 9.36 miles; and using up 779 calories. That’s what I did in London.

Oh, you want to know what we actually did?

After meeting Fi at the station (we were early, so we had our Homer Simpson moment - uhhh, not quite to my taste as they are VERY, VERY, VERY sweet, but Madam and Son enjoyed theirs, and DH - who is normally an utter doughnut fiend - declined), we headed here.

It's one of my favourite places. (Very inspirational for Hotly Bedded, Conveniently Wedded.)
And we saw all sorts of things, including:

an early alarm clock (from 1725 – the alarm made the top cover open and pushed the candle to vertical, then lit it – basically, it woke you with a bell, an explosion and then a light - can you imagine?)

and the Lewis Chessmen (which may have been carved in Trondheim – this is important for the Norway book)

and the Rosetta Stone

and the Frankes Casket (the text is written in runes – which I studied as part of my degree, in the Anglo Saxon module – and part of it tells the fate of the whale from whose bones the casket was carved)

and part of the Mildenhall Treasure (Suffolk, but it’s still East Anglia – this is from my part of the world).

After lunch (in Giraffe, in the Brunswick Centre – the food was fab, but the wait was... a little long), we went on the DLR to Greenwich. En route, we saw part of the Olympic stadium in progress:

And then in Greenwich, we walked up the hill to the Royal Observatory.

Saw some snowdrops on the way up. (These pics are especially for Ray-Anne.)

Had to do the touristy thing of standing astride the Greenwich Meridian line.

And admiring the view of the city.

And then we looked at clocks and Flamsteed’s original observatory (beautiful interior – one of the few known to be designed by Wren); and then went into the observatory centre, where we touched a 4.5-billion-year-old meteorite (yes, I did say billion) and played with the hands-on displays. Next time, we’ll go early enough so we can see one of the planetarium shows.

On the way home, we were too tired to think (DH and I struggled with a crossword and spent more time cracking up about how feeble we were than actually doing said crossword). The train was a little delayed, and after making a big fuss of the dog (who was an angel), we fell into blissful sleep.

Today, we’re footsore, but it was worth it. Visited Dad this morning, and there are some gorgeous spring bulbs in the churchyard. This the view from his window (taken through glass, hence not brilliant), showing the aconites and the clumps of snowdrops that really do look like drifts of snow.