Thu. Jul 27th, 2006

London

Sticky hot again, thunder and lightning (very very frightening), rain towards evening

Woke up about 6am, late for us, early for the rest of the world. Emailed Matt S. to get an idea when to expect them in London. Between email and texting we worked out he and his friend David (not the Dave that came to stay with us in 2004), would be leaving Ipswich around noon. The Dave we know was going to try and see if he could get off work early and join us later, but Matt said not to expect much. (He never did make it).

I also have to mention here, that I thought San Franciso had big fat pigeons. But WOW, they've got nothing on the english version. These things are the size of chickens! they must be at least double the ones we have at home.

So we figured a bit over an hour from Ipswich to London Liverpool St. and then another 30 for the tube to Goodge Street, so the earliest we'd be likely to see them would be after 13:30. That gave us plenty of time to see the British Museum and then wander back towards Goodge to meet them and meet up at the flat before dinner. Its only a few blocks walk to the museum, but in the heat, even at 10am, it felt like miles. The British Museum was just as hot inside, but without any airflow, so it wasn't as nice a morning as hoped. We all went thru the Egyptian and Greek on the main floor, and while we were in the Parthenon marble section (looking at the brochure defending their right to have them) my phone started to jiggle and lo and behold, it was Shaun. He was in the area doing some shopping and had decided to take us up on our offer to get together. That gave us plenty of time to see the watch and clock exhibit and for the girls to go find more Roman and Greek bits.

Well, that and Marge had asked him to get in touch and remind us of the bar tab. :-)

So we agreed to meet at Goodge St. Station, somewhere between 13:30 and 14:00, he'd give a ring when he got there and one of us would run round and fetch him. We left the BM about 13:15 and slogged thru Bedford Square. By the time we'd gotten to Goodge none of us could face the thought of sitting in that hot flat, so decided to wait it out at The Hope. Shaun called first so down the 3 or 4 doors to fetch him Kel went, and brought him back to sit with us while we waited for Matt and David. They arrived about an hour later, and had some catching up to do. But at least an outside table finally opened up and we could be where there was a bit of a breeze. Shaun could only stay til 16:00, so we mobbed him while we had the chance, working on trying to convince him to come out and visit us in California.

We'll have to wait and see if we have any success. Once he was safely on his way, with assorted promises to email us, we headed over to the Original Spaghetti House for dinner. And finally had a chance to mob Matt and David to catch up on the news. Matt's met a special girl and he's taking her off for a holiday soon to pop the question. It was a shame she couldn't have some along too so we could meet her. (Perhaps we'll get an invite to the wedding since in the meantime she has said yes)

Dinner was quite good and they found a table out front big enough to hold all 7 of us. Our waitress asked where we were from, and it turns out she'd lived near here for a bit, in Hercules, and knew the area. It started to sprinkle during dessert and while we were waiting for the bill it finally opened up. While Len, Matt and Adri settled that up, Carissa, Matt S., David and I popped into Tescos to pick up supplies. We were a bit optimistic and ended up packing bottles of wine and cans of beer off to Cornwall and Italy when we split up. But they had Pimms in a can, so we had to stock up while we could.

The kids played Liars dice for a bit, and we watched some of the avi's Our Matt had taken to that point, until about 10:30, when the guys had to leave in order to catch the train back to Ipswich. David was pretty tired at that point, and apparently it ended up being a loooong train trip home, from the sound of the email next morning. Carissa and Matt walked them down to the tube station and then went for a stroll around the area since it had finally cooled off and was pleasant.

We ended up asleep before they came back in I think.