My baby is 30....

Can't quite believe my baby, my firstborn is 30!!  30 years ago I thought I had 4 more weeks to go before he would be born.  How wrong I was. it was snowing, really heavily, and we only just got to Nether Edge Hospital. When he finally decided to come out, nearly 20 hours after I'd gone into labour, he was heavily affected by the pethidine the midwife had given me less an hour before he was born, was blue, not breathing and only just 5 pounds.  And look at him now :-)


As a birthday treat, we went to London for the day last Saturday. First class travel of course - dead cheap on a Saturday, and coffee and bacon butties on the train.

When we got there we made straight for Baker Street - which has a
very atmospheric tube station. 
Outside the station is a statue of Sherlock Holmes, which is why we were there of course.  Then it was off to find 221B, where the Sherlock Holmes museum is located.

Complete with period policemen outside. I was surprised how busy it was - we had to queue for 30 minutes to get in, and how popular it was with Japanese tourists.

It was a great little museum. All done out to represent the period, and illustrating many of the Sherlock Holmes stories. Dan certainly looked the part, and in fact got mistaken for a guide by tourists asking him questions about the exhibits. Not surprisingly, he knew more about them than the real guides...

And of course, we found the Hound of the Baskervilles, the story of which Dan has adapted into a play due to be performed this October.

After the museum we went to Picadilly Circus, and walked down through Leicester Square to Covent Garden for lunch - a fish finger sandwich! Then walked round the market, and down to the Duchess Theatre to see the matinee of The Play That Goes Wrong.  I've seen it before, and it's one of the funniest plays I've ever seen. An amateur dramatic company putting on a murder mystery, and if anything can go wrong, it does. Sort of a cross between Noises Off and a Farndale play - and if you're involved with AmDram, as we are, it's even funnier.

Then we had to pay a visit to the big Forbidden Planet shop round the corner

and off to a Brazilian BBQ for tea - Cabana. Great food and atmosphere. Then it was back up to St Pancras and the train home. Great day out - really enjoyed it, and I think Dan did too!

London weekend

For the past few years we've a weekend in London to see Robin Ince's show, Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People, but last year he decided it had run its course and would do something new, so we still got our weekend in London. Traveled down on Sunday morning on a very cheap First class Advance ticket, and went for a walk. Ended up at Covent Garden where we had a great lunch of a pint of lager, fish finger sandwiches and chips. Brill!  Then we had a walk round the market, which is always decorated for Christmas


and this year had a Santa, sleigh and reindeers made from Lego!


As it was a Sunday , there weren't many shows on, but we managed to get tickets to an early performance of this:


The story of Franki Valli and the Four Seasons. The only problem was, I'd bought tickets in the balcony by mistake - I thought I'd got circle tickets. We came in at the back, at the top of a very steeply raked balcony, had to walk down it to out seats at the front, and then have what to me looked like a sheer drop to the stage. I don't like heights!! Stuart went and got me a bucket of wine, which did make me feel a bit better. The show was great, and you don't realise how many hits the Four Seasons had until you hear them all.


After the show we wandered up through the west End, through Picadilly Circus and Leicester Square, and ended up back at the same pun where we'd had lunch for a proper pie for supper. One with pastry all round it. It does annoy me when you get a dish of stew with a circle of puff pastry on top and they have the cheek to call it a pie!!


The following morning we set off early to Bethnal Green, to the V and A Museum of Childhood. I'd never been before, and it is well worth a visit. A huge open space inside

with displays on two levels. It brought back so many memories - I even found Tressy dolls.Before the advent of Barby, most little girls had a Sindy doll, but I had a Tressy, who's hair grew if you pushed a button in her tunny!



We'd gone to see a Dolls House Exhibition which was really interesting. Old and new dolls houses, telling a story from the era in which they'd been built or decorated.



Then we got the tube to Tower Bridge, and walked across it to the South Bank - only at road level. My fear of heights wasn't up to me going up to the top deck, especially as part of the floor is now glass!


The walk down the South Bank is really interesting. You pass the Golden Hind


and some converted warehouses which are now posh shopping centres, and have to wind your way under some tunnels, and past old prisons. We got as far as Millenium Bridge, which gave us a lovely view of St Paul's in the sunset.


After a meal at an small Italian place near the hotel, it was our usual short walk to the Bloomsbury Theatre (one of the only theatres I've ever been in where you can get Eduroam...) to see Robin Ince and many friends in his Christmas Special - we saw The Ghost of Christmas Past which was the usual blend of science, comedy and music.



An interesting act was the rapper Baba Brinkman and his wife, neuroscientist Dr Heather Berlin, who talked about creativity, neuroscience and rapping, and Baba freestyle rapped some neuroscience!

Following morning we went to the National Portrait gallery - one of my favourite galleries in London, and saw an exhibition by Grayson Perry called Who Are You. i knew little of him, apart from he has an alternate persona which is a little girl called Claire, but I was bowled over by his exhibition. A huge tapestry about what was Britain - this is only a small part of it


and ceramic figures and his famous vases. All stunning.


Finally we had a walk round Trafalgar Square where living statues, most either Yoda or father Christmas, abounded, and I was glad the see the big blue cock still on the fourth plinth.


Then we picked up our cases and walked back to St Pancras in time for lunch in the Betjeman Arms.

Godless trip part 2

Monday we got on a boat and went for a trip down the Thames.

I love the view you get of London landmarks from the Thames, and of course, many you can't see any other way.

We stopped off at North Greenwich and had a look round the O2 Arena Square which is looking really good

and then got back on the boat to Greenwich where we went round the Cutty Sark.

I
t's had a huge restoration programme, and has been lifted up 3m to create a hall under the hull which is very impressive.

From there we walked to the Royal Maritime Museum which was hosting an Ansel Adams exhibition.

Ansel Adams took beautiful black and white photographs, and this was a stunning display of landscapes from the mountains and the sea. Then it was a steep wall up the ill to the Royal Observatory, and I couldn't understand why the parkland in front of the Naval College was all being reseeded, until I was reminded that it had hosted all of the equestrian events during the Olympics.
The view over London from the Observatory is stunning, and you can just see the reseeding in the bottom of the picture

Of course, you have to take the obligatory picture of the Prime Meridian, which I am reliably informed also runs through Cleethorpes. Lots of tourists having their picture taken standing on it, but I've not seen that happen in Cleethorpes.

Then it was back on our boat, back to the Embankment, and a quick tube journey back to the hotel.

We were off to the theatre again, so grabbed a meal in the Massala Club - a thali of mixed curries, very nice. Then off to the Theatre Royal to see One Man, Two Guvnors. A comedy set in the early sixties, but based on a Commedia Dell'arte play from 1743. It was hilarious. One of those plays where you are desperate for the interval so you can stop laughing. Well worth seeing.

Tuesday morning we went to the Museum of London, which we'd not done before. Lots of really interesting stuff about the History of London, including the plague, the great fire, the Blitz and how the city has developed. well worth a visit.

Then we checked out of the hotel walked to St Pancras where we took advantage of the shops to do a bit more Christmas shopping, and a very relaxing journey home

Godless trip

The weekend before Christmas we always try to get down to London to see the Godless shows, as they are affectionately called. More on that later.

Sunday - early train to London, first class, booked in advance so dead cheap. Walk to hotel, stopping for a sandwich lunch on way. Check in, get lovely warm chocolate cookie from reception (a feature of all Doubletree hotels) and set off for a walk. Towards Covent Garden we saw a group of Pearly kings and Queens - first I've ever seen "in the wild".

Covent Garden looked lovely - all decorated for Christmas, and was obviously very busy.

Managed to do a bit of Christmas shopping and buy some presents, and saw the Jack Daniel's Barrel Tree

There was also a giant lego advent calendar, and loads of street theatre and buskers. My favourite  was not actually a busker, but a homeless person I think who was playing Christmas carols through a traffic cone - and doing it very well and collecting loads of money!

From there we walked to Leicester Square and Picadilly Circus through to Trafalgar Square. Saw the Christmas tree and Menorah in the square, and had a quick look in the National Gallery. We both love the National Gallery - so many beautiful paintings in there.  Then a walk back to the hotel to get ready for the show. We ate at a little Italian place  and then walked to the Bloomsbury Theatre, which is owned by UCL.

Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People is put on by Robin Ince, and originated from an arguement he (as an atheist) had with someone from Christian Voice, who said that atheists couldn't have fun at Christmas. So, determined to prove him wrong, Robin puts on this celebration of science and comedy every year, which always sells out.

We love it. Always slightly anarchic, different people appearing every night depending on when they are free, or whether they just happen to turn up. This year we had Robin, obviously, and a variety of other scienctists and comedians.
 It started with the band, and a laser harp! Very impressive. Laser beams played with white gloved hands.

 Alexei Sayle, turned up unexpectedly, he said he was just passing, and read some of his autobiography:

Richard Herring, in a very ironic Christmas jumper,  talked about his book, Talking Cock. Don't need to explain what it was about, needless to say it was hilarious. So funny that I bought a copy from him at the interval for Stuart for Christmas.

Ben Goldacre, (of Bad Science fame) had a good 20 minute rant about pharmaceutical companies refusing to release all of their clinical trails data. Very interesting, especially when you look at how much money the government spent on Tamiflu during the last flu scare, and yet there is no real published evidence that it works.

There was music from Helen Arney, Grace Petrie and others (can't remember them all), and the mathematician Matt Parker showed us his binary scarf:

as well as solving a rubric cube puzzle in under 3 minutes whilst delivering a stand up routine.

Perhaps the most bizarre act was Baconface, who turned out to be Stuart Lee in a wrestling mask with bacon draped over it.

My favourite bit was from Andrea Sella, Professor of Chemistry at UCL who produced ever increasing sizes of explosions on stage:

You can't beat an explosion for pleasing a roomful of nerds and scientists!