8456/21375
Catie and I had one of our much too rare day-dates, heading in to London for brunch at Dishoom, which is always a treat. We go out so rarely now that we are consolidating all our date expenses into single events and can push the boat out a bit.
Then we had a little wander around Great-Fire-of-London London (starting at Monument) hoping to chance across something unexpected (without knowing what it was going to be).
When we lived in town, we had a book of London walks and had both enjoyed the surprises thrown up in the City of London. We had vague hopes of re-finding an old pub from Dickens' times and I had a vague notion that one of the ridiculous modern glass edifices of the City had Roman remains in the basement.
We didn't find anything, but in looking for Roman stuff on Google maps we saw mention of Roman Baths so headed to see if there was anything there. I'd never heard of any ruins in this area and again, my guess was that if it was viewable at all it would be in some business' basement.
It didn't matter that we couldn't find it (failing to find it was what made it fun) and we weren't going to google it at the time. It was the adventure that mattered. It was a poor adventure, but that's part of the deal. If you take a chance and go where fate takes you, a lot of the time it's going to be boring.
I love the combination of mainly modern buildings with the odd survivor of 17th Century infernos or 20th Century business development. I imagined the warehouses by the river exploding and the Lord Mayor of London refusing to pull down people's houses without permission, before getting fed up and going to bed. Samuel Pepys managed to put himself front and centre of course and that's why his diary is still going 450 years later. My refusal to make it all about me (ahem) is why no one is reading this in 2486. Also the fact it's not on paper hasn't helped. And the fact that there are no more humans then.
Shout out to you if you are an evolved cow or an alien and are reading this in 2486. Send me an email and let me know how things are going for humans and whether people still talk about my diary that remarkably manages to avoid mentioning nearly every major historical event of the early 21st Century. Everyone thought Donald Trump was a dick, apart from some very stupid people.
Of course ironically writing that sentence was what led to my show trial in 2031 under the orders of UK President Nigel Farage and I was guillotined for writing it. I'd have preferred a more British execution, but Farage was nothing if not a hypocrite. Again that sentence didn't help my case. In my defence I didn't think anyone read this.
We ended up walking round the perimeter of the Tower of London and then crossing Tower Bridge. I must have walked across it before (
I definitely ran over it in 2004 when I ran the London Marathon) but it seemed magical to be able to walk over as a pedestrian. It wasn't. There was a path and a tourist experience on there. It just felt like it shouldn't be allowed.
We remembered previous visits to this area, and boat rides on the Thames and looked over the city ancient and modern, our relatively short history overlapping with the history of this insane, once highly flammable city. Which will of course, ironically be once again consumed in the fire of a nuclear bomb in 2032. Another little nod to dramatic irony for my future reader.
We went to the theatre to see Into the Woods. It was a great production and the cast were fabulous, but the theatre was warm and I kept nearly nodding off and the piece itself wasn't our cup of tea - they really should have put a Shrek in it. It was basically Shrek without Shrek. That's exactly the wrong thing to do. Maybe they did put a Shrek in the second half, but we wouldn't know because we decadently decided to leave in the interval.
What a weird pleasure it is to do that. It feels so naughty. It feels like with theatre you should stay and stick it out (partly because of the deference given to this art form, but partly because you've spent so much money), but we were taking chances today. No guide book. No respect for great art. Doing what felt right to us.
We went out and after enjoying brunch now had a linner (the meal between lunch and dinner). We just ordered some starters and drinks, which did feel like they were taking a long time to arrive. Catie saw the waiter suddenly look at us, look shocked, go and speak to the manager and look on the computer. "I think they forgot about us," she said. But they'd brought us drinks and some plates to share stuff with so surely not...
Catie, as usual, was right. The manager came over and offered us free drinks to make up for the wait. The Universe rewarded us for our bravery at leaving a thing that everyone else thought was good (or did it punish us by making our food take ages to arrive). It turned out that we left the restaurant just as the rest of the audience left the theatre. They all looked very happy (but to be honest the low level of wit that this load of idiots thought justified a laugh suggests they would have equally enjoyed someone waving a coloured rag around whilst playing a stylophone), but somehow this felt like a victory for us. We'd bunked off school, Catie had had free wine and we were the winners.
For me it was just nice to have a day away from failing to work.
