Alright so update is probably in order then. Much has happened since last I wrote.
Firstly was the Sky Christmas party, yes I know, its very late for a Christmas party but better late than never and it meant that I got to go out and get drunk with my new work mates. We went to a place near Drury Lane called Guanabara, its a Brazilian themed place so we all got smashed on mojitos and tried to fill up on cassava chips. Some danced to the live band, some got drunker than others, some mysteriously disappeared then some time after 1 am we all drifted off into the night after finding someone to foot the bill. A highlight of London: late at night when you're a little merry and you dont particualrly want to have to fork out for a cab, London helpfully provides night buses, they don't really cost all that much and in my experience thus far seem to be fairly regular. I caught the night bus back to Acton with the lovely Vanesa who also works at sky. I was a teensy bit freaked out about walking home on my own at what was now 2:30am, there was only me and the occasional drug dealer out and I steadfastly refused to look at them. Time was that I'd have no hesitations in heading out at that time, often I'd go just for the walk, maybe I'm getting old. Maybe its just because its a newish town.
Recovered quite admirably the next day though, made my way down to the farmers market and got myself some fruit and veg as well as spending possibly too much on some silk scarves and a wrap that I wanted to wear for Balmoral. That's the other thing that's been happening lately. The gorgeous and talented Steven Rafter has published a new book which is to be launched next weekend at Balmoral Castle in Scotland and I have been lucky enough to be invited. I cant tell you how excited I am about it, when in my life am I ever going to be invited to one of the Queens residences for anything let alone a book launch. I've been busy planning what I'm going to wear and booking hotels and flights and figuring out how to get there. I will absolutely be taking lots of pictures for you all and blogging to let you know how it went. Go have a look at Steven's website and if you see a copy of his book in the bookstores, grab it while you can http://www.209astory.com/
Beyond mojitos and weekends at Betty's summer place I've finally bitten the bullet and gotten myself a GPS system so that I can go Geocaching. I may possibly have bored some of you before with tales of Geocaching but in case I havent, basically its a world wide treasure hunt involving GPS systems. You go running around with your GPS device following co-ordinates and clues and finding little caches that are hidden in all kinds of places. My brother introduced me to it before I left home and I thought it would be a fantastic way of getting to know a place so I resolved to Cache once I hit London. I found a way of doing it using one of those in car navigational GPS's that you can pick up pretty cheaply so I went and bought myself one on Amazon the other day, it arrived on Saturday morning so I ran around like a mad thing getting all my shopping done and buying the last few items for my outfit for Balmoral so I could have sunday completely free for caching.
There is apparently a cache right near where I live in Acton so when I headed out on Sunday that was the first place I went, it was a bit hard to find and people were starting to look at me like I was casing one of the houses or something so I decided to move on and look for it on the way back. I jumped on the Picadilly line, because that's where I seem to live my whole life, and headed out to Russell Square. Got out onto street level, whipped out the GPS, which I have christened Neil, and went hunting for my first London cache. It was near the Foundling Museum next to a statue of a man called Thomas Coram. The clues to the cache made me think that it would be on the statue itself so I went round and round this thing checking it out. Clearly I weirded out one of the volunteers in the museum because she came out and tried to figure out what the hell I was up to, she gave me a little history of the museum and I pretended to be very interested in the statue and as she was talking to me out of the corner of my eye about 10m's behind her I found the cache. I told her I wanted to take a picture of the statue and she seemed satisfied by this, probably thinks I'm just some very strange tourist, and I made a big show of riffling through my bag to get my camera so that I'd have the chance to grab the cache and sign the log without her noticing. Signed it, slipped it back into place and then took a photo to try and make it seem like I wasn't a total freak, then it was off to my next one! Found another one in a little secluded park I would never have known existed if I hadn't gone looking for a cache and then decided to go for a third one behind Grey's Inn. This time I think I spotted someone else who was caching but he was looking in the wrong spot and then wandered off so I don't know if he was just lost or if I scared him off. This third one was particularly well hidden so I felt all clever about it.
Last weekend Katie and I met up at Covent Garden and went for a look around the markets after having lunch in one of the pubs. I was pretty close to Covent Garden by this point so rounded off my day with another wander down there using Neil to guide the way.
Next time I shall go caching in the other direction and see what I can find around The British Museum. I'm such a geek.
At least you get to see a picture of the statue that I took to try and cover up for the fact that I was caching, I should so be a spy!
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