A snowy day in London town…

This morning we were up and about bright and early (although I should probably make it clear that that is by our standards rather than other people’s so – 8am ish :lol:) breakfasting, getting dressed and packing. The year before last we were away from home so regularly we had a set of bags with all the basics already packed ready to go, I think we are at that same point again now so I really should organise that again. Ady had gone off to work to collect various things for his QVCing and was back to collect us around 9am. He had a meeting in the sevices at Pease Pottage (which just always makes me think of the nursery rhyme and want to chant about Pease Pottage hot, pease pottage cold, pease pottage in the pot nine days old!) to collect a storyboard from someone.

In the car we had all sorts of conversations but the most interesting was one about words that sound the same but mean different things. It started with how some numbers -one, two, four and eight- sound like words that mean different things – won, two/too, for/fore, ate. We then moved on to other words rhyming with ‘light’ which Davies had asked me to spell out for him – kite, bite, bright, sight/ site, height, fight and how spellings and meanings were different. As I’d been talking to people about the history of language at the weekend I was able to throw in some additional examples to impress, which got us talking about primary and secondary colours (bonus points to the only two or three people that could recall the example I cited!).

We got to our hotel in Putney Bridge just before midday having driven through lots of snow on the way. The room was not officially available until 2pm but Ady is now a Business Acccount Holder with the chain so they scurried about and sorted a room out for us, offered the children chocolate eggs each and an activity pack with colouring bits, story book and so on in it :). After a debacle with the credit card key not working to get us into the room with various people of various levels of importance getting involved before declaring the lock broken we were given a different room. It is HUGE, overlooking The Thames with the whole width of one wall made of windows. We had a cup of tea and debated plans for the day eventually deciding on The Imperial War Museum.

At reception we asked for some directions / best advice for transport and the reception clerk was keen to tell us the IWM might be a bit old for D and S. TBH I’m not sure I agree but neither was I desperate to go there myself so we decided to go to The Museum of London instead. I’d checked it out online yesterday after a tip off from Jan and discovered the ground floor is shut for refurbishment which to me made it perfect as you so rarely see all of a museum anyway and I was cagey about how busy museums would be today so thought the closure might put off enough other visitors to make it quiet.

This involved something of an epic tube journey but we were given lots of maps and hints of good places to see by the woman at the tube station that it was pefectly achievable. When we finally came above ground again it was snowing heavily as we walked to the Museum Of London.

There is a time line in the foyer with temperature /climate changes through the ages from ice age to today so we walked along that – and yes, there were the pictures about skating on the frozen Thames and Frost Fairs:), there were a few hands on activities to do with weather which we did before entering the London Before London bit of the museum. This bit was pretty busy and whilst interesting was similar to various other museums in it’s archealogical finds of early tools, pottery, human and animal remains, except of course these were specific to London.

Next was the Great Fire of London exhibit which was all of our favourite. Plenty of pictures and articles to really give a flavour of the time and the event. Davies and Scarlett did some drawing of the Great Fire and tried on firefighters helmets from 1666 and the modern day.

We then looked at the Roman London, plenty of which was familiar from information we’d recalled from visits to Fishbourne and finally Medieval London. By the end we were all hungry and slightlyMuseum-ed out but agreed it was a good one we’d like to return to, especially when it reopens completely.

We tried to bridge a bridge (nearly)

and were very interested in a convoy of 3 oddly behaving vehicles below the bridge, realising they were filming the ‘driver’

We had a quick walk round St Paul’s and got some food before retracing our tube journey.

We dossed around ther room for a while, all had a bath and watched London At Night start to appear through the window as it got dark. We had dinner in the hotel restaurant which was actually very nice and the children got loads of attention. We retold the story of Willy-Nilly while we waited for our food and then played a sort of real-life Cooking Mama with the children talking through and miming out baking flapjackes, victoria sponge (which we also had to go in a time machine for to give to Queen Victoria herself, so we used vanilla pods for flavour to make it special :lol:) and cheese scones. I was slightly amazed at how much of the recipes, techniques and equipment for actually :shock:. Over dinner we talked about autonomy, home education, money versus happiness and other deep and meaningful things.

Finally me and the children came back to the room, where they were asleep very quickly while I scoffed all the chocolates from my Thorntons EasterEgg, had a very unsatisfying hotel bathroom bath as it is so short and narrow I have to bath sections of myself in shifts as my whole body doesn’t seem to fit in at once 😆 and am drinking red wine out of a mug waiting for Ady to be on QVC between midnight and 1am.

I’m aware this all sounds delightful and easy – and therefore rather fabricated! So I will mention how the children drove me insane bouncing on beds while I was trying to rearrange the Sainsburys delivery for later this week that I have realised there will be noone home to receive, how Davies drew a crowd of confused looking people when he was waiting for a turn at the firefighters hats by being oblivious to all else other than his own reflection that he was pulling faces in the mirror and finally how Tarly managed to be holding my hand but facing the wrong way when the tube started with a jerk throwing her away from me while I grabbed her, thus twisting her wrist so she sobbed as I yelled ‘well it was either that or let you fall!’ and then realising by the horrified faces of everyone else on the train that they thought I’d deliberately smacked or hurt her and were all glaring at me, meaning I felt all defensive and felt the need to explain loudly and repeatedly to Scarlett precisely what had happened so they’d all overhear me and believe me 😆 :oops:.

Tomorrow the children have voted for ‘an art gallery’ and ‘Bank of England museum’ so I need to work out transport routes and idea of a plan while Ady is off being famous again.