Further tales from the city

I slept really badly and woke just after 630am when Davies clambered into bed with me (Ady had just left for QVC) and then tossed and turned and muttered for ages. I have this theory about needing to sleep with your body in the right direction – eg at home my bed is east/west, Davies’ is the same but Tarly’s is north/south. I know in the same was as I have to sleep on the same side of the bed wherever I am and even if Ady isn’t in it too I don’t sleep as well if I’m not east/west. This is backed up by Tarly sleeping just fine here in the hotel room (where all 3 beds are north/south) but me and Davies struggling. It also explains why when she comes into our bed occassionally she feels the need to sleep across it 😆 Or it could all just be bollocks, but I’ve harped on about it for enough years to practically make it a scientifically true phenomena ;).

So Davies, Scarlett and I headed down to breakfast at about 845am. The hotel, which has about 800 rooms is fully booked so breakfast was very busy. We were shown to a table and then had to queue up to help ourselves. As I neither felt comfortable leaving D and S out of sight at a table for 15 minutes or so while I queued, nor would be able to manage to carry all 3 breakfasts myself anyway they came with me. We got all our cooked breakfast stuff and sat down to eat. Then they went up to choose cereal, then I did, then we got more to drink. I never normally eat breakfast and infact can’t face food for a good 2 hours until after I’ve woken up really, although I do require at least 4 pints of tea :lol:. Mindful of the fact lunch might be a long way off and breakfast was on Ady’s company though I felt obliged to eat my fill, which was a mistake I won’t be repeating tomorrow morning as it left me feeling distinctly odd for the rest of the day really.

Breakfast finished we came back up to the room and checked to see if Ady’s appearance was online yet – it wasn’t – and to find the right route to the Tate Modern. Just as we were about to leave to start walking Ady rang to say he was back and parking the car so we walked down to meet him and then walked alongside the Thames to the Tate Modern. It was the one thing I really wanted to do this weekend, having never been there before and never taken Davies to a ‘proper’ art gallery. It was *very* hot, I was feeling quite peaky and Scarlett was not as entranced as I would have hoped but Davies really enjoyed it. It was interesting to sit and view the art and get the children’s ideas of what they thought it meant, how it made them feel and so on. Some of the artists work they were slightly familiar with eg Picasso and some of the artists they had heard of or were aware of eg Jackson Pollock. I think the main thing was the scale of the art which was overwhelming. We spent a fair bit of time downstairs in the Turbine where the current exhibition is the rather quirky (as if any modern art isn’t ;)) crack the entire length of the actual concrete floor. I am probably of the school of thinking that art should speak to you itself and if it needs explaining then it is either a bit crap or a bit wanky in it’s ego but I could ‘get’ the crack although I thought it would have been more ‘poetic’ if it had stretched from a tiny fault to a widening chasm by the end of the floor.

We had a drink in the cafe and a look round the rest of the galleries (although we didn’t view everything) and then watched a film crew setting up at the Millenium footbridge. There was a helicopter and police boat going up and down a small stretch of the Thames for the entire time we walked along it which was intreresting for the children who have seen Thames scenes on so many things from Doctor Who to Primeval. No idea what the crew were filming for but we were the last people off the millenium bridge before they closed it for filming as we crossed the Thames to walk back along the other side.

We’d started to half heartedly look for somewhere to get lunch but never really quite managed it as we walked along past various landmarks including St Pauls which we popped in for a quick peek at

and past Trafalgar Square, Downing Street, the horse guards, a protest/ demonstration about justice in Zimbabwee which meant Davies and Scarlett got a proper introduction to what demos are about. Finally we were at Big Ben / Parliament with still no lunch and it had started to rain so Ady popped into Tesco and got a few bits and we went back to the hotel to eat. I checked my phone which has a built in pedometer to discover we’d walked 7.2 miles :shock – so no wonder we were all pretty worn out! Davies and Scarlett did amazingly well for such a trek, and plenty of it was at brisk walking speed too. We ate and then I had a nice long bath (I say nice, it was narrow and not at all deep as hotel baths so often are but the soak was nice just the same), Ady and Scarlett had a bath followed by a shower, Davies spent ages on the BBC website creating a Doctor Who comic and learning what ‘scene’ ‘prop’ and ‘dialogue’ mean. We lazed around for a couple of hours before heading back out again for a walk around the block which takes in Big Ben and London Eye.


Back to the hotel where as the restuarant was so packed we arranged to bring our food up to the room and eventually around 10pm D and S finally fell asleep.

Tomorrow Ady is off early again to QVC and me and the children are planning breakfast followed by a trip to the which has just opened and looks very ‘us’. So far we haven’t actually spent a penny so I’m quite happy to pay for us to visit something so very suitable looking :). Then hopefully by careful coordination we will manage to have Ady back to collect us so we can exit the hotel room by midday without me and the children having to tote all our bags round with us. Precision timing will be key :lol:.