Entertaining Wees and Some Cold Turkey!

Regular readers know that on the odd occasion that I have to go to London, I do so with a heavy heart and a desire to get in and out as quickly as possible.  Last week was no different.  It was the first journey to the capital with the new company, and so had added elements of dread as I am still very much in the zone of trying not to look like a right tit as much as is possible.

Upon reaching London I do go a bit touristy to be honest, and with a new company comes a new office venue, and this one in the heart of the West End.  As you might imagine, the streets in this part of London, are filled with hundreds of theatre types dancing on top of taxis in pink leg warmers, the dancers in leg warmers, not the taxis!  We stopped for a £7 coffee in Haymarket, and had to wait ages for Bob Hoskins, Julie Walters and Robert De Niro to decide whether they wanted a croissant or a skinny muffin.

So having walked with slack jaw past Eros, those large boards with Coke on that you see on the telly (and I don’t mean Frankie Cocozza’s dressing table) and a myriad of theatres I got to the offices and proceeded to blag my way through a series of meetings, nodding when everyone else did, and somehow fumbling my way through a presentation or two.

The reason for all this pre-amble is that during a break in proceedings I had a wee, and I think it may be a contender for an award for The Wee with the Best View in Britain!

These are the perks of working in the heart of the capital I imagine.  A nice as it is to look at the London Eye whilst peeing all over your shoes, it does not (for me) make the daily use of the tube anything like bearable.  I am much happier sat in first gear for an hour traveling the twelve miles or so to the office!!

So the day was pretty much a success, as the meetings went well and I was back home before 8pm.

The highlight of the day, without doubt though was the phone call I got from Emily on the way down.  She was due to pick up her GCSE results for her Maths re-take.  Having inherited the Williams aversion to Maths, she too did not pass it first time around.  This is a family tradition, and having retook it recently she had not exuded confidence about passing this time either.  I do admit to being a little nervy for the first hour of the journey, whist trying to engage in jaunty badinage with the boss next to me, but once she’d called the trip seemed a little more bearable all round.

Thankfully, her call to me was a joyous one, as she had passed, and we were all absolutely delighted.  Having mastered algebra and isosceles triangles she can now forget them forever and just wave her certificate at employers.

One downside of the journey down south was that I missed Rebecca perform in her GCSE Dance group that evening.  One of the very few school performances I have missed since they started being sheep in the nativity in nursery!  She did very well according to Louise, as a zebra!  I imagine it very similar to the Lion King Show in the Animal Kingdom!

The rest of the week was relatively uneventful, my Mum’s birthday aside today.  We popped round with a present and a card, and I spent a comfy hour in the restful grip of my Dad’s brand new “ladyboy” chair.  Only the die hard long standing trip report readers amongst you may get that reference!!

We are now in the full maelstrom of March which is officially the busiest and most expensive month of the year in the world of Williams.  It contains four family birthdays and three Mother’s days.  Yes that’s three.  My Mum of course, Louise’s Mum and Louise.  As grown up as the girls are they still seem incapable of finding their way to a shop and procuring their Mum a pressie.

In other news, I, no we, as I include Louise in this, are in the full grip of WDW cold turkey.  Like the full-blown addiction it is, we are metaphorically rocking ourselves slowly in the corner, quietly whispering random words such as Philharmagic, Applebees, Epcot, and overdraft.  I cannot lie to you, we have both this week spent time on websites that contain flight searches.  This has not helped, and in fact only reinforced how much we cannot afford to go this year.  This makes me sad, in more ways than one.

So our house is like some scene from Trainspotting, but the train in question circles the Magic Kingdom. I made the very big mistake earlier this week of re-reading one of my trip reports as someone had just commented on it.  In light of the coldness of my turkey, this was not a wise thing to do.  It did reinforce my thinking that the writing of these trip reports is well worth the effort at the time, as reading them some years later really does allow you to transport yourself to the exact time and place.  Let’s face it, that’s a lot cheaper than paying for flights.

Till the next time…..