Tuesday 12th November 2024
A slight variation today. I’m heading off to the ExCel exhibition centre near Canary Wharf whilst Christine is heading off to Regents Park.
My ticket says I have a 0900hrs time slot to enter, so up and breakfasted fairly swiftly and I headed to Bond Street station to catch the “Elizabeth Line” train, the first time I’ve been on this new service. Unfortunately today was not a good start, the trains were running late due to one on our “Eastbound” trains stuck at Paddington, apparently they couldn’t close the doors so trains were backing up behind it!!! When a train did come along it was ”over full”; couldn’t get another person on so waited for the next which fortunately came along virtually immediately. This was also full but I did manage to squeeze myself onto it but at Liverpool Street the train emptied phew, I can sit down and breathe!!!!!!
I arrived at the F1 Exhibition 15-minutes after my time slot, but all the information given to me when I bought the ticket about the importance of arriving early due to the volume of visitors; “poppycock”, no issue getting in, in fact I wandered in all by myself, no one around me!!!!!
It took me 3-hours to get round the exhibition and it was fascinating, it told the history of Grand Prix racing between the wars and from the first F1 World Championship in 1950 to date. Naturally there were a number of cars exhibited, but all aspects of the sport were on display especially accident protection. The most dramatic exhibit was the film of Romain Grosjean’s crash at the start of the Bahrain Grand Prix on the 29th November 2020 where his car was broken in two and it became one huge fireball. Alongside this film was what was left of his car, “The Tub” that saved him; apart from burnt hands and losing one of his shoes, miraculously he was unscathed!!! A few years earlier, it would have certainly meant his demise, the sport has come along way in the last 10-years.
Like all exhibitions, there is far too much information to assimilate but was fascinating and well worth the visit.
Christine went off :-
After Geoff left, I decided to go to Marks and Sparks, so set of about 9ish, followed my instructions from Apple Maps and soon found my way, and to my horror, they don’t open till 10.00am, went across to Selfridges, they also are not open. So set the maps to Regent Park, and wondered very happily around the park, it’s an amazing place considering right in the middle of town.
I love where Andrew lives, because it is like a little village, with lots of interesting streets, then if you want to do some serious shopping Oxford Street is a couple of streets away.
Having walked several miles around the park, I made my way back to Marks and Sparks did the shopping then went back to Andrew’s where Geoff joined me!
We hadn’t planned anything else for the day but as I had completed my visit earlier than I predicted. I remembered our visit to Padstow in September, but more importantly the visit to the “Prawn on the Lawn” restaurant; what an opportunity, their other restaurant is here in North London, so booked a table for tonight. Second thought, I’ll contact Lee and Sarah and see if they are up for another visit and after a couple of minutes I got the message “YES!!!!!!”; I didn’t tell Christine, I thought it would be a surprise.
On route to the station, we met up with Andrew and Elton in the park, and watched little one enjoying himself with friends, he is very settled and happy with his new life.
We arrived at the POTL (short for Prawn on the Lawn) a little earlier and settled down with a bottle, hoping they would arrive before Christine was wanting to order, fortunately they did and the surprise on Christine’s face was a picture; she hadn’t got a clue even though Lee had telephoned me earlier and I had to answer in Christine’s presence,I’ll never go to heaven!!!
We did our usual thing, work through all the starters and washed them down with copious amounts of wine. The POTL has a “two hour” per table policy but naturally we ignored that and the staff did some reservation swapping, we were spending too much to kick us out. On the way back to the station we stopped off for a couple of nightcaps in the local pub, just for good measure.
Arriving back at the flat where everything was in darkness, everyone had gone to bed, still another great day came to an end. The sun was