We went off for a rambling journey around London on Sunday, which was an uncharacteristically beautiful day. It started strangely: my London pride (not the ale) was somewhat dented by the fact that Sarah, who is from a land far, far away, seemed to know her way around the touristy parts of London much better than I do. We went to Trafalgar Square, which I've stood around in plenty of times*, but never really actually looked at in any detail - I've certainly never looked up at the column properly or taken photos of the lions. From there we went to St James' Park (which I've been in before, but only when drunk) which was a lovely place - it had pelicans, which at first glance I mistook for bizarre hallucinations of swans, an army of cyclists, and Buckingham Palace - which I've never actually seen before, and, to be honest, don't feel any the richer for having seen - it's pretty urgley.
After some tasty lunchings and lounging around in the park sunshine for a while we moved on to somewhere else, and the balance finally tipped so that I knew more about where we were going than the person from the other side of the Atlantic.
We went up to Camden where, to my shock, no-one offered us drugs (I'm not being snobby, it's just that I used to go up there a lot, and never walked more than about 200 metres without being offered something.) we shambled around looking at the emokids, goths and hipsters shaking their bony asses and spending this months allowance on various ironic, almost-witty or 'random' T-Shirts and sweating like pigs in their ankle length leather jackets. There was cool stuff left right and centre but seeing as neither of us had any money it was kinda like dry humping retailwise.
At that point the period of me being the one knowing where we were going ended again as we walked down regents canal from Camden Lock, which was lovely; all the weeping willows sinking into the water, the funny shimmering reflections on the walls and under the bridges and the little jetties at the end of people's gardens. I was walking along, possibly giving the impression that I knew where I was going, but in fact I was just following the prettyness. Luckily, the walk down the canal led down to Regent's park, where we sat around in the sunshine and observed (from a safe distance) some sort of traumatising mass aerobics event where middle-aged saggy women in pink t-shirts were enthusiastically shouted at by the gayest man in the history of aerobics instructors (and lets face it, it's a pretty gay history.)
From there we tubed it back to Greenwich, loafed about in the park & riverside, and drank tasty beer until it was bus home snoozetime.
It was a good day.
-Ben
*usually whilst waiting for the N21 at some ungodly hour of the night on the way back from somewhere fun
