After leaving my disastrous stay at Palmer’s Lodge, I met my sister and her husband at Borough Market for lunch – I had a Chicken Masamann from the Thai food cart. We sat at a table at the top of a set of wooden bleacher-like things with a great view of everyone else eating their lunch.
On Christmas Eve we met my other sister and her wife in central London for panto. We saw Goldilocks and the Three Bears at the London Palladium. It was awesome, funny, and magnificent (I later read a newspaper review that gave the show only three out of five stars because there was so little plot – it didn’t need plot). This was followed by a meal together at a Mexican restaurant.
Christmas day was lovely and quiet. We watched a lot of T.V., drank a lot of tea, and ate a lot of chocolate. There was a particularly bizarre T.V. show called Martins Close; it was about a young man accused of murdering a woman whose ghost had since been seen several times. We also put together a kitset of a wooden marble run – so much fun!
On the Saturday I went to Cambridge by myself. First, I popped by the visitor information centre and picked up some brochures and a map. I spent the rest of the day at the Fitzwilliam Museum. It seems to be artier than I had thought it would be, but I enjoyed the ancient history bits.
Monday was a London day. We (my sister, her husband, and myself) had tickets to Witness for the Prosecution at London County Hall. We started with an hour in the treasures room at the British Library (I liked the illuminated manuscripts).
Getting off the tube at London Bridge, we bought hot chocolates at Rabot in Borough Market and drank them as we walked along the Thames to the winter market outside the Southbank Centre, where we had lunch. I had a Korean pork rice bowl that was quite a bit spicier than I had anticipated.
On New Years Eve, I accompanied my sister and her husband to Cambridge. They were going to see the New Year in at one of the clocks there and had booked a fancy hotel room for the night. We had lunch at The Old Bicycle Shop (good food, great atmosphere). I was planning on seeing more of Cambridge afterwards (perhaps Great St Marys), but I didn’t feel like it.
I saw the New Year in hanging out the attic window. There were at least six fireworks displays going on that I could see, and several more that I couldn’t (judging from the sounds and wafts of smoke coming from the other direction). I had tried to watch the fireworks at Big Ben on the T.V. but the cameras weren’t great at seeing through the smoke created by the fireworks.
