Friday, August 29, 2003

Thursday the last day of our 7 day passes and jolly useful they have been may I add. I would like to take this brief moment to pay tribute to the fine service that is the London Underground. Those 7 day tickets for example cost a mere 19 of your earth pounds apiece and for that you have unlimited travel on zones 1 and 2 which is pretty much all a tourist is likely to require. Additionally there have been but 2 occasions when we have waited longer than 5 minutes for our tube (notice how easily one slips into the ways of the locals) to arrive. That and for the most part it's clean and tidy to boot, of course that may be due to our frequent use of the Jubilee line extension. Well done Ken.

Well as I mentioned yesterday we were setting off for hell in the form of Oxford Street, but hey did we go there, no we went to Knightsbridge instead. That way we were very clearly going to window shop, as we don't have the means to purchase anything there or thereabouts.

First call was Harrods, well the tube drops you at the side door where the Saudi chauffeurs await their mistresses beck and call. We did enter and have a look around and emerged some time later with a couple of wee pressies for Mumsy and Mumsy'spal. The food hall was impressive indeed lots of stuff from all over the planet. I thought that the Beluga at �750 for 250g was a tad overpriced myself nevertheless, we did get a cople of hot baguettes, mine with cheese and thewife's with cheese and ham, these were a mere � 1.39 each which in fact provided us with probably our cheapest lunch to date and tasty they were too.

I'm a liberal sort of bloke and welcome asylum seekers with open arms. I did observe a scam of outrageous proportions however, being perpetrated by (possibly Romanian) women with babies. There was one begging outside Harrods and a few minutes later I noticed a group of 8 no less, all with baby in arms, crossing the road and slowly seperating to their various pitches. Frankly I would have got the local Social Services to take the bloody kids into care.

Anyway we moved on to Harvey Nichols once thewife had visited Harrod's loos smelling of something expensive, seems they have samples in jars around the place.

Harvey Nichols was similar in that its a big Department Store, a bit more modern and trendyish. I do have to ask though, does Calvin Klein have no end to his ego that he thinks he can design beds as well as pants? Three steps on and it seems Ralph Lauren likewise wants to have his name on everything possible as well. Its was like when we passed BabyGap, what the fuck is that about? I offered up for thewife my new concept of FoetusGap, designer amniotic fluid for mums to be huh niche or waht? Up there with "CheesyDrink"(c) methinks. Shoot the designers shoot all of them!!!

Rant over we headed back home in the rain, first we've seen so can't complain, also, I don't need to water the garden tonight. Hit Sainsbury's around 6.10pm. bought our dinner and were just making our way to the checkouts when the famous London Power Cut happened. Sainsbury have a genreator though and within minutes the computerised checkouts were re-booting themselves and I was then impressed that they started off from where they finished, no need to rescan anything. I suppose they need that sort of back up. It was only when we got home and the power came on and we watched the news we realised the scale of things. Tube's out etc, could have been stuck underground for a while jeez would not have liked that.

Next morning I read that in fact the tubes operated succesfully during the blitz for christssake. Up until last year the tube had it's own power station, that was until the Government stepped in with it's new Part Privatisation Programme and PFI and hey they closed it down didn't they.

Rant over off for a shot in the London Eye in the rain.

Oh and almost forgot, Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me............
posted by timesnewroman at 10:20 AM  

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