You know your vacation day is not up to par when the funnest thing you did was videotaping your 13-year-old stakeboarding. But that was my day today.
Suzie got the flu late yesterday, and was as sick last night and this morning as I’ve ever seen her. So our planned activity for the day (watching A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the new Globe Theatre) was shot. Setting off without a real plan, I ended up pretty much screwing up the whole day.
Will said he wanted to see the British Museum after hearing me rave about it, so that was our first destination, but we decided to take the bus rather than the underground, which was a mistake, because it took us forever to get there. By the time we arrived at the museum it was after lunch, and the boys were hungry, so we ate a small lunch in the museum cafe (one of the great bargains in London), after which the boys had to make multiple trips to the bathroom (I don’t know, don’t ask), so it was well after one once we started touring the museum. But the boys weren’t interested in looking at anything but mummies and other human remains, and in any event we needed to get to the play, which started at 2 (we had 2 standing room tickets that could be interchanged among the three of us), so we had to rush back to the underground, rearrange our journey due to a delayed train, and walk several miles to the Globe in order to be 45 minutes late. So up to that point, the day was pretty much public transit, public transit, eat, wait for the boys, look at human remains, public transit, public transit, long rushed walk.
The Globe was very interesting, and I would go back and see a whole play there if I could, rather than the stolen 20 minutes I managed to sneak in while wondering what Andrew was up to in the lobby (Will, interestingly enough, seemed genuinely intrigued with the experience). The setting was terrific, the actors great, the scene one-of-a-kind. But, as I said, I got to experience it for 20 minutes. Then it was time for … wait for it, more public transit! What a great day!
That lead us home, because I felt as if I was hitting a wall, and wondering if I was getting the flu too, but I had promised Andrew that we would go to Clapham Common to videotape him stakeboarding. So after a 45 minute rest (at about 5 pm) we set out again. On our way to … public transit … we were accosted by a drunken, semi-coherent man asking if he could borrow 72 pence (which fascinated Will; exactly why did he want exactly seventy-two pence?) to get to a hospital because it hurt when he was “breaking wind” (I am not making this up), and when I said to him, “But there’s a hospital right there” (which there was, as we were standing across the street from something called “Lambeth Hospital”), and he replied, “But that’s a psychiatric hospital,” I stifled the urge to suggest that might be an appropriate destination for him (or to ask him why he needed 72 pence to get to the hospital when he could afford a cell phone), fearing he might pull out the knife I was sure he must have somewhere on his person. I gave him a pound, and he fortunately went away.
About this time, our bus approached further down the road, and departed without us. We walked to the stop and started waiting, when I asked, “Did anyone remember the video camera?” This resulted in Andrew returning to the house to fetch the camera, arriving of course about 15 seconds after the next bus had gone by. This was followed by a good 20 minute wait for the bus we finally took.
I decided I needed food. I was crabby, irritable, hostile, unhappy, and hungry. So we looked around the area, and I found what I thought was the perfect place: A Thai restaurant that was inexpensive and quite busy, and excellent combination. So we’re standing in the door and Andrew says, “Does anyone want to go to this restaurant except Dad?” That set me off. “What exactly is it that you want to eat?” I demanded. “Why don’t you choose our restaurant?” So we set off again, and after about 10 minutes of searching, found a relatively inexpensive pub that served dinner. We sat down and ordered drinks, only to be told by the bouncer (very politely, I should add) that children were not permitted in the establishment after 5 p.m. So off we went again, finding yet another pub that also didn’t take children after 5 p.m. At some point my frustration and parental perogative set in, and I simply told the boys that we were going to eat in our original Thai restaurant, so we walked back there and had … the best dinner we’ve had in London, at a bargain price. The motto, I told the kids, was that sometimes, just sometimes, I know what I’m doing.
After that, it was off to find the skate park, which was about 1/3 of the way into to the enormous park called Clapham Common. The skate park was nice enough, Andrew struck up a friendly conversation with some local stakeboarders, and the videoing was accomplished. As I said, this was the best part of the day.
The stinkiness of the day continued as we walked back to the edge of the part and went to the Sainsbury grocery store. The list that Suzie had carefully made out had managed to slip out of my pocket, I couldn’t remember what was on it, I couldn’t find the fruit, they didn’t have any breakfast pastries, and when I paid for the groceries with a credit card, the checker handed me the slip to sign and said, “Do you have a pen,” as if customers were expected to carry pens with them. When I said “no,” he looked at me rudely and said “well, that will be a problem then.” I was speechless (a rare event). Finally he asked the checker in the next booth if she had a pen (and she, better prepared apparently than he, did), and the transaction was complete.
This was followed by (1) trouble bagging the groceries, (2) another wait for a bus, and (3) breaking plastic grocery bags that spilled their contents several times on the sidewalk before we finally made it home.
I am tired and am hoping tomorrow is a better day.
Categories: Travel -- London
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