London on a hundred pounds - including hotel!

It's January and what with Christmas, moving and everything I don't have 2 brown ha'pennies to rub together. My dear daughter Vicky arranged a trip to London for the two of us to see Hamlet starring David Tennant and Patrick Stewart, two very able and experienced shakespearian actors, (as well as being Doctor Who and Captain Jean-Luc Picard!) who also happen to be two very attractive men.... But it was the quality of the acting we were going for!

Anyway back to London, Vicky arranged the tickets, booked the train and found a nice cheap hotel back in Summer when she was flush and could afford to splash it around a bit. Then just after our frugal Christmas, it dawned on her that although the hotel was booked it wasn't paid for! Well I had a hundred pounds stashed away for the trip, so we would be able to pay for the room, but it would just mean that we would have to make a cheap trip positively stingy!

Our secret weapon would be a "mum special" packed lunch! My mum is a great one for feeding people, and all through my childhood and that of my children, no-one could travel further than a few miles without a stash of egg sandwiches, ham sandwiches and fruit. After years of rejecting this bounty I did a quick U-turn and asked her to chip in with some food for the trip... which is how I ended up on the Caledonian Sleeper with a suitcase crammed full of frozen sandwiches, crisps, bananas and peaches!

On Monday the 5th we caught the sleeper and were deposited in London at 7:30 am on a freezing January morning. We decided to buy a couple of tube tickets that would allow us to travel freely across the centre of London, and head to Westminster and try to find a greasy spoon for a cheap fry up and a coffee.

We emerged from the Tube station near Big Ben so walked over Westminster Bridge taking photos


the aforementioned greasy spoon proved elusive to track down so we sat in Parliament square near Nelson Mandela's statue and grabbed a couple of egg rolls out of my suitcase. Suitably refreshed, we had a wee wander around the area. Parliament square has very few people wandering around and the reason could be that it is really a busy roundabout surrounding a green square with a permanent anti-Iraq protest, several statues, some invitingly empty benches and NO pedestrian crossings to access it. We didn't notice this until we were marooned in the middle and trying to find a safe way back to the pavement! Westminster Abbey stood by looking lovely and golden in the brilliant sunshine, and we wandered over to it, however we didn't go inside partly because it was such a lovely day and mainly because it would have cost us £24 to cross the threshold! (Everything they say about Scots must be true!) We wandered up a street at random and found ourselves in St James' Park where Vicky found a friendly pelican taking the air and trying to elude a gardener in green overalls who was trying to get it to go to the frozen lake.

We saw quite a nice glimpse of Buckingham Palace from where we were standing, but with suitcases and sandwiches and pelicans and all, I gave up on taking photos and left it to Vicky, so we've no pictures of the queen's house. We admired the partially frozen lake and the ducks who were standing on it and wandered off up Horseguards Parade to try and find somewhere we knew. We had no map but Horseguards Parade leads onto the Mall (another view of the queen's house) and if you nip through an arch and go off to the side there before you is Trafalgar Square! I had only been driven round Trafalgar Square in a taxi and I hadn't noticed that it is actually right in front of the National Gallery. (I thought there were roads all round it - a bit like George Square in Glasgow - I'll admit it, I'm a provincial)

We spent some time there, admiring the frozen fountains (Ice? In London? It's always warmer down south than up our way!) and looking up at Nelson on his column (it's a nice detailed statue for all it's so high up, he's standing in front of a coil of rope) and wondering if it would be possible to climb up on the lions to get a photo... we resisted the impulse. Then off to the left we found the goal of our search - a wee café serving coffee and breakfast! We had a full English breakfast (which included toast and coffee, but only had a single sausage! Poor thing, how lonely!) and an extra coffee. Vicky had the breakfast and I ate the toast. £7 gone from our reserves but we did ok. I suppose cheap cafés are not to be had in a tourist area that is also at the centre of government.

Suitably refreshed, we wandered off down to the river and found ourselves near the Jubilee Bridges. These are a pair of footbridges across the Thames built to commemorate the Queen's golden jubilee. They are built alongside a railway bridge, so on one bridge there is a view off to the West with the Houses of Parliament and the London Eye, and on the East bridge, is a view of the City of London with the OXO tower, the Gherkin etc. I'm not great with heights or bridges, I have to cross them exactly in the middle with my eyes fixed firmly to the ground, I can only raise my eyes if I am holding on to something (much like when I visited the great wall!) To admire the view I had to shuffle to the edge, grip the rail for dear life and only then could I look up and out!

Having crossed the bridges safely we descended into the depths of the tube heading for the Natural History Museum and the dinosaurs! Museums have fairly improved since I was 7, we went round the dinosaur exhibit twice but the T-Rex remained sleeping.


We also managed to look at the stuffed animals and the whales. Why do museums feel the need to have po-faced explanations that they no longer stuff animals for exhibition and that the exhibits they do have are old and from an unenlightened time? I like stuffed animals, although I'm not suggesting they go out and gun down endangered species for my pleasure, but why not stuff any animals that keel over in the zoo?

I must say, if you're watching the pennies, London's museums, squares and "sights" are good value. You can ooh and ah at the famous buildings, and if it is cold or rains, visiting the museums for free can't be bettered!

After that it was back to the tube in order to find what kind of hotel in Bayswater only charges £55 for a room for two people. And the answer to that is a nice clean one! The furniture arrangement was a little eccentric, a double bed in front of the window and perpendicular to that a single bed in front of a wardrobe which in turn was in front of a door! But the beds were clean and comfy, there was a sink and a wee telly, and the loo and shower were only a couple of steps outside the room.

We had sausage rolls (home made from mum! yum), and a wee snooze - well we had been walking round and round London lugging bags and a case! Then we roused ourselves in order to get to the theatre for the main event!

The journey to the theatre was a wee bit daunting. According to the tiny map in the Caledonian Sleeper's guide to London (we really should have got a tourist map) the nearest tube to the theatre was a just a short walk away... but the whole map was only 2" by 3"! We did find it but it was a bit worrying not being sure where we were heading. We arrived at the theatre with half an hour to curtain up and hadn't eaten yet. (egg sandwiches aren't quite the thing for Hamlet) so we had a wander round and found another café and settled for a baked potato and a lasagne, not bad though - I bet no-one else in the audience had a pre theatre supper for £11!

Once we walked into the theatre all thoughts of penny pinching went to the wall. We walked into the lap of luxury, gilt mirrors on the walls, velvet seats, thick carpets. Seats in the centre of the stalls! No climbing up the back staircase to a seat so high you're sharing with the pigeons. Vicky had done us proud. The only worry was whether we would get a six foot man with a top hat on sitting infront of us. There was one moment when Hardeep Singh walked in with an enormous yellow turban on, but luckily he sat elsewhere. Vicky and I had a bit of fun taking photos of ourselves with the programme hoping it would look like David Tennant had popped down to see us ... ....
...then we settled down to enjoy the show. Hamlet takes a bit of time you know, and we enjoyed every minute of it. Sheer luxury, then having had a wonderful evening we hopped back on the tube and headed back to our hotel, where we slept the sleep of the righteous.

The next morning we set off back to the railway station to catch a train back to Edinburgh, but first we popped into a nice coffee shop to have a coffee and croissant, a little extravangance to round off a very economical trip!

Not counting train fares and theatre tickets, which are what we accountants call sunk costs and can safely be ignored, the whole trip came in at under £100 pounds:
Hotel £55 + Tube Fares £25 + Food £20 (thanks to mum's sandwiches, which kept us going through the day - and the remaining ham sandwiches sustained us on the train)

Christmas Countdown

You know how in magazines etc from about September they have these Christmas timetables – Step by step guide to creating the perfect Christmas ?

Well here’s my version:
How to have a perfect-ish Christmas with next-to-no outlay of time of effort!

1. October and November – Instead of using this time to look for early Christmas presents, menu planning and saving money for the holiday, haunt the property ads and spend every spare weekend visiting potential homes. Make a half hearted attempt at preparatory packing and clearing out. (Not too much though – you don’t want to tempt fate!)
   
   
2. 1st week in December – You could use this to dig out your Christmas decorations, test lights, discard old decorations and buy replacements, but instead find a house, make a real start on packing and chucking out the detritus of 20 years in the same place.
   
   
3. 2nd week in December – Send your husband to hospital so he can have a heart attack in a nice safe environment. Spend the rest of the week in a tizz of packing and hospital visiting.
   
   
4. 3rd week in December – Move house. This shouldn’t take long so you can devote the rest of the week to lying ill in bed.
   
   
5. 4th week in December – Only a few days to Christmas! Now that you are fully refreshed and in a cosy new house, albeit surrounded by boxes and haven’t got the hang of the fire yet, it’s time to think about celebrations. The first class deadline will be staring you in the face so grab an assortment of Christmas cards and bankrupt yourself by posting them out first class. Take time out to collect your offspring from airports and bus stations. Presents – your nearest and dearest will expect presents but you’ve no time left for hand crafted things of beauty and no money left to buy well thought out gifts…. Thank goodness for 24 hour supermarkets!
   
   
   
6. Christmas Eve – time to turn the house upside down looking for a Christmas tree and decorations – surely they’re here somewhere? Nip out to the shops and buy last, last minute pressies. Wrap the things you have got, stick up the tree, drape tinsel and greenery over selected spaces, pop the gifts under the tree and stand back well pleased with yourself that you made it after all!
   

Thanks to William for putting up the tree, and Vicky for helping me pick presents for under a fiver, and for coming back from China with a ton of stocking fillers that she proceeded to stuff in stockings for all of us, and thanks to all of us for setting aside any greed and for really appreciating a book, a jumper, some hand cream for Christmas gifts. We opened our little packages with the delight that can often be missing if a Nintendo is bought instead of a Wii, or the wrong brand of trainers.

We had a delightful day, and were so busy enjoying ourselves we didn't have time for Christmas lunch at lunchtime, so after visiting my mum in the afternoon and having fun with the greater family, we had a civilised Christmas dinner in the evening, and because no one was driving anywhere we could have wine and flop on the sofa afterwards.

Moving House - how many disasters can happen?

Dear all,
Here is the sad and sorry tale of our move to Blainslie. We were in an all-fired rush because the light of my life was suffering with the stress of noisy and abusive neighbours, so as soon as we located a cottage and it was empty we gathered our stuff together and dashed off. Unfortunately 5 days before the move, the light of my life went to hospital for a routine visit and they decided to keep him. That made the last minute preparations for the move quite challenging! However, plans is plans, and we just had to carry on. The house was wreathed in mist when we arrived to pick up the keys and absolutely freezing! However George, the farmer had offered to lend us a horsebox to move our stuff and threw in a huge pickup to pull it

The move of boxes and furniture went reasonably smoothly, but even although I had had a big clear out I still ended up with too much stuff to fit into a 2 bedroomed cottage with no cupboards. George had offered to come and light the stove for me to show how it all went, but once he arrived he started pulling bits out of it, tutting and shaking his head. The result is that the stove needs a complete rebuild, but he fitted the bits back in for the time being so we could get some use out of it.

Someone at this time told me that the electric water heater can be switched on and left and it would kick in only if the fire wasn’t managing to heat the water. The fire was lit, the radiators started to become warm, every room was filled with boxes but in the main the furniture was all in the right rooms. The cat was released from his box and the light of my life was released from hospital, so I picked him up from a warm hospital and delivered him to a cold house.

That evening the telly was connected to the existing satellite dish but it showed none of the “right” stations the radiators stayed warm to cool and we could hear the hot water boiling in the tank above us I found the box with the phone in it and plugged it in. The phone didn’t work

That night I tossed and turned worrying that I’d made an awful mistake, at 4 am I got up and looked at the fire which looked as if it had gone out. On opening the door I found a huge plate of metal had fallen down into the fire!

I let the fire go out.

Sunday morning, after a sleepless night I went to the bathroom and threw the entire contents of my stomach (precious little) up into the toilet…. Unpleasant enough but made more unusual by the clouds of steam that were emitted by the toilet when I flushed it! the cistern was pleasantly warm, the handle comfortably hot and the radiator stone cold. My brains were scrambled but I knew the loo shouldn’t be boiling hot! The hot tap in the bathroom sink was running hot, and so was the cold one! I called for help with the fire and then spent the morning ringing BT repeatedly to try to get my phone fixed but they denied my number was a BT number and couldn’t trace my order, technical services were available from 7:00 am but they passed me to another dept who wouldn’t start till 8:00 am and they passed me to a department who didn’t start till 9:00 am. This was taking forever with continual requests to press button 1, key in my phone number, key in my order number… and my mobile phone kept cutting out on me so by the time they decided it was a technical fault that would have to be looked at by technicians on Monday, I had had to resort to getting 2 other people with landlines to make the calls for me.

During the afternoon George came and moved the plate for me and relit the fire, tried to get the radiators working and contacted a plumber for us. He recommended we pour off the incredibly hot water - I ran off gallons of hot water in the bathroom – so much that the steam was lifting the wallpaper off the wall! I was washed out, couldn’t face any boxes and sloped off to bed.

Monday was a bit of a blur from my side – if I wasn’t throwing up, I was hiding in bed wearing 4 layers of clothes and an electric blanket, plumbers and workmen were working away in the house - apparently the fire was more or less working, it’s the electric water heater that is making the water boil. The central heating pump was replaced and thermostats were fiddled with, the fire re-lit and the radiators slowly started to pick up some warmth

BT finally connected the phone and someone fixed the satellite dish so once more my house rings with the sound of foreign news broadcasts (actually on reflection - , but at least the light of my life is happy ) He was an absolute star on Monday, made a valiant start on emptying the boxes littering the lounge and kitchen – even though he had been in hospital just a day or two before! I felt guilty playing the dying duck when he was working so hard but I really could hardly move.
Late Monday evening the tumble dryer squawked and died

Tuesday morning the kettle didn’t work… nor did the electric heater or any other kitchen appliances including the washing machine. Oh a fuse! Where is the fusebox? About 10 feet off the ground above the front door! Is it a fancy one with trip switches? No, old fashioned fuse wire. Who fancies balancing on top of a step ladder fiddling with fuse wire? Certainly not me, I’m having difficulty staying on my feet on the ground! Fortunately George is a nice man who, being a farmer, is out and about nice and early It seems the steam that was released when I poured gallons of boiling water away on Sunday night/Monday morning condensed on the wires causing a short circuit. (I hope that’s it anyway – I can’t imagine regularly changing these fuses!) Once the fuse was fixed the tumble dryer came back to life By Wednesday I was coming back to life too. Still a bit fragile, still unable to face more than a couple of bites of dry bread without dashing to the loo but I was managing to stay awake and erect for several hours at a time. I was still, however, lying awake each night wondering if this was the biggest mistake of my life. The fire seemed to have started behaving itself, staying in (just) all night and coming back to life when I coaxed it with sticks and logs, it was even managing to warm up the radiators, but it takes time to warm up the walls of an old stone house enough to make the rooms comfortable. Other excitements during this period were the pouring rain on the day of the move, snow the following day and gale force winds the next day, something going wrong with the plumbing in of the washing machine leading to water going all over the place, and the cat refusing to emerge from behind the boxes in the spare room.

Still, we’re in and the only neighbours above us are the bats, I have been told, that live in the roof. So long as they don’t start having late night parties they’re welcome!

IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE

I have just been forwarded a powerpoint presentation titled "IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE" (The entire presentation is in block capitals)

This presentation is anti-Iranian and anti-muslim propaganda bundled onto a series of images of holocaust victims.

I would like to assure anyone who ends up watching this that there is no such thing as a "United Kingdom Curriculum" each country within the United Kingdom sets its own curriculum, certainly Scotland does and without any instruction from Iran.

I went to school 30 years ago and wasn't taught the holocaust, at that time Iran was still Persia and there was no muslim control of education in schools, so whether or not it is taught in schools now cannot be placed at the door of Iran or the mullahs the Islamophobes are so scared of.

I am sorry but I am absolutely blinding angry about this.

There are plenty of lessons that can be taken from the Holocaust , the killing fields of Cambodia and the distressing massacres in Rwanda and most recently DR Congo. Targeting another "enemy within" is not one of them.

(non-members can comment here)

Sunshine on Leith (The Proclaimers Musical)

I went to see Sunshine on Leith (again) today at the Dundee Rep Theatre in Dundee.
This musical first opened in 1997, and I went to see it at the Kings in Glasgow, but seeing the show at the company's home theatre, which is small and intimate compared to the Kings, was a different experience completely.

I can't improve on the rep website blurb "A fantastic, fun and poignant night’s entertainment, Sunshine on Leith follows the highs and lows of young ex-soldiers Ally and Davy as they return to their lives back home in Scotland. Families, relationships and life in Leith are not all plain sailing in this exceptional love story about everyday life in Scotland."

The music and acting were truly fantastic, and so poignant, at two points tears were running down my face - watching Jean sing "Sunshine on Leith" at her husbands bedside, and (naturally) when Hazel is packing and the family she is leaving behind sing "Letter From America"
The opening scene in Afghanistan, showing the soldiers preparing to go out on a sortie was incredibly effective - particularly a few days after all the publicity surrounding the 90th anniversary of the 1st World War.
The funny bits were hilarious, the poignant bits were tearful, and the love stories were romantic but realistic.
If ever you get a chance to see it go! It's a real slice of Scottish life.

It may be raining outside...

...but my inner weather clear and sunny!



If you want to know your inner forecast click here

Wet Feet!

Well, we’ve been having a busy time of it lately.

On Wednesday evening my nice (single, male, quiet) neighbour from downstairs came and said water was running into his kitchen, I rushed and checked my kitchen sink that I suspected was leaking, and there was a tiny bit of water in the cupboard, so I said I’d get an emergency plumber out, which I did and he replaced part of the sink drain. All sorted out, no problem.

Then last night after traipsing round B&Q and Tesco with my mother, (don't you just love these 24 hour supermarkets? it means you can do a whole days work and then spend your free time trochling round the shops...) I eventually got home at 8 o’clock, opened the door and nearly fell over the same plumber!

It wasn’t the sink.

In the afternoon my neighbour had noticed water running down his walls and called the plumber out, my DH was fast asleep, and they had to rouse him to do something about it! As you can imagine, that and the fact that I had come and taken the car away without even saying hello didn’t put him in the best of moods! Anyway the plumber was fiddling away with the hot water tank and shaking it to find where the water was coming from… eventually he decided it was corroded and needed replaced. He disconnected it, and drained it and at 10pm went off home.

So now we’ve no hot water at all. Luckily he connected the bathroom up to the mains supply, so we can use the loo and sink, (and the bath if we feel masochistic) but because the mains water is so powerful, whenever you switch on the tap, the water goes everywhere, and when you flush the loo the noise!!! It sounds like the damn thing’s going to explode!

I don’t know how I can face my neighbour again, I’m mortified. It has always been my nightmare that I would flood out the flat downstairs, but I had always expected that it would be me in the bath going through the floor! Which, on reflection, would be rather more embarrassing!