I'm a tourist

Sometimes having a friend stay with you for a couple of weeks on holiday is a good thing. It's a great motivator to get out and see all the things your city has to offer. I spent most of yesterday wandering around with Janine being all London-expert like... of course little did she know I was winging it completely after spending the last 3 months doing little else but work and sleep, hence knowldge of London is scarcely more than it was when I first moved here. Here's an example: we wanted to catch a 'flight' on the London Eye in the late afternoon. The tubes from Southfields weren't running. I was like, no problem, we can catch a bus to Capham Junction and get a train to Waterloo (thinking that from Waterloo we could get a tube to the Eye). Ummm... yeah... aparently the London Eye is RIGHT next to Waterloo station. Ok. Didn't know that.

Then we went wondering down some road and next thing there's a sign... 'Buckingham Palace'... which I so completed pretended to know was there, even though it was as much a supise to me as her. Shortly after that (and some time spent ogling at the Queens guards) we were chatting about going to Harrods when I spotted a building address... 27 Knightbridge... ok, so how did we get to Knightsbridge I'm wondering? Of course that wasn't what I said, what I said was, "So, do you want to do Harrods now then? It's actually just around the corner."

I reckon she's well impressed with my London know-how... which in all fairness doesn't actually exist. At least having her here got me out and about and doing some of the things I really should have done a long time ago.

The only shit part of the day was boarding the Eye. I switched my camera on only to find that the battery was completely out of juice. No problem, I knew it was running low, but I also knew that I had a spare (which I assumed was charged) in the bag. Apparently the last time my battery ran out I also assumed the spare was charged because this time around the spare was completely dry. So there I was 130-odd meters (or feet, I can't remember) above London, in a glass capsule, with a digital camera and 2 useless batteries. It was a valuable lesson (and it's been an adage of mine for ages now): "Assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups!"