Revolutionary Rants

I have now reached my quarter century, I am 25. The annual change of my ‘About Me’ page. It feels a bit frightening to be 25, mainly because it is a ‘part-of-a-century’ birthday and because every year you sort of think “I should have written a novel/traveled the world/released an album/done something by now”. Not much point crying over spilled opportunities though, is there?

On Thursday we headed off up the motorway to London. It was a pretty quick drive, around three and a half hours driving and two stops (one for coffee, one because we’d run out of windscreen water). We stayed at Park Royal Travelodge, which was fine. Clean and tidy, with a car park. Chicken and I got on the tube straight away and had an evening drink and meal in the city centre. The next morning we were off to see the First Emperor exhibition at the British Musuem, we headed off quite early as it was a 35-40 minute tube journey in to Russell Square. Once there, we had a coffee and saw the Egyptian stuff at the Brit Museum to get us in the mood for the next day. Then we went in to see the warriors. The exhibition was, sadly, very badly set-up and there were lots of people with head-phone tours standing for f**king ages in front of everything you wanted to see. The warriors themselves were out in the open, stood altogether at the end of the cabinets and here we did actually get to stand close by a marvel. They were amazing. I am glad to have seen them but I think the whole exhibition could have been done so much better and the head-phone brigade should have been shooed on by the useless staff - why were we all given such time regimented tickets if they meant nowt?

Mum then went off to meet Noreen, her cousin, and we had another coffee, went for lunch at the National Film Theatre, went to the Tate Modern, the National Portrait Gallery and had a cup of tea at Patisserie Valerie on Old Compton Street.

The next day was my birthday, which was odd, being away from home and having no cards or presents! Still, we had a nice King Tut exhibition instead. Only half of the tube was closed for repairs… The Piccadilly line was running so we got from there to Russell Square again before taking the 188 bus to the dome. We now know Deptford and Greeenwich pretty well, as the bust took well over an hour to delivery us to the dome. When we got there the place was hideous, like a great big dirty wedding marquee with shitty restaurants in it. The exhibition itself was, once again, rather badly organised, with people who were supposed to be going in over an hour after us getting in on our time slot. However, the boxes were all stood centrally meaning you could see a lot of the items close up. There was only half an exbitions worth of Tut relics, but it was all amazing to see.

A fter another stressful journey back to Park Royal we headed out of London and went to Newbury, where we spent the night. Yesterday we met Alex in Bristol and had lunch before getting home. As usual it is good to go away but great to get home. London itself is rather full of wankers, it must be said. I have also managed to pull a muscle in my back right out with a wet towel on my head and a soft bed combo, not good.

I forgot to mention, but just after Christmas we had a rather powerful thunder/lightening incident with the Hooda star, which is a big metal star on the hill above the village. At around 6.30am there was the loudest thunder clap I have ever heard (and I’ve been to Nice during thunder season) at precisely the same time as a massive flash of lightening. This hit the star direct on and not only did it cause us personally £300 (the electric came down the phone line and blew various comps), but it has blown the whole house of the family who have the star attached to their house and cause lots of other damage to other houses. Now we hear that they are palnning to bring it back! Nice though the star is, I think it is a bit worrying that that could happen again…