Back to work tomorrow. It seems ages since my last post and I've done quite a bit this week. Shamila and I went to London Monday to Thursday. We went for our (becoming) customary picnic up Eston Hills for her birthday on Friday and I went to Ste's 50th birthday party followed by a late night visit to Bandstand at The Crown. Saw a couple of bands, The Janice Graham Band and The Christophers but the highlight was Rikki Doolan's finale party piece of Psycho Killer. , Needless say still feeling a bit delicate.
I enjoyed London. We stayed in Earls Court which was a pretty good base for what we had planned and especially what we ended up doing. Shamila wanted to visit The Tate Modern, The V&A Museum, view the general tourist attractions and do some shopping in Oxford Street. I was happy with all but the latter but it all turned out ok because Shamila soon got sick of Oxford Street and decided to give Kensington High Street a go leaving me to chill out reading, listening to music on my iPod and sleeping in Kensington Park. Result!
It was interesting being in London the same time of the Labour Party Conference which I followed from the TV News, The Times, The i and the free Evening Standard. Ed Miliband didn't go down too well did he? It seemed that way to me anyway. I applaud a lot of what he said but then again I suppose I would. I particularly liked the spirit of his idea to punish "predatory businesses" but it's all dreamland stuff. Big business quickly turned it round on him asking him to explain what he meant by "predatory businesses" and what he proposed to do about it and they were right. Own goal! I fear Labour might be in opposition for a long time.
Looking around London there weren't many, if any signs of an economic downturn. Loads of development and building work going on. EG, some (turns out 199) new 1and 2 bedroom apartments being built near The Tate Modern a snip at £1m to £5m each!
Who on earth buys these properties? I could speculate about Russian Oligarchs, foreign businessmen, Arab royalty, "predatory businessmen", Premier League footballers et al. People not paying much UK tax anyway but then again what would I know? What I do know though is that it's unlikely I'll earn enough in the whole of my life to buy even one of the "cheapies". Jeez, another world isn't even in it! That said, they can have it for me, if they're daft enough. Nice to spend a few days there but happy to leave. I took a few photos and might post a few up later.
So what's on this week? Double header on Thursday - meeting up with some old work colleagues for tea and a couple of drinks and then going to see Gary R at The Sessions in The Boro. Obviously no work Friday and then going to see John Otway at The Georgian Theatre on Saturday.
Cheers
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