What a SHOCKING day I had yesterday ... problems on the M40 (apparently blue light services were turning cars around just shy of the M25 and sending them back to the previous junction) meant I plumped for the M1, which was no better through the widening between junctions 10 to 6.
I eventually arrived in London early evening, and after parking my car at our Sampson House office I dropped my bags off at the hotel on Southwark Street and went straight over the road to The Tall House, which is a great little Chinese restaurant opposite. Last time I was in there, I'd just been up to Leadenhall Market with an old colleague of mine and had had about six pints of Old Speckled Hen. Three colleagues were talking around me, and I wasn't even capable of a grunt. I must have seemed such a complete drunk - something I hate is out-and-out drunkenness.
Anyway, I was in The Tall House having a bottle of Tsing Tao beer (which the perennially complaisant Chinese waiter always announces, as he places it carefully on the table, as "Cheeng Chow ... Cheeeeeeeeeeng Chowwwwwww" as if he needs to repeat it. So I'm sitting there and I realise the music is out of place. In an Indian restaurant you always get Indian music, either some bearded guy playing a sitar or a George Harrison song (which I suppose is also a bearded guy playing a sitar). But this music was oddly out of place ... what was it? I sat pondering ... of course - Glenn Miller!! What a coincidence after yesterday!
As I sat chewing some really tough fried chilli beef, two guys who'd been sat outside came in, saying "It's raining out there" (it wasn't, it was sunny ... don't ask) and proceeded to say to the Chinese girl in the bar (with her child in a carry-cot) "Your baby's got a funny haircut". The bloke saying it had a comb-over, so he could hardly comment. Poor girl just looked hurt ... and the baby started crying.
After eating I had a walk around the Tate Modern (outside, of course, the place was shit ... typing error, I mean shut ... no, actually, I'll stick with the first one) and along the embankment to take some photos of St Paul's and The City. London's got the best and worst of everything (I drove through most of the worst on the outskirts today), and it's funny to think it's where my family originates. To say my dad was born in Battersea you'd never know. given his strong Midlands accent.
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