Your Day (apart from gardening) - what took place?

@Victoria all the best from both of us for a very successful op.

 

Yesterday evening we went up to London to meet up with some of Mrs Shiney's siblings at a restaurant as her brother is over from Brazil (he comes over about once a year but he's lived there for close on fifty years, and we've been over there for visits a few times ).

This is rather long as it was an interesting time going up to the Big Smoke. It's not as if I don't know London, as I was brought up and worked there, but it has changed so much recently that I can't recognise a lot of it!

The car park at our local station is tiny and was still completely full as the commuters were still parked there when we drove down there. I suspected that would happen and, as there's no on street parking for nearly half a mile I had phoned the garage where we get our cars serviced (it's an old fashioned 'hole in the wall' at the Maltings next to the station) and asked whether I could park on their small forecourt as they would have finished work by then. "That's OK mate".

So we had a four minute drive to the station, a five minute wait for a fast train that took us to Tottenham Hale in 28 minutes. A two minute walk to the underground at the same station and a tube was waiting for us. Twelve minutes later we were at Kings Cross - 45 minutes early for our restaurant booking. Public transport works well some of the time .

Wow! The big city has certainly changed. Kings Cross/St Pancras is an amazing place and is the biggest station in the country which has the junction of six underground lines, two main lines and the International train terminal. I think I could improve the signage but it's not too bad. The restaurant was near the rear of the complex and we had arrived at the front. From the underground they have a multitude of wide walking tunnels to all the different stations and exits and it took us ten minutes to reach the rear, which was the main entrance to one of the main lines.

I used to know the area very well and, in my day, it was close to being a slum area. What a change! We emerged in front of a vast area of office blocks with restaurants and bars on the ground floor of all of them. They enclosed open plazas with trees and water features and, being Friday evening, it was crowded with young office workers relaxing at the end of their week. Massive outside bars, sheltered by the overhang of the first floor of the office blocks lined most of the buildings. There must have been tens of thousands of people massed around the place and I'm not sure how they could carry on conversations with all the noise (I must be getting old ). It was good to see so many people apparently enjoying themselves with not even a hint of aggression anywhere. Although they were all talking to each other there were some that were tapping away on their phones at the same time. I saw one person talking and tapping away at two phones!

We had a good wander around looking at the menus of the restaurants and soaking up the atmosphere. Some of the menus were much more inspiring than that at the one we were booked into. I liked the menu at a Korean restaurant. Most of the restaurants were vast but the German Gymnasium where Mrs Shiney's sister had booked us into is 13,000sq ft! It seats almost 500 people - plus the hundreds at their outside bars.

The service was outstanding, the noise horrendous, the food good and the a la carte prices a bit high. We all had from their set menu at £30 for three courses, which was quite good compared to around the same price for a main from their a la carte. Mrs Shiney's brother paid . He and his wife are over here for a friend's 70th birthday party today and they shall then be going to Oporto and Lisbon for a few days before flying back to Brazil - their flight was going that way as they are flying with a Brazilian airline.

Our journey home ran just as smoothly with trains waiting on the platform as we arrived. On the Tube people gave up their seats for us , which we gratefully accepted . It was uncomfortably hot on the Tube but it was a short journey.

We may take a trip up there again to try the Korean restaurant - and their prices were more normal.

 

Good morning @Victoria all the Woos warm and sincere wishes that your forth coming op goes well,you are in our thoughts my friend

 

Good afternoon this morning I had a choice of either getting to grips with a 5 litre tin of emulsion or going to the banks of the River Thames ,so I picked my camera up and off I went

 

@wiseowl right choice but I hopwe you were wearing your suit of armour for when you got home to Mrs Woo.

Yesterday I finished off doing the accounts for the tournament I ran on Sunday. Then started working on catching up on things that had been neglected but didn't get far as the garden was calling for me.

This morning will be some paperwork and then starting on some of the barrow load of apples waiting to be cooked. This afternoon I'm running my bridge club as usual (weighed up 11lb of beans to take for sale) a meeting in the evening.

 

Yesterday I spent a lot of time sorting out someone's benefits. For a change they had told him (after I had filled in 40 pages of forms last month ) that they had underpaid him and shall be putting a lump sum into his bank account. I then had to phone different departments to find out whether this increase in savings now affected his other benefits. Then the same with the council about his rent and council tax allowances. I expected to have a big struggle with each department but they were all helpful and pleasant

Now I've got to contact the hospital for him (neurology department ) to make an appointment at a convenient time for me as I have to take him there - 20 miles away! He hasn't the faintest what it's about but he received two letters from the NHS apologising for having to cancel two appointments they had made for him - which he knew nothing about - and asking him to make another appointment. Unfortunately they failed to put a phone number or address (or even the name of the hospital ) so I had to find out all about it from his doctor. The doctor's secretary traced it from the reference number on the letters he received but said they hadn't made the appointments for him.

I'll find out today.

I also have to go and get photos done for a Visa so I had better make myself presentable.

 

Yesterday the Plumber came to replace the Ballcock of the Header Tank in the Loft. He did a really good job and checked the Tank for leaks and charged a reasonable price. Later on in the evening I went into the Kitchen and standing by the sink felt dampness on floor. When I checked I found that the 40 year old internal mains stop cock under the sink was leaking badly from my having to switch the water on and off during the Header Tank work. The leak was otherwise entirely unconnected with the work the Plumber had done. It was then around 9pm with the leak seeming to get worse when I rang the Plumber and he immediately came out. The nuts and seals were seized up solid and refused to budge so the Plumber fixed the leak temporarily and then came back today. The job which should have been reasonably simple but due to the seized up stop cock and the old sizes of pipework and connections, with a mixture of metal and plastic, there was problems finding the right sizes in the Plumbing Centres
After phoning around we managed to find a retailer who sold the right sized connections but was shutting within minutes. We persuaded him to stay open until we arrived and even then the job was not easy and new copper piping had to be installed replacing part of the plastic piping. Anyway, the Plumber did a really solid job and he quoted so low for the job, not even charging me for coming out the evening before, that I refused the quote and paid him more. The twist to this was that I have lived in the House for nearly 40 years and when we searched for the outside Water Board stop cock we couldn't find it...........until we realised that I had parked the car over the top of it.
While all that was going on today, there was a guy climbing my two Conifers reducing them to the height I wanted so the air was filled with the sound of chain saws and the swear words of me and the Plumber trying to sort out the leak problem

 

Lots of paperwork!