19-20/10/25 Its Raining In London

We left the Ibis Heathrow and reached our new digs in Chelsea via the Tube and bus, roaring around corners and lurching to sudden stops. Roger took pain medication and wedged himself and Steve securely into a corner for the ride. He fended off multitudes (at least two anyway) of concerned Britons, explaining that he couldn't comfortably sit and was much better standing for the short trip across town.

The train gave fine views of wet British back yards.

"They've filled in the bushes stop and now it's a traffic calming strategy as well!" Even sore and hoped up, engineers get excited about engineer things.

Our new digs was on the 4th floor, accessed by running plodding up 4 flights of stairs or, if you were the Roger/Steve combo, by taking the slowest and scariest lift in all of Great Britain. I spent some anxious minutes wondering if my Next Great Adventure would be figuring out how to liberate people from stuck lifts but thankfully everything worked as it should, just very slowly and with bumps and odd noises.

Britain turned on British weather. Rain splattered on the skylight all night and in the morning sneaky sunshine seduced us out to the riverside only to be ambushed by showers. At this rate I'll actually have to use the umbrella that's been sitting in my suitcase since Brugge.

Trying to beat the rain home.

Autumn leaves.

At least the miserable weather made the paperwork grind less intolerable. Roger booked doctors and went off to submit himself to the tender mercies of clinical Physiotherapy. I girded my loins, unfurled my umbrella, and went on an exciting and ultimately unsuccessful quest for soap.

Sunset and chimney pots.

We ordered pizza for dinner with a delightful relative but made a rookie big-city mistake by not checking at which store we'd placed the order. Roger went to collect our pizzas only to find out that they were waiting for us at a store far enough away to render them uncollectable. Oh well. We ate our second order of pizzas and hoped someone at the distant store appreciated our unintended donation of expensive pizzas.

As if my travels weren't curtailed enough as it was, some generous and unknown Briton shared a Britush head cold with me. Not wishing to share with Roger, I took my sneezing self to the fold out couch for the night. It was as comfortable as can be expected of fold out couches in slightly tatty apartments with geriatric lifts.

The joys of a washing machine... Westwood House: home for a little while.

I liked the lines.

Goodnight.