Bank Holiday Weekend

Came down to London for the weekend after finishing unpacking (I had to move back into my college rooms which I had fully vacated during field season), mainly to see whether I had left vital items -- chequebook, office keys -- in my sister's house. Thankfully I had, along with mountains of other crap I had to shed on the way to Oz, and I will not have to do some embarrassed foot shuffling in front of our facilities manager (who is actually very nice, but probably still wouldn't be pleased if I had actually lost my keys). Speaking of embarrassed foot shuffling I did however have to do this in e-mail form to the (again, very nice) directors of Lizard Island Research Station to explain that, of all the things to inadvertently leave behind, such as important pieces of scientific equipment or diving gear, I had left my teddy bear. It took me days to build up the confidence to write this embarrassing email. Why I am now publishing this on the world wide web I do not know.

Time in London really quite nice despite being quite disappointed that my sister and her husband had gone off for a Bank Holiday Weekend jaunt in Lisbon and so I had to spend it by myself (no dog to play with either as it's gone off to the dog sitter's!). I have managed to avoid too much couch potato-ing (the temptation is always very strong when I stay here at my sister's because I don't watch telly otherwise, the common room always seeming far too far away) by means of going for a jazz class at a nearby dance studio that I've always meant to try (a fantastic workout, loads of fun and it just felt so good to be dancing again after two months of exile), wandering through the National Gallery's Manet to Picasso exhibition (all paintings in the permanent collection which I have seen before, but I do still enjoy looking at them and the exhibition audio guides were full of quirky little art history details), and hitting the Chinatown grocery stores! Well I also hit a clothes store -- not in Chinatown -- and they gave me a pair of dungarees for free. It would never cross my mind to buy a pair of dungarees. Perhaps I am not alone in this, hence being given them for free. What to do with them? I feel that I need to paint some walls.

In Leicester Square tube a rather nice looking Indian bloke came up to me whilst I was debating with myself the relative benefits of the Northern or Piccadilly lines and started up a rather flattering conversation. This does not happen to me often. When it does it usually comes from drunken and extremely unattractive hairy men. I couldn't stop myself being quite happy, really, that I can actually be hit on by a normal person -- although I must be terribly naive to think that someone who tries to pick up girls in tube stations could be normal at all -- but he did seem it, anyway, so I will allow myself the delusion. I almost wished I'd stayed to chat instead of rushing off with my two gigantic bags of Chinese groceries, but of course I didn't...