Taking a break from editing my sci-fi essay to write up this weekend's excursions. (All I have left is the bibliography, easily the most irritating part, so I'm only procrastinating on that...)
Julianna arrived on Thursday! She left this morning, but we had all day Friday and Saturday, plus hours and hours on Thursday night to catch up. (At the Sherlock Holmes pub, hee!)
When I texted Jules last week with the instruction, "Start making a list of things you want to do in London," she sent back with only two words: "Westminster Abbey." She'd already done all the touristy things before, so WA is the only thing she needed to do. So we did that on Friday and she told me all sorts of things about the architecture and the churches of the time and it was cool. (She's a medievalist...) After that, we hit up a new pub, then I took her around various parts of London. We saw the Twinings store, and then wandered Covent Garden, and made our way over to Soho and finally all the way back down to take the train home. We ordered Indian and ate and drank and enjoyed ourselves immensely.
Saturday (yesterday? Oh, goodness, it was yesterday, phew) we did awesome things. Not that wandering around London isn't awesome (it's one of my favorite activities), but yesterday was even awesomer. First, at 11 am, there was the Oscar Wilde London Tour. Yes. That's right. A man dressed as Oscar Wilde (Alan is the best ever, with a shiny waistcoat and two green carnations in his buttonholes and a bowler hat) took us around Mayfair and the uppity part of London and showed us places where my main man Oscar Wilde frequented.
One of the things I love most about the topics I love (literature, authors, dramatists, actors, literary figures and fictional characters) is that I keep learning new things about them. I've done research papers on Mr. Wilde, I've read most of his works (some, multiple times), I use his epigrams whenever they're relevant (the title of this post is always relevant), but there is so much more to him than I could ever learn. Alan, wrapping up his tour, told us he stumbled into the Wilde family five decades ago and stayed close ever since--and he's admitted even he doesn't know everything about Mr. Wilde. (He was amazing; a real love of his topic, a good voice, contagious smile and bright green eyes that sparkled like I imagine Wilde's would have, like he has a great many secrets and if you ask him nicely, he might tell you one of them, or he might pull your leg.)
After that wonderful two hours finished, we made our way up to Camden Market. The complete opposite of Mr. Wilde's high-falutin' London, Camden is an amazing, amazing place and Jules loved it, thankfully. (Actually, I'm not sure if Wilde would have approved because it's so unique and interesting and interesting people are the only people worth surrounding yourself with...or disapproved because it's not at all high society. It's punks and goths and purple hair and corsets and piercings in places that shouldn't be exposed to the air and it's crazy--his sort of people in spirit, certainly, but not in aesthetic taste.)
A whole afternoon of Camden and we made our way back to Berrylands, where we stopped in at The Berry. I didn't know till we got there that the Chelsea-Munich Champions League Final was last night--so we stayed for that. It was quite the spectacle. Two plates of chips, four pints, and 4-3 goals in extra time later, Chelsea won and the place exploded into cheers and applause and singing. I think Jules and I had more fun watching the crowd than watching the game--and I like football!
Now she is currently on a train back to Wales (for her last week! Eeep!) and I am sitting in my room, sticking my tongue out at the silly need academics have of sourcing material. Sigh. Back to compiling a list of all the places I stole things from.
* Oscar Wilde. One of my absolute favorite of his epigrams. As I said earlier, it's always relevant to my life.
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