Nick Jordan

Yesterday morning I got up early(ish) and made my way to Lambeth Palace, which was allowing visitors in as part of London’s Open Day. There was already a queue when I arrived so, pausing for a quick chat with a friend who’d arrived before me, I joined at the back end. After a few minutes some more friends arrived and came up the queue to chat for a bit, at which point an elderly lady behind us went completely ballistic, accusing them of queue jumping and even making a racist comment. She just wouldn’t stop talking long enough to allow anyone to get a word in so, after giving her a telling off, my friends made their way back to their place.

Anyway, after a while we found out that we were going to have to wait quite a while to get in and the others would have to wait considerably longer, so the decision was made to abandon Lambeth Palace and go and have a bite to eat in a local cafe. This done, the decision was made to wander across the river, visit a couple of shops (the Bead Shop and then Forbidden Planet), have a pub lunch and then pay a visit to the Cartoon Museum, which has a wonderful exhibition of W. Heath Robinson cartoons on and, to my great delight, a working version of one of his amazing contraptions, a device for assisting in the consumption of peas.

After all this, back home I came and collapsed for the rest of the day in a rather undignified heap. It’s surprisingly tiring, all this walking around stuff.

I got back yesterday from a mediaeval re-enactment weekend at Raglan Castle in South Wales, courtesy of the SCA.Basically, it was a couple of days’ worth of dressing up in silly outfits and drinking, and what’s wrong with that? The castle is very beautiful and we had the complete run of the place. I have to say that it looked very fine indeed with a load of pavilions pitched in the grounds and people wandering around in period costume.

I have to confess that I didn’t camp, unlike most people, but stayed in a hotel in the village, which was a nice comfortable way to do things. There’s no substitute for a comfy bed and a proper shower followed by a decent breakfast.

I have today off work so I’m spending it recovering. I’m surprisingly tired. I think that it was a good decision to take an extra day off and I’ll probably do it again next time.