Have Camera, will travel

I went to the pub last night and was asked by an old student why I had been absent the week before, didn't realise that I had to bring a note from my mum if I missed a week. Anyway, last Friday I went to Clapham for a change with a Colombian friend and had mojitos and later a curry which is different from several pints.

But I still managed to get up the next day for a day of being a tourist in London. You see, I realised that I had spent much of the previous evening complaining that I haven't been away since going to visit my brother and sister in law last year- which is a LONG time ago! People ask me why I feel the compulsion to go away all the time, well that isn't exactly what they say, rather more something like 'when the hell are you going to settle down?' and 'I could never go away on my own, why do you want to do it, you freak!'

I guess that need to do different things and break out of the old routine plays a bit part of it so I decided to go somewhere new in London instead of just complaining. Well, somewhere new for me, I will admit that the building is hardly new since it has been there since the 1600s. So last Saturday I went to Kensington Palace, a place which is kind of special for me, though I have never been there before, not because it was the home of Princess Diana but because when she lived there I sometimes did her shopping- or the KP order as we called it back then. It was weird to think that some of the things that I had picked off the shelves at Selfridges had been consumed within those walls and it seemed high time I actually went and had a look.



The guides are all very keen to point out that the building was never supposed to be a startingly artistic feat, it was built for William and his wife Mary, when they ruled as joint king and queen of England.



It orginally stood in the small village of Kensington, two miles away from London, selected because of the cleanliness of the air. Of course, at some point in the last four hundred years, London has rather swallowed up the villages around it so that Kensington is now pretty central.

Queen Victoria was born at the palace and grew up there and was apparentely very fond of the place.



And there is indeed a lot to be fond of. Unfortunately you aren't allowed to take photos inside the palace, unfortunate because it means that I have none of the interior to put here but extremely fortunate because it means that people actually have to look at what is in front of them rather than snapping it and filing it away for future inspection (and I am as guilty of this as the next person) but it also means that that palace is not full of people gurning in front of the amazing murals or posing on top of Queen Vic's bed.

There are some great views from the building of the Round Pond, something which if you photograph at ground level tends to look like a large puddle with a few swans on it, and Kensington Park in general. It is a nice location overall and it was a good day for sightseeing.







I made up for a bit of lost photographing time in the gardens after the audio tour, however, just to really grasp the idea that I was a tourist for the day. Then I went and had lunch in Wagamammas before getting the bus back to my part of London, a rather unusual act in itself when a tube will get me home in under half an hour and the bus is over twice that. And I made sure to look out of the window and appreciate what I was seeing rather than burying my nose in a book.



I had intended to do more sightseeing on the Sunday but went to the cinema with my flatmate instead and then chilled on Tooting Common for a while. The green spaces in South London, and indeed London in general, are part of the allure of this wonderful city and I don't really make the most of them.



Then this week I have been working and socialising, with a drop of Spanish class towards the end of the week. I was pleased to see that despite the recent ban on carrying open containers of alcohol on London transport, the tubes are not entirely drunk unfriendly- in fact I was delighted to discover this special 'drunk' bench at Leicester Square tube the other night



This person is so drunk that they even have their mate sitting on their lap.

Who says London Transport doesn't care?

And today it seems that I have selected the one day where it isn't hot enough to melt my eyeballs to go to Hampton Court Palace with Rachel. I'll let you know how it goes.