Ahoy,
London this week bathes in unseasonable warmth, warmth being a relative term but the peak daytime temperature has been above 10 degrees Celsius almost every day this year (thus far). No scarves or beanies on the lunchtime walk needed! With any luck, the wasps will wake up early and all freeze to death in the inevitable February cold snap. And we won’t miss them one iota.
This is the first post of 2020 and in terms of reportage, it has been a slow start to the year. Pretty much business as normal now that the terror of the holiday season is behind us for another twelve months. How’s January been thus far? I spent New Year’s Day in my PJs/loungewear & dressing gown as like the rest of the country, I indulged in part of the collective malaise even though I’d done nothing worth reporting the day before – apart from posting the previous blog entry and play a game of Civ V. And although Thursday and Friday were work days, bugger all happened aside from a walk around Clapham Common on Thursday and a walk to the river and back on Friday. Those spending time out of London with family began to return in dribs and drabs so traffic levels picked up again.
In contrast to that week, I had a fairly active Saturday – admittedly more of that normality stuff, or rather what’s normal for me. Reclamation of sanity, that’s the way I’ll look at it. After dedicating the morning to a little PC gaming and some YouTubing (watching outtake videos, not making more vlogs), I left the flat after lunch and walked all the way to London Bridge via Elephant & Castle. It was a quite nice afternoon, not too cold and streets only half full of people. Borough Market was the destination du jour and I called at all the usual stalls for supplies/treats. Jumi Cheese for some Schlossburger, Ritter Sport bars & Erdinger Dunkel (no Mezo Mix sadly) from the German Deli & Honey Cake at the Latvian Rye Stall; all fattening and to hell with the calories, needs must. Consequence of the holiday season; the market was mostly civilised, only one internal meltdown had, induced thanks to a swarm of people walking in the opposite direction to me and not one of them wanted to move aside for oncoming traffic. Dummies.
After I left, I then walked to Forbidden Planet but had to swing by a coffee shop by Fleet Street as my shoulders were killing me and my dogs were barking. It’s always pleasant around that neck of the woods at the weekend as the footprint is much lower than adjacent parts of town. Not that there’s a great deal that’s open though if you want a good view from the bridge, head over to Blackfriars. After buying nothing in FP (wasn’t tempted by anything), I was beginning to flag so went to Whitehall and decided that I’d jump on whichever bus came first; the 87 or 88. If the former, I’d then go to Asda by Clapham Junction. If the latter, Sainsbury’s Nine Elms and then use the hopper to get the first bus home. It was the latter which won out but led to me doing something I swore I’d never do – order fish and chips from a food delivery service! Something I miss about no longer living on Heyford Avenue is being nowhere near Claylands Fish Bar. Food was quite good, will use them again but next time, I’ll get up off my backside and walk over to the chippy.
Monday was a pretty odd day and I’d only had five hours sleep. I knew deprivation was going to happen and yet like watching a slow motion video of a crash test dummy go flying through a windshield, there was something inevitable about it. I went to the cinema Sunday night to watch Rise of Skywalker (it was as bad as I thought it’d be). I’d only had a soup for dinner as I was planning on getting something sweet for the film, given its run time of 2½ hours. I totally overloaded on white chocolate jazzies, cola bottles & foam bananas from the pic n mix, thinking I’d take some home for scoffing on another day. I ate 2/3 of the box (I’d estimate between 300g & 400g of sweets) so was kinda high on sugar by the time I left the Vue. Sugar rush kept me awake until at least 2am. Sugar crash kept me in a foul mood for much of Monday.
The rest of the week has been pretty routine. Work, walk, home, eat, game, bed. I did get some snaps of Leake Street Tunnel art, it’s been a good week for actual art, fewer tags. I’ve been trying to plan for my trip in March to the States but so far, I’ve only decided what time train I want to take to the airport. I’ve a couple of ideas about what I want to see in terms of landmarks (the inside of the Old State House in Boston, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the main landmarks of DC) but no schedule has been woven together aside from keeping an eye on the travel times. Eight weeks today and at the time of writing, I’ll be at T5 either waiting at the gate or pulled aside yet again for security checks. Really need to put my brain in focus and pull it away from the ethereal which is where it’s been living for a while, presumably as I’ve no intellectual challenge at the moment aside from doing the puzzle page game on my iPad.
In terms of a gaming update, there have not been any board games played in a while. On the PC, I’m slowly progressing my Empire at War: Forces of Corruption game as the Empire. Definitely the best way to play is to go in fast and hard, take over as much of the Zann Consortium before the Rebellion swallows all their territories. For each Zann planet the Rebels take, you take one of theirs so they aren’t overwhelming you with hit & run attacks. I’ve now had a few games of the Gathering Storm expansion of Civ VI. It’s really growing on me, it allows a lot more flexibility On the Xbone, my progress on Red Dead Redemption continues apace, being in the middle of Chapter 3 with very little progress in the story though I finally unlocked the horse fence. And on the online version, my character is around level 18 and is now a trader thanks to a Microsoft giftcard and a gold bar purchase. Let the Deer of New Hanover tremble!
So, week one of 2020 is over, fifty-one more to go. Assuming we get to December 31st 2020 before the Armageddon clock hits midnight.
Imperial Centre 