Dammit. PC crashed. Lost all blog. Pfft. *goes to PC world to see about an upgrade* Saturday. Stikki (Nikki) came to visit me, with Brian. They get free travel on trains because Brian’s a guard on one of them, it’s very cool...so Nikki comes down lots and lots and lots. Today’s excuse was that she needed some new clothes for a christening on Sunday. Brian got dragged along because he needed a new pair of trainers...so we met up at Tottenham Court Road and armed with wallets and nerves of steel, we struck off in search of shops. First stop was the discount shoe store thing, so we could get Brian’s trainers. He looked at the prices and decided that “discount” was a relative term and we left. Next stop, Selfridges. I knew it was a mistake going in that place, as I’ve been in there with Nikki before, and it was hell when she didn’t want to buy things...so we traipsed up to the womens floor and wandered about fruitlessly for a time looking at pricetags and making odd sucking noises through our teeth. Brian moaned about being hungry, so we carefully ignored him but decided to go in search of the food hall, so we could giggle at all the funkeh foods rich people can buy. We missed the food hall by a floor (navigation was never my strong point) and ended up in the “things” department. I’m pretty sure it wasn’t called the “things” department, but hey, artistic license and everything. Plus, it appeared to sell “things” with no rhyme or reason. A 1930s Indian birdcage next to the cutlery section. Rude postcards next to rubber ducks. That kind of thing. Nikki liked the rubber duck. She decided that it should become a rubber gift duck and picket it up. I found some pasters in the shape of kisses and lips and stuff, and so they became gift plasters, and so on. After paying (that damn duck did not want to be scanned at all) we decided to go upstairs again. Brian moaned everso slightly more loudly about being hungry, so we made our escape and headed into the myriad side streets in search of something cheap and filling. Fnar Brian and I settled on a small Italian with a cheapish set menu...we’d abandoned Nikki by this time as she was intent on fiddling with a small designer toy shop in a side alley. Slowly it seemed to be sinking in that everything that looked nice, individual and different in London was therefore subject to a 100% price hike, which was probably a good thing as it meant we didn’t have to stop in every single shop ever My suggestion that she buy $newchild a nappy reading “My godmother went to London and all I got is this lousy nappy” was met with a scowl. Bah. Some people have no sense of humour. Food consisted of the afforementioned set menu. I had prawn cocktail (5 prawns sprinkled over limp lettuce piled on top of crabsticks and doused in pink goo) and scampi - Nikki had something that I think involved paté for starters and then pasta dumped unceremoniously on top of a bit of chicken. Not sure what Brian had, but it was pretty painless I should imagine. Almost forgot to pay, oops! Heading off to that scary place called Oxford Street (again) so Nikki could shop some more...I pushed her in Gap (EEvil) and we found her a lovely outfit, even if she wasn’t convinced about it Cream top with a red pattern and lovely red cords. I think it’ll have gone well together “My mother will have a fit when she sees me in the church wearing red, ’you’re not wearing red to church!’” “Tell her it’s from London and therefore stylish” “She’s convinced nothing good ever came out of London” I wait to see what happened We escaped Central London - my idea - as there are some small shoe retailers out by Spitalfields. Sadly they were all closed by the time we got there. I was thirsty tho and suggested we visit a bar I’d been looking at oddly for a few months now - y’see, it’s made out of an old public toilet and is entirely underground. So we went to investigate