More leg falling off business

Saturday dawned sunny and full of promise so we decided to head to the royal institution as we hadn't made it there the day before. I checked the website for the correct tube and after a couple of changes we were at green park. Given that it was still pretty early we thought we may as well walk down to buckingham palace, no point being so close and not going to have a look. So we wandered down, took the required tourist snaps and then got out of there as it was already starting to fill up with tourists. We headed to RI and then realised one very important factor we hadn't considered before - RI isn't open on the weekends - grrrrr! Stupid post office on Friday turning all our plans pear shaped and sucking away the hours of our day...

What now? We decided to go to the natural history and science museum as we knew it was open for nerds seven days a week. Heading off on foot we walked from buckingham palace back to the science museum and spent a good few hours in there - with rohan in his own special sort of heaven. Home to watch the women's final of the tennis and then another quick walk down through kensington palace to see everyone lazing about in the summer sun....last day in london tomorrow - time goes so quickly!

The empire

Yesterday we decided to go see what the empire had collected and visit the British Museum. I also figured it might be easier to stay out of the way of the protestors, Kylie included, who were striking over changes to the pension system, but in my head I sang a little version of the internationale for them. We got to the museum at opening time which was nice and not so ridiculously busy. First stop the enlightment collection and by the end I felt not only enlightened but also a little bit overwhelmed by the amazing collection of things from so long ago. This only intensified when I went into the collection of stuff from Greece- how did they manage to get this stuff here? A visit pass the rosetta stone which was already surrounded by hordes of people and each time we came out of one room the throngs of people had multiplied a la the loaves and fishes. The strike had impacted here at the museum with some collections and rooms not open due to members of the public service taking strike action -probably just as well or my brain may have exploded/ imploded completely.

We wandered home for lunch and then headed down towards the Natural History museum. We never made it - got waylaid by random sighsteeing and tourist moments. As the time grew nearer for us to go to the cricket the skies darkened and it started to rain. We headed home for an interval, I lay down on the couch for a brief moment and woke up 2hours later when emery came home from work - about 20 minutes after the time the cricket had already started. Hmmm. The empire had exhausted me.

I still call Australia post home.

So in keeping in line with our one bag philosophy we thought we'd send home the couple of things we'd picked up here in London- mostly royal tennis tshirts for rohan and my brother, and a couple of cast off pieces of clothing from my sister (not you prada jacket - you stay with me at all times). Who knew posting something could be so hard? In the post office in Notting Hill I felt like a moron rather than a person with a phd. At first I couldn't work out why the post office clerks were so heavily guarded, hidden behind glass with tiny slide through slots and an annoying lift like contraption down the end where they slide through packages or give you the box that you've had to purchase without knowing if it will suit your purposes, by the end of my visit I realised they needed to be behind glass because I wanted to leap across and throttle them.

After first showing what we wanted to post, the man said a box would be in order. So we bought the box, left the queue, put our stuff in, wrapped it up with tape that rohan had got at the art supply store, joined the line again and got a different person. She told us that the box was too big to be sent normal post and we would have to pay either 100 pound or take it out of the box and put it into 2 smaller boxes and then we could send it normally. GRRRRRRRR. It was at this point I thought about murder.

Rohan being a much more temperate soul than myself decided to take over because I was about to have a stroke. He bought the bags, split up the stuff, addressed it, taped it up and went back up to the counter. The man wondered why we were sending it all seperately - why didn't we just put it in one box? Are you freaking kidding me?

Australia Post - I'm sorry. I'm sorry for the times that I've said terrible things about you or complained about the ramshackle line at Bakery Hill. I'd give my right teeth for a ramshackle line and the chirpy man who makes jokes whenever we go in there. So thanks to Rohan and no thanks to the british postal services our parcels have gone off into the abyss. I wonder if we will ever see them again?