Desperate for a blip

This selfie will have to do! Mounted on a billboard, of course. Unusual effect courtesy of Photo Director. Amazing how faces look better upside down...

My friend Ann came over from Walthamstow to visit. We worked together in the 1980s at a language school and  got back into contact via Facebook over the past several years, and have met up from time to time. 

Our destination was Wanstead park, where walked among the bluebell woods (see Sunday's blip) enjoyed an ice cream in the cold Good Friday wind; and visited the Temple, which functions as a little museum these days. We learned that the park has existed since Tudor times; that Princess Elizabeth I met her 'favourite' Robert Dudley, later Earl of Leicester, at Wanstead House. The fortunes of the house waxed and waned according to whether the owner was a gambler or reprobate or not! Eventually it was  transferred into public ownership. Officially it forms part of Epping Forest.

We were unable to find the boat house/grotto, but saw some attractive birds on one of the lakes. The light was in my eyes, though, and I got no good shots of anything.Walking back from the park, we took a wrong turning or two, and ended up walking far further than intended. I discovered some new neighbourhood shops, though!

Earlier, we'd decided to go for a South Indian meal in Forest Gate. The big mistake we made was to take the car! We found our resturant, and drove round and round the nearby streets, and a car park, but nowhere could we park. We were getting hungrier and hungrier, and the combined food smells were causing us to salivate like Pavlov's dogs. We drove on. round Upton Park, I found to my amazement that the old West Ham stadium is being converted into Barratt homes! Eventually we located the North Circular and drove all the way to Walthamstow, where we'd located another South Indian restaurant. It was still there, and offered Sri Lankan food as well. 
We felt starving, and the food went down very well, being a dhosa combination that we shared, and a vegetarian thali each, which was of course far too much!

I was able to catch the bus back right to the end of the street. Only took half an hour. I felt relieved to be back in the leafy suburbs, and the cats were happy too, because it was teatime. A huge white fluffy cat from another house keeps coming and eyeing up the food. All attempts to banish it by staring him/her out have ended in futility. Fluffikins is lingering longer and longer, in the hope that she can slip into the kitchen undetected and polish off the remains of the three cats' dinners.