Cheers ...

London. Sunshine at last, like a miracle after what seems like months of grey skies and rain. Dreamy from lack of sleep and high on the beautiful light. Walked down the South Bank as far as the National Theatre and had coffee in the NFT, remembering one of our first intense dates when we fell in love nearly nineteen years ago. Discovered a rather nice statue outside the National which I must have walked past hundreds of times without really noticing it, called London Pride, and which was ironically created by a sculptor called Frank Dobson.

Had coffee in the national film theatre coffee shop. The menu looked really nice and we decided to go for a walk and come back later to eat. Unfortunately that was not to be...

The Lord Mayor's Parade was on and the west end was full of strange looking people: cheerleaders, men in green suits carrying musical instruments, a peculiar fellow with a Styrofoam bulls head on, and an awful lot of donkeys. Every time we thought we had managed to escape them, we would turn a corner and find them there again. They were in St James's Park, they were in Picadilly, they were in Westminster Square. By the time the day was nearly over, I had visions of waking up in the morning sweating and finding a donkey and a cheerleader sitting at the foot of my bed grinning.

Whilst we were in Picadilly, the power of Facebook struck again and some friends who had read TSM's post about us being in the west end called us to see if we wanted to get together. Strangely enough they were sitting in the national film theatre bar and having lunch. We met them for hot chocolate in Covent Garden. The blokes Went to the Apple shop to look at gadgets, whilst the girls went to the Cath Kitson shop to buy handbags. All very sexually stereotyped.

We then started walking back to the south bank, over Hungerford Bridge. At this point I called home only to find myself talking to a tearful Girl Racer who had not seen one of the cats for several hours. We abandoned our supper and caught the next train home, TSM sitting with tears pouring down her face the whole journey.

Disappearing Dylan was eventually heard miaowing in distress but infuriatingly his voice kept coming from different directions as if he was teleporting around the neighbourhood. We managed to disturb most of our neighbours by borrowing torches and demanding access to their sheds. It turned out that Dylan was stuck at the very top of a forty foot high densely foliaged tree and his voice was coming from which ever way he faced. The Girl Racer climbed two thirds of the way up, I was about halfway, and Top Gun manned the ladder. The Dizzle had retired hurt after falling over a pile of timbers (he had broken into the timber yard looking for said cat). We eventually got moggy down, passing him between us and trying not to fall out of the tree and breaking our necks.

So an eventful start to the new year ... But still plenty of mince pies and chocolate left over from Christmas if I need ongoing stress relief...