The Big Smoke

Dear O'H dear & Lovely Tea Jenny,

Lovely Shuvly and I headed to London today. At Darlington, a group of 10 young women got on the train and 2 of them were sitting opposite us.

The girls were very glam. There was lots of fake tan and eyelashes. They were all having a few drinks and the girl opposite me started doing her make up. A man, around my age, sitting at a nearby table, caught my eye and raised a eyebrow.

LS and I started chatting to the girls sharing our table and we were both blown away by how sorted they were. One of them has just finished getting her degree part time whilst working. She is planning to go travelling for a year but waited until she was promoted. The other young woman laughed and said “Yeah, she’s the clever one, not like me.”

But her friend stepped in and disagreed. Turns out this woman is a CSE (Child Sexual Exploitation) officer and is studying to be a social worker. The reason she had ended up doing her make up on the train was because she had come straight to the train station from a 36 hour shift.

As LS and I were getting off the train in London, the man who had conspiratorially raised an eyebrow said “I’m glad MY wife doesn’t wear perfume” and I felt sad for him that he had made assumptions and (mis)judged these amazing young women. They were so lovely and really left an impression of people who are genuinely changing the world for the better.

We had a fantastic night. Our hotel is 5 mins from Covent Garden and it’s sunny and warm. I was so excited about being in London and I honestly feel like a kid in a sweet shop.

Lovely Shuvly had been so organised. She booked bars and restaurants for the weekend. London is only 400 miles from Edinburgh but it really feels like a different world. We went for drinks outside in Covent Garden and then Mrs Riot before heading for dinner in Fishworks (where I was in food heaven with all the seafood) before finishing off the night with a couple of cocktails in the life-sized Victorian train carriage in Mr Fogg’s Society of Exploration, a bar inspired by ‘Around the World in 80 days’.

We were sharing a room and decided at about 3 am to get some sleep. About 30 seconds into the silence, we both had a fit of the giggles, which was pretty much how we’d spent most of the day.

C