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narrow boat cruise
Today Matt and I got up and got on a narrow boat cruise at Warwick Avenue, wending down Regent's Canal to Camden. It's a lovely route, one of the prettiest stretches of canalside in London. It was good to see the banks that I cycle to work on, but from the middle of the water. The view is quite different, and there's more time to look around and appreciate it.
There was a woman who talked to us through a microphone as we chugged along, telling us all about this stretch of canal, and the barges, narrow boats and 'plastic boats' we passed, about the rope marks on the bridges from the horses that used to pull the boats along, and about the houses lining the canal, or 'the cut' as we should call it. One of the houses in the Regent's Park stretch belongs to the Sultan of Oman, and has the second largest private garden in London apparently. She imparted bits of boating wisdom too, telling us about life on the cut, where nothing is more than an arms length away, where you have to live with the outside world, and where you get to sneer at the pansies who live on plastic boats!
We arrived at Camden and then went to find Michal a belated birthday present, getting him a cool bubble machine from the Gadget Shop.
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birthday house warming
Friday night we had a house warming party, and also celebrated Matt and Michal's recent birthdays. It was a pleasant do, with a bit of a club in kitchen atmosphere downstairs where the Polish contingent took over! I drank a lot, and suddenly found myself with a dreadful hangover kicking in at around five in the morning, which it took a lot of Saturday to recover from. I met Helder for the first time - he was very nice and interesting - and various old classics were there, like Mateusz.
Next day, Dan M came round and I lay about in the living room, unable to eat or drink while the others started on post-party red wine. Very upsetting. By the evening though, I'd recovered enough so Matt and I could head over to Abbie's, where Dain and Mark were hosting a goodbye London party, before they depart to Suffolk to a smaller abode. Every era always comes to an end, I guess, but it's so sad when our parents' generation have to move away from the action. Reminds me of when the Bells relocated from their Kemptown Brighton house out into the Sussex countryside.
On the way Matt had to take a picture of this sign - unsurprisingly!
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