London with Kids Tour

This weekend we were lucky enough to venture back to London. Dave Grey, from my work at Parramatta is over here and has a unit not far out of the centre of London. They were away for the weekend so kindly let us stay. So packing the bag AGAIN, we headed to the big smoke this time deciding to do the ‘London with Kids Tour’ that reads something like this:

“DAY 1: You will first be whisked away on a monotonous 3 hour train ride through the rainy countryside on your way to London. We have made special provision for your children to be allowed to climb all over the seats and annoy your fellow travelling companions. On arrival at Heathrow you will be joined by our friendly staff who will guide you on to your next train to your accommodation for the weekend. Unfortunately you will need to carry all your luggage for the 10 minute walk from the station but at least you will be able to fall into bed.

DAY 2: You will be woken early by your personalised wake up call involving the twins jumping on your bed at 5am. You will then be joining your train for the days sightseeing. First stop is the ‘Natural History Museum’ where there will be plenty of stuffed animals, bones and rocks. We will attempt to frighten the kids by showing them the dinosaurs and make them look inside the mouth of a big whale.

The tour then moves on to the Science Museum after a small stop for lunch. This is a suitable time for any kids tantrums over food and other trivial matters. You will not see much of the Science Museum as the children will be consumed in the ‘Activity Room’ where you will no doubt loose them several times. You will then have a great opportunity to scare the shit out of them as we give a great live demonstration on ‘How Rockets Work’.

After dragging the children kicking and screaming from the Science Museum you will have the opportunity to deny any ownership or existence of them at a playground in Regents Park. The tour will then depart in the afternoon for a trip to Madame Tussaudes where we will conveniently arrive just in time for it to close. Several trains later you will return for a specially prepared dinner by the head chef ASDA.

DAY 3: Another early morning, as you join the tour again, heading back to Madame Tussaudes where you will join the other 3,456,678 tourists looking at lots of shop-front dummies. The children will have a great time looking up dresses while the husband will be able to grope Kylie and several famous models. You will also have the unique opportunity to pick the nose of the Australian Prime Minister John Howard. If the dinosaurs or the rockets did not manage to mentally scar your children for life, there will be a great opportunity to take them through the house of horrors to see decapitated heads.

The tube will leave just before lunch (please mind the step) and take you to the Millennium Dome. Now called the O2 in the hope the British forget how many millions of pounds were wasted on this tent, you children will spend time playing on the artificial beach created indoors (unfortunately the only remaining sand beach in the UK had to be destroyed to allow this unique experience).

To complete the evening your private tube driver will pick you up and take you to Harrods where you will be able to look at obscenely expensive things you could never afford and allow the children to run riot in the toy section.

Unfortunately your tour will be close to the end. The only thing remaining is the long and tortuous train trip home, guaranteed to arrive near midnight. We hope you will enjoy this unique tour and we welcome you to join us”

YEP - we had a great time

Gardens on Steroids

Many know I have an interest in gardening so there was one thing I had to do while in the UK and that was visit the world famous Chelsea Flower Show. Bigger than any rock concert, tickets are sold out months before the day so luckily I went on line and purchased my ticket to the steroids of gardening.

Leaving the family at home I headed to London for the weekend. Walking to the show was no different to going to a rock concert apart from the audience shuffling in the walking frames and everyone remaining a polite distance from each other. As you walked there was the constant whispers from 70 year old scalpers “wana bya chelseee tickets?”, “how much forya ticket?”.

Entering the show the first thing that strikes you is the orderliness. Surprisingly, it was very easy to get around and they obviously limit the number of people. I guess this is to prevent the mad push of obsessive green-fingered pensioners falling over each other and breaking their hips.

First port of call was the outside gardens. An amazing series of displays, each meticulously tendered, flowers in full bloom, weedless, all traces of any rouge snail vaporised. They say some have spent up to $1 million to make the gardens – that is $200,000 PER DAY so don’t even think you can reproduce this at home. There was the “Cancer Garden” with a 30 metre long oak sculpture resembling a string of DNA, the “Relationships Garden” based on a farm workers cottage garden, “Sand and Ice” exploring the extremes of climate change, and other strange named ones including “Garden of Transience”, “Scent of a Roman”, “A Pleasance for the Rose and Lily Queen”, Lust for Life” and “Tufa Tea”.

But the best had to be the “Australian Garden”. Not because of its unique use of native plants, but because of the designer who spent most of his time chatting up good looking girls in the crowd, telling jokes and demonstrating the true larrikin in us all.

With all my senses in overload it was time to completely overdose and enter the Great Pavillion. Here your eyes are overloaded with every imaginable colour as flowers compete for each other in trying to be the most dazzling. Realising it was time to get out of there before the mind thinks it is on acid, or I consider changing to a Blue-rinse hairdo, I headed off to catch up with Doug (an old college) from Parramatta for dinner and a good lie down.