A Dud's day out

On Saturday we had a dud's trip to London, with one crucial difference....

no duds!

We did invite at least one dud, but our invitations were sadly rejected so Georgina, Sarah Hole, Sophie, Jess and I went off for a nice day out by ourselves.

The arrangement (as I was told) was to meet at the Imperial War museum at 10:30. I woke up at 9:53 (due to my alarm clock, my boyfriend, having not shown up) and panicked rather. I immediately phoned Jess, frantically apologising and promising to be there as soon as possible, only to be told that, actually, Swing dance lessons (the reason for our excursion to the museum) didn't actually start until 12 and everyone else was getting there at 11:30, they just knew I would be late.

Having been reassured (or insulted, depending on how you look at it), I proceeded to fall back asleep until my mum came to rouse me half an hour later. 11:30 came and went and I was still at home so I called Jess again to apologise from the car on the way there only to find that everyone (bar Jess who is super organised) had done the same thing and she was the only one there and getting a little worried.

Georgina, Sophie and I arrived just in time for the lessons and they were absolutely brilliant! There were these people in 40s costumes boogying away and it wasn't long before we were boogying with them. I love swing dance! I have a video, which I will attempt to put up now, but I've never done this before, so fingers crossed!

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Nope, not happening. Anyone have any ideas how?

Oh, and we were filmed for the ITV 5:00 news! It didn't get shown in the end but how exciting!

After the lessons had finished we went downstairs to the main part of the museum where we posed for some photos with an ARP warden. There was a rather dodgy looking bloke hanging around in the background during this and just as we were about to move on again he came up to us (and the ARP warden) and asked if he could take a picture of me wearing the wardens helmet and posing with the warden for THE SUNDAY TIMES!!!! He took down my name and everything to caption the picture with, but unfortuantely, on Saturday afternoon news happened and we didn't get on tv or in the papers after all.

Anyhoo, we left the museum and wandered on down to the Royal Festival Hall to collect Sarah Hole, who had been listening to a free jazz concert. Then we were off (via charing cross to get some lunch) to St Martin-in-the-fields for brass rubbing. Jess, Georgina and Sarah all went for small brasses, whereas me and Sophie (after some pursuasion from me) got huge ones. We were there for hours, rubbing away. Eventually the others finished their brass rubbings and came over to help us and we carried out a brief experiment into leadership styles. Sophie praised and encouraged her helpers, whereas I exhorted mine with cries of "make it SHINY!" and "rub, slaves, RUB!". (I think I would like to just briefly note that my brass rubbing was finished before Sophie's, and when we took them to the counter to pay, the lady in charge called her collegue over to look at mine, praising it and asking me if I was sure that I'd never done it before, although obviously I don't want to blow my own trumpet or anything, the others' were very good too.)

From there we walked to the Science museum, where we headed straight for the Launchpad. Sophie and I very nearly managed to construct a bridge over a river marked "extremely hard" and then I beat the Science museum's previous record for the highest tower built with their wonky bricks (16 as opposed to a paltry 15). There were some who tried to denigrate my achievement by pointing out that I was a 19 year old Oxford University student studying physics and not a 7 to 11 year old child like most of the visitors to the launch pad, but I won fair and square I tell you!

Speaking of Oxford, I then had to return to those dreaming spires so the others accompanied me back to Victoria and waved me off.

That evening I went to a ball at St Hilda's with my new St Hilda's friends, and it was brilliant! We danced the night away to the strains of MC Hammer (Can't touch this), Bryan Adams (Summer of '69), and Chesney Hawkes (I am the one and only). It was the perfect end to the perfect day.