Spring is Back! Strand-on-the-Green

This post is going to be about Spring ... and how it came back this weekend.

< -- If you are a middle-aged wo/man with big glasses who wears an oversized tweed jacket, then please skip this part and go back to reading Noam Chomsky's The Responsibility of Intellectuals -->

Friday night, I was meeting Syn after a rrrreeally long time and we had a minor argument / discussion over whose fault it was that we had not met for so long. Bad weather, work (mine), exams (hers) were all blamed. We were supposed to have a totally girly night, watching He's just not that into you but Syn was late (blaming a friend whose girlfriend had just broken up with him and he phoned and talked and talked and talked - therefore it was HER fault - the ex's, not Syn's) ... are you still with me? Anyway, the ticket queues in Leicester Square were sooo long that we decided to go for dinner, to ehm ... Chinatown again. And the good news is that I have a new favourite Chinese place to eat, actually Taiwanese. It's called Leong's Legend Continues ... and it's on Lisle Street and I can't find a website for it. The decor is really nice, sort of like "slaughter-house meets country Bungalow in China" and they have some real authentic food on the menu like Noodles with Pig's Trotter but I suppose you could always just go for a Spring roll (told you this post was about Spring, no?).

After our delicious meal, which was definitely bigger than it should be, given my expanding waistline, we went for a drink at Oxygen, where I blagged free entry and a "First class" stamp on my wrist - very proud of these new skills. This place, again, had some interesting decor (nice lights), but I can't help myself, all nightclubs / bars in London just seem dirty to me. So either I need to stop wearing my contact lenses or drink more shots. Syn definitely thought that drinking more shots was the way forward for me, since I told her that alcohol always makes me sleepy and maybe I'm not drinking the right stuff. We spent the rest of the evening dream-talking about travelling and becoming a Bohemian.

Although I love London, I am toying with the idea of moving to Prague, renting an apartment, walking down to the local antikvariát every day (second-hand book shop, really, but antikvariát sounds so much more romantic as a word) ... and buying 10 million dusty books and just reading them for the rest of my life and drinking so much coffee that I never have to sleep. Syn seemed to totally get me, which is why I like her! We also spend a bit of time bitching about non-single people and watching some woman have a fight with some man. I admired that woman's ability to vent her emotions in public, really. I can never do that. To give you some useful information about Oxygen - it's a bar conveniently near Leicester Square, spread across three floors,with a quieter (but packed) section upstairs and a noisier section downstairs ... they serve, like all bars, booze!

<-- The Intellectuals can read from here on again, since the rest of this post does not contain any information that could interfere with my sensible girl image. -->

Saturday was such a glorious Spring day that I could not possibly be stuck inside the house, so I walked down to Strand-on-the-Green, sat on a bench and read a book. (I am still trying to read my way through Gregory David Roberts' Shantaram - 936 pages - intense!) I am not going to go on and on and on about how pretty it is down there by the Thames, so I will just upload these pictures, which speak for themselves!
And sitting here on a bench underneath these trees, I realized that I don't need to move to the country because I can have it all here in London.


The next lucky person who will come to visit me in London is definitely being taken for a drink at one of the pubs here.

And this picture just makes me giggle and reminds me of the ducks that used to walk around our flat when we were students, up in Birmingham. We lived near a canal and used to look at those ducks from our kitchen window, thinking ... DINNER ... If only we could be bothered to kill it and plug the feathers. (OK, we were poor and lazy to cook back then, surviving mostly on noodles.) And just in case you wonder, yes I know the difference between a swan and a duck. But a dead bird on a plate is a dead bird on a plate.

This house here at Strand-on-the-Green is up for sale and it's telling me that I need to start purchasing lottery tickets promptly!

Just before sunset, during what is known to photographers as the golden hour, I took a stroll around Chiswick and went to take some photos of this Russian orthodox church, which always makes me want to ask - What are you doing here in this neighbourhood?!

Enjoy Spring, daaahlings! Go outside! Now!