They're Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace...

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
                                                                    Says Alice.

We went to London on Saturday, as we live on the coast it's up for us, not down, and we are neither called Christopher, nor Alice..I'm not sure where this is going except I recited this poem to DD when we were at Buckingham Palace, I feel if when you see this

and don't recite that perfect poem by A.A. Milne you are wasting everyone's time.

We were not in London to visit the Queen though, nor a little mouse under her chair. We were there to meet up with the simply marvelous totally barking authors that I met up with back in January but this time DD was coming along too.

First I went to John Lewis with £200 worth of vouchers that I'd won online burning the proverbial hole in my pocket. After an hour of um-ing and ahhh-ing and with help from DD I settled on a lovely chiffon dress in black, with a butterfly motif (£105 !! *faints*) and a White Stuff reversible cotton skirt with a bird patterm (£45) I also stocked up on 'my smell' (as DD calls it) Clarins Dynamisante (£32)

Then it was a rush to the pub, to meet for Lunch. We were late of course. We met at the Mayflower, the pub was charming, and after a brief confusion where I was upstairs and alone with Dd and a bottle of wine while everone one else was downstairs, we settled down to chatting about all sorts of odd things, books, food, women, sex, cats, watches...sometimes several from that list at once.

The food was delicious. The waitress put up with our happy mildly tipsy behaviour. No one danced on the table, or got naked, though Andy and Tony downed shots of Tabasco sauce to impress us. We were suitably impressed...and a little bit worried!

All in all the meet up was lovely (well I enjoyed it - I do hope the others did!) DD has declared all authors (but especially Andy Stanton and Anthony McGowan) 'barking' ... after the Tabasco affair I fear she has a point.

Emily, Tony, TM, DD

Sally, Andy and Jane

Later we walked back from the tube via Green Park and Buckingham Palace.

What a super day!

Jubilicious

Well, the Jubilee was a bit of a wash out in our house. DH is failry anti-monarchy so the bunting was subdued (allowed on 'my side' of the house only!) and poor DD came down with a horrble cold on Sunday afternoon causing her to want to stay in bed (on a holiday!!) 

The cold also meant that there was no chance of a trip to the Arundel Lido on the Monday. A Monday where we also had a street party invite which due to cold and rain we also didn't attend. All in all a rather sad Jubilee. 

We did however, find time to bake some jubilee cakes, and make most of a sock bunny using instructions from here, although we are out of stuffing now so he is pathetically skinny until our ebay order arrives.

Red(ish), white(ish) and blue(ish) cakes

 

We also found time to watch the rather fun Jubilee Concert, causing merriment in the house when DD said "At least Cheryl Cole isn't on the bill" only 3 minutes before Miranda Hart announced that Cheryl would be singing with Gary Barlow! Our fave bits were Jessie J, Tom Jones and the light and firework displays, we also enjoyed Grace Jones (talented on the hula hoop) and Madness who are just always fun.

How was your Jubilee? What did you get up to? Did you love it or loathe it?