Stuff Wot I Did

After writing everything down yesterday and reading it back, I made the executive decision to stop using the oestrogen cream. I know I only had to take it for another five days, but I don’t care. That’s five days too many.

This morning I woke up and noticed that I am already feeling more like my old self. I feel clearer and more defined, like I am coming back into focus from somewhere very far away. The physical stuff is proving harder to shift, which is understandable, but a tad frustrating. I am starving hungry but not able to tolerate much in the way of food. The only things I have found so far that don’t make me want to vomit are burned toast with no butter, dry oat granola and some plain tortilla chips I bought because at least they were yellow and not brown. I am sick of brown food.

I was meant to go and see a friend today. She is a member of a London guild and she was going to show me round the guild building. She has the right to drive her sheep over London Bridge. I was hoping that if I went to visit, they might have a spare sheep I could trot over the bridge, but it was not to be. I am not in any fit state to be driving anything anywhere at the moment. Instead she came to see me and bought me a cinnamon bun to cheer me up. The bun was very brown, so I ate it. It was also very delicious, but it has been three hours since she left and I am still burping up cinnamon. I feel haunted, but not in an exciting way.

I am so sick of myself I thought I’d write a post about some of the things I have been doing that are not related to being an ill person. A change is as good as a rest etc.

On Friday last week, I met with my friend Zak for lunch and art. We had an excellent lunch at Viet Food on Wardour Street. Even though it’s always busy, I’ve never had to wait for a table. The service is quick and the food is great. It’s also pretty reasonable for central London. We had mains and drinks and it came to £30 including the tip. We got our art fix in the National Portrait Gallery. This time we did it properly and went to the Tudor galleries first. I’m not much for Tudor art but you can’t deny that they were really excellent at painting fabric. Faces, meh. Tufted velvet, yeh. We finished the afternoon with a trip to Choosing Keeping, which has all the best stationery in the world and which is the first place I’ll go if I ever win the lottery. On my way home I detoured through Seven Dials and treated myself to ice cream at Udderlicious followed by half an hour in the art section in Foyles on Charing Cross Road.

Saturday was more subdued due to health shenanigans but I did manage a walk round the Isle of Dogs with Jason before friends came to visit for the afternoon. On Sunday I was not at my finest, so we got the Uber Boat from Canary Wharf and took it all the way to Battersea. We sat outside in the sunshine and watched the world unfurl before us. I love experiencing the city by water, walking or boating, it offers you a completely different version of a place you think you know.

We had a wander around Battersea Power Station, which is now flats, shops and restaurants. It’s been really well done and there is a great deal of power station left so that you can read the history of the building and it hasn’t all been hidden behind plasterboard. We got shouted at by a lady when we wandered into a historical bit we should have had tickets for and didn’t. By the time she tracked us down we had already pressed all the buttons, so we were good to be thrown out. Mischief managed.

We had lunch at Arcade, which is a kind of posh food hall. You scan the QR code at your table and order from all the different places you like, then someone brings it all over to you. It was very fancy and a lot like world tapas. I expected the food to be awful, but everything we had was delicious and it was lots of fun.

This week has been a bit of a disaster and I have only left the boat for non medical purposes once. Jason had to go to Forest Gate to pick up a giant wicker basket that a friend of ours won on eBay, so he took me with him for an old lady jaunt in the car. Once we had picked up the basket, we decided that we would find something lovely to do in the area. We weren’t in the mood for the Horniman Museum, which is excellent but up a steep hill and my legs were not in steep hill mode. Instead, Jason found what Google referred to as a wildlife sanctuary, called The Tarn, so we went there.

The Tarn, it transpires, is a very small park, with a very brown lake in the middle of it. The wildlife consists of ducks, squirrels, pigeons and geese. You can walk round the entire Tarn in ten minutes, even at my current speed. There is more wildlife at Poplar Marina than there is in the Tarn. Also, the wildlife is not very wild and we were accosted at every turn by squirrels and geese, ever hopeful of a slice of bread and a few exotic nuts. I was not sad about any of this as a ten minute crawl round a brown lake was all I was capable of at that point. Also it was very, very funny.

We ate lunch at Egg & Co Bistro, a two minute walk from The Tarn. Well, I ate some of mine and thought dark thoughts and Jason devoured his. The food was delicious and had I not been so poorly I would have devoured mine, too. I can’t say I will be back, because The Tarn is not a place that requires a return visit, but if you’re ever in that neck of the woods, pop in.