Failing Body

Posted on Mon 23 October 2006 by alex in general

I've been fighting the assumption that I'm still ill since last week. The "long tail" of the cough is something I can deal with during the day. However when I lie down in bed I can look forward to a good few hours of hacking coughs. It can be heard through floorboards apparently. The cough mixtures I've tried so far seem to encourage rather than stifle the coughing. As a result I may bot be "ill" but I'm certainly tired and hacked off with my failing body.

The annoyances of the hacking cough aside the weekend in London was fun and entertaining. Through means too nefarious to go into on a public system I travelled first class on Thursday. Unfortunately the beer was not as free flowing as advertised, however it was nice to get hot food served for free. It became apparent I need a new coat that is somewhere between my warm winter coat and my leather jacket especially for the life of the Underground. And possibly some new lungs...

I was on my own for most of Friday so I did a bit of a tour. I skipped the London Eye (again) as by the time I got there the queues where far too much to deal with. Instead I went for a very pleasant walk around the south bank. I then got my fill of public art at the Tate Modern. I was quite supprised to see how many of the items where recognisable - obviously one of the benefits of being a national gallery. Some pieces did make me wonder what was artistic about them. Jackson Pollock still makes little sense. However it was great to be able to see pictures by Dali and Picasso up close and in real life (which is surprisingly different from a poster). Quite a lot of stuff was familiar even though I didn't realise it was "art" like Alexander Calder's mobiles and Man Ray's Indestructible Object. I shall have to go back next time and go over the other floors.

I wondered over in the Soho direction to get food although I ended up near Harley Street (and very expensive Italian restaurants). I was intending to hit the Science museum and possibly visit Parliament but time was against me at that point. I did walk through Hyde park but found it disappointing. I was expecting a little bit more than a large flat piece of grass, more tree's would have been nice. I met up with Fliss before heading down to Windsor.

Ivan is an exemplary host who ensured we didn't go hungry for the whole weekend. Although I was planning to get Fliss to watch Blues Brothers we never got round to that. Instead we had a fine time playing a series of board and card games. Memorable ones include Robo Rally which appealed to my inner geek as it involves programming your robots course in advance while ensuring we don't lock instructions into your course if you get too damaged. We also played the original Settlers board game.

We were joined by Chaz and Dan on Saturday and tried a few more board games that involved building Arabic palaces. It was quite interesting seeing how you can develop strategies even when at the outset the games seems quite dictated by chance. There was also a fun card game by the name of Hex Hex which provided plenty of amusement. We also played a monster 4 hour game of Risk 2210.

Before heading back on Sunday I caught up with Roo and Jay for a few beers and some pool to round of the day. I then endured a long journey back on the train (luckily having a seat, unlike a large chunk of people). So despite the rather annoying cough it has been an enjoyable weekend. Hopefully I don't have to spend too much of this week cleaning up after the party I missed for it.