The Queen

Posted on 2008/10/18 13:35:20 (October 2008).

[Thursday 16th October]
The Queen and Prince Philip came to my office today, which was all very exciting. I didn't actually get a chance to talk to her, but she did walk past my desk and we exchanged smiles. Prince Philip stopped to talk to one of the guys on my team, enquiring as to how he avoided "getting square eyes".

They both look much shorter than I expected in real life.

Today also marked two years since the two longest running members of my team joined the company, so we decided to go for a pub lunch to celebrate.

Towards the end of the day I was starting to feel a bit out of sorts, possibly a combination of the come down after all the excitement of The Royal Visit plus the fact I'd had a pint at lunchtime and had been feeling drowsy all afternoon. So I decided to leave the office at 5:30 and go for a wander.

I initially headed out past Buckingham Place (where incidentally I think I might have seen Lady Camilla in a car), across Green Park, and then to Piccadilly... but I kept walking from there, up through the fascinating streets at the back of Mayfar, all the way to Bond Street. I then decided to take a right there and head in the direction of Holborn. I think I walked about 3 miles in total.

I eventually ended up at the Cittie of Yorke. I let Chie know where I was and parked myself there to wait for her. Whilst waiting I had a group of office workers come and stand next to me, and overheard the women in the group complaining about this beautiful, magical place - describing it as "an old man's pub" and whinging about the fact they didn't have the particular brand of shitty mass produced lager or Bacardi bloody Breezers or whatever it was these banal uneducated Philistines normally drink. I resisted the strong temptation I had to interrupt their conversation and inform them they had no soul.

Chie was hungry and a tad irritable when we met up, so I hurriedly looked for somewhere to find something to eat, which in hindsight was ill-advised. We went to an empty Thai restaurant on Red Lion street, which was altogether pretty naff - one of the dishes I ordered was tofu with bean sprouts. They brought it to the table and it turned out to be just a dish of bean sprouts. On enquiry they informed us they had ran out of tofu. The fact that they'd hoped we just wouldn't notice or something really got my back up - especially as I don't even particularly like beansprouts. So we sent it back, and had it struck off our bill. One wonders if they would have said anything if they'd also ran out of bean sprouts.

After dinner we had one quick drink at the Old Red Lion on the corner of Red Lion street, and then went home.

Looks like a pretty eventful day! I never manage to send back things at the restaurant... I admire you for it! Fortunately Chiara doesn't seem to have these shitty problems and she does the dirty work for me! :D

Posted by Lox at 2008/10/18 14:10:21.

Well the Royal visit is hard to follow, isn't it? But congrats on getting the reduction of your bill for that meal. How annoying that the staff hoped you wouldn't notice! Pah!

Posted by Nigel at 2008/10/18 17:06:08.

Reading back through this post, I rather like the fact that quite possibly a once-in-lifetime opportunity for me to come face to face with the Queen is somewhat brushed over in the opening paragraph, to then make way for the usual diatribe about pubs and restaurants.

:)

Posted by John at 2008/10/19 12:35:50.

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