few minutes ago was

A few minutes ago I was trying to get to my bank in
Soho Square
and I saw the Queen (of England) and Prince Phillip.

There was a crowd of people and lots of police and it looked like someone
was visiting the Tucan pub. Then I spotted the Royal Standard flying on a car, and realized
it was the Queen and she was visiting something opposite the pub.

I was trying to make my way through the crowd and she stepped out
from a building, waved, there was some clapping and cheering, then
she got into a car and was driven away. Show over.

Sitting on the tube

Sitting on the tube on my way home this evening, this guy was sitting opposite me. I’m not sure what it was about him but I needed to take a quick photo of him, I think it was because of the laptop and the flat cap, two things which stereotypically don’t go together very often.

chappy on tube

(Photo taken with the eyemodule and with apologies to said chap)

We spent the weekend

You know you're not in England when the road signs look like this

We spent the weekend in Aberystwyth (Wales, UK). Not sure why really. Hadn’t been there before. Jane might write up a travelogue but for now we have some”
eyemodule photos.

While researching the trip I found virtualhotels.com, which is handy for narrowing down the choice of hotels in an area. Then you need to jump off to Google or similar to get extra information about
a place.

We ended up at Conrah Country House Hotel. Nice place. Great service. Recommended. “Helicopter arrivals may be accommodated by prior arrangement with the hotel”. Of course. We may get addicted to luxury hotels like the Conrah.

shocked by how absorbed

I’m shocked by how absorbed I become when playing the card game Pit. You try to collect a set of commodities (like all corn cards, wheat cards, etc) by exchanging them blind with other players. There are no turns, you all just call out how many cards you want to exchange: shouting “trade two two two two TWO TWO” and grab the two cards from anyone who offers. It’s noisy. You need at least three players, but more is better.

Hull City Latest…

Woohoo! After a draw with Plymouth Argyle last night at Plymouth, Hull are in one of the Play-Off spots. Okay, so we’re 7th and are only one point ahead of Rochdale, and they have 3 games in hand but at least we’re there for the moment.

Our new owner, Adam Pearson, has been speaking to the press and has said that Brian Little will be staying as our manager which is excellent news, and also that he plans to support the project to build a new stadium in Hull. He seems alright for an ex-Leeds Director and Huddersfield Town supporter 😉

And, the chap who used to spend his Saturday Afternoon’s being our mascot, Roary, is mentioned on the BBC sport news with his new club, Exeter City.

Plymouth Argyle have banned “Alex the Greek” (which is Roary’s new name/job) from the Plymouth v Exeter match. It would appear that Alex the Greek gets up to all the mischief that he did when he was “Roary the Tiger”, and Plymouth are concerned about him upsetting their supporters. He made the news with the FA Cup match between Hayes Town and Hull City when he was sent off (or at least escorted from the playing area by the stewards).

Exeter approached “Roary” last October and made him an offer he could not refuse. See Mascot swaps Tigers for leather on the BBC sport news site for more.

All of the eateries

All of the eateries around the office, in Hatton Gardens, are getting worse.

Our favourite cafe was “refurbished” over Christmas and re-opened with new decor and new owners. The food hasn’t been as good since then, so we only go there once a week, rather than every day.

We went to another one today, Aud’s, on Greville Street. The food was okay, but the service was pretty poor. We’d only just finished eating before we were asked to leave as other people were waiting. We weren’t actually intending to sit there all day, but this was just rude (the manner it was said wasn’t pleasant either)

So, we’re on the hunt for a good, reliable cafe, which serves breakfasts and jacket potatoes, and maybe even omelette baps. Any suggestions anyone?

Weekend sports roundup…

Wycombe beat Leicester to get into the FA Cup semi-final (they’re going to play Liverpool). Not a bad achievement for a 2nd division team, especially one who had to advertise to find a striker, and who signed an unknown player from Belfast, Roy Essandoh, less than a week before the game on a 2 week contract. Quote from the Wycombe page on the Nationwide website – “Ten days ago the Wanderers striker was out of work but he responded to an Internet plea from the Adams Park outfit for a new goalscorer that duly led to the second half substitute notching the dramatic winner.”

Hull City lost to Brighton at the Withdean stadium by 3 goals to nothing. That result leaves Brighton 2nd in the league, and pushes Hull down to 10th. If we’d even got one point we’d have been in the play-off spot. There are rumours starting to circulate about who our new owners are, and apparently a press conference is expected at 5pm today… watch this space