Mommy is Here

I woke up yesterday morning at 5:45 and was TOO EXCITED to get back to sleep, so I tidied stuff up, had breakfast, went for a run, got dressed, and waaaaaaaaaited. Finally it was time to go to the airport. Mom’s flight actually landed early, but it took them a long time to bring out the baggage, so she didn’t get out until around the expected time. Big hugs, found her a place to get nicotined up, then grabbed a train back into London. I knew she’d be kind of shell-shocked and just need to be herded around, so we cabbed it home, then I threw her in the shower and fed her lasagne. That woke her up, and she was ready to hit the town.

We decided to train it back over to Victoria Station, then hit up Westminster Abbey.

Funny Abbey story -we had been walking around for about an hour when mom leaned over to me and whispered “Don’t people know this is a house of worship? Why is everyone on their cell phones?” I pointed out that the “cell phones” were actually the electronic tours. Cue lots of jokes about how everyone in London has the same model of cell phone and that they just walk around listening to them intently and don’t actually talk.

Here we are in the Cloisters. You’ll have to excuse both of our terrible hair – we actually looked okay leaving the house, but in typical London style, it rained and rained all day yesterday. We got sick of fighting with the umbrella and just decided to get wet after a while, hence the terrible hair.

We walked up to Piccadilly Circus, then around SoHo for a bit. Mom gives a couple of cigarettes and a pound coin to a homeless guy. I am okay with donating to organisations and with giving homeless people food/clothes, but I refuse to give them money. I explain my stance to mom, who responds “He might buy a cookie with it. Or vitamins. Yes definitely he is going to buy vitamins.” Mom is super soft hearted, but hasn’t really lived in a city for a very long time, obviously. Anyway, we head to a pub and wait for Mike. Mom is still topping up the nicotine every hour or so (a 10 hour flight with no cigarettes almost killed her, I think) and keeps meeting friends outside the bar, probably because she keeps offering fellow smokers Canadian cigarettes to try. She ends up chatting to a paparazzi who is following Keifer Sutherland around.

Anyway, Mike finally arrives, and we have another drink, then head to Angel of Green for my favorite spicy noodles. Mom (disappointingly) doesn’t like them as much as I do. Ice cream, then home, where mom promptly passes out and sleeps solidly until 7am when I wake her up!

We are now all just getting up and dressed to go on a bus tour to Stonehenge, Bath, and Windsor Palace!