A day out in London.

There is something about London that just makes me smile. I love it. I have never lived in London but I have plenty of friends who do and whenever I return from a visit I seem to miss it.

A couple weeks ago my father offered me his tickets for the Masters tennis at the Royal Albert Hall. I had an initial panic as having booked my hair appointment 8 weeks ago I now had a clash – considering I am currently unemployed, clashes rarely happen in my diary. I didn’t know what to do! I simply LOVE tennis but then at the same time I wouldn’t be able to see my hairdresser till after Christmas, he’s annoyingly popular so you have to be outrageously organised booking appointments. For example I can tell you already that my next visit to the hairdressers is on the 4^th February. Anyways I suddenly realised I can’t not go to the tennis – next problem who was I going to go with? Fear not I called a fellow unemployed graduate and off we went.

Neither of us had been to the Royal Albert Hall so that was exciting in itself. Secondly we’re both big tennis fan so watching tennis in such a stunning building was just incredible. 

Thirdly we were watching Mark Philippoussis and it didn’t take long for us both to realise how good looking he was. We almost became obsessed.

This all started when at the end of his match tennis balls were hit into the crowd at this stage we weren’t fussed about catching a tennis ball. Well we weren’t until…Andrew Castle announced if you caught one you would be meeting Mark Philippoussis. Suddenly we both sprung to our feet and were shouting “Mark, Mark” but no balls were hit our way. I just have to put it down to the fact he didn’t see us. If he genuinely is single and the average age of the audience was 50+ (it was the masters tennis after all) then why did he not throw it our way? Even the ladies in front commented on the situation in shock – highlighting the age of a member of the audience who had caught one. Anyways we weren’t put off by the lack of a ball we went to the meeting point and followed those who did have balls to the special room. Upon entering the room people were handing over their balls and sadly we had to bail last minute. We were genuinely devasted.

We didn’t stop there though, we took to twitter. Couldn’t find Mark Philippoussis so tweeted to the masters tennis twitter account. The tweet read as follows: "@masters_tennis loving the tennis but sad to have missed out on the meet and greet with #markphilippoussis - feel free to put in a good word." Sadly we failed.

It took a while but we moved on from Mark Philippoussis and onto the V & A museum. I cant think when/if I have previously been, if I have it would have been on a rather uninspiring school trip, which would have consisted of filling out question sheets. You wouldn’t really take in any of the beauty just simply answer the questions as quickly as possible so you could go to the shop and/or café. I love being at an age where I actually enjoy visiting museums. I think it’s also the addition of my SLR as I love being able to snap away especially at the architecture. A couple pictures from the V & A are below.

We didn’t stop there. Oh no, on we continued to Harrods and yes after looking at the jewellery and handbags we did make our way to Santas grotto. Now our initial plan was just to see it – we tried peering round the corner only to be greeted by this….

Now this lovely pink elf (if that’s what she was) informed us Santa’s Grotto was in fact FREE. Now as most of you know nothing comes free but it actually was. So with our new pink elf friend we made our way to the queue. 

This is when we suddenly realized it is actually a little bit weird that at 22 years old we were queuing to see Santa – this was emphasized by the average age of 6 surrounding us. At this stage we looked at each other and the role play began. Oh yes we pretended to be American.  Of course this is the kind of thing American tourists would have loved. The good thing was at this stage we were only chatting amongst ourselves and bizarrely enough we speak in American accents on a regular basis.

A little something to keep you smiling in the queue to Santa.

The issue only came when we were situated at the front of the queue. At this point we had an elf chatting directly too us and it was for a good 7 minutes whilst the kid ahead of us had their moment with Santa. All I can say is this felt like a life time, but imagine the embarrassment if half way through we slipped into English. I could see my friends face beginning to panic but we made it through and this had to be the highlight of the day. As we left Santa’s Grotto we just burst into laughter but it certainly was worth it. Fingers crossed Santa makes our wishes come true. For those of you reading “we would like boyfriends and jobs” Please contact me if you can offer either.