laaandaaaannn

Yesterday, myself and my Padre embarked on a wee trip to Laaandaaan Town, the main aim, to get me a wonderful, sparkley present. Hurrah! For my sister's 21st birthday, my parents treated her to an antique ring of her choice from Portobello Market, so naturally, when my 21st came around, I bagsied myself one too, and yesterday was D day.

Now, when we have a trip to London, living in different parts of the country, we get separate trains in and my Dad tends to wait for me at Waterloo. Throughout the whole of my life, whenever he is waiting for me somewhere, he likes to do the typical Dad thing of hiding and then creeping up on me. I hate this. I hate the whole situation of not being able to see said someone, when they can see you. Even though said someone is my father, it still makes me super conscious of my movements, the way I stand et cetera, et cetera. So, once off the train and approaching the gate, a grin engulfed my mush, me desperately trying to spot him, after about 3 minutes of searching I came to the conclusion that he mustn't yet have arrived, with my back against a shop so he couldn't sneak up on me I rang him. Needless to say he was at the wrong gate, so, with me super prepared for his attack, he still managed to 007 it round the side of the store and take me by surprise. Bastard!

It was a beauty of a day yesterday and Portobello looked lovely, all the different coloured buildings curving down the road off out of sight (there will be pictures to follow but I need to get them developed, I still have around 35 left on the film, bloody Golden Half giving me double the amount of snaps!) So, the hunt for my birthday gift commenced. There were a couple of criteria I had in mind for the ring, 1. yellow gold...obviously and 2. opals! After a reasonably short search, trying on only about six different rings, with my horrifically chipped, tatty fingernails really making it look like I was worth the beautiful pieces bestowed upon me, I found the one I wanted. We carried on our search, just in case, and then returned to the seller, my Dad telling me to go along with whatever he said in order to get the price down. He managed to get a tenner off...Ha.

The seller included a lovely little old leather heart shaped box to keep my ring in, but I decided to wear it for the rest of the day and haven't taken it off since :) Whenever I walk past a window or mirror I keep glancing down at my hand, it is laaaavly! Three greeny, orangey oval shaped opals, with four diamonds. SCORE!

When we went shopping for my sister's ring we ate from this wonderful little vegetarian take-away place, so once again we frequented there. The little ladies behind the counter ram packing take-away boxes full of noodles, Thai curry, lentil dishes, gigantes, whatever we chose. I wish there was once of these in Southampton, the place had quiches, and pretendy sausage rolls, pastries, pastas, oh! The veggie treats!

Once finished in Portobello, we made our way to The O2 for the Titanic exhibition held there. It was really rather good! Very informative, which is often the downside to most exhibitions I have been to (I must say they are usually ones of the art variety...) It was brilliant to discover the real story of the Titanic and to see some of the wonderful things they have managed to salvage from the bottom of the sea, which are still in such fantastic nick! They have bank notes, that are virtually perfect, which like everything else have been buried in mud at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean for near on 80 years!

When you actually stop to think about what happened, it really was a tragedy, there was such hope and excitement surrounding this ship, the biggest that had ever been seen, the new technology making those who built it, those who travelled on it and everyone else truly believe it was unsinkable. For it to go down on its maiden voyage, to put it lightly, was such bloody bad luck! Most of the people on it were just using it in order to get to America, to start new lives and live the American Dream, and many of them weren't even meant to be travelling on it! Due to the coal strike at the time, many people who had bought tickets for other ships, had to be transferred on to it!

What I found very interesting, which I never knew before (the majority of my knowledge surrounding the ship solely based on Kate and Leonardo) was that they knew there was ice in the area. The Titanic crashed at around 11.30pm on 14th April 1912, earlier that day, the crew had been messaged by other ships, several times, warning that there was a lot of ice. The Captain of the Titanic kept the ship travelling at just below its top speed despite this knowledge, a well-known theory is that they wanted to break the record for crossing from Southampton to New York (previously held by the Americans). Due to how the ship was made, which in turn influenced its nickname of 'The Unsinkable', it could have stayed afloat with up to four floors being damaged, six were struck, the Captain said that there was no way it would stay afloat. There weren't nearly enough life boats for the amount of people on board (although this was allowed at the time, after the incident the regulations were changed) I can't imagine just knowing that you're not going to survive, you are going down with this ship.

There were a couple of interesting stories about those on board, one was about this woman who was holding her baby as the ship was sinking. Her baby was taken from her and put into a life boat, but she was put into a different one. After spending the night in the boat, convinced her baby had died (many people although in the life boats died of pneumonia) the rescue ship came and she got aboard. After being unable to find her baby, she locked herself away in her room for two days, refusing to come out or eat. Finally a fellow passenger persuaded her out, and as luck would have it, she found her baby. But the woman holding him argued that he was her child and refused to give him back, in the end the Captain had to settle the dispute, the real mother knew her son had a birthmark on his stomach, so he was returned to her. Alright Ronnie Mitchell, what a bitch!

And the second story goes...The Titanic was part of a trio of ships made by this particular company, the other two were called the Olympic and the Britannic. All three encountered some sort of issue, not on the same scale as what happened with the Titanic, but real problems none-the-less and one woman travelled on all three and survived all three disasters! She did end up with a fractured skull, but she still lived on!

I'm finished with the history lesson now :) Once done with the exhibition we made a bee-line for a 'typical London pub', visiting two and me getting somewhat squiffy on two and a half pints of cider black. There really is nothing like a London pub, I love how there are so many and they're full of such an eclectic bunch of people, businessmen, students, girls about town, old bearded men propping up the bar, and they're always decorated in that Victorian manner. Oh! I can't wait to live in Laandaaan and have a 'typical London pub' as my local :D

After purchasing a pasty, me and my Dad went our separate ways, my hand suitably sparkling from my wonderful bit of bliiing bliiing!!

Until anon x