Up in the smoke with Carl and Bob

To Seaford station, looking at the sea, before zooming up to Victoria via Lewes. At Victoria a voice on the tannoy asking for someone with medical training to urgently go to the gate we were all crowding through.  Welcome to London.

Tube to Embankment, and The Salisbury to meet Bob and Carl. 

Excellent to see them both. Weird how quickly being together feels entirely normal. After some discussion we decided to go to the After Impressionism exhibition round the corner in the National. A decent exhibition, with some paintings that were new to me. I enjoyed seeing After the Sermon by Gaugin again, one of my favourite paintings. We enjoyably mooched around there, Carl in signature style not wasting time on work he didn't like much, Bob refraining from waving his fingertip three or four millimetres above the surface of the paintings so all well. 

Then we tubed to Hammersmith and lurked along the river talking about old times and catching up some of the news while dropping in at old haunts such as the Rutland, The Dove and The Black Lion, before we drifted onto Kings Street and Chiswick High Road where we found a curry house.

One sign of our advancing years perhaps was that our drinking was restrained and fairly civilised.  Just as we were about to go into the Indian restaurant, I spotted Steve Broadhurst getting into a taxi across the road, and nipped over to say hello. He told me to pop into the pub to say hi to Matty boy and Karam. A cheery minute or two with them, crossed the road to to have curry with Carl and Bob. A decent one at a not over inflated price although the waiter kept trying to persuade us to eat naan.

After this I had to leave, hugged my old chums at Turnham Green, they had both sensibly booked rooms in London, and I should do that next time. I got a latish train from Victoria and because of train nonsense I had to go to Brighton, and catch a bus from there, arriving home some time after midnight. Well worth it though, for the pleasure of hanging out with dear old pals. Felt there was so much more to say, than we had time to say. Carl said Bob and I should go up again soon to Runcorn. And I will make it happen.

Lorraine still up, and my two weeks of monitoring blood sugar over, and Lorraine peeled off the plaster and pulled out the sensor. Not having the hyper vigilantly monitor blood sugar in a hypochondriacal way a good thing. Luckily blood sugar is fine however.

Below a shot Carl took of us on the terrace of The Dove, Carl and Bob taken by me, and a snap Matt took of him and me and Karam during my one minute visit.