Geriatric OE

The weekly musing of a couple of Kiwis on their geriatric OE in The UK






Sunday, 16 June 2013

We were not expecting that...



I saw an ad for an Antiques and Collectibles fair that was being held ar an exhibition hall called Olympia. And that was our plan A for today. It was easy to get there, and the station was immediately across the road. Notice that I said ‘was’ to be our plan for the day.  Thought it was strange that on the final day there were hoards of folks looking for a bargain. Oh well I said to The Man, we must be early. So we walked in and went to pay our entry fee.
Both of us were gobsmacked when the woman at the cash desk said ‘that will be £40 please’. I thought I had misheard her. But no it really was £40 for the two of us. Absolute daylight robbery and I told her so. She just shrugged. The wallet went back into the bag pretty smartly I can tell you. For that amount The Man and I could go to the movies, have a light meal and still have change.
So it was on to plan B.
We’d checked the map before we left knew that we were pretty close to a part of the Thames Path that we hadn’t done yet. So it was back onto the train to get to the river. No sense in tiring ourselves out before we start the walk proper. It was getting onto midday and we thought that lunch in a nice café would be just the ticket. And could we find one? We could not. OK we did see a couple of high priced eateries, but nothing that suited us so we kept going.
We walked past some very flash apartment buildings and around a very expensive enclosed marina and hardly saw a soul. You’d have thought that there would at least have been the odd person working on a boat, but no. We kept on walking keeping an eye out for a café or pub, growing hungrier. Good thing I had some toffees in my bag.
By now we were pretty close to Victoria Station so we just kept on walking.
So it was lunch with the clown before catching the train back to Crystal Palace. 

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