London Aquarium on a 'relaxing' weekend

What better way to spend a Friday night than with fish (and champagne)?

Last Friday saw my first 24 hour stint in a long time with farewell drinks for my TA, carol singing at Leadenhall Market for the Christmas light switch on, dancing my heart out to Anile, Etherwood and Keeno at MedSchool in Elephant & Castle and then finally rolling into bed at half 5/6am, having woken up at a similar time a full 'day' before. Feeling a little too 'old' (at least on a Friday) for all that these days, I was rather looking forward to a quieter time this weekend, and very excited for fish!

I've probably been to the London Aquarium before, but when Hunstanton Sealife Centre (please imagine I said that in my overly enthusiastic with a hint of sarcasm voice) is on my doorstep at home, we've probably never felt the need to journey to such a place; I certainly didn't have any recollection of a visit anyway. After my incredibly fun experiences of Zoo Lates at London Zoo, and Science Museum Lates at (you've guessed it) the Science Museum, I decided that London Aquarium must be done as soon as it caught my attention!

Gone are the days when you could stroke these guys...

A complimentary glass of champagne upon arrival, I was more than happy! There is something truly wonderful about not feeling obligated to move aside for small children struggling to peer into tanks! Instead it was initially a little more like the battle upon entering an already sardine-like tube train, elbows out and everything! However as some people raced ahead to find the next bar, we decided to take our time.

So stingrays evolved from sharks. Who knew?

Determined to get our money's worth, we oggled at the weird and wonderful in every tank, waiting patiently to read signs that would inform us what said 'weird and wonderful' were actually called (the Fox-faced-rabbitfish had to be my favourite name, although I wasn't entirely sure where the name came from...)! It transpired that shark tanks are pretty hypnotic, and before we knew it, it was twenty to ten (we had arrived at twenty past seven)! So we tore ourselves away and went to find the penguins!

Drunken seahorses.

Pretty piranhas!

Unanimous oohs and ahhs echoed around the crowd as we eagerly anticipated their descent into the pool for a swim. Sadly it never came, but they still looked sweet waddling around their enclosure (if a little trapped; the murals on the walls of the world beyond where they now live seemed a little cruel)!

Penguins waved goodbye to, the rest felt like a come-down (although a fish swimming through a tiny tube adjoining two tanks was a pretty entertaining highlight (perhaps the alcohol was kicking in by this point)). Before we knew it, we found ourselves exiting and we came out by the arcade and McDonalds; quite the opposite to the inviting entrance!

More sharks...

... just because they're sharks.

Once we were back along the Southbank, we decided to venture into the festive enclosure where this year's Winter Festival awaited us. We discovered a Christmas tree maze (magical), a 'lodge' serving all the Rekorderlig, and an incredible array of inviting Scandinavian food stalls. After a wander around to make sure we were about to make the best drink (and maybe food) choice, we settled on a table and chair straight out of Ikea in the lodge for a tipple. As we sat there, our minds turned to the intriguing food stall situated right outside the lodge, and before we knew it we were tucking into a mighty burger and a meat ball sandwich with lingonberry jam and some sort of gravy; yum!

The rest of the weekend was pretty restful; on Saturday evening we returned to Southbank to try out another food stall and to catch up with friends not seen in far too long (I even managed to get a little something for Christmas while we waited)! On Sunday I finally saw The Shawkshank Redemption (in bed, of course), and loved it, before my 'relaxing' weekend was topped off with Linkin Park at the O2 Arena; so much nostalgia!

I'm definitely starting to feel fully festive!

Grabbing horns, bobbing along, childhood nostalgia, and a little history

I can’t believe how long it’s been since I last wrote! I’ve been a crazy kind of busy, and by the time I ever have a moment to sit down and write, I feel like whatever has happened is suddenly rather irrelevant (it’s not just a case of nothing interesting happening, honestly)! I can’t deny I am a lover of being busy and I certainly feel as though I have an awful lot of purpose at the moment, which is never a bad thing! So I write to you with some of the ‘best bits’ of the last month I suppose; just to prove that I haven’t just disappeared into a deep, dark cave somewhere (although there’s still time).

Something that this year has taught me is that I need to grab opportunities and take risks. In a nutshell, there’s been a lot of bull-grabbing – or at least the horns of bulls. One pretty big ‘event’ over the past month has been my weekly swimming lessons! I’m still pretty ashamed to admit that I’m an adult taking swimming lessons, and apparently it’s quite unbelievable that someone who loves water as much as I do can’t actually swim in it? The decision was spurred on by my visit with a year 4 class to the public swimming pool where I had my own school swimming lessons. Memories of watching all of my classmates move up into the ‘big pool’ until I was the only one left in the ‘baby pool’ surrounded by many floats and with no clue how to actually move came flooding back, and the fear of slipping, falling in and just sinking slowly to the bottom made me think it was perhaps time to face my fear. I’m almost at the end of my 6 weeks of lessons now, and my confidence has certainly improved no end; so much so that I will definitely be booking in more lessons, and not just because I still can’t actually swim on my front but because I really enjoy bobbing about, and the exercise can’t be doing me any harm?

View of the Church from Cromer Pier

Talking of swimming, took a very lovely trip to Cromer a few weekends ago (not that I even paddled actually, it was FREEZING and very, very windy so I was a little too wrapped up). The last time I was there I’d been singing in the Church with the Festival Chorus and getting very chilly! It seems I’ve been experiencing a lot of nostalgia this month, because this time I was reminded of trips there with my family as a child when we would stay in West Runton and go off to Cromer for the day just for a change of scenery. I think it may have brought out my inner child slightly as I got all excited along the pier, and was a little over-enthusiastic about the Henry Blogg Museum where I made my very own medal with a fancy press. I have a bit of an affinity with the RNLI as my very own Grandad was on the lifeboats, and apparently in a picture or two at the Museum – which I thought I’d made up so sadly didn’t spot him this time – I’ll just have to go back.

My 'medal' from the Henry Blogg Museum

I’m not usually one for an interest in history, but personal history is always a little more appealing. My violin and bow have now been in my possession for (I think) about 10 years (how awful is it that I can’t actually remember how old I was when I got them even though I remember the whole experience so very vividly??) but I’d never actually looked into the history of my violin until very recently. There is an old concert programme that has sat in the case since the day I took it home, and I’d had a quick flick through it and kept it because it was quite cool having a programme from a concert that the previous owner had performed in.

Concert programme from June 1960, newspaper cutting of a
 photograph from the performance, and my beautiful violin

Little did I know that the owner was actually a pretty big deal in the violin and orchestral world, as concertmaster of the Hague Philharmonic for many years of his musical career! Theo Olof actually only died last year, and has left a huge legacy behind him – I can’t help but wonder if I’m even meant to have his violin or whether perhaps it was stolen many years ago and is still in the process of being recovered? For anyone who has got a bit lost/bored by this last tit-bit, MY VIOLIN IS ON GOOGLE IMAGES, it’s cool. He's also on Spotify performing a bit of Britten (quite apt for this post I'd say):

Theo Olof – Violin Concerto Op. 15 (original version): II. Vivace - Cadenza -

I’m deluding myself if I think that all of this would ever fit on a postcard. Hoping to have a little more time for ramblings so I won’t have to let a load out at once again in the near future!