I have just returned home from a memorable day in London. I left home early to drive to Southampton airport, no I wasn't flying to London but catching the train from the station. I'm always early for everything and was glad that as usual I had allowed oodles of time to catch my train. The station car park was completely full, so I had to park in the airport car park.(ouch! the £14.00 to park encroached on the cheap day retutn!). I enjoyed the train journey as I sat back and enjoyed reading my novel to pass the time. I had arranged to meet Claudia at the Tate Modern at 11.00am, so I had plenty of time to meander along the South Bank. I prefer to find my way over ground than use the underground, so I enjoyed the walk along the river, looking at the familiar sights along the route, even though it was drizziling with rain. After I had met up with Claudia we wandered around the exhibits and chatted as we went catching up on news. I don't know a lot about art, though I know that I don't understand a lot of this 'modern stuff', if I like a picture its usually because 'I just like it'. Claudia was very interested and tried to explain her interpretation of some of the pieces we saw! If I'm completely honest, some of the works I saw could have been created by some of the five year olds that I have worked with.'
We left the gallery and wandered back along the South Bank and over Westminster Bridge to 'The Houses of Parliment', Claudia is a 'spouse in the house' in other words she is married to Patrick who is a Labour MP. Claudia has a pass into the the parliment buildings and although any member of the public can queue and visit the palaces of Westminster, we were soon admitted into the great buildings. It was surrreal to be being given a guided tour of the seat of government by an Italian lady, but Claudia arranges tours for her husbands constituents and certainly had done her homework. We had lunch in the restaurant and then we went into the public gallery to listen to a debate on the chidcare bill. It was really interesting as an honourable lady member from Dorset was proposing a change of one word in the bill about an early years curriculeumn for 0-2 year olds! The word was 'taught', and the debate centred around the need for children of a young age to learn through experiences rather than be 'taught'. I personally believe that introducing a curriculemn for 0-2 year olds is preposterous. It was interesting listening to the dabate,though we didn't stay long enough for the vote, though a little later we were in the 'Portcullis building' the glass building which houses the offices for MP's, when bells rang calling MP's to vote. We didn't see a mad rush of members, but we did see Claire Short (hows that for name dropping)!
I left Claudia and made my way back to Waterloo, I boarded a train immediately and thankfully boarded a train and bagged a seat. The train was full to bursting, apparantly a lightening strike had knocked out some signal stations, causing mayhem, trains cancelled and delayed. My train crawled to Woking before it got up speed and carried me back to the airport, where I collected the car and now I'm home again, sitting watching Eastenders and drinking hot chocolate!