Being contrary

Things are a little weird in Contrary Towers at the moment. Owing to the O word my flatmate is working from home in the morning whilst I am seeking new contracts and prepping for various things. Except yesterday I wasn't, I had a lot of prep to do, but my heart wasn't really in it during the morning.

Which will be why I was pondering dinner.

I couldn't decide between pea and pesto soup with fish finger croutons, or maybe a greek salad omelette, or perhaps thai beef stir fry. My vague idea was to pick two, get in the ingredients we didn't have (namely because I ate all the fish fingers) and cook one. Sounded like a plan.

Until I looked at Twitter.

Without wearing my glasses.

Me: "Oooh, Belshazzar's Feast is on at the proms tonight!" Her: "Oooh, fancy going?"

Now the problem here was I'd not noticed that (a) the text might have implied that the person was writing after the event and (b) the post time was 15 hours earlier. Whoops.

It didn't take long for the brighter one to work out how dim I really am. By now we both liked the idea of going anyway so tickets were booked for prom 25.

Hurrah!

The plan was set, we'd meet at South Kensington station at 6:30, what could possibly go wrong? Well, given that I'm a ditz and I kept saying Kensington High Street, quite a bit...

But it didn't. I got there early. My flatmate got there early. So we went to find a sandwich. Which will be why we ended up sitting in Little Japan on Thurloe Street. After all, I'd been listening to Japanese tourists on the District Line and had understood maybe one word in ten. Perfect.

I've just read a review on the place, hmm, I think it must depend on what you eat, my mixed meat and noodles was lovely and my flatmate is still alive after eating prawn. Hey ho. So we liked it. And the chilli sauce was astounding. In a good way.

Van Dough... An open pizza oven!

Next stop, The Royal Albert Hall. Via Exhibition Road. This has changed so much and there seemed to be some sort of festival going on. Which normally would have distracted us completely, but we did have tickets to collect and music to listen to. Anyway, there was a stage, with interesting music being played, bored looking security, fabulous eateries with silly names and...

Peter Pan eat your heart out...

...people on strings. Huh?

This had drawn quite a crowd as a group of people did a sort of aerial ballet off the side of the Imperial College Engineering faculty. This was very impressive. What was even more impressive was Exhibition Road itself. It's now been pedestrianised and the change to the feel of the area is quite astonishing. It's so nice to meander down and actually see the buildings properly without dodging, well, anything on wheels.

Oooh, orange vodka!

Moving on we passed a few more eateries. And drinkeries. Including one that had the requisite orange vodka for a Limehouse Half Cut. I doubt they had the not-so-secret recipe though.

Waiting in the queue at the Albert Hall box office was interesting. There was a druid! I kid you not. But this was good, as druids were mentioned in the programme. What wasn't mentioned was that we were standing in the wrong queue.

I know, you're shocked.

Once we got ourselves in the right queue, for pre-booked tickets, all was well. Except I nearly walked past the entrance as the last number I had in my head was 12, which Clare had previously mentioned, but we were looking for 4. Yes, I know, ditz. Honestly, I think she did it to confuse me.

The music was amazing. I might have shed the odd tear, but we'll not talk about that.

I also might have told a tourist to stop clicking away with her SLR. Grrr. And another thing... SWITCH OFF YOUR PHONES YOU RETARDS. FFS. Is it so difficult? Same with coughing. Please go and die elsewhere during the Adagio.

Anyway. It was a fabulous Contrary Towers evening. Even more so for the fact that it was unplanned and a result of me not being able to read a tweet properly.

How wonderfully contrary is that?!