Travelling Diaries
2018 Swedish Lapland / Day 1 - Travel to London
Previous and next: Day 0 - Pre Travel / Day 2 - London
2nd February 2018
Off on Doggy vacation
The day was rushed. The dog, Tess, needed to go to the kennels for her vacation. The kennels is in Garristown, which is near Balbriggan, a mere 37km away. The check-in time was 9.30am, so no pressure.
When we got to the car to head on our way, we found that the morning was unusually frosty and the car was badly iced up. It took us longer than usual to get it defrosted which added to the stress.
Anyway, after a mad dash across the city battling through the school traffic, a short journey on the motorway and a skate down back-roads to the kennels, we finally got there and dropped off the dog.
Although Tess had been to the kennels before, this was the first time she had been without her companion, Molly, who unfortunately had died late last year. So when we got there, Tess did not want to go into the kennels. She’s normally a dog that loves other people, but it was as if she was going to the vets, which she hates. She sat down and needed to be almost dragged into the place.
Hope she will be alright.
London calling
It was then a dash back home to do our final packing, calling in at various places on the way to pick up last minute medications etc. for the journey. (Getting old is not easy).
The journey to London was generally uneventful. We were ripped off by the Gatwick express, of course, but eventually arrived in our hotel in Kensington in the early evening.
We decided that we would go out and have a curry.
The
restaurant we chose was a former bank and was now a huge place with a
cocktail bar. It was packed. We had to wait in the bar for about 20 minutes
for a table.
Once we were seated we were looked after very well. Overall, the food was great. I started with seared scallops and then went on to have a lamb shank (not a euphemism).
Karen had various vegetarian options which were also excellent.
Back in Dublin we don’t often go out for a curry, so this was a great novelty for us. This is because we haven’t really found any good places in Dublin, though we haven’t really looked very far.
Curry on up the Khyber
The meal we had in Kensington tonight was very tasty, and it got me thinking of the various curries I had had over the years.
My first experience of curry was in the seventies in Eccles, a town near Salford in Manchester where I grew up. I can’t remember the name of the restaurant so let’s call it the Eccles Tandoori.
The Eccles Tandoori was a big place, in a mostly poor town. Posh, it wasn’t. It catered for the drunken locals who wanted something a bit exotic after a night out on the ale, rather than the usual boring fish and chips.
The food was inexpensive and the staff friendly. However, many of the staff were Muslim and didn’t drink, so how they put with the drunken slobs of Eccles I’ll never know.
As drunken slobs, we weren’t very adventurous in what we chose to eat in such establishments and generally had the same thing each visit.
I was told by the others in my group that you had to eat vindaloo. I hated it. It was too hot and spicy for me so I usually went for something a little milder (delicate Dave).
Weekend nights in the Eccles Tandoori were a bit of a nightmare. I remember one night going in and in one corner there was a guy, drunk and passed out with his head in his plate of curry, another arguing with the waiter that his curry wasn’t hot enough, and a man and woman having a blazing row over something or other.
I nipped to the bathroom to relieve myself of some of the glorious Eccles beer I had sampled that evening. In the loo there was someone who was not feeling the best and was crying out for his maker through the big white telephone.
Anyway, I returned to my group and we got a table as far away from these other people as possible.
Our evening was actually quite good and we were there for about an hour and a half.
Before we left I decided to use the bathroom again. On the way I noticed that the bloke was still there with his head in his curry, the other man was still arguing with the waiter and the couple still shouting obscenities at each other. It was as if time had stood still.
I felt sorry for the ill guy who was still in the loo and then felt even more sorry for the poor staff who had to put up with all of this on a regular basis.
It was a long way from cocktails and seared scallops.
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