London is fun.
Poor Shai and James had to wake up early for work after our late night out. (That was my subtle way of saying - "I slept in!!").
Then I set off on a mission to find a post office because I had a ton of souvineers from Thailand to post home. Today I got hardcore lost! In the process though, I found the nicest apple and cinnamon waffle. I also discovered that Optus is so very very Australian that I would get nothing more than stupid stares from Londoners who I spoke to about buying prepaid credit. Ahhh. No phone!
My fantastic sense of direction led me straight to a post office after 20 minutes (it was a post office on the other side of town to the one I was actually trying to find!). With that out of the way, I rounded the corner right onto........wait for it.........DRURY LANE!!!!!! Wow. Made famous by Shrek! And some other old nursery rhyme too I think! Anyway, I'll sing it for the confused people....
Nursery rhyme: "Do you know the muffin man, the muffin man, the muffin man; Do you know the muffin man, the one from Drury Lane?"
http://www.kididdles.com/mouseum/m027.html
And for the younger confused people...
Lord Farquaad from Shrek: Now, tell me! Who's hiding them?!
Gingerbread Man: Okay, I'll tell you. Do you know the Muffin Man?
Lord Farquaad: The Muffin Man?
Gingerbread Man: The Muffin Man.
Lord Farquaad: Yes, I know the Muffin Man, who lives on Drury Lane?
Gingerbread Man: She's married to the muffin man...
Lord Farquaad: The muffin man?
Gingerbread Man: THE MUFFIN MAN!
Lord Farquaad: She's married to the muffin man.
But before you get too excited, heh heh, I couldn't find that darn muffin man anywhere! So no, I don't know him, if you were planning on asking.
Drury Lane is full of ballet, costume and marathon shops. I found the London Ballet Company; the Opera House; the infamous Charing Cross police station; the old street that the red lady in "Oliver!" danced down whilst singing "Who will buy these wonderful roses?"; some cool markets; one set of clean public toilets (erg, some of these dunnys are worse than in Thailand!!!); and a hippie veg restaurant.
Excitement of the day: I thought I'd call home to beg someone to buy phone credit for me (hee hee, thanks dad!), so I pushed through all these people to get to some gorgeous, old-fashioned, red phone booths right outside an old building. After finally parting the crowd to make it into the booth, and then tipping my entire small coin collection into the phone, I realised that I was 5 pence short! Of course, I couldn't just leave the booth after 30 seconds - especially after making such an effort to get through the crowd, so I picked up the phone and pretended to be having a lovely conversation. Ha ha ha!!! At this point I thought to turn around and find out why there was such a huge crowd anyway. I realised that I was bang-smack in front of 3 press cameras, and that everyone gathered was looking at me!
Okay, so maybe they were instead looking at the 'old building' that I was standing outside! This building was actually the court house that Dan Brown was being trialed in at that very time!!! MY Dan Brown!!! The Dan Brown whose books are so good I've almost missed every station I've been aiming to get off the underground at!!
Here's a small article from the Washington Post about it:
Dan Brown Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Going to Trial - March 4 - LONDON
The British press is closely following the Dan Brown trial: each day the testimony is analyzed in detail. The Telegraph focuses on Dan Brown being grilled on cross-examination. Apparently, during the discovery phase of the trial Brown had to turn over all his research materials to opposing counsel. Most of his books had annotations in the margins, which the attorneys closely questioned Brown about. Also questionable was the strange blonde girl loitering in the phone booth outside of the court room. Did Brown really copy phrases and ideas from another novel for his own? Did Blondie think she was Superman? Only the Washington Post will bring you the truth.
Just a side note - that end bit wasn't really in the paper, heh heh! Another side note - how clever is this song? (Turn up your volume) - http://www.muffinmanthemovie.com/
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