London Travel Diary – Day 7

Our continuing adventures in the UK! Check out Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, and Day 6 if you missed them.

Day 7: Thursday, November 5

After the previous day’s excitement, what better than another long whirlwind of a day?

Simon and Warren headed to our place in the morning. We wanted to set off early to walk around London and shoot scenes for the RFS Gally intro video. At the time, the whole project was a big hush-hush secret, but now I can shout it from the rooftops! Rather than burying the lede, here’s the glorious finished product:

Warren’s plan was to check into a hotel later that day (after a few lovely nights at Simon’s pad), so he dropped his stuff off at our place first thing. We got our timing a bit wrong and we were out when he arrived. Whoops. We’d popped out to grab some groceries, and he had to wait outside for a few minutes. Luckily, those groceries included a box of Jammie Dodgers, so we placated Warren with some delicious Dalek-busting treats.

I don’t usually like jam or fruity desserts. Jammie Dodgers are a delicious exception to this rule!

Meanwhile, Simon sat at Speedy’s, the cafe up the block. You may know it as the cafe outside Sherlock’s apartment on the BBC’s Sherlock. We found Simon having a cup of tea next to the great detective’s front door. (You can see this during a brief establishing shot in the video. It’s also the moment of my tiny cameo.) We brought Simon a Jammy Dodger too. Then Steven and Warren had some tea with him while we planned our attack!

Navigating Nando’s

Nando’s has come to Edmonton! Steven and I were pretty excited to learn this, as we quite enjoyed our experience eating at a Nando’s in London last November. So we headed down there yesterday to check it out.

Let me start by saying we will be back. As you’ll see, it wasn’t the smoothest experience, but nothing that happened was completely unexpected, given how recently the restaurant opened and how busy it was.

Libraries & Librarians, a Personal History

I did not know this week was National Library Week until this morning. Synchronicity! I wrote the first draft of this post last week, when it was not library week, but when I was physically in the library. I didn’t have time to edit and post it right away, but I’m leaving the language as-is because writing about a library in a library is perfect. More perfect is releasing said writing during National Library Week!

Oh, and please see this previous post, where I explain why this one is so very very late in coming. And yes, this is a patron-inspired post. Many many thanks to patron Brandee, who requested I write about libraries/librarians!

Today seems like a good day to tackle this topic. I’m sitting at the Edmonton Public Library right now. It’s not the first time I’ve been here by any means, but it’s the first time I’ve done more than grab a book and go. I brought my laptop and vowed to be more productive than I sometimes am at home, where I have the temptations of the TV and the couch.

Libraries

I love libraries. Some of my earliest memories are of my mom taking me to the Waukesha Public Library back in the 80s. The children’s section had some toys I could play with while Mom looked for grown-up books. My clearest memory is of a farm play-set with realistic animals. The image of that dark bay horse is burned into my mind forever.

Post-crastination

There’s a patron-inspired post I’ve been putting off writing. For a long time. A very long time. Why? Because it terrifies me. Okay, “terrifies” is a strong word. Maybe it just intimidates me. Yeah. That’s it.*

Brandee is one of my favorite people in the world. Like several other of my favorite people in the world, she’s a librarian, and when she started supporting me on Patreon, she requested a post on libraries or librarians. I love libraries. And librarians. So, in a way, it’s a match made in heaven. However, I’m far from the first person to write a blog post about the glory/importance of libraries.

That’s what’s so intimidating. Knowing what I write is following (and thus, may be compared to) the likes of Neil Gaiman, The Bloggess, John Scalzi, and many many others? That gives me the impostor-syndrome shakes.** Which, I suppose, makes this post a bit of a two-in-one for me.