An invite from the neighbours!

No, not those neighbours, THOSE neighbours!

The Windsors wearing smart/casual?

As a pair of fairly staunch republicans, this has come as a surprise but, apparently, TH has been “recognised” no, not from that time where HM the Q and Prince Phil nearly mowed us down as we were out for a Sunday stroll, but apparently for services to building a cable car over the Thames, which certainly expedited the transit of spectators from the Exel Centre to the O2 (AKA the Millennium Dome) during the Olympics.

I have just been e-mailed by a shell-shocked TH, who copied me in on the e-mail he had in turn received from the Grand Fromage at TfL, telling him to advise The Powers That Be of the name of his nominated guest. I am taking it that the guest in question will be me, largely because he sent me the e-mail.  Yes, we are to keep a date in May free, as we’re invited to take tea in the garden at the neighbours’ pied a terre in London. Provided we pass the security vetting….

So, it looks like I shall have to press a frock and Google the hat protocol, as well as studying the art of the curtsey and forms of address. 

I’ve joked for such a long time that they’re really miserable neighbours, having never invited us over for drinks in the twenty-plus years we’ve lived practically next door. The big concern now, if course, is whether they'll expect to be invited back?

I’ll be nice. It’s only polite.

Hanging around....

Yesterday was a very proud moment indeed for the N-o-T household, as TH’s latest job came to an end, following months of running round like a headless chicken (him, not me) and a long series of business trips taking in such exotic locations as Switzerland, Austria, Scunthorpe and Bolton….

Yes, dear reader, for the last six months, TH has been managing the construction programme for this: London’s first cable car. Or, as some have billed it, “the world’s most expensive Cable Car”.. a slight exaggeration, according to inside sources. Well, according to TH, who has had his hand on the purse strings for much of the venture.

We’ve had our ups and downs. Again, not me, as I’ve remained on terra firma, but TH would insist on sending me scary photos such as these, just in case the full impact of dangling 90 metres above the River Thames might have been lost on me. 

No, the ups and downs were more to do with the fact that Messrs Johnston and Livingstone held diametrically opposed views regarding the value of the project to London’s transport infrastructure, and the whole project could have been left in mid-air (see what I did there?) if the Mayoral elections had gone the other way.

Yesterday, Mad Boris was transported across the Thames and waxed lyrical about the marvellous feat of engineering for the assembled press. Owing to a mess-up in arrangements, I watched this from the comfort of my sofa, because plans to meet TH in London and take a ride were scuppered by other commitments. In a way, I was quite glad, once I learned that the hardier types had started forming a queue at 5 a.m. yesterday morning.

Well, it’s over now, and we can relax, safe in the knowledge that anyone who needs to dash between the Greco-Roman wrestling and the Tae-Kwan-do events at the Olympics will not find themselves having to swim between venues if their timings are a bit tight. And you may mock, but in the lottery that has been the allocation of tickets, you can bet that more people than expected have been left holding tickets for those two events, having randomly applied for anything and everything in the hope of landing tickets for something far more exciting.