Rescue Happycopter

You know you have failed at your husbands birthday when you spend the first 20 minutes of the day wandering around the house picking random items up wondering if he has seen it before and if you could get away with giving it to him as his present. “Ahh, a tea cup! Hmmm. He probably doesn’t like teacups as much as I…. Er… This pair of underpants looks fairly new! Gah, he  will probably notice if I try and give him his own pants for his birthday… Umm… Oooh, I bet he has never noticed THIS notebook before, I’ll just tear out the first few scribbled-on pages….”

I’m not completely the worst wife if the world-  I had crafted him a little something and only discovered on the morning that it hadn’t worked – it was a little resin number and it was still wet from lack of mixing. (Funnily enough, later that day he saw the Toffifee packet that I had mixed the resin in still on top of my craft cupboard and he reached up to see if there were any left, there weren’t -this womb-baby just sometimes really demands Toffifees, okay, GOSH - but there WAS this toffee-like substance… so he dipped his finger in…. and licked it. If my lack of gifts didn’t ruin his day you can bet getting a mouthful of toxins instead of toffee would do it! Poor old sausage.)

After wandering around the house trying to choose him a gift from his own possessions I threw open the curtains to see what the weather was doing. It was foggy, and raining, and there wasn’t a glimpse of blue sky. ARGHHHH. The one thing that could have redeemed my rubbish wiflidom was going to be a surprise trip up the London Eye. Superbreak – the peeps who head up loads of London attractions- had sent me some courtesy tickets a few days before and I had managed to keep it a total surprise. I had been lucky enough to go up the Eye a few times in our 6 years here, but Tim hadn’t been once.  And now he was going to go up and see a blanket of grey cloud.

I wept.

However, as I burnt his special birthday fry up (I was pulling out ALL the stops) the clouds disappeared and by the time we got on the bus the sun was shining heartily and there was nothing but blue sky. WOOP!

Ramona didn’t know what to make of the Eye, although she was stoked to bits to be on it. The only thing she could relate it to was a helicopter, of which she doesn’t have the pronounciation quite right, so the whole way round she chatted excitedly about being on the Happycopter! Cute wee thing.

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We had the most incredible views, we could see almost everything. Tim is a bit of a geographical kind of person, so he loved getting this perspective on London. We were able to spot where we lived, and follow the Thames as it snaked through the city. Once at the top Ramona decided to combine pleasures and sat on my knee for a (not so stealthy) nurse. I don’t think many of the tourists were used to tots breastfeeding in their attractions. *cue stares*

Going up the Eye isn’t cheapest adventure BUT the whole area is buzzing with free activities so it could make up part of a fairly thrifty special day. Sometimes, like right now, tickets are two for one deal with National Rail. After going up the Eye we played for ages in the brand new wooden playground in Jubilee Gardens, stood captivated by the buskers and ran amok through the Royal Festival Hall which is so often bursting with freebie things to do. We finished our trip with one of the best Hot Chocolates London has to offer at the beautiful vintage Scooter Café on Lower Marsh – a short walk through the constantly evolving street art tunnel on Leake Street.
You just can’t beat this city on a beautiful day like that. And as we crashed contentedly at the end of it I sensed it was nothing but this ancient metropolis that had salvaged Tim’s birthday from the realms of giftless, toxic-tongue, burnt brunch rubbish birthdayness. *High Fives London*