Monday, August 07, 2006

Last day at work and meeting visiting old friends

It's my last day at work for three weeks and I'm struggling to clear my desk. I'll be off to Canada on a training course and as I suspect I'll be very busy, I'll try to keep blogging but I suspect my blogging may be intermittent. We'll see....

An interesting weekend largely filled with visiting and meeting up with the various friends and relatives visiting from Nigeria in the usual summer holiday onslaught. thankfully this time, I haven't actually had to play host to any, but just getting around, catching up with everyone is quite a feat. It's a strange feeling, dashing half way across London to meet some old classmate or friend and their families, and then struggling to make the most of the couple of hours you have together before dashing off to the next rendezvous. How do you compress the events of the last two years into a hurriedly snatched hour, interspersed with buying rounds and pub lunches, with many of the visitors raring to get on with the shopping that is the high point of the London holidays for many of them.

Forget Trafalgar Square, forget the museums and galleries, forget the tourist attractions of London, for many of my friends visiting from Nigeria- Jermyn Street, Oxford Street , Liverpool Street and Finsbury Park markets are where it's at....

As I walk home on Sunday night to meet a pulsating rooftop party on one of the houses on my street, I reflect on how much I and my friends have changed, and how much we've stayed the same.......

1 comment:

ayoke said...

You're right. Shopping seems to be high point of the London holidays - even for my "not so young" parents, who I sense are shopping as I write now...:)

And, as we say in Nigeria, "safe journey".