My travels...

For once in my life I actually escaped from London for the weekend. It was only the second weekend I'd spent outside of London this year. On this occasion I was in the 'home counties' keeping my friend company whilst her fiance was away on his stag do. We started off with a spot of shopping in Guildford. Previously, I'd only ever visited Guildford to visit people and had never seen the city centre. In my opinion it's a really nice place. Plenty of decent shops, nice places to eat, a cinema/leisure complex type thing in walking distance of the shops and a bit of history thrown in for good measure. My friend parked at her office and we walked down the hill in to town. On the way we passed a statue of a guy called George Abbott. Despite working in Guildford for serveral years my friend had never stopped to look at it. I'm nosey about anything historical so I stopped and read the plaque. It turns out that George Abbott was born in Guildford and went on to be Archbishop of Canterbury from 1611-1633. In 1619 he decided to share his wealth with his home town and founded Abbott's Hospital, almshouses to provide homes for 12 elderley Guildford residents. Abbott's hospital is just across the road from the statue and was actually open for visitors so we popped in to have a look. It is still operating as almshouses and is a really rather impressive example of 17th Century building. I thought it was similar in style to Hampton Court Palace with the very small, red bricks arranged in slanting patterns. After our bit of historical education we looked around several shops for pink shoes and a pink cardie to finish off my outfit for the wedding. We were unsucessful but I'll worry about that a bit later. We then popped in to a rather studenty pub to meet with some of my friend's friends who had just returned from their honeymoon. We stayed with them for an hour or so and then continued shopping. This time we were a bit more sucessful as we bought faux pearl earrings and hair clips for the bride to wear on her wedding day. We rounded off the day with a Pizza in the local Strada. A trip to the cinema was considered but there wasn't really anything on we wanted to see so we went back to my friend's home town to rent a DVD. She drove me back via 'the scenic route' to show me all the pretty towns and villages. Some of them were proper 'chocolate box' places. We took in the counties of Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire all in one short journey. That's more Counties in one day than I'd visited in months! We also encountered many examples of crazy driving. As a city girl and a non-driver I'm pretty frightened of country lanes. It never fails to amaze me how many people drive like complete loons on dark, hilly, narrow roads full of sharp bends. At one point my friend was doing 60 mph and someone overtook and pulled away from her - on a country lane with no street lights. Utter madness! Anyway, I digress.

Upon arrival in my friend's home town of Petersfield we went to Blockbuster to rent a DVD. The last time I rented anything from Blockbuster it was a video so I was a bit out of practice. We didn't realise that they don't give you a fake box these days, you just pick the original off the shelf. After some minor difficulties with the staff as my friend's account had expired we settled on renting "27 Dresses" to get us in the wedding spirit. It was dreadful. An extremely corny chick-flick-rom-com in which all plot developments could be spotted a mile ahead. It filled the evening though.

The next morning we watched the final of 'Last Choir Standing' which my friend had videoed the night before. I still think the gospel choir who were voted out in the semi should have won but I didn't vote so I can't complain. We then went for a bit of a country walk to the church in which my friend is getting married in 8 weeks time. It was a bit uphill and I'm not used to uphill walking so I was flippin' knackered afterwards even though it was only ten minutes away. On the way there we passed a bit field with a massive climbing frame in the middle. I asked my friend whether it was the village green thinking it was a public climbing frame. My friend sagely informed me that it was part of someone's back garden. I am such a city girl, I just couldn't imagine having a garden that big. 100ft is considered enormous in my corner of London.

It was a really lovely weekend. I'm so lucky to have such lovely friends.

The good news is that the stag survived in one piece. My friend was a bit worried as a previous stag do he attended had ended with most of the party in police cells and the groom with a black eye. No such shenanigans in this case. He went to Milton Keynes where he did snowboarding and wakeboarding. He was made to wear a pink tutu (presumably not not whilst snowboarding or wakeboarding!) and only one 'tactical chunder' was required!

Now I'm back home and unhappy again. Possibly more about that tomorrow. Or even Tuesday as I'm working late again tomorrow :(