A discerning flea

I woke up this morning with what can only be described as a cake over! I guess arriving back from Wales at 3am and getting up less than six hours later didn't help matters, but I spent the morning feeling rough as old boots. Eating rich food late at night is always a mistake with me, and I suspect I'll be feeling even worse tomorrow, having just taken Fiona out to dinner to mark her last night in London. I can feel the unsaturated fats charging through my veins.

We have just dropped Fiona off in King's Cross. She's off to play some gigs with a certain rock band and the tour bus was waiting just behind St Pancras Station to pick her up. She invited us on board to had a quick look inside. I have seldom seen such a fancy tour bus! In all honesty I've actually NEVER seen a tour bus, but I can't imagine they all have baths inside. I got terribly excited on Fiona's behalf, especially when I learned that the bus had actually been designed for Dolly Parton!

They're gentrifying that crazy wasteland behind St Pancras Station, around the canal where the clubs used to be in those darkened Victorian warehouses. I still have no idea what the area is going to become, but, randomly, by the side of the road they've built a giant birdcage with neon lights of hundreds of different colours instead of bars. It's such an odd thing to find by the side of a desolate road in what is essentially a building site covered in Japanese knot weed. We drove past wondering what it was and who put it there, but on the way back realised that there was a swing inside. A young woman was having a whale of a time, within the neon cage, swinging for England like a dear little stoned budgie on a perch. Sometimes I love the eccentricity of London.

350 years ago, and Pepys' journey continued south to Portsmouth via Petersfield and Havant, avoiding the ancient forest of Bere. They employed a man with local knowledge to guide them around the edge of said forest, but he plainly had no idea what he was doing and took them further and further out of their way.

They reached Portsmouth in the evening and Pepys shared a bed with one Doctor Timothy Clarke. The experience seems to have been mirth-filled, particularly in the morning when they discovered that the surgeon had been rather royally munched on by fleas. Oh how they laughed! The joke became that, because he was older and more sophisticated than Pepys, his refined blood had attracted the little critters. You obviously get a more discerning type of flea in Portsmouth!