We’re going to China!

This has been at the top of our travel list for a long time, but we finally booked flights in January after iterating through upteen potential itineraries. At one point we’d put together a totally mad plan for our 2 week trip including (I kid you not) 6 separate destinations linked by 5 long-distance trains, but slowly we came back to sanity and now have a sane itinerary with time to actually enjoy where we’re going.

And there certainly is more planning required than a normal holiday. Not only are there visa forms to print and sign and take to the Chinese visa application centre – where, I must say, everyone was incredibly helpful – but also just figuring out questions like “wait, how will we pay for things?” or “is this really how booking trains works in China?!” and then working through the signups on WeChat and AliPay and hoping that these things really do work for us once we arrive. (Answers to follow in the next post, I suppose…) But I’m excited for the adventure!

Side-note: the reason I’m illustrating this planning with 368chickens.com is because I became very addicted to this game during this process. (Indeed, one of my best attempts was in the basement of the Chinese visa application centre, which is one of reasons for my fondness of it.) Randi was incredibly relieved when I finally completed it.

When not rescuing chickens or trying to reassure one of our tour guides over WeChat (Me: “if it’s possible, we would prefer to try and get a train/metro instead of a taxi” Him: “Ahh some tourists just cannot walk too much, and then they propose to grab a taxi half way 🤭🤭”) we’ve been continuing to edge slowly and cautiously into spring. One of my favourite weekend days was an afternoon with Josh, Anna and Cora walking around Fryent Country Park, where we met a family of friendly horses, jumped off logs and enjoyed a delicious picnic of samosas from Kingsbury Road.

Randi and I also really enjoyed our couple-date with Steven and Sadie. This originally came about because Steven recognised me as a fellow QPCS kid back in November, when we just so happened to be sitting at the next table over from him and some friends one night at the (very tasty) Miss Margherita pizza restaurant in Honor Oak. But since this turned out to be the night before his wedding, Randi wisely suggested we postpone our catch-up to a later date, which is how we all ended up together back at Miss Margherita (where the pizza is still very tasty) earlier this month. Anyway, it turns out we have a bunch of common interests (“wait… you like walking and theatres too?”) and a second date is already on the cards for May.

Talking of theatre: my mum was staying with us that weekend, and on Friday night she treated us to The Score in the West End. This is a play about the composer Bach and his clash with Frederick II of Prussia in 1747, and based on a real meeting between the two men. Bach, from Leipzig, is growing old but remains an undisputed musical genius with an incredible memory combined with fierce moral and religious convictions. King Frederick is about as moral as you’d expect the King of Prussia to be. So, the meeting doesn’t go well.

Of course, there’s no getting around that this play is really “the one with Brian Cox”, and he completely dominates the stage. The other performers aren’t bad at all – in fact, the actor playing Frederick II does a great turn from frivolous fop to steely militarist over the second act – but when Cox is performing, he’s the one you’re looking at. The play also has a bit of an odd structure, with nothing much happening in the first half, but it all works because of its star and I was really glad I got a chance to see him perform.

In other news: I dropped in on Lea’s birthday party on Saturday night, and had the unexpected bonus of seeing Troy, Bill and Katie there as well as Lea and Abi themselves! Apologies for any offence caused re. lino or flax. Randi and I got great enjoyment from the BBC’s two-part Thames Water: Inside the Crisis documentary – an excellent throwback to the golden era of the BBC inexplicably being allowed to film inside clearly dysfunctional workplaces. We also loved the season 2 finale of Severance, as well as being curiously smug that for once we’re actually up-to-date with an ongoing hit show. (And yes, if you’re wondering, I would rather work for Thames Water than Lumon.)

I also added a Twilio developer meetup for work purposes at a pub near London Bridge (despite not actually being a developer) which was fun, especially after the sessions were over and I persuaded someone at our table to show off his Farsi calligraphy. Randi and I also had drinks with our new downstairs neighbours, who are no longer locked inside their flat, and enjoyed a wonderful afternoon out with Alix, Austin, Tash and mum at the Museum of Childhood (apparently now the Young V&A) in Bethnal Green.

And finally: over the last few days we’ve had the pleasure of hosting Randi’s school friend Phoenix and her partner Marcos. Phoenix and Marcos are New Yorkers, and I’m always a little bit nervous of showing New Yorkers around London because, y’know, aren’t we rivals? What if they laugh at our transport and our parks?

But, thankfully, they didn’t – and we had a great time on Sunday roaming from Hampstead Heath (where I peppered Marcos with questions about his job at Air Traffic Control) to the Mayflower pub. Randi also threw in another Strangers’ Dining Room experience in Parliament – and you can’t do that in New York – and we all nerded out with a tense game of Dominion and, believe it or not, Jay Foreman’s history of the Tube Map after Phoenix had some serious concerns about its layout and design. (Spookily, the very next day New York announced that they were finally ditching their own long-standing messy and confusing map and returning an updated version of their 70s London-style classic design. Please file this under “some good news coming out of the States right now”.)

OK, I think that’s pretty much everything. Hopefully, I’ll be back in a few weeks with all of our China adventures. Including some Chinese subways which should put all of our transport maps to shame 😉

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