Arrived safely in London and living in a brothel?

Richard and I arrived safely after an uneventful flight.  I sat next to a muslim family who were all reading newspapers in arabic with photos of Bin Laden on every page.  I didn't use that as a conversation starter.

As for the brothel - well, having deposited our luggage in what appears to be a modest little hotel 300 metres or so from Kings Cross/St Pancras, we took the underground to the Embankment and walked to the Tate Brittain on a lovely crisp sunny spring day. Having explored the William Blake paintings Richard wanted to see, my dodgy leg was a bit stressed and so we grabbed a cab to bring us back to the hotel for a rest.  The cabbie told us that all of the litte hotels in Argyle Square less than 20 years ago were brothels.  He said he knew this because his neighbour had inherited one from some distant relative and when he inspected it, was totally shocked and spent some time getting the neighbourhood residents to petition against such use and was ultimately successful.  The brothels he said moved to Battersea.  The rooms are advertised as cheap, small and close to the railway stations. They are that.   Small boxes containing a bed, shower/toilet cubicle and have a breakfast room in the basement.  I can see it suiting the previous use very well, not that I have ever explored one of those establishments.   When we first arrived at about 7 am, I enquired where we might get some breakfast as the only food outlet we saw in our walk from the station was Macdonalds.  The receptionist told us to just use the hotel breakfast room and we went down the stairs to do so but it was full of young blond scandavian girls with no room for us. Richard caused a bit of a titter, being the only male, and later when we heard the above jokingly wondered if it was still part of a sex trafficking outfit.

Here is Richard on the Embankment decyphering the obelisque clutching a bag of blueberries that he bought from the fruiterer at Temple station (memories - Joan and Judy and I bought fruit there in 2007)

I promised more about Elspeth's marathon.  Well, I can report that she completed it, ran all the way.  She took longer than expected because being number 48,000 and then some, she found it very difficult to get through the pack to get going.  However 5 hours and 5 minutes sounds an awful long time to be running.  Elspeth was exhilerated by her successful completion and not too concerned about the time.

I am looking forward to catching up with Thomas and Alice on Friday morning, and their parents as well.  Today I am supposed to be meeting up with Wendy and going to a Black Ballet in the evening.  We are having communication problems, I can text her but not phone. She can neither text nor phone me.  I received an email too late asking me to meet her at 6.30 last evening, so I texted my apologies, I havent had a return email as yet....     Richard is meeting up with a mate from school, Trent who has been living in London for many years and is working as a stock broker. It will be interesting to see if they still have anything in common.