They say that if you're on Tower Bridge at the moment it is raised, you should make a wish as it will surely come true. I might have wished to have one of the best evenings of my life ever, if I hadn't already just had it. So instead, I wished to be on the other other side of the bridge and just minutes later, I was! If that's not proof enough for you sceptics who don't believe in such miracles, I don't know what is.
But let's take a step back, before all of the merriment, to the start of the day. My feelings then were very different. I was a mixture of nerves, excitement, apprehension and wonder. I was headed to London to attend a private viewing of an exhibition where one of my photographs was being displayed.
I wrote a post about this a few weeks ago, so you might like to check it out here out before continuing. Although that might be a bit of an effort, so in summary, I entered a competition organised by Pentax and my photo was shortlisted as a winner. An exhibition of mine and 29 other pictures were on display at the Design Museum, which is situated close to the aforementioned magical bridge in London. As well as the photographers, guests, PR people and Pentax representatives, the event would also be attended by Radio 1 DJ and all round cool hipster Reggie Yates and Girls Aloud performer Sarah Harding.
Having never been to anything like this before, I had no idea what to expect and whether it would be my cup of tea. I'm really not a fan of 'poncey' and was concerned that this could be an occasion full of trendy folks looking for the deeper meaning and symbolism behind a photograph of a fried breakfast.
One comforting fact was that I wouldn't be facing this ordeal alone. It had been such a difficult decision of which of my two best friends, Jessington Cupcake or Keira Husky, was to be my plus one (more details about them can be found in this earlier post).
Being mature adults, they settled this amicably between themselves by engaging in a series of hair pulling, scratching and all round fighting that would have put the Hunger Games to shame. It was Keira Husky who finally proved victorious and would be my companion for the afternoon. In a state of giddy excitement, we set off on a lunchtime train to London!
I'd never traveled at this time before, and expected it to be really quiet. Surely a Friday afternoon would see people trying to escape the capital for the weekend, not heading towards it. With this mindset, I graciously let an old man with a walking stick onto the train ahead of us. After initially hobbling, he suddenly showed a great turn of speed to grab the only free seat within sight.
Thankfully, much further on down the carriage we managed to find the last vacant seats on the train. It was a group of four with a table and we were quickly joined by what turned out to be a journalist and a mad woman who kept talking to herself and sniggering whilst playing games on her phone. A journey on public transport just wouldn't be the same without the company of a lunatic!
The train was rammed full, with many people standing for the entire journey. The drink and snacks trolley couldn't move because of the congested gangway and was stuck right by us. I was tempted to pinch a packet of biscuits that were winking at me, but to do so, I would have had to lean across the giggling mad woman and was worried she might bite me.
It's a good job I didn't need the toilet because there was no way of making it through the crowd. If I'd had to go, things would have got very messy. Although me soiling myself may well have delighted Mrs Mental as she'd probably have thought she'd finally found her equally troubled soul mate.
The weather deteriorated, and as we arrived in London, it was horribly wet and windy. I hoped it might ease off by the time we left cover, which was still some time off as we had to go subterranean and head towards Tower Hill tube station.
Our underground journey was complicated by a fire at Embankment which meant no trains would stop there. So instead we had to head in the opposite diretion to Westminster before resuming our journey east. I was pleased that I'd built in some contingency time into our journey to allow for such an occurrence.
What I hadn't planned for was our experience on the District line. The tube train was mainly packed but we spotted one carriage that was nearly empty. Thrilled at being able to sit down and not being put in that awkward situation where there is mass personal space invasion as you practically climb aboard the shoulders of your fellow travellers, we gleefully hopped on and sunk into our seats.
About two seconds later, it became apparent just why this carriage was empty. An ample Indian gentleman was sat a few seats up from us. He seemed very relaxed and had his arms spread out across the top of the two seats next to him. This had the unfortunate side affect of sharing what can only be described as his 'gargantuan stink' with the rest of us. Boy oh boy it was awful. His body still seemed to be trying to sweat out a hearty meal he'd eaten several years previously.
Now, being one myself, I'm fairly used to dealing with the odour generated by smelly old men. Dear Keira however was finding it increasing difficult not to gag. At first I thought she was joking, but the stench combined with the rocking motion of the train started to make her genuinely look like she was going to be ill. So, despite being a very un-British thing to do, we headed up the carriage away from this filthy behemoth, trying to take emergency breaths of deodorant and aftershave from the cleaner passengers along the way.
We finally arrived at Tower Hill, but was then engulfed by a sea of foreign students, whom it would appear had not come to see the Tower of London, but instead found it more entertaining to congregate in large numbers on the staircase and in front of the exit to the station.
With sharp elbows, we bowled through this loud, unruly group and finally broke free of cover, out into the fresh air! But suddenly we were faced with an even more almighty enemy than the bubble gum chewing, gibber jabbering Italian kids. The weather was even worse than when we had first arrived...
Would we make it to our destination? Or would we...no wait, you know that we obviously do make it because of the introduction to this post. But it was bloody hard! Tune in to part two to find out how we somehow managed to survive a howling gale and the adventures we had once at the exhibition.
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