One of the  ideas for Sunday was to go up the Jubilee Line and visit the Hindu temple that's about equidistant from either Neasden tube station, and Stonebridge Park on the Bakerloo, but a series of transport delays eat up time.  Firstly, I can't get into the bathroom because Lemmy is doing his ablutions:



Any attempts to brush my teeth in the sink are meant with baleful stares and a mean left hook...

Eventually, after a negotiation on bathroom space and a  fine breakfast fromvelvetdahlia I'm trundling down the road to find somewhere to buy a travelcard.  I pick a newsagent at random and am flabberghasted to find the person behind the counter is someone I used to work with at the cinema in Fulham.  There's one of those 'staring open-mouthed in disbelief 'moments as she also can't believe I've just walked into her shop in Boston Manor far west on the Piccadilly Line.  There's much squealing and hugging across the counter as we just repeat each others names as though we've summoned each other by incantation - especially ironic is that I am going to metmidnightxpress this morning who is also an ex-Fulham UGC compatriot.   She's so flustered by my materialisation that she nearly stamps my travelcard the 14th November 2006.

London is supposedly this vast metropolis where everyone is a stranger, and yet I regularly bump into old friends and acquaintances - school-friends from Cornwall, people I worked with decades ago, people I know who don't live in London...even vodex of this parish (IIRC) was in a tube carriage with me an overheard my conversation about this art project before he found this blog...life is a series of astonishing co-incidences. I suppose that given the size of London and all the variations on chance encounter that are made possible by the sheer number of people sloshing around the city that we shouldn't be surprised at the frequency of bumping into people we know on the street, but it is still an ever-amazing occurence when you crash into someone you know from Bodmin on St Martin's Lane, or find yourself in a train carriage with an ex-boss.

Still slightly dazed, I then spend the next 40 minutes waiting for a bus, and wonderment has time to settle into annoyance at the morning slipping past.  Transport woes increase when I realise that my planned route is impossible due to engineering works taking out the whole Circle line and the Edgware Road branch of the District line.  Further hopes of a clever alternative are quoshed at Hammersmith when the PA system reminds us that there's no service on the H&C from Hammersmith today - so effectively any direct route into Paddington from West London is frelled.  I travel all the way into Piccadilly Circus and back on myself via the Bakerloo to eventually arrive at Paddington nearly an hour late. I'm more than a little fractious, so after leaving baggage at left luggage G and I settle for a soothing cup of tea to imporve my disposition before renegotiating today's plans now that we are behind schedule and I'm in a bad mood.  Tea helps...time with my friend to chat about frivolity helps even more.  We hatch a new plan and set off underground to conquer a few more stations.  I leave you this clue to deduce where we emerged: