Today, Joe decided to visit the RAF museum in Hendon, so I will leave him to wax lyrical about that later on in the post. We started the day with breakfast at Pret a Manger near London Bridge station and then went our separate ways, Joe for a quick stop at Waterstones near Piccadilly and then on to the Museum at Hendon, and I went to Covent Garden to meet Heather. She wanted to replace the battery in her phone as part of a special deal Apple had going, so we met at the Apple store . She made an appointment for later in the morning to take her phone back to have this done, and we wandered shops and stalls at Covent Garden in the meantime. Lots of antique stalls, mostly selling jewelry and small household items, such as china and cutlery, although there was one selling old military uniforms. I found a Pylones shop, there used to be one in Sydney but it closed, so that was an exciting discovery. They sell all manner of quirky things, I bought some little plastic tongs (good for serving pickles, olives etc) and some cute little bowls the perfect size for cereal that had facial expressions moulded on the side of them.
We stopped for a sneaky cake to fill in the time until H's phone was ready, I had a choc chip cookie that was delicious and H had a snowman that was nice but so rich she was unable to finish it. Once the phone was collected, we mooched out way thru the Seven Dials shopping area and on to Carnaby Street. There was all manner of quirky shops with interesting and different stuff. A few minor purchases were made. Star Wars and Marvel socks for Ivan and Dave, Star Wars undies for Joe, a cute little coin purse made to look like a book for the "bagaholic" and The Liberty store had a really adorable zebra jug, but as I already had a large bag that seemed to be bulging I decided against it.
I mooched off home with the idea that I would catch a few zzzz's to tide me over for the New Years Eve party, but in the end I decided I would feel worse if I meddled again with my body clock and sleep patterns. By about 6pm we were feeling dangerously sleepy, and we knew we had to keep moving of the night would be a right-off. So we got ourselves ready and caught the tube into the city, and parked ourselves at a pub right next door to NZ House for some eats and drinks before we were scheduled to meet H at 8pm to be let in to the party. It was a strictly invitation only event with limited numbers, but H had secured us tickets. We had a quick burger and a drink each and then me with H outside NZ House. We'd been warned to bring ID as she'd had to give our names with the tickets, but in the end we didn't need it, the woman checking guests knew H and we had a wrist band applied and were ushered in, up to the 17th floor and then one more flight of steps to the Penthouse. Sound posh, but actually the building is really ugly and tired and in desperate need of a makeover. It looks like it's stuck in the 70's and to be perfectly honest is a terrible image to present if we are wanting to promote our country via the embassy.
Having said all that, the Penthouse has some of the best views over London, with a balcony that runs all the way around the outside. The view is SO good, the BBC position a camera there to film the New Years Eve fireworks for broadcasting.
We were feeling horribly under dressed, all the men were wearing tux's or black suits and the women were wearing evening dresses. Joe had a neat Paul Smith shirt that had guitars on it, but no tie, and I had worn a lovely blouse that I had bought at Karen Millen on sale that day, with plain black pants. Barely acceptable, but it really hadn't occurred to us that it would be a flash event. In hind-sight it should have. Ah well, just was well Kiwi's are a relaxed bunch. The evening seemed to go quite quickly, there was food and drink on tap, though it was amusing to note that guests were asked to "bring a plate". I had promised to bring something, and then completely forgotten about it and turned up with nothing. Thankfully H has many more brain cells than me, and she had brought something on our behalf. Fail #2 of the evening. Oops. I have already mentioned the décor was quite dated, it was also very low ceiling-ed and there was lots of marble everywhere, combined with music blaring from the DJ and it was very difficult to hold a conversation. So mostly I just absorbed the chaos going on around me, critiqued everyone else's outfit. There was a woman wearing a very questionable pantsuit that was transparent fabric but covered in gold sequins that she wore very short shorts/undies underneath. That was voted worst outfit of the night. Several others were vacuum packed into dressed two sizes too small or were very low cut with a risk of boob slippage.
One of the highlights of the evening, of which there were many, was the opportunity to meet Sir Jerry Mataparae, who is currently the NZ High Commissioner to the UK. As it turns out, Heather has met him before, and had assured us he was a very approachable and down to earth bloke. She spent most of the evening threatening to introduce us. We were reluctant, what on earth would we say? At one point I had gone to get my go-pro and when I came back, there was Sir Jerry (no no, just call me Jerry) chatting to Joe. So that was my cue to bowl up and be introduced as well. As mentioned earlier it was horribly noisy, so he led us over to some vacant chairs where the noise level was marginally less, and we chatted for a few minutes until someone else came along to make an introduction. We politely relinquished our seats at the point and assured H that she was not in trouble for facilitating the introduction. I found out later that she had approached him, with a "gidday Jerry, I'm getting married so my aunt and Uncle have come over for my wedding and they'd love to meet you" and he had said "sure, where are they I'll come and say hello". Well that's obviously not word for word, but does cover the general gist of what happened. I'll also note here that when he and his wife Janine left for the evening, as he passed us he said goodbye and wished Heather good luck for her marriage. A top bloke.
Soon it was 11:30 and time to grab coats and head out to the balcony to reserve our spot to view the show. It was REALLY cold out, so we were glad of puffer jackets scarves and multiple layers. The countdown began, with the time to midnight projected onto a building neat the Millennium Eye which were to be the center of the fireworks display.
It did not disappoint. I will let the photos do the talking. These are Joe's, I was focused on filming with the go-pro, gripping the stick tightly to keep still, terrified of being jostled and sending the camera over edge and 18 floors to it's death on the footpath below.
They lasted about 10 minutes in total, fabulous. We felt so privileged to be able to see them.
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| View from NZ House |
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| Fireworks |
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| The view from NZ House - Panorama |
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| Crowds gather in Trafalgar Square |
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| Some of the crowd |
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| Deb and Heather |
As you can imagine, London was heaving with people, so as a security precaution, the party attendees were kept at NZ House until 1am so that the streets had cleared a little before we exited the building. We said good night to H as she started to make her way home. We walked over to Charing Cross tube station which was only about 5 minutes away, but there was only one station entrance open with a queue about 100 metres down the street to get into the station. Not encouraging. So we fired up Google maps, which estimated a 40 minute walk, and decided to hoof it home. There were lots of people about, and a large Police presence. Despite the strong smell of pot in the air at various points, everyone was very well behaved and we felt very safe. We made it home by 1:50am (H had beaten us by about 20 minutes) and went straight to bed, considering the New Year sufficiently welcomed!
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