Man time!

***WARNING - THERE IS MINIMAL ALPACA CONTENT IN THIS POST***

Last week was school half term week and coincidentally I was off for most of the week too (Woop woop!). Anyway this meant that it was a good week for me and Number 1 son, Angus, to spend some quality time together (actually he is number two son as well, we don't have a spare).

So at precisely 9.01am on Thursday morning we set off from Tisbury, in rural South Wiltshire, on the train to London Waterloo. Our ultimate destination; The Natural History Museum.

Now I don't know about you but if there is one place in the world that makes me feel like a complete and utter country bumpkin it is good old London town.

It wasn't a good start. As we left Tisbury station we were standing. There were no empty seats on the train. Some people got off at Salisbury (the next stop) and we managed to bag the seats in the bit by the doors before the droves waiting to get on did so. Not the most comfortable seats on the train but we remained there, me with the Daily Telegraph and Gus with his DSi, until Clapham, when numb bum cheeks and stiff knees got me, and the boy, upright.

We negotiated our way through the masses at Waterloo Station and were very excited when we realised that the coin operated entry to the toilets was broken! We could piss for free, just like at home!

A black cab then swooped us across London to the Natural History Museum which I hadn't been to since a school trip about 35 years ago! I don't know who was more excited, me or Gus! En route we passed the house of Parliament, The London Eye, Buckingham Palace, Harrods and loads of other central London stuff. Our cab driver, realising we were not from London, gave us a guided tour on route, what a gent!

When we arrived at the Natural History Musuem our hearts sank as we saw the queue to get in. There was a queue to get into the queue! However, fortunately and very surprisingly the queue was rather fast moving and we soon approached the grand entrance to the museum. It was at this point that I looked down, I was wearing my hiking boots (anticipating a lot of walking), a rather nice pair of Scarpa's. These boots, rather than my wellies, have been worn a lot recently to feed the alpacas when the ground has been frozen and when I looked down I could see a few bits of straw sticking out at right angles. I obviously picked up this detritus when I went into the barn and trod in some alpaca 'droppings' amongst the straw, it must have then dried hard within the tread of my boots.

I looked around and no-one seemed to be watching me so I trod on the ends of the straw with my other boot and stepped forward. By this time we had reached the entrance.

As Gus and I walked through the doors I looked back and could see, there on the pavement outside the most visited museum in the greatest city in the world, a small clump of Patou Alpaca Poop! We had left our mark!

Here are some pictures of our trip.

Gus pointing out exactly where we were in the guidebook.

An elephant and me, yes I am the one at the front!

The blue whale, a favourite of ours was photographed from every angle, it was huge!

The dinosaur collection was the star attraction for us and was amazing!

A 'bigbadripyourarmsoffasaurus' or something like that

This was a real giraffe that followed us everywhere!

Buckingham Palace, flag up the pole, the Queen was in. We nearly stopped for a coffee!

A large statue, emnbarrassingly I don't know what it is nor where it was.

So there we are that's what we get up to sometimes!