So, last week was generally frustrating in a wide variety of ways, at work and at home; it culminated in Friday evening, in which I sat in the Castle with a bunch of people expecting to see taimatsu, only by 10pm she hadn't shown up so I wandered over to the Carlton to see nassus who turned out to have already left. Can't help feeling I got something wrong there; also, the evening going like that was a microcosm of my entire week.

Saturday was better, though. I went down to London for my sister's cunning plan to take Mum up the London Eye. I'd never done that before, and it was great fun; extra points for the terribly civilised idea of having a premium ticket which not only cuts down your queueing time massively but also gets you a glass of champagne during the ride. (Or ‘flight’, as all the official text insists on calling them; looks as if British Airways' involvement has had a linguistic as well as an engineering influence.)

The security checkpoint confiscated my Leatherman before I got on the Eye, which I thought was odd. They gave it back when I got off half an hour later, of course, but I confess I'm not sure what kind of serious threat they were expecting someone to be able to pose with a penknife, even a largish and quite sharp one. On an aeroplane I would naturally assume they were scared of me pulling a 9/11-like stunt, but that fundamentally relies on aeroplanes being steerable; even if someone did take over a London Eye capsule at knife point I think it would be a bit tricky to fly it into the Houses of Parliament! (In fact, if I really wanted to do such a thing I wouldn't go for the capsule at all; I'd go for the motor control centre, wherever that is, and rev it right up. It'd certainly work in a cartoon, and it might even work in a Bond film :-)

Sophie asked the guide when was the best time to ride on the Eye, to which he responded ‘between 7 and 9pm on 5th November’. Brilliant. And apparently they don't even charge extra for that…

Then we went to a fish restaurant, which is only about the third time I've eaten out anywhere since being diagnosed coeliac. They actually had a special list showing the allergy information for all their dishes, which was impressive service; sadly it was obviously inaccurate in two places, which was less impressive. We pointed that out after the meal and got it corrected, but it did leave me less than confident that it wasn't non-obviously inaccurate anywhere else :-/ Still, the food was excellent.

Now back at work, and hoping that something might go my way this week.