Hamilton

It is the middle of the night.

I am sitting in the camper van eating leftover chocolate ginger and waiting for the shower water to heat up.

We have been in London.

London.

As the taxi driver said on the way home, it is another country, and it is, it truly is.

It is all another country. The trains run more smoothly, and go faster. We sat on the station this morning and marvelled at all of the different lines, and at the speed, no wonder people say that it is a slower pace of life in the Lake District. This is because London has got all of the expensive trains.

It must have been the wettest day in London’s history. We all had macintoshes, but we have just peeled them off now, and they were sodden.

We set off early, because of wanting to see London. It is a very exciting place when you live in the Lake District. Everything happens there, and there is always the chance that you might bump into Boris Johnson or the Queen, although we didn’t. We hung about outside Buckingham Palace and Ten Downing Street hopefully for a while, but they must both have been out, because we didn’t see either of them. In fact we didn’t see anybody interesting at all, except the chap who has the car spares shop in Windermere, who was drunk, but still surprised to see Mark.

It was very wet indeed. Mark had prepared for this by making himself a skirt out of a dustbin liner. I did not approve of this, but it kept his shorts dry, and since it is London nobody noticed, except possibly the car spares chap, because obviously being from Windermere he would notice things like that.

It rained so hard that there stopped being any point in trying to stay dry, and we didn’t. We splashed about pointing at everything and wandering about in the road like all tourists do everywhere.

We started the day with a trip to an art gallery. I like to visit these because we do not have any in Windermere except for the Beatrix Potter one, which does not count.

This one was not at all like Beatrix Potter, and was showing an exhibition of things that were supposed to make you think about gender fluidity but actually just made me think what self important idiots some people must be, and also that you should not be allowed to be an artist if you can’t actually draw. Conceptual art is not something that I like at all. I like pictures that look properly like the things they are supposed to be, and preferably ones that make me sigh with happiness and think how beautiful they are.

Even Lucy, who is very modern about people turning into lesbian transexuals, said that it was a rubbish exhibition, and none of us could understand how it got the five stars on the advertisement, unless it was a score out of a potential hundred stars. Most of it was roughly the standard of a primary school art class, not that they draw pictures of naked men in high heels fighting bears, and none of us understood what the giant sleeping bag with rabbit ears was supposed to signify. We did not understand the dressmaker’s dummy with the ribbons and the antlers and long vomit of black material either, maybe we are just dim.

There was a bit for over eighteens, which Oliver was not allowed in, so he and I stayed out and milled about looking at other rubbish. Mark and Lucy went to look but when they came out they could not explain at all and just said that it was weird and only upsetting because the pictures were so peculiar, not because they were erotic, although they might not understand southern ideas of erotic so we will not pass judgement.

We came out in the end, feeling glad that we are not the sort of people who have to think fashionable things about modern art.

We liked St James’ park much better, and admired the stunning flowerbeds with our whole hearts. They were true examples of artistry and warmed our inner souls, how clever the London gardeners must be.

We had a massive lunch in a little restaurant opposite the Savoy. We were visiting places where we had been before, and Mark and I stayed at the Savoy on our honeymoon. We did not go in today, because of it being the Savoy and we were scruffy wet people.

We also visited the wall on which we had all slept when we went to London to cheer for Prince William when he got married. It was right outside Westminster Abbey, and we went and patted it fondly. We had had a happy night then, and an ace view of everybody arriving at the Abbey. We cheered our heads off and waved Union Jack flags and felt like the centre of the jolly old Empire.

Lunch was brilliant. Mark and I had fried tuna steaks done rare, which were superb, and we had a competition to see who could see the most buses with advertisements for Hamilton. Mark won with two.

In the end, of course, we went off to see Hamilton, which was our reason for going to London in the first place. The children have been longing to see it for ages. They know all about it from the mighty Internet, and could both sing all of the songs. They sang along in the theatre.

Mark and I only had the vaguest idea of what it was about, we went because it was the children’s Nice Thing to celebrate one of the hardest working school terms ever. It turned out to be about an American who started the Civil War and then became a Founding Father. He had an affair and got shot in the end.

It was utterly fantastic. All of the Founding Fathers were played by black people, and somehow it made you think how much better the world would have been if we hadn’t invented having slaves. They were absolutely stunning, and when it finished the whole audience leaped to their feet practically with one accord, and clapped and whistled and shouted. The cast deserved this.

I could say lots more about London, but it is my bedtime, and my eyes are closing, so maybe I will say it tomorrow instead.

It has been the most splendid of days.