bignoseduglyguy

Family frolics & fab food

It has been an intersting weekend around here. The first significant event occurred in the early hours of Saturday morning when Jessie, one of the three cats in our resident menagerie of eight animals, gave birth to three kittens - for a picture hastily snapped on the new SPV smartphone, click here. She chose to do this in our bedroom cupboard so, whilst we now have the soothing sound of maternal purring and tiny little mewls from the kits as we slumber, during the day we have to literally pussy-foot around so as not to disturb mother and offspring too much. This proved to be a pain when I had to search for my day sac in the very same cupboard earlier today. SWMBO woke me this morning with the pronouncement that she and the kids would not be praising the Lord today and that, instead, we were to spend 'quality time' together geocaching, hence the need to find the day sac with the GPS and cache goodies in. As we haven't been out caching for ages, it took a while for the kids to get fired up but the addition of a sleepover friend (theirs, not mine) who'd never been geocaching before soon had them fighting over the GPS and arguing about which way to go. As it has been cold and rainy, we decided to stay in town and look for urban caches rather than drive out to the sticks and get covered in mud.

The first cache we aimed for turned out to be near the old Royal Mint buildings in the City of London ,where coins of the realm were struck for many years. This proved to be spookily providential for, as we circled the area looking for a way to get closer to the location, I found a soggy but pukka £20 note lying in the gutter. The second cache we sought out was very different in that it took us to an unusual memorial in one of the busiest stations in London. A variety of pictures, letters and toys in display case in the form of a giant glass suitcase, with a bronze statue of a small child next to it, illustrates the story of the Children of the Kindertransport who, as mainly Jewish refugee children, had arrived in London’s Liverpool Street Station in 1938 and 1939. By this time, we were all a little cold and hungry, so we scooted of to the nearby Kingsland Road. Here there are a fair smattering of Vietnamese cafes and restaurants which are always a safe bet, as the sprogs and attendant sleepover friend are all rice and noodle fanatics. Having previously eaten at the excellent Hanoi Cafe, this time we decided to cross the road and try the Tay Do Cafe instead. We were the only non-Vietnamese diners amongst the 5 or 6 parties eating late Sunday lunch so we were confident that we would eat well if other Vietnamese were eating there. The seven of us ate a hearty meal that was mostly based around kid-friendly dishes washed down with fruit juices and the 'home-made' lemonade (which was great). The special and chicken fried rices had lots of meat and the prawn and chicken crispy noodle dishes were packed with green veggies and lovely oyster mushrooms. The service was swift if a little remote. I attribute this to the mess resulting from our less-than-perfect chopstick technique - as evidenced in my first faltering video capture with my smartphone - a 1.4Mb .avi file here. The only downside for me was that the chilli sauce wasn't very hot! After icecreams elsewhere, we dropped sleepover friend back at her home and heading slowly back to ours, bellies bulging. Ninety minutes later, three out of four sprogs were baying for pasta with tomato sauce and grated cheese...bless 'em.