the world according to kmuki: The One Where Kevan Comes To Visit

Last Wednesday I had the pleasure of a visit from my brother in law Kevan for a couple of days.

Originally he was going to arrive in London on the Thursday, but the pull of my obviously wondrous charm was just too much (hehehe) and he arrived a day early. Unfortunately for him I was working at school til late with Concert Band rehearsal, but we made arrangements to meet up at Charing Cross to go for a stroll on the river and a nice meal before returning to Chateau La Jean's.

It was a pleasant evening, although poor Kev has been suffering the effects of jet-lag the past few days so he wasn't really up to much. We ended up in Chinatown for a bit of food, then headed back home.

The next day Kev hit the town and I hit the school. But crashed. Very tired. Kev is staying in my room and is a bit of a snorer! Although he told me to wake him up if he snored, I couldn't do it. I just put my earplugs on instead - and they worked a treat! Actually, I'm not being fair to Kev, it wasn't that bad...

Anyway, he did the London Big Bus experience, and then we made arrangements to meet up in town again for food and a show. We went to my favourite place, Wagamama's (Beck, Kev has now been indoctrinated to the Wagamama's experience, and guess what, he actually liked it!) and then we went to see my favourite show, Avenue Q. Now before you think that I dragged poor Kev to all the things I wanted to do, and didn't give him a say in it - let me tell you that is completely not true! Kev wanted to do all these things too - and he really enjoyed Avenue Q - although it wasn't until Friday afternoon driving down to Portsmouth and listening to it in the car that he got some of the jokes, because the guy doing the sound mixing in the theatre really was quite rubbish. But he really enjoyed the show no less - so much so that on Saturday night in Portsmouth he wanted to try and find more theatre to see!

Kev tries Wagamama's

So Friday. Kev headed out to Greenwich to see the Royal Observatory, and I headed off to the munchkins at school. We met up at the Oval after school and set off for Portsmouth, in search of a B&B. Do you think we could find one? I mean, we arrived quite late because the traffic, to be fair, was absolutely diabolical, so that immediately made it a bit more tricky to just rock up somewhere, but the other reason we had trouble was, do you think we could actually find any? There just didn't seem to be a definitive area where the B&B's were! Eventually we found a place - but it was a hotel B&B - and the only room they had was a double! It was good though - the B&B had wi-fi - so the two of us sat there on our laptops being terribly antisocial!

Saturday morning saw us, after a gorgeous breakfast, heading off to the Historic Dockyard to check out Nelson's Victory. We had a wonderful time too - it took most of the day to be fair - we saw the Victory, the Warrior, the Mary Rose, checked out the Maritime Museum, the Mary Rose Museum... and then did a tour boat trip of the harbour! It was really good, we had a really good time. By mid-afternoon though we were starting to flag a little, and seeing as the place we'd stayed the night before only had that room for one night, we had to find somewhere else to go - so we headed off again in search of more B&B's. This time though, we went to Tourist Information first and found out where they would mostly be. We found a nice little one (twin this time) and had a bit of a rest before the evening's adventures.

Basically, Kev had suggested on Saturday morning that he'd enjoyed Avenue Q so much, that he wouldn't mind seeing something else. The only problem was we couldn't see anything that was actually on in Portsmouth - but then I saw a sign in the window of the Salvation Army thrift shop - "125th Reunion Weekend of Southsea Citadel Band" - yep, you guessed it - we went to a band programme!

I would love to say that it was wonderful, the music astonishing - but let's be honest, for starters the average age of the bandsmen would've been 150 not out! In fact, Kev and I brought down the average age of the audience too. Actually the programme was pretty good, the bandmaster played the xylophone and he was pretty amazing, and the soloist David Daws was very good on the cornet. The other soloist, David Duffey, was actually a bit past his prime, but he gave a fair stab at it.

The sad thing about the whole experience was the way we were treated when we arrived. It was right on the start time, and the hall was packed, and as we walked in, a bloke said we could have the last 2 seats (which were in the front row). We went to take them but the lady on the door jumped up and practically hyperventilated that we hadn't paid our admission yet. Of £2.50! Seriously! Like they wouldn't have been able to recognise us later on and get the money then... we were the youngest there...

Anyway, the next day it was unfortunately time for Kev to head back home, so we chuffed off to Heathrow, enjoyed a coffee and another d&m conversation on the way, and then it was time to say goodbye...

I have to say I really enjoyed Kev's visit - if you're ever this way again Kev...