Whale of a time

I know you probably won't believe me, but the picture on the right is actually of a grey whale. Honestly. I mean, how close did you think we were going to get?!? Actually, we got a lot closer than my pictures seem to suggest. I even got a picture of a whale upping tail and taking a dive, but I swear to god you'd have to max out your furtive imagination to work out that the tiny black dot on that photo was a whale's tail, so I thought I'd go with this one, even though it is hardly much better. Ah well, we saw 2 grey whales, a bunch of sea lions and a few sea otters to boot, so I'm certainly not complaining. We also managed not to look remotely ridiculous in our red floater suits* and had a cool time bookin' it across the waves catching tons of sweet air**, so a damn good day all round. I did, however, neglect to wear waterproof mascara (a good tip for any of you who plan to do this in future***) and so ended up looking like I was off to an Alice Cooper tribute evening, but hey ho.


*no, really, we didn't. You're wrong.
**can you tell I hang out with teenagers alot?
***yes Silas, I do mean you

Brookie

Yesterday, my mother & I took a quick trip on Concorde. Not that it left the ground, you understand, but it was damn good nevertheless.

Brooklands Museum has one, 30% of which was actually built there, and they've done a really good job with it. You buy a boarding pass and meet on the transfer bus for a briefing, then up into the cargo hold (tiny!) to see some information about Concorde's history and the story of this particular vessel. Then, you pass up through the cabin where there are original seats from the 70s, 80s and 90s/00s, before taking your seat at the front of the plane and experiencing a full take-off and flight experience (lasting 10 mins!) . Very good indeed and surprisingly emotional.

The rest of the museum is well worth a visit too. To my delight, I got to sit in one of Ayrton Senna's F1 cars although I am sorry to report that my hips are obviously wider than his were. A fact that the (rather advancing-in-years) museum assistant was not slow to point out, in some detail in fact, even going as far as to speculate on my dress size. Which he got wrong. The insulting way. He then tried to guess my weight, which he also managed to get spectacularly and not-a-little humiliatingly wrong. Hmmmm.