Lords and Ladies (or one Lady at least)

5 April 2007

We started the day with some of the more mundane tasks, shopping for food, etc. Then it was off to Lords. Nowadays a single zone 1 and 2 fare on the Underground costs four pounds. Alternatively you can buy an off peak pass which is good from 9.30 in the morning onward for five pound ten pence. Guess which the two of us bought.

Those of you who know us well understand that we are interested in Cricket and had, in fact, been to the Boxing Day test match where Shane Warne took his 700th wicket. Having checked that there was no game at Lords we decided to do the tour of this famous ground. We were not dissapointed. Lords is the home of Cricket and if you want to know more about its history, visit http://www.lords.org.uk/. In addition to the ground, there is an excellent museum with memorabilia dating from the earliest days of the game. Please note that it is quite some time since an Australian has scored a test century at Lords although Glenn McGrath has made it at least on three ocassions onto the honour board in the visitor's dressing room for taking five wickets at Lords in a test innings.

Thoroughly worn out after tramping around the ground and up to the ultra-modernistic media centre but still determined to get our five pounds worth of value on the Underground, we headed off to the Florence Nightingale Museum on the other side of the river not far from Waterloo Station.

Florence Nightingale was quite a phenomenon. Everyone knows her as the "Lady with the Lamp" at Scutari, but she did much more even though she spent the last years of her life confined to bed. Her main contribution to medical thought was the notion that one should do nothing that might make patients sicker or cause greater harm to them. She was extremely concerned about sanitation - something that obviously had not gotten through to the staff at the Museum if the women's toilets, according to Virginia, were any indication.

Leaving the museum we walked over Westminster Bridge to do some sightseeing, but couldn't see much as a result of works in progress on the bridge. Back on the tube and into our local for beer and crisps before going home and cooking ourselves a very nice fish dinner. We did feel as if we had gotten our value from our Underground passes which, incidentally, also cover buses!