Remember a Charity

This week is 'Remember a Charity in your Will' week and on Monday I joined up with Louise from Alzheimer's Research UK for a photo-shoot with veteran newsreader Angela Rippon to promote the event.

Of course, a trip into London meant lots of photos but the weather was so bad there aren't many outdoorsy ones.  The first few were taken from the train.

The obligatory shot of The Shard

A tower block of flats and offices affectionately known as The Lipstick

The London Eye

The inevitable delay waiting to get into Charing Cross station

First stop was St Martin in the Fields

The sculpture by Michael Chapman outside entitled 'In the Beginning'

Detail

The East Window 

Time for coffee and croissants in the crypt

Walking on the past

The new design of London bus

We had a look around the BP Portrait exhibition in the National Portrait gallery

Crochet!

Then it was time to head off along Tottenham Court Road for the photo shoot.  It was raining pretty hard by then.

A 'photo-shoot' sounds so glamourous doesn't it but the reality was somewhat different.  ARUK was 1 of 20 charities chosen for the event and so there were representatives from all the other charities there as well as us. We'd got absolutely soaked on the walk there as it had been raining really heavily for several hours. I'd been asked to bring my running gear and the scarf so the first thing I had to do was get changed (in a teeny-weeny toilet). Here's my 'selfie' to show what happens to curly hair in damp weather - it sticks out!!!  

The studio where the photos were taken was small and their offices were spread over 3 floors.  There wasn't a waiting room so everybody lined the 4 sets of stairs whilst we waited to go in. 

Daphne the trainee guide dog stole the show. She was so well behaved. Her trainer told us it costs over £30,000 to train one dog.

We went right to the top of the building and found an empty studio to sit in.

We waited and waited.  They told us they were running about 15 minutes late. 1 hour later the photos started. It was literally a case of in and out as they only took about 30 seconds each. We had been promised a chat with Angela at the end as her mother suffered from vascular dementia and so we hoped we could connect and get her support for ARUK. She was so pressed for time that we only managed a very quick chat and her involvement was perfunctory so we were a bit disappointed. Never mind, the photo turned out well and will be good for publicity.

When we left it was still pouring with rain so we got soaked again. Mike's back started to hurt from all the walking so we had to slow down, missed our train by a few minutes and had to wait another hour for the next one. Whilst we were waiting I tried to do my usual cryptic crosswords and sudoku but was struggling with them.  

When we arrived home I realised I'd left my jacket on the train (I'd hung it up to dry) so I tried to phone the station where the train terminated as I knew it wouldn't have arrived by then and I thought perhaps someone could have rescued my jacket for me. Oh no, I couldn't get a phone number for the station and had to go via the national enquiry service to get to the lost property department who informed me that it would take at least 10 days for my jacket to be returned to a depot 20 miles away (that is, if it hadn't been stolen).

At that point I decided that my absent-mindedness meant I was developing dementia and burst into tears. The perfect end to a perfect day!