A Ghanaian in England: A Distillery, a Lot of Rain, a City of Art and a Gold Toilet

Basingstoke has to be famous for something, right? It’s been called both Amazingstoke and Basing-grad, depending on one's personal opinion, and everyone knows it has that many roundabouts on the ring road that newcomers often get muddled up and think they’re going round in circles (see what I did there?) but its stand out claim to fame must be the Bombay Sapphire distillery. You can get an entertaining tour of the whole process and get to design and drink your own gin cocktail at the end - what's not to like?

Okay, the distillery’s not exactly IN Basingstoke, but close enough.

Then there was the day we planned a second trip to London and I had a Good Idea and I said to Anita, “Let’s travel around by bus this time. It’s convenient and cheap and because we’re above ground we get to see more of the city sights.”

Well it was convenient, and it was cheap, but we didn’t get to see an awful lot. It hammered down with rain all day and the windows were steamed up. Ah, the pleasures of sight-seeing in England in November…..

Tower Bridge looks a hell of a lot better in the sunshine. Still, it was there and we posed with it and photographed it.

And then it did stop raining. For about twenty minutes.

It was pretty dismal round Trafalgar Square too.

If it hadn’t been for Anita I would never have done the “Banksy Tour” of Bristol. It’s well worth doing and there’s even a phone app that guides you round all the works of art. We variously walked and travelled by bus – it wasn’t raining so at least we got to see out on this one.

Basingstoke’s fame could never rival that of Salisbury, with its magnificent cathedral and its charming medieval architecture and of course its proximity to Stonehenge. On the outskirts of the city itself we had tea and cake at a kind of retro-café. Before catching the bus to Stonehenge we each did the obligatory visit to the Little Girls’ Room and Anita came charging out with “OMG! You HAVE to go in there and see the toilet!”

And this is what I found.