Day 45-46: London

Highlights:

• Blackwood reunion
• Charge's comedic timing
• Children In Need with Hayley and Alex

THURSDAY

The new Blackberry Facebook app automatically imports people's birthdays into your calendar and so even though I definitely had remembered Thursday's birthday kids, it was an easy reminder that it was my old boss's birthday and on texting him I got an invite to drinks that evening. Socialising sorted, I got out of bed to discover I had horrendous dodgeball muscle ache. It really is one of the best work outs you can have; with all the bending down to collect the balls, the leaping and dodging, and then the throwing you can guarantee you'll hurt at least somewhere you didn't know it was possible to hurt. I shuffled around the house painfully and then after my first beans on toast in a long time (another British cuisine that is under-appreciated on the continent), applied for some jobs and listened to Blitzstein's weird U.S. Air force symphony (remember Blitzstein who was murdered by those Portuguese sailors?) and then some more of the new Bloc Party album. I really love it, so give Kettling a listen at least if you're up for some weird, metally Bloc Party.

I went to give blood at 2.55, but was told there were running 45minutes late as someone was sick and they also only had three beds. I literally live 2minutes away from the venue, so asked if I could check-in but go wait at home. Not allowed apparently. After my aggressive attempt to get you all to stick needles in your arms, the right thing for me to do would have been to wait around and give that day, but I didn't do the right thing and figured I could book into another appointment next week. It'll serve me right if there's a 2hour queue there.

I was going to head to the V&A (the last time I went was about 12years ago, and the William Morris stuff was so boring I've not been back since) but after receiving a fitness message from Abbie and knowing Lewis was at the gym, I decided to go for a run. There's a nice park called Burgess Park between Bermondsey and Peckham which has recently been done-up. It has a lake, a BBQ area, a kids park and some 'green gym' equipment. Not sure if you've seen this, but they're basically just gym machines that are cemented around parks but obviously don't require electricity to run. They have some in Southwark park as well, though they're grouped together. In Burgess Park there's one machine every 30metres. For an isolated workout.

Later I walked my old commute along the Thames, through Shad Thames and across London Bridge into the City. I've accidentally worked in the City for years, and whilst I don't really miss it, there's something cool about the little cobbled lanes and back alleys around Bank. I stopped off at my office to say hi to the building reception guy Joe, and fortunately bumped into my old colleague Chris who walked me to the pub where Banksy was having his drinks - The Cock and Woolpack on Finch Lane. Not a pub I'd necessarily go back to (the worst part of working in the city was mid/post work male drinkers. Awful). So it was Banksy's 32nd birthday (though a 10-Years-Younger style survey he did on his clients that day placed him a fair bit above that). I worked with him my entire time at Blackwood, but only started calling him Banksy like everyone else this year. I used to prefer to wind him up by calling him Andrew. Keep him in his place. It was a good little work reunion. I got all the latest gossip, baby announcements and envy at my freedom. I got a little drunk with my friend Louella and then went home to bed.

Abbie arrived home with her friend Jonny around 11pm, so I got up, put on some clothes and had another drink whilst catching up on Jonny's latest activities. I think I have an affinity with him due to our mutual lack of commitment to higher education. Stuff like that is binding.

FRIDAY
I got up on Friday morning and talked to Jonny for a bit before he went to the Entrepreneurs Conference 2012 at the Excel Centre. He's going in to business by himself as an eco-surveyor (not sure if that is his actual job title but it seems quite apt given that he goes round to properties and tells them how they can save money by implementing certain energy saving changes) after his former boss (at their two-man company) became somewhat impossible to work with. He'd signed up for the conference a while back and knew it was going to be a little bullshit (I think you can make strong comparisons with David Brent's motivational speaking career and those of the speakers there), but he had a mate working at the event who told him Bill Clinton was speaking on the Friday so it was worth going for that at least, and he planned to spend the rest of the day slating the shit speakers on twitter.

Being one of the only people I know to have plans to go top the Excel Centre, I recommended Jonny arrive in style by taking the Olympic/TFL Ski lift from the O2. The best possible use of an Oyster card:

After he left, I did my standard few hours of job searching before committing a full hour to entering on line competition. There are HEAPS of them. I completed loads of surveys targeted at housewives, was asked questions on every possible subject and only called it a day when I became worried that I wasn't putting enough money aside for my funeral (apparently we should all be concerned over the rising costs). A few years ago I did really well out of competitions (two Reading festival tickets, a Field Day ticket, few other miscellaneous gigs and a box of CDs. As I haven't won the lottery since I'm pretty sure I'm due at least an Argos voucher from this latest drive.

I was catching up with the first episode of the new series of The Hour when I heard the charming vocals of baby Charge coming from the living room. Abbie called me in with a "you've got to see this, Nicole!" I popped in to see Charge lying on his front on the sofa with his face smushed to the side. Almost immediately (after seeing me?), he threw up a little bit of milk baby sick on the cushion and settled in with satisfaction. We mopped it up but be careful where you sit next time you're over as we didn't dis-infect at all. More of a wipe really. Just before Ellen left, she confirmed her position as the coolest mum in the world by asking us if we wanted to see something she'd discovered recently, then proceeded to show us how Charge's whole fist could fit in her mouth, leaving his little baby arm looking like a sort of human lollipop stick. Bloody hilarious. She couldn't understand why the other baby mums at the mother/baby screening of Skyfall that morning (it is a 12A) weren't impressed. Squares.

After Charge left (and Ellen with him) I went for a run with Tony. I'm a little out of practice, and his slow run was faster than I'd have been inclined to go at even during my peak 5-times-a-week gyming period (back when my gym was in the stylish old Highbury stadium wing). I've always been a bit of an independent runner. I figure there's no need for anyone else to see me beetroot or judge how often I stop. After being jokingly shoved into a lamppost by Tony (he didn't realise I would actually run slap bang into it), and then him dancing to Carly Rae Jepson as we ran, I think I'm going to continue being an independent runner.

I went to meet Hayley at her flat in Bow in the evening to take her the bottle of wine I'd booze-cruised back from Paris. It was a Medoc. A nice musty number. Good legs. We toasted Hayley's new job and watched some Children in Need. Just a few notes about CIN this year:

• So, first thing's first; what was with the sexy, cartoon Pudsey bear? They kept showing a clip of him dancing sexily to some sort of smooth music, with a really creepy zoom and focus on his crotch area. His little animated hips gyrating to the the beat. Yuck
• Girls Aloud; not sure I approve of their new Stylist. I think drugged, anorexic, fake-tanned, gaunt drag queen is a bit 2007. I don't like to comment too heavily on female image (did anyone hear Clare Balding's amazing statement on HIGNFY about women in media, and newspaper focus on 'sexy' teens turning legal? Completely on the mark) but I really wish they'd grow older a bit more gracefully. They're still only late 20s but their attempts at beauty somehow have the reverse effect of making them look like 50 year old mutton dressed as sunbed lamb. The only one I can look at for longer than five seconds is Kimberley, who has retained a slim but not skeletal figure and some nice warmth to her face, keeping her looking her actual age, if not younger, and making her the only candidate for a half decent role model to young women (though after Darcy Bussell outrageously told her she needed to do a few more sit ups on Strictly this week, I imagine she'll struggle with weight issues before long).
• Good to see Dave Benson-Phillips back in business. After spotting his LinkedIn profile a few years back (http://www.linkedin.com/pub/dave-benson-phillips/21/450/67), I presumed he was struggling. Clearly not if that Horsham charity stint is anything to go by
• The Eastenders/Alan Sugar skit that could have been completely appalling if not for the one slightly redeeming line where he calls Billy Mitchell a 'Cockney SatNav'

I had meant to go to a housecooling party at Dom's (sorry Dom! I had the hat ready and everything) but Alex and Hayley kept me there with extra wine, telling rude jokes regarding the CIB equivalent of working with animals (too inappropriate for this audience I think) and showing me videos of Nick Helm performing (check out "He Makes You Look Fat" here). Even our near friendship-breaking disagreements on the qualities of Matt Baker (hero, if you've ever seen the Blue Peter episode "There's a Nomad In My House") couldn't drag me away. Hayley and I got the friendship back on track when the conversation somehow turned to deaf actors and when I mentioned the pretty, blonde deaf lady from West Wing, Hayley guessed it was the same actress who appeared in the L Word as there couldn't be two people in that category. Yep. It was the same actress.

I left after doing a few lunges behind the couch (my hammies* were killing me) and as Hayley cried with laughter as Alex declared himself victorious for winning a six year relationship with her only by staring at her for weeks across the dancefloor of a student indie club like some sort of creep. No need for roses or sweet talk with Hayley.

* I'm so, so sorry for using the word 'hammies' even as a joke. Sometimes even I want to stop being friends with me

Day 44: London

Highlights:

• World Press Photo 2012 at Royal Festival Hall
• Sir Paul Nurse and the Last Supper at the National Portrait Gallery
• Go Mammoth Dodgeball in Clapham

After a solid morning job search session, I signed up for my next blood doning session. This isn't a good-deed name drop but they're really short of blood at the moment, so if I ever try to convert you to anything, let me just persuade you to pop along to a centre and let some nice/brutal (it's pot luck really) nurses take some blood...they only take a pint, and that replenishes in no time at all. And the smug feeling you get from your good samaritanism is un-quantifiably high. I normally hear a lot of bullshit 'I'm scared of needles'. I'm sure it's a genuine fear, but I think it's probably a good experience for you to face your fear in the name of helping humanity. I'm just saying, you pansies. Plus sides are that you save lives blah blah blah, get free walkers crisps and biscuits, find out your blood type and about all sorts of exotic, if a little niche, sex partnerships that you're probably not even considered (have you had sex with a man who has paid for gay sex in Africa etc.), and get to go on the powerfully-named website www.blood.co.uk.

In the afternoon, I grabbed the tube to Waterloo and then wandered down to the Southbank. After a disappointing stop in the National Theatre (I'd read that they had an interesting exhibition on but the only thing I could see was about jewellery. Yawn), I struck lucky in the Royal Festival Hall where the World Press Photo 2012 winning photos were on show. It's displayed over both sides of the foyer on the bridge level with quite a few prize categories (nature, reporting of world event, individual shots, landscape shots etc.), but I only got around one side before I became a bit too tearful to continue. It's fair while ago now and so in case you've forgotten, 2011 was a bit of a rough year. The Arab spring, the Japanese Tsunami and nuclear disaster, continued economic downtown (leading to 4million US citizens losing their homes according to this display) and all sorts of bad shit for sex workers in Ukraine (HIV hotspot). I'm not sure how long the photos stay up, but you should check it out. It's free and afterwards you can check out the Christmas market tat stands. The stand-out photos in the display include (and if I accidentally sound flippant, I really don't mean to - the photos were really powerful and sobering) the shots of devastated now-rubbled Japanese towns, the Ukrainian interrogation photos, the drug cartel shot of Acapulco* complete with the dawn off arms and head of a man just lying in the street and then somehow the most moving were the photos of the recently evicted families in the US just sitting outside their old properties, surrounded by all their stuff, looking completely desolate. 4million is a lot of people to relocate. Abbie looked at the photos on the other side as well, and her favourite (if not her favourite, at least one she thought was a strong photo) was this:

I headed out across Waterloo Bridge. A man had just bought a Big Issue in front of me and the guy asked me to buy his last one. It was sunny, and I was in a good mood, and the last issue I bought was actually really good. So I bought it, earning a little banter in return that went a little like this:

Man who looked a little like a younger, toothier Hulk Hogan: Where you from?
Me: England, from Essex.
HH: No! You look much more exotic. Like you're from the place with all the Ferraris....(mumbles something that sounds like 'Goodbye')
Me: (affronted slightly by quick end to conversation) Oh, ok, goodbye.
HH: No, goodbye!
Me: Huh?
HH: The place with all the beaches and people in ferraris (acts driving a car). Hoobye!
Me: ...Dubai? I look like I'm from Dubai?
HH: Yes! From Dubai.
Me: Right....ok, that's a compliment I suppose? Thanks

Apparently I also pass as a Middle-Eastern. I walked up past Charing Cross to Trafalgar Square to go to the National Gallery. After a scene in James Bond (it's not a spoiler if I tell you that at one point he's sitting in the room with the Turner and Constable paintings), I had an urge to revisit. It's been about 10 years of no noticeable changes in the layout of the gallery but suddenly they've had a nifty reshuffle of the art in the main rooms, in part to include this cool photo/painting comparison where they put a painting of a naked figure next to a Degas, and a little explanation of the differences and similarities. I charged through the gallery, dominoeing tourists into the walls either side of me, to see my favourites. Cezanne, Claude, Canaletto and that. I was going to add to the 'suggested donation' pot but saw that they'd upped their price. Since then, I've noticed everywhere has done it. The suggestion amount had doubled in the Portrait Gallery. 

First time I went to the National Portrait Gallery it was full of loads of boring old portraits titled 'wealthy merchant's wife' and 'unknown man' and stuff like that. Really dull. I went back a while ago with my friend Tom Mayo to see a painting of Aleister Crowley (that's a Led Zeppelin story for another time), and discovered that the gallery now has a selection of modern portraits, probably making it my favourite gallery in London. There was a photographic/magazine exhibition of Marilyn Monroe and her British appeal, presumably because this year is the 50th anniversary of her death (she died in 1962 for the mathematically deficient). She really started out very sweet looking. Not all glamourous and pouty like the image most of us probably have of her, but just a pretty, happy and lively girl-next-door. The chronological magazine ordering was useful in seeing how she changed. 

Aside from this, there was a £2 exhibition I didn't have time to see (the 2012 Photographic Portrait Prize, featuring Mo Farah and a Pastry Chef) and then the collection of modern portraits. It's broken down into categories now as well, to give equal focus on all key figures in society, rather than just displaying artists' self portraits, so there's a section for politicians, scientists, artists, athletes and a few other categories. Alistair Morrison had taken a probably obvious, but well delivered photo of the last supper, featuring Colin Firth, Michael Gambon and Julie Walters (see here here). There was a bit of a weird head cast by Mark Quinn, which was made out of liquid silicone and the artist's own blood. Yeah, that was a bit gruesome. There was a portrait of Johnson Beharry, who I think probably deserves a particular mention, as he is the only living solider to have been awarded the Victoria Cross. On wikipedia it quotes him as saying 'sometimes you're the bug, sometimes you're the windshield', which I quite like. Nice to see him getting a place in the gallery, rather than focussing solely on David Beckham (a video of him sleeping by Sam Taylor-Wood) and the Beatles. My favourite painting by far is by Jason Brooks, of the doctor and nobel prize winner Sir Paul Nurse. You'd swear it was a photo until you get close and see it's a painting. Incredible. (here). I'm putting a few links on here rather than the actual photos, as I'd really recommend you go see it for yourself.

I walked home from the National Gallery along the river (the below is taken behind the ITV studio part) and whilst on the phone to my Grandma (usually no shorter than a one hour call), missed three calls from Abbie about dodgeball that evening. It was earlier than I realised, so after a super-quick turn around at home, and then a sprint from Clapham North station to the sports centre, I only just made it. 

Abbie and Tony started playing dodgeball last year, and then set up their own team this year. The company that runs it is called Go Mammoth, and after making excuses for months about why I couldn't play, I finally gave in and went along for a match. I bloody loved it. It's surprisingly fun and a really good workout (you ache for days after), and after the first ball flies past you, you lose all fear. Go Mammoth do loads of other sports as well and put together teams of individual players if you're looking to try something new and can't make up a team, or even if you're just looking to make friends. We were three players short, so Abbie called one of the put-together teams for reinforcements. The other team only had two players, so we won by default but we lent them some players and after some feet-dragging by the ref, we got started. On a weeknight you play three sets of three games, which lasts about 40minutes (apparently you play longer on the weekend league). I have what you might call a losing record at dodgeball. We lost each game I played before going away, but then the team started winning. We're not drawing a correlation between those two things. This match was really close. We won a set, they won the next, and then the last set we were tying one game each. In the dying moments of the last game, I was the only person left in against two others. A chance to prove myself at last. So I gathered a ball, flexed my muscles and lobbed it at the weaker one's (the girl's) calves. Only, I'm a bit of an inaccurate thrower, and it just went straight into her arms and so she caught it, meaning I was automatically out. Lose. And it turns out, we hadn't registered with the ref that they hadn't enough players and so it went down as a loss on our record as well. Shit.

We went to the pub after (The Loft near Clapham North), which offered discounts to Go Mammoth players. Two bottles of Becks for £4. It was like uni prices. Almost. I bloody hate Clapham and everything and everyone that is associated with it (only a few, very special exceptions) but this bar took you up a level from the highstreet and had lots of nice sofas and space, and wasn't particularly busy apart from dodgeball players. We hung out with our reinforcement team and some others for a while (see below photo), and then Abbie and I caught the bus to Elephant and Castle where we decided to have a Top Gear style race; her on a Boris Bike, me on the bus. I've been out of London a while, and everything all looks the same in the dark (…) so I sort of forgot where to get off and ended up in the middle of nowhere on a road name I half recognised. I had to wait for another bus for 15minutes, and then that took 20minutes to get back. So Abbie arrived home around 11pm, and I got in just before midnight. My phone battery had died, and Abbie was waiting up like a worried parent. Whoopsy.

* Acapulco like the song. Former holiday resort, now caught up in a drug war so perhaps head to the Copa Cabana or somewhere instead on your holidays if there's a choice

Day 41-43: London

SUNDAY/MONDAY

Six weeks travelling, eating barely any fruit and vegetables and living off mainly beer and bread but remaining completely healthy, and then three days back in London and I pick up a vicious cold. It happened on Saturday, in the space of about 30 minutes. You know when you can literally feel the sickness developing inside, but not being able to stop it? A slight discomfort in the throat, a sneeze and then BAM, death's door. Consequently, after a night out drinking on Saturday, and with this cold to beat all colds (well...not quite...but I was a little poorly) I did absolutely nothing on Sunday. I slummed around, completely guilt-free. I got out of bed around 3pm, and then eventually out of my pyjamas in the evening (rediscovering my onesie and then actual clothes). Tony cooked us a roast dinner and heated up a nutroast for me. Common misconceptions about vegetarian food aside, it was actually really tasty. I mean, it's just nuts and beans joined together with some cheese. You can't really get that wrong.

I still had the cold on Monday, so I moped around in the morning, feeling sorry for myself. I made it out of the house a few times to do errands, played on my Kindle a bit and then waited for Abbie to get home, at which point I stood around annoyingly as she made a tartlette and couscous for dinner. Ian and Ellen came over with baby Charge. It was all going swimmingly, until he threw a bit of a tantrum and started crying. You could confuse him for a few seconds and he’d stop crying, but then a second after he’d remember what he was supposed to be doing and belt out a few more tears. Film and TV baby cries are slightly misleading, or perhaps Charge has just developed his own unique style of crying. He sort of makes sounds like a pterodactyl when he’s in the throes of his unhappiness. Eeeeerch, eeeerch, eaaarrrrck. Those sort of sounds. Ian and Ellen seem to take it in their strides though, and adultly try to reason with him to stop, though there's varying success with that method. The old bounce and bop generally seems the best way to silence him.  

TUESDAY

Things got interesting on Tuesday. Well, in comparison to the past four days, things got interesting. After promising Abbie by text every day that I was going to go to the gym, and then afterwards head to the Design Museum, I finally found my membership card and made it there (no gym, though. I was in recovery from that brutal cold, wasn’t I?). 

The Design Museum is in the Shad Thames wharf and was set up by Terence Conran back in Thatcher's day. He tricked her into agreeing to part-fund the museum be saying that it would be a place to display British design and ingenuity. Terence, father of Jasper and founder of Habitat (R.I.P.), had his own exhibition at the museum a few months back called 'The Way We Live Now', which showed all the cool things he'd done in his life. He takes credit for revolutionising the sex lives of Brits by bringing the duvet to the country. Pre-duvet, we just hard horrible rigid blankets. Not conducive to sexy-times. Aside from the duvet, Jasper and Habitat, he's also designed the chairs and crockery for a lot of top London restaurants. 

As I’ve got a membership, I really need to go to every exhibition to get my money’s worth and the last time I went was a few months before to see the ‘Designed To Win’ exhibition (which I think is closing soon, given that all Olympic feeling is nearly depleted). On the walls as you head up into the exhibition, there are lifesize outlines of lots of famous athletes and a few stats about them. You feel slightly torn looking at these, as whilst you may be only one month younger than Lionel Messi and nowhere near as famous, talented or successful, you’re also the same height. Shorty. The exhibition itself displays all the top developments in sports technology, so from this lethal-looking time-trial bike (here) to the Speedo LZR (here) BSA: START I wrote a joke article about the LZR a few years ago with some friends (here) and then felt pretty pleased with myself when it came up as a question on University Challenge, and I could answer it correctly END

That was a cool exhibition, and at the time they also had the Designs of the Year 2012 displaying on the top floor which was INCREDIBLY cool. Covering all areas (entertainment, transport, public services, architecture, landmine-detonation devices, fashion etc.) it was so impressive and really inspiring to see design being used for things beyond the asthetic of various products. My favourite items were the landmine-clearing device (below), the earthquake table (here) and the Tesco virtual shop in South Korea (here). I bought the book showing all the designs if anyone ever wants to see it. 

At the moment they’re showing ‘Digital Crystal’, which is sponsored by Swarovski (I will consider it a major life achievement when I’m certain of the pronunciation of that word). I don’t know much about crystal or how it’s formed, but if it’s anything like the cool video you see on entry, then it is ridiculously cool. There were two long screens either side of a darkened corridor showing these enhanced, sped up videos of crystal growing as they played these eerie noises littered with crunching sounds as the crystal broke free of the ground:

The exhibition itself was cool (see photos below) and used a variety of devices to display the ideas, including a cool 3D projection thing you could only see as you got close up, like some sort of Star Trek technology. There was this cool ring of crystal, which looked relatively nondescript from the outside, but as you cut down through it, you created polar bear shapes (I've included the white one, as the crystal is too difficult to make out here). 

As a side note, Swarovski was founded by Daniel Swarovski in a place called Wattens in Austria, after he patented a specific sort of crystal cutting machine. Just so you know.

I didn't bother going in Designed to Win again, but headed to the top floor which is now displaying an exhibition called 'Thrift' by the Designers in Residence 2012. I think the museum funds a few young designers each year to get them started. Supposedly after being given access to as many materials and equipment as possible at university, when designers leave they've not got the funds to buy any of those things, so generally have to start out using either cheap goods or changing their styles completely. This is only a small display, but there was a cool PCB (Printed Circuit Board...) that looked like a tube map:

And another woman had created a new product from wool cast-offs from carpet factories, by mixing it with starch. She showed how firm the material could come by putting it in a toastie maker. Yummy, gluey wool toasties. 

After the exhibition I had a walk along the Thames, and took some photos of the nice sky and the seagulls flying over the river in front of Canary Wharf. Beauty in what would otherwise be a pretty grotty area. 

I then headed to the Woolpack pub on Bermondsey Street. This was my first day living as a London Tourist, so I had to resume my European lifestyle of a glass of wine at 3pm each day. Their house wine was a Hungarian wine called 'Moonriver Pinot Noir' (from Aszar-Neszemly, Hungary). Compared to cheap European prices for decent wine, I felt a bit hard done by for the £5.60 medium glass cost for something that was pretty minting. Probably not going to take Gabo up on his offer to show me round the Hungarian vineyards. 

I had to bring my costs up to a £10 card-payment minimum, so I ordered the next one up, which was 'Tilia Malbec' (Mendoza, Argentina) for £6.10. Steep cost, but it tasted much better. I probably can't afford this on a daily basis though. I mean, I've got no job. Can't really justify expensive wine purchases over paying my bills. Before going for the second glass, I went to the loo (don't worry, this is going somewhere) only to find the toilet didn't flush. I told the barmaid, but said it was fine and didn't look bad; it just had a bit of tissue down it but it wasn't gruesome. She went silent for a moment and I presumed the conversation was over when she suddenly said "Have you seen Dogma?". I have seen Dogma. I imagine it must be considered an appalling film by the reviewing community, but I loved it. Alan Rickman with no penis? Matt Damon and Ben Affleck as fallen angels? Alanis Morrisette as God? Amazing. I immediately knew the barmaid was thinking about the Shit Monster scene, where Jay and Silent-Bob have to fight a monster made of shit that comes out of the toilet. That barmaid is a legend. What a brilliant response to a non-flushing toilet warning! 

Went back to the flat to meet Abbie, Tony, Lewis and Abbie's Mum for a group cinema outing to finally see Skyfall. There's a big Odeon near us in Surrey Quays, and on Tuesdays with Abbie's premium card (which I think is a free loyalty card), tickets are only £5.50. Cheap for London. Abbie's mum bought us ice-cream to thanks us for taking her out to the cinema (it was originally supposed to be a date between her and Tony, until Abbie, Lewis and I crashed) and we settled in.

So, given that our housemate has been working on the score to Skyfall, and has had the film lying around on his computer since June, we've all done pretty well to not know any of the plot. Cue a phone conversation with my brother on Friday telling me he'd seen the film, and before I could even draw a breath, revealing what happens in the last scene. Thanks, bro. I presume it's payback for me convincing him to let me tell him what happens in HP and the Half Blood Prince (about a certain wizard dying...). In my defence, I at least gave him the option of not knowing. He just blurted it out before I could stop him. Also, when Abbie was booking our tickets online, in the customer reviews below the ticket options the  douchebag reviewer had revealed the same plot development in the first line of the review. So we went into it knowing at least part of what was about to happen.

Pre-film, there was the benefit of the Kevin Bacon advert being shown in the trailers, and then the Les Mis trailer. That's a family-induced guilty pleasure. Can't wait for it. All those celebs singing? Brilliant. They also showed the Life of Pi trailer which looks insane; it's been given a sort of mystical realism style and whilst I'm not sure I'll actually see it or if it's any good, I reckon it'll be visually impressive if nothing else. Another version of Great Expectations is coming out soon as well, though given that there's only just been another BBC version, not sure there was any point to a film? I wonder why they never check what's coming out before releasing two versions of the same thing in a short period. They did the same with Robin Hood.

Back to Bond; I haven't seen Quantam of Solace and I fell asleep during Casino Royale, so I wasn't really expecting to be blown away. But boy, was I blown away! I'm not going to reveal anything (because that's cruel, isn't it Tom?) but the opening credits are amazing (they go on for about 5 minutes and it's the most visually amazing thing I've seen in a while) and the film is generally great. Action, but without having unnecessary explosions/car chases serving no purpose to the plot, a good story, beautiful/bleak/hectic locations, a great villain (whose first scene might be my favourite Bond/Villain scene in the film series' entire history. It's hilarious. Watch it if only for that) and just brilliant cinematography. Not like your traditional Bond lady-killer stories, but for the first time I felt that it didn't matter. Daniel Craig's Bond is so much more engaging than any of the former ones. If you haven't seen it, I seriously recommend it. Also, there are loads of London scenes, and a nice Ben Whishaw in the National Gallery moment. BLOWN AWAY. We stayed to watch our housemate's name in the credits and then went home to have a beer.

The Speedo

Speedo. Item of international mockery*1 and the nemesis of small penised men. Worn by well-endowed aging celebs a plenty (Peter Stringfellow, Paul Daniels, Mikhail Gorbachev), but what?s the story behind the mysteriously appealing strip of nylon? During a 170,357kb email thread, we found out. First to the origin of the Speedo; invented by a Scot named Alexander MacRae, who in an (assumed) unrelated incident, married his wife at the unusual location of a train station. I?ll give you a moment to overcome your surprise that the internationally renowned one-piece was presumably first tested in an icy loch by a man whose nation (one would imagine) has an Olympic swimming trophy cupboard emptier than the Bible is of scientifically plausible content*2. Ah, but perhaps swimming glory is the motivation! We took a closer look at the Speedo to see if this was true. 

On first glance, one immediately acknowledges the pleasing aesthetics of the swimming garment, but after further discussion, the aerodynamic advantages of the item also come to light; advantages which have undeniably helped the Scots and the rest of the world break
historical swimming records. But back to the beginning, and the almost unimaginable pre-Speedo era of naked swimming and we look to see what Mr MacRae thought the Speedo could bring to the world; to quote our Scotch genius, "Aye, bonny speed"*3. But have you ever stopped and asked yourself how much drag can a willy really have? This is a subject sadly neglected by the scientific research community, but our reporter supposed that it was "crucial tenths of a second to professionals". Guess work doesn't fly unless there's no other option here at (enter publication name), but we pondered this idea and questioned why Scots in particular suffered this drag. Perhaps Scottish men had massive wotsits and prior to the Speedo invention, swimming at internationally recognised speed was a problem for them? Having no Scots among us, no national stereotypes to go on and no Scottish friends close enough to ask about the size of their hoo-haas, we abandoned this line of enquiry. 

Whilst we fear this question may never be answered, Speedo themselves supplied us with at least some science to explain the benefits of their new, critically-acclaimed LZR
(pronounced laser*4) Speedo series, which has a mouth-watering 5% less drag than the company's 2007 release. Put in layman?s terms, this can reduce racing times by 1.9-2.2% and is officially endorsed by Olympic administrators FINA, with 94% of swimming medals in 2008 won by competitors wearing the suit. But back to our entrepreneurial Scot and a
twist to this already inspiring story; it seems he emigrated (sans wife) to Australia in 1912, two years before he even invented the Speedo! Ah, so now we see the light at end of the investigative tunnel. One must assume that on reaching those golden beaches and azure waters, our dear friend Alexander came to feel inadequate in the water alongside the swimming-pool Trojans that Australians are known to be*5. Taunted by Bruce's easy
acceleration in the pool, humiliated by Sheila's giggles as he was lapped yet again by the natives, a light bulb came on in the mind of our modern day Braveheart. And so like democracy and gunpowder before it, a new life-changing genius entered the world. As slogan 'Speed on in your Speedos' and brand name tell us, for speed, yes. But perhaps we can also assume, as his nickname would suggest, old Alexander 'big one' MacRae also
had a large whaddyamacallit and the tight style of the Speedo, which was considered inappropriate by the prudish, was a way of reclaiming his dignity on the beach whilst standing amongst the possibly length-challenged Australian swimmers. 

Today, almost 100 years since it was invented, Des O'Connor and the rest of the world continue to embrace what is now regarded as the epitome of sports equipment perfection. With phenomenal sales each day, hundreds of ranges available on the shelves of all good retailers and the Speedo recognised as the only brand worth wearing in the Olympics, Mr MacRae can rest happily in his grave*6, knowing that in his lifetime, he changed the world for the better.


*1 Ridiculed by Spaniard Nicolás Obregón and African Nicole Pearson (as
all humans originated in Africa), Alexandra Johnston (nationality
confidential under Interpol and CIA command), Middle Eastern
Anglo-Caucasian Joe Harvey (as Europeans all came from the Middle East)
and Sexist Adam Larter (well, of self-assigned nation of 'Sexy', sexist
seemed the most usable informal term) alike
*2 On further research you will see that Scottish men have actually won 8
medals in swimming in the past 50 years, the last being in 1996. We're
still looking for plausible content in the Bible
*3 A completely fabricated quote, loosely utilising the vocabulary of
Scottish character 'McLaren' in 1970s TV series Porridge
*4 Lazer to our American friends
*5 Australian men have won 26 medals in swimming in the last three Olympic
games alone
*6 We assume burial, though he may have been cremated and scattered, or
cremated and turned into a pair of Speedos; research continues

Day 38-40: London

Highlights:

• Getting drunk with my sister on Lidl Prosecco, and learning about Morwenna's medieval re-enactment parents
• Kindle Fire, imdb scene actors recognition
• Baby Charge and Saturday morning Coffee Club
• Reunion drinks with a few friends in the White Hart pub near Waterloo
• Learning that The Hour is coming back to BBC next week (starring Ben Wishaw, Romola Garai and Dominic West)

Lowlights:

• Fern’s bag getting stolen in the White Hart pub near Waterloo
• Kindle Fire not able to charge whilst in use

So, I considered keeping a daily blog on returning to London. It would force me to make the most of the city, right? Make sure I don’t just sit around watching back series of Diagnosis Murder? But after three days and only having a gym trip, window cleaning session (A THREE HOUR WINDOW CLEANING SESSION) and a nice nut roast Sunday Dinner to talk about, it occurred to me that my home life may not be interesting enough to write about on a daily basis. So instead, I’m going to make it every few days, or once a week, in the hope that I’ve done something more entertaining than cook beans on toast in that period. I’ve had a great few days though being back in London. After all that moaning I saw on Facebook about weather, London’s been brilliant. What are you guys talking about? Check out those blue skies and that mild weather*! Those autumn leaves and all that.  

THURSDAY

So on my first day back I ended up waking really early (well, 8am). I had a restless sleep on my memory foam. I think the problem is that it really is almost too comfy. Falling asleep means you miss out on some good comfort awareness, and that dilemma plays on your mind during the night. Anyway, despite being 8am I decided to just get up and make the most of my first day back in London. I went to suss out the kitchen food situation, but it was pretty poorly stocked. We had one egg. No milk or bread, and just one egg. 

Still, it made me get dressed and head to the shops rather than slum about. It took me a while to get ready. I was so excited about the idea of being able to wear different clothes, I tried on about three outfits before settling on a different pair of jeans and a SoundCloud t-shirt. With sleeves! That felt particularly luxurious after 5 weeks of only cutoffs. BACK STORY ALERT (BSA) START: I had sent a unsolicited job application to SoundCloud in Berlin, sending along a book of gig tickets I’d put together over the years to prove my love of music. I figured I had nothing to lose. I received an email from HR saying they had nothing relevant but to keep an eye on the post as they’d sent me a gift. More badges than you can shake a stick at, a few stickers (I might plaster one of the cars on the estate) and a SoundCloud T-Shirt. Not bad, eh? END

I did relatively little for the rest of the day, though I did start exploring my Kindle Fire. It’s a really decent product. Compared to an expensive iPad, it does the same thing, including letting you access music and books from the Amazon Cloud, or storing them on the device, but for a much lower value. You obviously lose a few things in the price drop, but given that you can browse the web, read books, download email and facebook apps, I think it’s worth spending less if you’re not massively in demand of the extra iPad features. The coolest function is when watching videos (you have to have a lovefilm subscription, though you can stream an adequate library with their £4.99/month deal), if you tap the screen, without stopping the video an imdb box pops up giving you links to the actors in the exact scene you’re watching. So if you ever have that ‘Shit! I know that actor. Where are they from? Lemme think, lemme think. Mmmmmmmmmmhhhh’ moment, you can just click on the link and a pop up will appear from imdb showing you their history, briefly pausing the video. You can close the pop-up and resume the video in a second. So after a nice day paying my bills, tidying my room, going to the gym and playing with my Kindle Fire, I came over all helpful and felt the urge to cook dinner (which was a version of this here) and then wash up. Great first day back.

FRIDAY

This was the day I decided not to write a daily blog, because I realised Thursday and Friday’s activities really couldn’t warrant two whole posts. I've given it my best, excessively-detailed shot though. Guys, you've in for an excruciating treat.

So despite the length of this post, Friday was actually a relatively un-eventful day, despite my best plans to make it at least productive (if not interesting) by going through my photos and loading the appropriate ones onto this blog and checking the old posts for spelling and grammatical errors. However I was spurned by some appallingly slow Sky internet and the new Everything Everywhere network on my phone (please watch this amazing Kevin Bacon advert here) which didn’t give me Anything, Anywhere. I had evening plans with my sister though; her boyfriend Jeff was moving back to New Zealand after his Visa had run out, and so I figured she probably needed a little comfort. I was killing time with Tony and Lewis when I received a call from my Dad saying he was in town for work drinks, and wondered if I wanted to meet beforehand. That beat watching Tony try to reload his online Call of Duty game for the billionth time. 

So I went to meet Dad for an early dinner/drink near Covent Garden; we were supposed to meet at Covent Garden station itself but he heard the overhead announcement declare that there were no escalators at Covent Garden, so thought it better to get off at Leicester Square instead because he has a bad leg. That’s all well and good, but a little misleading of the voice lady perhaps as instead of escalators, Covent Garden is equipped with lifts which  would presumably have actually been a better option for his leg...We faffed a bit (Dad - “I’m by the Singing in the Rain theatre”. Me - “Well, I’m by the big Steakhouse at our actual meeting point and haven’t yet managed to learn all theatres and their current productions by heart, so have no idea where Singing in the Rain is showing at the moment”**), but eventually caught up. He wanted dinner so we went to - wait for it - Pizza Hut. Hut. Not Express, but Hut. What a blast from the past. He ordered a Pizza and I ordered the quite tasty House Malbec (bit of a nice grape choice for PH, isn’t it?). His pizza came with a salad bowl, so I spent a good five minutes trying to cram as much in it as possible, being careful not to waste space with lettuce or unstackable tortilla crisps. Dad gave me some family updates and then told me about my their slightly bemusing/concerning 5th November experience. 

BSA START: Billericay holds a HUGE firework night every year on the Saturday closest to 5th November, so we’ve all paid our increasing ticket fare to go most years since I was born (Mum’s got a great anecdote/horror story about how she brought me as a baby to Lake Meadows and I started screaming my head off at the sound of the first firework. She was left stranded without my Dad, trying to push a huge old-fashioned pram with a screaming baby inside through huge crowds and muddy walkways, almost crying herself. In my defence, probably not a good move on my parents’ part to bring a baby whose default noise was to scream until its throat was sore, and then scream a little more after that, to a firework night). There’s an early bonfire and burning of Guy Fawkes (which I’ve only bothered to go to one year when my brother, a Beaver at the time, helped carry the dummy Guy Fawkes to burn horrifically onto the fire. Definitely an appropriate activity for 6 year olds), some funfair rides and a stage hosted by Martin and Sue (and the Morning Crew) from Essex FM, featuring such pop-acts as the Cheeky Girls and a lot of X Factor failures. This is all followed by a 20-30 minute mega-display where the fireworks go off in time to songs like Live and Let Die, a few standard classical pieces, and then last year a playlist with titles that included the word fire (Katy Perry’s ‘Firework’, the Prodigy’s ‘Firestarter’ and Kings of Leon’s ‘Sex on Fire’) END. 

On the actual Guy Fawkes Night (for international readers see here), for about the past 10 years, we’ve alternated with the Wild family (they used to live four houses from us, and their eldest son is my brother’s friend) hosting a mini-firework display in our gardens. This year it was at the Wilds’ new house in Billericay. 

It’s always been a relatively unsafe affair; one year a firework fell over just after it was lit and it bounced around the garden, off the wall and fences and only just missing us as we scrambled out of the way. Like all potentially-mutilating firework accidents (we’ve all seen the public service warning posters), we didn’t even take it that seriously at the time, and sort of shrieked happily as it whooshed a few centimetres past our little kiddy legs. Mum might have been the only one screaming with sensible parental fear. So for 2012 both families bought a box and headed out into the garden to start their display at a reasonable 9pm. After a few fireworks, they suddenly hear yelling from over the fence down the end of the garden; the Wilds’ new neighbour is shouting “What do you think you’re doing? Stop those f****ing fireworks”. My Dad said this guy yelled and swore a few more times before they started defending themselves, explaining (possibly using a few choice swearwords of their own) that it was 5th November, and they just had a mini display that wouldn’t last much longer. The guy continued yelling, so the Wilds asked if they could perhaps come over and talk about it sensibly. The guy then said: You want to f****ing come over here? Do you? Come the f*** on then. Come f****ing talk to me”. After a bit more confrontational argument, the Wild/Pearson party decided to just carry on regardless (there weren’t many more fireworks to light and it was still only about 9.45pm) when suddenly the neighbour next door turned his sprinkler system on and directed it towards the Wilds’ garden. Comically, it fell so short that it didn’t even reach the firework area, let alone the people, and I’m sure everyone’s victorious laughter antagonised this guy even further. He then slumped off back to his house defeated (or to plot a revenge strategy). For the finale they had a nice Roman Candle from one of the sets. A nice, gentle ending at around 10pm. They lit it and stood back in anticipation of some nice, soft firework fizzle. Only, turns out it wasn’t a Roman Candle after all. No, it was in fact the loudest firework of the night and let off tremendous BOOMs every five seconds for the next three minutes. Whoopsy. Way to stick it to the F-word Neighbour. Keep an eye out for a future post about the Wilds being letter bombed or the victims of egging. 

After leaving Dad and having a little wander around the back of Covent Garden to see the Christmas Lights, I went to my sister’s. I stopped off at the Finsbury Park Lidl for a £3 bouquet of Autumn Sunset flowers and a £5.99 bottle of Prosecco. Not my first time in that store. I know exactly where to locate those bargains. Janine, a bit tearful in her heartbreak, appreciated the expense and we spent the evening showing each other photos and chatting with her housemates (my old housemates too, actually. Before moving to Bermondsey, I lived with Fleur, Jo and Janine, before letting my room out to Morwenna). 

Having only shown housemate Morwenna around the flat before I moved out and having only seen her once since, I hadn’t actually get to know her that well. Turns out she’s really cool and interesting. She explained about bad Obama’s Guantanamo continuation plans and later when I mentioned Ljubljana and asked if anyone had been to Slovenia (I can guarantee that about 99.2% of people I ever ask this to will say no), it turned out she had been there a few times! Her family had taken her and her sisters on holiday there when they were younger, and she’d been back with friends since. Morwenna’s parents are Celtic Irish, hence her being named Morwenna (she has a lot of problems with other people’s pronunciations, despite the name being completely phonetic. More-when-ah. She gets a lot of Morweeeeenas, and in her current temp job they’ve actually spelt her name Morweena on her temp badge to accommodate their version. Being called Nicola 50% of the time, I can sympathise). Her siblings are called Aisling (Ash-lin) and Angharrad (Ang-harod), so they have it a little worse I think, and one of them even has the middle name Attracta. Sure, it looks nice written down, but it is actually pronounced ‘a tractor’...Unsurprisingly she didn’t tell the priest about this name when she got married. Morwenna’s parents (Mary and Gerry (which in an Irish accent, this sounds like Jairrrh)) used to take the kids to North Poland for their holidays, accompanying donated goods from their Church to needy families in communist Poland. They drove all the way, stopping off every night to camp out and consequently seeing a lot of mainland Western Europe. They stayed with a nice Polish family the first year, and every year after that they went back to join them. The Slovenian holiday was a result of flooding in Poland and the 1980/90s equivalent of googling to find another suitable location to drive to. Morwenna describes her family as being ‘quite weird’, and I think they sound really cool (her parents play in a Medieval band and go to re-enactments in full court attire; her Dad is a tailor and so they even made the Medieval outfits themselves). 

Morwenna went to bed, and then Fleur hung with us for a bit. She surprised me by telling me she’d been reading my blog every day***, and telling me interesting stories about the time she was forced to go on an French Exchange (whilst still in Junior School!!!) and then for a year during university when she lived in Pigalle. The quality red light district area of Paris. The most interesting/creepy story she told was about a time she was waiting for a cab after a night out, and a car with four men rolled past, calling “Taxi!”. They called her 'poupee' (which I think means ‘doll’), a few other endearments and then on her sensible lack of response started calling her ‘salop’ (bastard?) and 'bitch' (erm...bitch). That French charm.

SATURDAY

I stayed the night at my sister’s, and we 100% confirmed between us that the other didn’t snore, just in case other bed partners had been too polite to tell us. We were woken up early by the check-in calls Janine receives from her colleagues in Liberia. Her company is working on a mining project out there (Liberia sounded like it could be a made up country before I heard about it from her) and as it’s at the planning stage with local tribes, it’s a little risky. A few quick facts for you about Liberia:

• Situated in West Africa next to snazzy Sierra Leone and the Ivory Coast (and Guinea!)
• Capital city is called Monrovia
• Population of 4m, of which only 15% are employed. And we think we have it tough...
• It has lots of delicious iron ore for the West to mine

Janine had put her name down to receive the daily check-in calls from two of the engineers/planners out there. Presumably, if they don’t check-in they’ve been kidnapped by the local tribes (a genuine risk) and my sister has to start some sort of international rescue mission. Fortunately, both guys called so as of Saturday, they’re still alive. It’s been interesting learning from her about the whole mining process beyond the general negative impression we all have of greedy Western mining in poor nations. For a country with little money, economy or infrastructure, mining can actually have some benefits for the local people. If I’ve understood it correctly, in establishing the mine they will create jobs for locals and will also build a town around it, providing schools and general infrastructure for the people. And my sister’s role as a town planner/environmental impact assessor is to make sure this is designed and set up to meet international environmental regulations. So it’s not all bad. As long as the money the country receives from selling their iron ore goes to the people and not corrupt government officials....

Anyway, I rushed back to Bermondsey after a quick crumpet to get to Coffee Club. On the bus from Blackstock Road to Highbury station, I encountered my first London Transport Crazy (LTC)* since being back. European transport seems to be full of drunks, whereas London transport is full of CRAZY people. As four pensioners got on at Highbury Grove, this quite hefty and unwashed version of Emma Thompson’s Professor Trelawny got off the back seat, shouting “ ‘urry up! I’ve only got a minute” a bit of muttering and then “I can’t breathe on here! ‘urry up, you’re wasting my time!”. Whilst aggressive and directed towards a sweet looking 80something old man and his equally aged lady companions, that can’t necessarily be considered crazy until combined with the following lines (bearing in mind I had my iPod on loud for a while, and only caught the following lines three minutes later after seeing other passengers repeatedly glance round at her AND bearing in mind she was by herself and not on the phone): “Oh stop rain. You’ve been raining all morning and I’m fed up!” and then later, after some other jibbering, the creepier line “You would say that!”. Talking to the rain is something, but talking to a voice in your head? Certifiable. 

Anyway, after the bus and train, I just about made it in time for Coffee Club, with a quick stop off to collect my gift for Charge Gridley Stickland. BSA: START Before I moved in with them in February, Abbie, and Tony had established a routine of a Saturday morning coffee session with their network of Bermondsey/South London friends (colloquially known as Coffee Club among us). You used to be able to guarantee it would happen every week, so you could just turn up and find people there without checking first. Or, after everyone in the group (apart from me) bought iPhones, you could use the stalkers-delight app ‘Find Friends’, to check the GPS coordinates of your friends and see if they were still at home or on Maltby Street. That app aside, it was quite a nice community event, and felt particularly un-Londony. For a brief bit of background on the location, every Saturday from about 9am-2pm, Maltby Street (a pedestrianised, warehousy street which runs just behind the bridge in Bermondsey, which runs on to London Bridge) hosts food and drinks stalls and a Saturday-only Monmouth coffee house, and the arches under the bridge open up to sell groceries, cheese (Neal’s Yard and others) and fresh baked pastries and bread (I think a lot of London’s cafe bakery products are made in this area, as when I used to go for 6am runs on weekdays I would be taunted by the smell of freshly baked croissants as I dragged myself past). In the main grocery which we usually go to, you can get a huge bag of fruit and veg which will last most of the week between three people, and it generally only comes to about £10 (you can spend that on one meal’s worth in T*sco. It really opened my eyes to the actual costs of these products if they’re grown locally, and the mark-ups supermarket chains put on things when in their Metro stores). So over the summer, Coffee Club fell a bit slack, and fell off entirely when the Monmouth coffee grinding house shut. This was an archway where Monmouth ground and stored their coffee to supply to London, and unlike Borough Market’s shop, it was only open on Saturday mornings. I think they still own that space, but it ceased it’s Saturday morning selling when a development across the small street started going up and blocked all the sunlight for the people who sat out on the chairs they provided in the street. It always had a huge queue and presumably made them a heap of money, so they reopened further along down the bridge away from Maltby Street (which has been reviewed a ridiculous amount in Time Out and London Guides recently so has got increasingly busy) alongside a few other weekend warehouses-turned-shops. As a side note within a side note, on my first visit to Maltby Street I bumped into my sister’s friend Anne****, and then when I first took my parents, we saw Andrew from Masterchef (little guy with curly hair, who used to be a banker*), and later that day saw Gok Wan walking his dog END.

So I’m hoping this Coffee Club revival was really set up as an excuse to allow me to meet the new baby I’ve been writing about/making famous on this blog, Charge Gridley-Stickland. Since coming home, I’ve been taken aside a few times to confirm that I understood that the baby wasn’t ACTUALLY called Charge G-S, and had been given the name Edison Stickland. Charge was just the nickname before birth, when the parents (Ian and Ellen) didn’t know the gender but needed to call it something. I like it though. I think it’s a strong name, so I’m going to stick with it. So after a quick introduction to Charge (we didn’t shake hands as he was swathed inside Ellen’s coat, but I touched his cheek in what I presume is some form of Eskimo greeting a few levels of intimacy before rubbing noses) everyone grabbed a coffee and some cake. Abbie presented Charge with his own toy versions:

We grabbed some groceries and then everyone came back to ours, and I got to properly hold my first baby. I mean, I’m pretty sure it’s my first baby hold beyond adult guided, pretend holding of babies when I was under 10. I couldn’t help but develop a bop as I held it. Without any control, my body sort of dropped into some sort of self-guided hip-hop bounce. I just couldn’t stop. Charge seemed to like it though, and made some weird non-standard baby noises of delight. As well as Abbie’s gift, I’m pretty sure Ian and Ellen were impressed with my Monoprix outfit for the baby, combining a sort of Lederhosen and a T-Shirt with bikes on (Ian loves all that Tour De France/Professional cycling rubbish as well).

I spent the afternoon cleaning windows, in what I’m calling ‘professional training’ for an idea I have of setting up a window cleaning business on my estate. It’s got hundreds of properties, and if I charged a fiver for each flat, I could make a decent amount of money. All I need is a Squeegee and a bit of soap and soon I’m driving round the estate in one of those low cars with blue lighting, blaring out the best sexist-R’n’B I have in my collection. Then in the evening, having burned a severe amount of calories I’m sure with my wax-on/wax-off moves, I went to the pub to meet some friends for a sort of mini I-know-I-haven’t-been-away-that-long-but-let’s-have-reunion-drinks-anyway event. All was pretty upbeat; my school friend Fay came along who’d just passed her accountancy exams and was going to visit her parents (who now live in Hong Kong) for Christmas, Leo (from Paris, but who is interning for Total in Canary Wharf), Fern (work-friend Fern, who actually elevated to the ranks of genuine friendship through good effort on her part, and a friendship-cementing tent-sharing at a music festival the previous summer), Dom (who could only stay for one- wait, I can stay for another cheeky-half, before he had to shoot off to meet the foxy Dutch girl he was letting couch-surf...in his bed....), Sarah (school-friend who had just been to China with her MP employer Tim Yeo to talk about a green-future), Paddy (stayed for only a half before going to a dinner party in Hampstead. I don’t think I know you anymore, Paddy), and later Alex (Fern’s boyfriend, and blog reader, who identified with the struggle to find bottles of still water in mainland Europe). So after the upbeat start, it all got a bit shit when Fern’s bag got stolen. Having lived in London for about three or four years, I’ve seen virtually no crime. My Whitechapel housemate Joe told me about a relatively unsuccessful mugging in West London that he experienced, and then I saw a woman complain that her bag had been stolen in Leadenhall Market’s St*rbucks once. But this was the first I’d properly experienced it. It wasn’t even oversight on Fern’s part. Her bag was completely tucked away in all of our eyelines. But the robber must have been smart, and just nipped past her as he/she saw we were distracted. Sarah and I did separate scout outs of nearby bins/gardens/underneaths of cars as Fern cancelled all her cards and her phone. As I came back, I tried to cheer her up as she argued with Natwest by revealing the potato I’d just found in my bag. I emailed our old company to say her company blackberry had been stolen as Fern told me that she’d only had a replacement two weeks before after she dropped her last blackberry down a toilet in Morocco. Pretty sure these are signs that God doesn’t want you working there anymore, eh Fern? Despite this, we managed to have a good end to the evening as I tracked down Alex (despite Fern not knowing his phone number) and convinced him to leave his friends and help his girlfriend in need and distress. Saturday over. 

*I started writing this on Saturday, and so acknowledge that we’ve had a little rain and a few grey skies since

** Palace Theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue apparently. Where Spamalot and then Priscilla, Queen of the Desert used to show

***So the blogger site provides stats on the number of viewers I have on each entry, and where they view it from (so country and, somewhat non-importantly, operating system). I had on average about 25 viewers a day, with some posts having around 60 views and others only around 17. I presumed that the committed 25 would be my family (though Janine told me that her and mum skipped all the detailed arts stuff, Dad dipped in occasionally and Tom couldn’t give a stuff) and close friends. Seems the actual average viewers were from an unexpected mix of family, good friends, normal friends and acquaintances

****Great story about Anne and Janine’s friendship: They met at Reading University, became friends and then lived together in their third year. After graduating, Janine moved to London and Anne went to South Korea to teach for a while, before moving home for a bit. One day Janine was at home and started talking to Anne on Facebook Chat. Anne mentioned that she was in London for a week doing an internship with BBC, and was staying with a friend. The conversation that followed went a bit like this:

Janine: Ah cool, where are you staying?

Anne: In Finsbury Park

J: Haha, really? I live in Finsbury Park too! Where abouts?

A: On Hornsey Road

J: No way. I live on Hornsey Road! What number?

A: 203

J: I LIVE AT 203. WHAT BLOCK?

A: THE FIRST BLOCK BEHIND THE GATE

J: I LIVE IN THAT BLOCK!!!!!

A: WHAT? What flat do you live in?

J: Flat 7. Top floor, on the right

(10 seconds later)

Knock, knock. Janine opens door to find Anne with a massive grin on her face

A: Hi Janine