the events capital

For the next 3 weeks until he left, Jubby let me stay in the spare bed in the staff quarters at the Globetrotter Inns hostel where I met the crazy Spanish Miguel (aka. CaMeL, aka. Fucking Spanish People, aka. Polla) and within a few days found myself on the ‘Monopoly Pub Crawl’. Pretty much a whole day of drinking at pubs that had very little, if anything, to do with Monopoly. It was more like they just said, "Hey, there’s a pub! Oh and we’re in London.. Wait, Monopoly is based in London.. Let’s have a beer…" I did manage to lose the group at some point and spent a good hour underground on the tube trying to find them, which added a sense of adventure to the tipsiness. The night ended up, unsurprisingly, in the Walkabout (the ever-so popular, yet filthy Aussie/Kiwi/South African pub chain in the UK) and ultimately with a takeaway pizza on the streets of King’s Cross whilst we waited for a birthday party that never came.

Come to think of it, I got upto a lot in my time in London – here are just a few things: Steven and his brother took me to see a very interesting singer/harpist by the name of Joanna Newsom. I spent a lot of time with the lovely Swedish Tess while she was holidaying in London for a couple of weeks. More time with Jubb. Awesome Seinfeld marathons and crumbles with icecream at Ella’s place. House parties; a few of them. Another visit to Manchester for student night, this time along with Jubby in a tranny bar – equally as messy as the previous excursion to that part of the country. Partying until 6am at Fabric, one of London’s most famous clubs, for Ella’s penultimate night over this side of the world was definitely a highlight for me. And Ella's fairwell which wasn't. Then there was the ‘Speaker’s Corner’ in Hyde Park, where anyone can stand up to voice their opinions, lecture, or argue about anything and everything in front of a large intrigued and often rowdy and opinionated crowd – and they do this, not surprisingly on the "big issues" of religion, racism, politics, etc., without apparent control or mediation sometimes causing heated debates. Jubb, Miguel and I took in a couple of plays at the National Theatre and South Bank surroundings, the Dark Knight at the iMax, some Hell’s Pizza and also a bit of Olympic action on a big screen set up in Trafalgar Square. Miguel took me to a few classic movie screenings at the neat and artsy Riverside Studios in Hammersmith, which reminded me a lot of the Palace-Nova cinemas at home, especially with a particular self-portait photo on the wall of a man that I'm convinced must be Mikie's twin. And I managed to casually slice my finger open and proceed to bleed all over the dance floor in a bar in China Town one evening – I have reason to believe there is possibly still a tiny shard of glass still lodged in my finger.
One of the funniest days I had was actually the one in which Jubby and I managed to fail at reaching the one task we had set for ourselves that day – to get to the Tate Modern art gallery – and instead ended up at every pub along the south bank that wanted to sell us a bottle of red wine. Ironically, the last pub we stopped at before calling it a day was literally about 50m away from the Tate Modern but we had sat on the opposite side of the building and so couldn’t see it from our vantage point.. What idiots. The journey back to the hostel involved a few shenanigans with a bit of wrestling and pushing each other into bushes in the middle of a busy walkway and at one point I was on my way to being thrown into the Thames – as you do when you’re drunk. This is pretty much the kind of drunken foolishness that makes people either giggle to themselves or shake their heads in disgust. But the foolishness didn’t stop there and I managed to let a few girls do my make-up before passing out in the hostel bar, only to wake up with black marker pen all over my face and nails, and the words "I love boys" written on my legs. I only found video evidence of this part of the evening hidden away in my phone memory a couple of weeks ago… Sufficed to say, I won’t be wearing shoes whilst drinking ever again!
We did make it to the Tate Modern after all that about 2 weeks later – full of weird and, as its name suggests, modern art forms like cubism, abstract sculpture and a video of a naked, masked man wearing boxing gloves and masturbating. Odd. Then came Jubby’s going away and our trip to Heathrow during which we caught the wrong tube going to a completely different part of London. When we finally reached Heathrow there was a problem with their systems and no planes were allowed to land or take-off for a few hours, creating a sea of at least 20,000 confused and tense passengers waiting outside the terminal. Eventually, his boarding call came and we said our goodbyes.

Photos:

The morning after a big night out...

a party.. in a house..

Tess and the Swedish flag

Joanna Newsom

semi-nakedness on the Monopoly Pub Crawl

Southbank at night

Jubby's suicide lightswitch

these kebab shops are across the road from each other near Ella's place - "probably" the best kebab in the UK or definitely the best on the planet... take your pick... remember to take into account the checklist-style 'tick'

@ the entry to Fabric

some more fish-eye mirror action with Bella

Jubby's "piss-off drinks"

Camel, Jubby and me doing.. something..