Out on the town

On Thursday night Callum, his mate Westie and myself went to a pub quiz in East London. I had to check several times that I was actually in East London as the pub was showing Hibernian vs. Aberdeen on the television, had a quizmaster from Dumfries, and posters advertising Burns' night. I knew I was definately in London however when a slew of derisory comments about the quality of Scottish football started coming from the adjacent table. I was offended and a little bit upset but avoided a confrontation because deep down I knew that they were probably right, and I didn't have a leg to stand on. Despite this distraction, we started the pub quiz well, scoring six out of ten on the 'science' round. (I can't believe I couldn't remember the chemical symbol for Mercury though. How foolish!). All our good work was undone by the TV & Film round, as the TV questions were all related to soaps and reality TV - which none of us watch. We didn't know who is going to be featuring in 'Dancing On Ice' this weekend but our answer of Terry Nutkins, Pat Sharp, Jimmy Saville and Samantha Mumba certainly looked like an appealing line-up. Anyway, as a result of the comedy answers we lost all focus and finished last, but only because the team below us dropped out. I like to think of it as a 'moral victory'.

Last night it was Callums' birthday so the three of us, a guy called Kevin who I knew back home, and three other friends of Callums' went to Jongleurs nightclub in Camden. The comics were all pretty good, but I refused to feel sorry for the guy in the front row who was made fun of, but couldn't take a joke. For example, it transpired he was a painter and decorator and when asked what his company was called he replied "Shite comedian!".
"You won't get much business with that name!" came the reply, followed by "Funnily enough, my business card says 'Wanky painter and decorator!'". It was a good night out, and after a pint in The Worlds End pub and a drawn-out debate on where to go next, I opted for the safety of the last tube home, and got in around 1.30am.

I'm off work today and tomorrow, but as it's the last week before pay day I'm down to my last few quid and can't do alot, but rest assured I'm saving my pennies for the next pub quiz on Thursday - as it's Burns' night there's two rounds on a Scottish theme. I think Callum and I can safely say we have an upper hand there.

War and other distractions

Last week while I was at London Bridge waiting for Callum, I took a stroll along Tooley Street and happened upon the 'Britain At War' museum. It is housed just underneath London Bridge Station and I've always had a mild fascination with Second World War memorabilia, and I had read alot about the use of Tube stations as air raid shelters in the war so it was with eagerness that I headed there yesterday. I needent have bothered. The whole museum takes about 45 minutes to go through, and apart from some posters, coins, clothes and army equipment from the era it is decidedly lacking. My Lonely Planet 'Best of London' book doesn't even give it a mention, which I should have taken as a sign. The only two things to note from the museum were a story about a man from Kentish Town who travelled to Bond Street every night to sleep in the shelter there because he 'wanted to die at a good address', and a poster urging citizens to save fuel by car sharing which bore the slogan "If you ride alone you are riding with Hitler!" which amused me no end.

Yearning for a decent way to spend my Sunday morning, or early afternoon as it now was, I headed for HMS Belfast, the Second World War battlecruiser which is now permanently moored on the Thames between London Bridge and Tower Bridge and is open to the public as a floating museum. It is advertised as a 'family day out' and is constantly cited in guide books as being a great place to take children, but it definately appealed to me. (What that says about my own maturity is neither here nor there.)

You are given a very informative audio guide, and while the exterior of the ship is all tarpaulin and scaffolding, it is almost pristine inside with faithful recreations of rooms as they were in the 40's and 50's, when she was in active service. I meandered down the narrow corridors and popped into one of the gun turrets, but the highlight was the second I went below decks, to the boiler and engine rooms. I climbed down a steep ladder and stepped through a few doorways until I was standing on a green walkway no wider than 10 inches surrounded by an incredible latticework of piping. As I dodged the many protrusions from the walls I was faced with the giant fans which were used to suck in air from outside to keep the pressure regulated and, as my voiceover explained, if it was warm air that was being sucked in, it was warm air that filled the already sauna-like boiler room, making conditions close to unbearable. After all, it was a cool January day, the ship is not even in use, and it was pretty warm in there - I can't even begin to imagine what it was like for the sailors who worked there. The complexity of the pipework was the most fascinating aspect of it, pipes of all sizes ran in every conceivable direction, making you wonder if they couldn't have laid it out alot neater. How the maintenance crews knew which pipe did what is beyond me, but they really were everywhere. I was utterly captivated.

As I climbed out of the bowels of the ship I made my way through the crews' washrooms and shower cubicles, and all of a sudden was struck with a longing to have been there, as a sailor during war time. I could see myself standing infront of the mirror brushing my teeth as a sudden jolt signalled that we were being called to action stations. Without a seconds thought, my crewmates and I were headed towards our posts, I was a gunner who had to hightail it all the way to the 'Y' turret at the stern of the ship, charging past fellow sailors up the steep ladders and narrow gangways with my heart pumping as fast as it could. With a raging storm outside visibility on the deck was minimal, and as the sea tried to climb on board all that kept me going was pure instinct. Adrenaline was pumping through my veins as I wondered not if anyone would die today, but how many.

I had gotten so lost in this fantasy that I didn't even realise my phone was ringing. At first the intrusion was incredibly surreal, I don't think the sailors during the war could even have contemplated such technology, but I soon remembered that it was actually 2007, and I was in a museum and my mate Callum was ringing me to see if I fancied some lunch. I had roughly another hour on board during which I took in an informative exhibition about some of the ships greatest moments, and spent ages marvelling at some of the detail, including a poster urging sailors to speak to their commanding officer if they had any worries at all about a range of subjects including mortgages, insurance, coping with grief, stress, and problems with other crewmen. At the bottom it also said (with tongue firmly in cheek), "Your commanding officer cannot help you with the following: How to find her, and family planning." It was an unforgettable day out.

As I was quickly running out of superlatives to describe the experience, I left the ship and went to find Callum. We took a trip to South Kensington to pop into the Science Museum for an hour or so, and Callum wanted to see the MI6 building at Vauxhall, so I took him there. From Vauxhall we walked east along the river and ended up at the Tattershall Castle, a paddle steamer which is now a floating pub, moored on the Victoria Embankment opposite the London Eye. Jen and I have spent several evenings there but I hadn't been in a while and luckily the weather was mild enough for us to enjoy a pint on the deck before we headed below for three or four more. As we were both working today we didn't stay out particularly late, but I was rather tipsy when we left and longed for my own bed after a long day at sea. What shall we do with a drunken sailor, eh?

Boobs and more boobs

Yesterday as I was shaving and brushing my teeth, I noticed something rather startling. Either someone had placed two very small mounds of jelly on my chest, or I was developing breasts. Unfortunately, it was the latter. I now have two wobbly bits of flab where my chest used to be. All my life I have been blessed with the fact that I have a very speedy metabolism, and have never really needed to watch my weight or my diet. But now it seems to be catching up with me. I have been drinking more beer than I ever have before, and my diet of late has been shambolic. (This is - I believe - a result of my girlfriend being far away and not telling me off when I have another dinner that not only comes in a box, but is delivered by a heavily padded man on a moped). I decided there and then to do something about it, but I'll touch upon that later on.

I had one of those mornings yesterday where I didn't really know what to do with myself. Rain was lashing against my window and I didn't really feel like going out, so I curled up in bed and waited for the storm to pass. When it did, I headed out and ended up at Waterloo station. Feeling nostalgic (Jen used to live round the corner) I decided to have a stroll around the area. The wind was still pretty strong at this point so my walk was not a long one, but just as I was heading back towards the tube, a rather excitable young woman jumped out in front of me brandishing a clipboard. Now, normally when I see charity workers in the street I bodyswerve them like a car avoiding roadkill, but I had no way out - she was right in front of me. Luckily she was a really nice girl with the sort of boundless enthusiasm a job like hers definately requires, and she went through her spiel of telling me what her charity does and how it helps people. The charity in question was the British Red Cross, and we built up a bit of a rapport as I took a genuine interest in what she had to say. Her name was Lily and after we chatted for a bit about travelling, I agreed to donate some money on a monthly basis, forgetting that in four weeks time I will no longer have an income. Still, she cheered up what was an otherwise depressing afternoon, and as much as I would have liked to chat to her some more about her job and her own forthcoming travels, I didn't want to hold her up and made my merry way back into the center of town.

Still feeling buoyant and not wanting to go home I rang Callum, who later joined me in town and we ended up at the Comedy Store, one of my favourite places for a night out in London. Before that however, we were chatting away and he amused me with news of his latest online purchase:
"I bought a Star Wars 'Phantom Menace' sticker album the other day, fully completed, for seven pounds off Ebay. And I don't even like Star Wars!"
It was funny because it was completely random, but then I remembered the days of my childhood when my entire weekend was taken up by swapping stickers for my Scottish Premier League sticker album. My friends and I went through hell to complete those, spending every penny of spare change on a packet of stickers from John Menzies trying to find the ever elusive arial picture of Kilmarnock's Rugby Park stadium, or a shiny sticker featuring an action shot of Aberdeen's Duncan Shearer. Every lunch time at school we would be comparing our 'doubles', endlessly repeating the mantra of 'got, got, got, need, got, need, got, got...' until we had filled every space in the album, but not before one of us had cheated and phoned the hotline to order stickers they simply couldn't find. Whether they asked the bill payers permission, incidentally, is anyones guess. But thinking of all the blood, sweat and tears that went into those albums, I found it incredibly hard to believe that anyone could let the fruits of all that labour end up on Ebay for a mere seven pounds. It just seems like a very tragic end to what was most likely a rollercoaster of an adventure.

Later on, after a few pints and plenty of laughs courtesy of some very funny people, I found myself on the 149 bus heading home. Two girls were eating pizza and in that instant I knew that the diet I had been planning would have to wait until the morning. I'm almost embarrassed to admit that I have Domino's Pizza on speed-dial, and within twenty minutes of getting in, I was tucking in to a delicious feast. But today I have eaten plenty of fruit and veg, and drunk plenty of water to wash it all down with, and if I continue this and combine it with a few trips to the swimming pool, I should be back in shape in no time, ready to strut my stuff on the beaches of Australia. Actually now that I think about it, it's a diet - not a miracle.

Happy new year

As I woke yesterday morning and surveyed the wreckage that was my bedroom, the one thing that I couldn't understand was why the clothes I'd been wearing the night before were lying in a soaking heap in the corner. My shoes, also soaked through were perched on top of a radiator that wasn't switched on, and the floor was damp in several places. I didn't remember it raining on my way home, and I'm pretty certain it wasn't raining indoors either. After a quick jaunt to the corner shop for a pick-me-up of Red Bull and a few slightly longer jaunts to the toilet, the haze that was Saturday slowly came back to me. Of course, the biggest worry in these situations is that you've embarassed yourself, or lost something valuable on the way. Luckily, neither of these applied.

The day started rather normally, I took a trip into a rain-soaked London to meet up with Callum, and the plan was to find a pub and watch Tamworth vs. Norwich City in the FA Cup. Callum is a die-hard Norwich fan so he was relishing the prospect of seeing his team thump the non-league opposition. With Callums mate - whose name escapes me now - we happened upon The Sports Cafe near Leicester Square and pulled up our stools. Our first pint was drunk at roughly 12.15pm. After spending a small fortune on the pool tables and watching Norwich coast to a 4-1 victory, Callums mate left us and Callum and I headed to Ben Crouches pub near Oxford Street for some lunch. It was only about 3pm but I was rather tipsy at this stage. Fortunately I was sober enough to do a spot of shopping and head home to get ready for stage two of the day. It was a staff night out, the one back in December was just for the management team but this one was for the whole store, so we made our way to a Country Club in what I believe was Cheshunt, but all these places look familiar when they're damp, dark and alcohol-blurred. It was a good night, but I contiuned the trend started earlier in the day and kept knocking back the pints until about 1am when I decided I'd better go home. After a regrettable phone call to my girlfriend - regrettable in the sense that I'd forgotton it was actually 3am where she was - I made my way to a busy dual carriageway that separated me from my destination: the bus stop. I wasn't entirely sure which direction London was in so I just followed the brightest lights. Unfortunately the only way to get to the bus stop was to go under the road through a subway that to my horror was completely flooded. I was in good spirits at this stage though having just phoned a friend who luckily wasn't sound asleep, and after staring at this watery obstacle for a few moments I decided the best way to negotiate it was to just run through it. It must only be a few inches of water, I thought, and if I was sprightly enough I could get away two damp socks and nothing more. I had to traverse about 20 or 30 feet, and was quietly confident of success. Stepping back a few paces, I inhaled deeply and started my run-up. The first ten or fifteen feet were fine, I skipped through the outsized puddle with the minimum of fuss until I was about two thirds of the way across when I very abruptly sank up to my knees. It was one of those situations where the only thing you can do is laugh to yourself, and swear very loudly. Four-letter words rebounded off the walls and celiling while I dragged myself out of the mire. I found the bus stop and sat soaking wet on an empty night bus until my bedraggled body found its way home. Evidently I got out of my clothes as quickly as possible, dried myself off, and passed out. Still, at least I'd made it in one piece. I was very wet, but I was intact.

My New Year celebrations were less eventful, but just as memorable. I waved goodbye to 2006 and welcomed 2007 with open arms whilst standing on London bridge with two Germans drinking champagne out of a polystyrene cup. I'd met up with my friend Jin in Camden earlier in the evening and she'd brought her mate Olly along and the three of us had a good laugh getting drunk and talking rubbish. It was all very random but it worked out lovely in the end.

So 2007 is now upon us - I hope the trend of alcohol-fuelled adventure continues well into the year, I now only have five weeks of work left and while I can't wait to jet off to Australia and be with Jen again I will be leaving with a heavy heart. I could have done with a few more months in London but it's really difficult without Jen being around so this is the best compromise. Hopefully I'll return one day for another spell as a Londoner but if I don't, at least I'll have plenty of drunken memories about this city and the wonderful people I've met in the last nine months.

Happy New Year folks, have a good one won't you?