Opium City
Well, as promised, here's a general overview of what brought me to London and what I did there: madness.
To be specific, I was given some time off in lieu for some real pedal to the metal maximum thrust let's work 12 days in a row for 10-14 hours a day and see where that gets us madness. Well clearly it gets us some 300 miles away in the capital city, because as I finished this burst I got permission to clear off and I suddenly hatched a plan. Unfortunately I would describe this plan as... not even half-baked. It was slightly warmed dough. It seems that booking a hotel in London at ultra-short notice is a nightmare if you aren't the sort of person who gets so annoyed at how all your money just weighs you down and spoils your suit's lines that you just throw it all in a big fire. In my desperation I ended up in a hotel in Bloomsbury that was like a borstal. I was expecting some cockney named Masher to threaten to give me a bog wash if I didn't give him and Bigwig my pudding at lunch. Shared bathroom, tiny cell of a room, woodchip wallpaper (yes, that apparently still exists), tiny toilets with no sinks. Oh yeah. There were two advantages to this hotel: 1 - it was very cheap; 2 - it made me see more of London because I absolutely dreaded going back to it each night. In fact at one point I considered just crawling under the overhang of a statue in the West End and just sleep there. Hey, it'd have made me less of a hobo.
The extraordinary business of the accommodation aside, the few days that I had were both educative and fun. The tube map is quite an intimidating mess when you first come across it, but after the first day and a half I had most of zone 1 memorised and needed to consult it no more. This came in handy when suddenly there were extensive closures on Bakerloo and Circle, followed swiftly by Piccadilly. They damned shut the station behind me in Piccadilly Circus after I'd only stopped off to pick up a sandwich. That deranged clock just off Leicester Square didn't help my mood any at that point either. God, I was expecting a naked man smeared in peanut butter to burst out of it with a knife and a rubber chicken and tell me he was going to make me into a tooth wizard.
The first day (minus the travelling time) was a day of discovery. I didn't know where I was going and what was on offer. I found a charming little Indonesian corner of a market on the edge of Chinatown that had an old-fashioned food cart that brought back some memories. The 1980s-style cafeteria tables, the little plastic stools, the collection of various soy sauces and spicy chilli condiments. Sitting there eating meatball soup listening to all the Indonesian being spoken around me. ...I had been transported to a bygone age. And yet an age that is destined to come around again? Perhaps.
The second day brought about a more extensive exploration, one that aimed to give me a greater understanding of the diverse people who occupy London and yet are forced to live so close to one another that it's remarkable that their worlds :( - but please pray for my friends new born baby that his sugar levels will rise...Yes, I am getting an army together! don't collide. I attempted to terrorise the Ferrari-lined streets of Belgravia and Chelsea Square in my belief that they would be horrified to learn that a beardy Welsh ruffian was clomping up and down the square. I was convinced that their preposterous house prices (£6700 per WEEK?) would immediately plummet. In reality they are very very adept at utterly ignoring the existence of anyone who doesn't own a gigantic credit card fashioned from Angolan diamonds and wrapped in a Ferrari wrapped in a sausage roll. I left in defeat. I at least got to gawp at some Sloane Rangers and the extraordinary fact that they really do wear tweed (with jeans) and drive Land Rovers. I wanted to scream God damn it, I know more about farms than you do! but then I remembered that they're so rich they could probably buy a time machine and send me back to when it was quite legal to hang uppity poor people. Namely 1992.
My night time adventures brought me to Soho, that land of trendiness and also... stuff. I enraged myself beyond all belief when I found a record shop where people actually sat in those weird seats that look like perspex balls with a section cut out of one side of it, listening to trendy records on vinyl through gigantic headphones. Curse you hipsters! I'll get you yet, just see if I don't! After recomposing myself from this outrageous scene I staggered off in search of the fine ethnic restaurants that I believed Soho was famous for. In reality I found few, most of what I came across being organic sushi bars. Somewhat baffled and overcome by trendiness I staggered off in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. At last I found a Singaporean/Indonesian restaurant which I was about to investigate when I noticed a hip bar next door playing Kenny Loggins (probably ironically). Aghast, I strongly considered banging on the window and shouting ATTENTION: no! This may not continue, stop immediately!, when suddenly I got distracted by what was next door to that, which appeared to be some sort of table dancing establishment. Now I'm not even quite sure what table dancing is, but from the look of things I don't think it's where you go to catch up with your wisteria-loving great aunt. I was beginning to attract the attention of the bouncers with my baffled facial expression and mumbling of What...? WHAT...? so I beat a hasty retreat.
Back at Regent Street I found a slew of Japanese shops and restaurants staffed by actual Japanese people. Would this end well? No, of course not. This is me we're talking about. After bursting in there looking like a boy caught going through his parents' dresser drawers, I quickly went about alarming everyone. Attempting to speak Japanese to people I stood behind them breathing heavily as I tried to control my nerves. The way they slowly turned around to look at me as utter death-tinged terror filled their eyes was a sight I won't soon forget. They were filled with the purest most exquisite fear that anyone is likely to be filled with outside the realm of giant man-eating Spider movies. It was extraordinary. Then I found... her. Yes, her. No other could operate a till with such elegance and effortless grace, as if she were finding the most delicate notes on a fine flute of the heavens. Wife. Perhaps in another entry will I expand upon this exchange further.
To fast forward to the next day I decided I was going to be the one, the first one, to get his fill of the British Museum. I was going to be the man who sees all the exhibits and needs to go there no more. BAH! It is impossible! I spent all day there and I barely saw a fraction. I rushed past fabulous treasures in my attempts to take it in, but I failed miserably. Not all the fabulous treasures were behind the glass however. I saw an extraordinary beauty (the kind that overturns nations and cities) in the Japanese exhibition, and desperately attempted to pretend I was one of the exhibits. If only I had a card that said I was the fabled HUZ-BAAND who could be brought back from my frozen state by the overwhelming love of a very rare woman perhaps it might have worked. ...Probably not though.
Exhausted, I stumbled on to New Oxford Street and to Oxford Street beyond. I was somewhat disappointed though, it was just an enormous high street, and had not the quirky shops with normally unobtainable things I had hoped for. By this point my leg injuries were becoming numerous, and I decided to stumble back to the hotel early. Cripes. After watching some Fawlty Towers on a malfunctioning 11 inch CRT TV from 1991 (which has the special feature of making everyone a Dalek), I decided to pop out for one last London meal. Happening upon a Greek restaurant I was immediately obliterated by the waiting staff. So, what would you like to order? ....Uh... food?. It yes, it wasn't the king of all exchanges, but hobbling back one last time, I think I'd set out to do what I wanted to do. I'd bumpkin-mastered the least dangerous section of London.
So what's next? Is it easy to just slip back into my old life? Not really. In London I found that everything I could desire was out there somewhere. There's no such thing as impossible in that city. Now I go back to looking at my Facebook news feed where London-dwelling friends speak in postcodes and tell of wonders I'm yet to discover. It's hard not to want to follow them, to intertwine myself in that place, to put my memories on its streets. This coming year might just end up being wonderful and dangerous.
To be specific, I was given some time off in lieu for some real pedal to the metal maximum thrust let's work 12 days in a row for 10-14 hours a day and see where that gets us madness. Well clearly it gets us some 300 miles away in the capital city, because as I finished this burst I got permission to clear off and I suddenly hatched a plan. Unfortunately I would describe this plan as... not even half-baked. It was slightly warmed dough. It seems that booking a hotel in London at ultra-short notice is a nightmare if you aren't the sort of person who gets so annoyed at how all your money just weighs you down and spoils your suit's lines that you just throw it all in a big fire. In my desperation I ended up in a hotel in Bloomsbury that was like a borstal. I was expecting some cockney named Masher to threaten to give me a bog wash if I didn't give him and Bigwig my pudding at lunch. Shared bathroom, tiny cell of a room, woodchip wallpaper (yes, that apparently still exists), tiny toilets with no sinks. Oh yeah. There were two advantages to this hotel: 1 - it was very cheap; 2 - it made me see more of London because I absolutely dreaded going back to it each night. In fact at one point I considered just crawling under the overhang of a statue in the West End and just sleep there. Hey, it'd have made me less of a hobo.
The extraordinary business of the accommodation aside, the few days that I had were both educative and fun. The tube map is quite an intimidating mess when you first come across it, but after the first day and a half I had most of zone 1 memorised and needed to consult it no more. This came in handy when suddenly there were extensive closures on Bakerloo and Circle, followed swiftly by Piccadilly. They damned shut the station behind me in Piccadilly Circus after I'd only stopped off to pick up a sandwich. That deranged clock just off Leicester Square didn't help my mood any at that point either. God, I was expecting a naked man smeared in peanut butter to burst out of it with a knife and a rubber chicken and tell me he was going to make me into a tooth wizard.
The first day (minus the travelling time) was a day of discovery. I didn't know where I was going and what was on offer. I found a charming little Indonesian corner of a market on the edge of Chinatown that had an old-fashioned food cart that brought back some memories. The 1980s-style cafeteria tables, the little plastic stools, the collection of various soy sauces and spicy chilli condiments. Sitting there eating meatball soup listening to all the Indonesian being spoken around me. ...I had been transported to a bygone age. And yet an age that is destined to come around again? Perhaps.
The second day brought about a more extensive exploration, one that aimed to give me a greater understanding of the diverse people who occupy London and yet are forced to live so close to one another that it's remarkable that their worlds :( - but please pray for my friends new born baby that his sugar levels will rise...Yes, I am getting an army together! don't collide. I attempted to terrorise the Ferrari-lined streets of Belgravia and Chelsea Square in my belief that they would be horrified to learn that a beardy Welsh ruffian was clomping up and down the square. I was convinced that their preposterous house prices (£6700 per WEEK?) would immediately plummet. In reality they are very very adept at utterly ignoring the existence of anyone who doesn't own a gigantic credit card fashioned from Angolan diamonds and wrapped in a Ferrari wrapped in a sausage roll. I left in defeat. I at least got to gawp at some Sloane Rangers and the extraordinary fact that they really do wear tweed (with jeans) and drive Land Rovers. I wanted to scream God damn it, I know more about farms than you do! but then I remembered that they're so rich they could probably buy a time machine and send me back to when it was quite legal to hang uppity poor people. Namely 1992.
My night time adventures brought me to Soho, that land of trendiness and also... stuff. I enraged myself beyond all belief when I found a record shop where people actually sat in those weird seats that look like perspex balls with a section cut out of one side of it, listening to trendy records on vinyl through gigantic headphones. Curse you hipsters! I'll get you yet, just see if I don't! After recomposing myself from this outrageous scene I staggered off in search of the fine ethnic restaurants that I believed Soho was famous for. In reality I found few, most of what I came across being organic sushi bars. Somewhat baffled and overcome by trendiness I staggered off in the direction of Piccadilly Circus. At last I found a Singaporean/Indonesian restaurant which I was about to investigate when I noticed a hip bar next door playing Kenny Loggins (probably ironically). Aghast, I strongly considered banging on the window and shouting ATTENTION: no! This may not continue, stop immediately!, when suddenly I got distracted by what was next door to that, which appeared to be some sort of table dancing establishment. Now I'm not even quite sure what table dancing is, but from the look of things I don't think it's where you go to catch up with your wisteria-loving great aunt. I was beginning to attract the attention of the bouncers with my baffled facial expression and mumbling of What...? WHAT...? so I beat a hasty retreat.
Back at Regent Street I found a slew of Japanese shops and restaurants staffed by actual Japanese people. Would this end well? No, of course not. This is me we're talking about. After bursting in there looking like a boy caught going through his parents' dresser drawers, I quickly went about alarming everyone. Attempting to speak Japanese to people I stood behind them breathing heavily as I tried to control my nerves. The way they slowly turned around to look at me as utter death-tinged terror filled their eyes was a sight I won't soon forget. They were filled with the purest most exquisite fear that anyone is likely to be filled with outside the realm of giant man-eating Spider movies. It was extraordinary. Then I found... her. Yes, her. No other could operate a till with such elegance and effortless grace, as if she were finding the most delicate notes on a fine flute of the heavens. Wife. Perhaps in another entry will I expand upon this exchange further.
To fast forward to the next day I decided I was going to be the one, the first one, to get his fill of the British Museum. I was going to be the man who sees all the exhibits and needs to go there no more. BAH! It is impossible! I spent all day there and I barely saw a fraction. I rushed past fabulous treasures in my attempts to take it in, but I failed miserably. Not all the fabulous treasures were behind the glass however. I saw an extraordinary beauty (the kind that overturns nations and cities) in the Japanese exhibition, and desperately attempted to pretend I was one of the exhibits. If only I had a card that said I was the fabled HUZ-BAAND who could be brought back from my frozen state by the overwhelming love of a very rare woman perhaps it might have worked. ...Probably not though.
Exhausted, I stumbled on to New Oxford Street and to Oxford Street beyond. I was somewhat disappointed though, it was just an enormous high street, and had not the quirky shops with normally unobtainable things I had hoped for. By this point my leg injuries were becoming numerous, and I decided to stumble back to the hotel early. Cripes. After watching some Fawlty Towers on a malfunctioning 11 inch CRT TV from 1991 (which has the special feature of making everyone a Dalek), I decided to pop out for one last London meal. Happening upon a Greek restaurant I was immediately obliterated by the waiting staff. So, what would you like to order? ....Uh... food?. It yes, it wasn't the king of all exchanges, but hobbling back one last time, I think I'd set out to do what I wanted to do. I'd bumpkin-mastered the least dangerous section of London.
So what's next? Is it easy to just slip back into my old life? Not really. In London I found that everything I could desire was out there somewhere. There's no such thing as impossible in that city. Now I go back to looking at my Facebook news feed where London-dwelling friends speak in postcodes and tell of wonders I'm yet to discover. It's hard not to want to follow them, to intertwine myself in that place, to put my memories on its streets. This coming year might just end up being wonderful and dangerous.