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London started in a whirl of wind and rain, delaying what's normally quite a quick train journey by almost an hour. (Because whoever would have guessed that a UK transport system might have to deal with wind and rain?) Although to make up for that, the sound of the wind howling outside the carriage was incredible, and it felt like the train was riding the storm through the darkness. Which is most definitely how to arrive in a city in style. (Also late.)
Due to late arrival, the original plan (head to Sharon's, drop off suitcase, get changed, drink pink sambuca and head out) had to be replaced with a new plan involving getting changed in the toilets at King's Cross, dumping case in left luggage and heading straight to Angel. Cue massive flashbacks to ten years ago, when that used to be my pre-Slimelight ritual. Met up with Sharon and her most lovely friends, tracked down pink sambuca in Wetherspoons (I have a reputation to maintain after all) and headed on to Propaganda, which was all kinds of silly fun. Introduced London to the question of whether or not ducks have nipples, dirty danced to inapropriate music, and were worshipped as goddesses by men in scary shirts. Very good night :-)
Saturday was up bright and early (well, 9am which should be illegal on a Saturday, especially a Saturday following several weeks of insomnia) to make the treacherous cross town trek to meet up with family and view the new cousinlet. Rode the bus back to King's Cross and was impressed that I actually recognised several places along the way. (I still have no idea where they actually are geographically beyond 'London', but it's a start...) Even more impressed that, having rescued my case, I managed to navigate to Victoria with nearly all the tube lines out of action... including the Victoria line. (See, I am still a London transport virgin - I actually checked to see if there were any tube strikes planned for this weekend, but forgot that with engineering work, you don't ~need~ tube strikes.)
Arrived in Sanderstead to a house full of family, including Mum and Dad who were also visiting for the weekend, and was promptly fed smoked salmon and soup (because that's a traditional Upsdell family greeting.) Convoyed off through slow south London traffic to Wimbledon to meet my brand new cousin-once-removed, who was being incredibly well behaved and quiet - so much so that when I was made to pick him up, I was slightly worried that I might have broken him - I'm sure they're meant to make some kind of sound or motion, aren't they? And why is it that people always insist on handing me babies to hold? I have absolutely zero maternal instinct, I am quite happy having zero maternal instinct, and dumping the thing in my arms is never going to change that. Luckily I managed to swap it for a glass of champagne, which I thought was a pretty good exchange. Had really nice catch up with cousins over cake and champagne, and made plans to actually head out on the town with them in December. Then jumped on a train to Patrick's to get gothed up for the night ahead.
Saturday night ended up being a night of many plans. The original plan (let us call it Plan A) was for me to meet Patrick off his train (he'd been off being a 70's sci-fi bad guy at a Martian house party in Wales) and we'd head to Reptile, hopefully finding somewhere to stash his case along the way. However, we were both suffering from prolonged lack of sleep, and weren't sure about the reliability of cloakrooms, and besides I still had a full bottle of pink sambuca in my suitcase. Thus I came up with Plan B, which was to have a few chilled drinks at Patrick's first, then head into town. Simples.
Admittedly it might not have been the best idea in the world to drink shots out of cups. (There were no chickens.) Or to match shots of sambuca with shots of very strong expresso. Or to finish the bottle. This was around the time people may have started to receive texts about tap dancing eulogies. It was also about this time that we started singing Coal Chamber at the coffee machine. And it was definitely around this time that Plan C was conceived. Plan C involved realising that it would be a three-hour journey to get back from Reptile at 3am. Which would be silly. It would obviously be far more sensible to go on to Slimelight and make a full night of it. (Possibly followed by breakfast cocktails.)
Plan C also involved absinthe. And mountain dew. Which go together surprisingly well. (It was only the following day that we realised that Patrick had accidentally invented the absinthe daiquiri. We ~are~ the bad idea bears. This explains so much.) We also experimented with absinthe espresso martinis and found them to be good. And so fortified we set out on the four-bus trip to central London, ready to bring over-caffinated green-tinged chaos and destruction to the capital.
And made it as far as Teddington. About five minutes down the road. The first bus was no problem. The second bus turned out to be slightly cancelled. Ironically, this was to stop drunken rugby fans from getting into town after the match, and instead it had foiled us in our perfectly innocent rampage. Spoilsports. I did at one point insist we get a taxi into town and went and withdrew a silly amount of money out of the nearest cash machine to make this happen, but Patrick talked me out of it. So after the customary midnight conversation with total strangers at a Teddington bus stop (it's a tradition, or an old charter, or something) we headed back to Patricks to drink the rest of the absinthe and make all kind of evil plans and schemes for Dragon*Con, and twins, and ridiculously-young-but-incredibly-pretty physicists. After all, the city would still be there to destroy tomorrow. Besides, if we had carried out Plan C to the bitter end we probably would both have died just around the point where we ordered breakfast. Which would have been a blatant violation of Rule One, and a waste of a couple of perfectly good breakfasts.
Sunday turned out to be slightly broken. Which was partly due to alcohol, but mostly due to my boots eating my feet during the night. I may be a complete anti-girl when it comes to shoe shopping, but I make up for that by loving most dearly the boots that hurt me the most. (They have spikes on. Big spikes.) We managed to drag ourselves into town to meet my long suffering Number One Wife, the one and only Ellie (worth many camels) for lunch. The journey along the South Bank from Waterloo was interesting. I was limping. Patrick was an airplane, then a submarine. (Because it was raining.) I was an occasional duck. Ellie manhandled my case for me and refused to be the repsponsible adult. We scared many tourists by giggling far too much, and shouting 'pub!' at them, debated filling the graffiti skate caverns with vaseline, drooled over books, and speculated about the most unlikely thing to take with you on a pub crawl (answer: a large group of mormons and some sandpaper.)
Finally made it to Doggetts and achieved food and medicinal alcohol. Got offered the option of eating upstairs in a room with a view but my feet said no. Watched the grand prix on a silent TV with long-distance telephone commentary from Kris, complete with much excited screaming when anyone-but-Alonso won. Discussed whether you could base an entire PhD on the physics of kneecapping someone with an iron bar (answer: probably) and discovered my army of giant spiders could actually come in pink and fluffy - win! We got excited by the concept of fire (well, I did, which may be why we didn't get a candle at our table) and tried to summon an army of evil fishcakes. Decided that with a beard, Patrick is almost certainly the evil twin, which makes Kris the good one. Also decided that we probably had in fact violated Rule One the night before, and were in fact dead, but just hadn't stopped moving yet. So we did what all good zombies do, and went to the Tate to look at sunflower seeds.
Which were... unimpressive. I don't think the whole poisoned dust thing helped very much - I imagine that actually walking on the seeds and feeling them shift under you, with the whispering crunch of yours and other people's footsteps echoing round the Turbine Hall, would have added a whole other dimension to the piece. As it was, it looked unfinished and only half there; an interesting concept, very skillfully realised, but with no visceral impact to transform it into art.
By this point my feet were threatening to rip my spine out and beat me to death with it, so after a random escalator trip to nowhere (because we could) we found somewhere to sit and giggle enough to scare the tourists again. (Or maybe they thought we were an exhibit? I have a piece of paper that says I'm fully qualified to Do Art, after all.) I came up with a wonderful total-destruction plan involving a suitcase full of genuine sunflower seeds and a flock of enraged parakeets, but lacked the energy to carry it through. Or, increasingly, to stay upright. Unfortunately this meant I had to abandon plans to get to MissyKate's birthday drinks and focus all my energy on not dying. Ellie was wonderful (many camels AND a tree full of the finest goats) and managed to get me onto appropriate tube to begin the trek back to Leeds. Called Kris and warned him he might have to actually come onto the train to reclaim my corpse, then concentrated in staying alive and not accidentally eating anybody's brain all the way home.
So thoroughly broken, but brilliant fun. Which was good, as after recent ups and downs I was afraid that London might have been slightly tainted for me this time round. But the city was as wonderful as ever, and I still can't wait to live there.
(Although I will have to be very careful not to die...)
Back the first weekend in December for a longer visit, probably Wednesday to Sunday. Which will hopefully involve slightly less alcohol (see Rule One) and more culture, and a lot of exploring the hidden bits of London (or at least the bits I don't know, which is most of it). It will definitely include ridiculously fine dining and dressing like a girl, could well include Inferno if we can solve the night bus problem, and may even involve twins and ridiculously-young-but-incredibly-pretty physicists. Who knows?
Now to start planning next weekend. Who's doing Wendyhouse?
Due to late arrival, the original plan (head to Sharon's, drop off suitcase, get changed, drink pink sambuca and head out) had to be replaced with a new plan involving getting changed in the toilets at King's Cross, dumping case in left luggage and heading straight to Angel. Cue massive flashbacks to ten years ago, when that used to be my pre-Slimelight ritual. Met up with Sharon and her most lovely friends, tracked down pink sambuca in Wetherspoons (I have a reputation to maintain after all) and headed on to Propaganda, which was all kinds of silly fun. Introduced London to the question of whether or not ducks have nipples, dirty danced to inapropriate music, and were worshipped as goddesses by men in scary shirts. Very good night :-)
Saturday was up bright and early (well, 9am which should be illegal on a Saturday, especially a Saturday following several weeks of insomnia) to make the treacherous cross town trek to meet up with family and view the new cousinlet. Rode the bus back to King's Cross and was impressed that I actually recognised several places along the way. (I still have no idea where they actually are geographically beyond 'London', but it's a start...) Even more impressed that, having rescued my case, I managed to navigate to Victoria with nearly all the tube lines out of action... including the Victoria line. (See, I am still a London transport virgin - I actually checked to see if there were any tube strikes planned for this weekend, but forgot that with engineering work, you don't ~need~ tube strikes.)
Arrived in Sanderstead to a house full of family, including Mum and Dad who were also visiting for the weekend, and was promptly fed smoked salmon and soup (because that's a traditional Upsdell family greeting.) Convoyed off through slow south London traffic to Wimbledon to meet my brand new cousin-once-removed, who was being incredibly well behaved and quiet - so much so that when I was made to pick him up, I was slightly worried that I might have broken him - I'm sure they're meant to make some kind of sound or motion, aren't they? And why is it that people always insist on handing me babies to hold? I have absolutely zero maternal instinct, I am quite happy having zero maternal instinct, and dumping the thing in my arms is never going to change that. Luckily I managed to swap it for a glass of champagne, which I thought was a pretty good exchange. Had really nice catch up with cousins over cake and champagne, and made plans to actually head out on the town with them in December. Then jumped on a train to Patrick's to get gothed up for the night ahead.
Saturday night ended up being a night of many plans. The original plan (let us call it Plan A) was for me to meet Patrick off his train (he'd been off being a 70's sci-fi bad guy at a Martian house party in Wales) and we'd head to Reptile, hopefully finding somewhere to stash his case along the way. However, we were both suffering from prolonged lack of sleep, and weren't sure about the reliability of cloakrooms, and besides I still had a full bottle of pink sambuca in my suitcase. Thus I came up with Plan B, which was to have a few chilled drinks at Patrick's first, then head into town. Simples.
Admittedly it might not have been the best idea in the world to drink shots out of cups. (There were no chickens.) Or to match shots of sambuca with shots of very strong expresso. Or to finish the bottle. This was around the time people may have started to receive texts about tap dancing eulogies. It was also about this time that we started singing Coal Chamber at the coffee machine. And it was definitely around this time that Plan C was conceived. Plan C involved realising that it would be a three-hour journey to get back from Reptile at 3am. Which would be silly. It would obviously be far more sensible to go on to Slimelight and make a full night of it. (Possibly followed by breakfast cocktails.)
Plan C also involved absinthe. And mountain dew. Which go together surprisingly well. (It was only the following day that we realised that Patrick had accidentally invented the absinthe daiquiri. We ~are~ the bad idea bears. This explains so much.) We also experimented with absinthe espresso martinis and found them to be good. And so fortified we set out on the four-bus trip to central London, ready to bring over-caffinated green-tinged chaos and destruction to the capital.
And made it as far as Teddington. About five minutes down the road. The first bus was no problem. The second bus turned out to be slightly cancelled. Ironically, this was to stop drunken rugby fans from getting into town after the match, and instead it had foiled us in our perfectly innocent rampage. Spoilsports. I did at one point insist we get a taxi into town and went and withdrew a silly amount of money out of the nearest cash machine to make this happen, but Patrick talked me out of it. So after the customary midnight conversation with total strangers at a Teddington bus stop (it's a tradition, or an old charter, or something) we headed back to Patricks to drink the rest of the absinthe and make all kind of evil plans and schemes for Dragon*Con, and twins, and ridiculously-young-but-incredibly-pretty physicists. After all, the city would still be there to destroy tomorrow. Besides, if we had carried out Plan C to the bitter end we probably would both have died just around the point where we ordered breakfast. Which would have been a blatant violation of Rule One, and a waste of a couple of perfectly good breakfasts.
Sunday turned out to be slightly broken. Which was partly due to alcohol, but mostly due to my boots eating my feet during the night. I may be a complete anti-girl when it comes to shoe shopping, but I make up for that by loving most dearly the boots that hurt me the most. (They have spikes on. Big spikes.) We managed to drag ourselves into town to meet my long suffering Number One Wife, the one and only Ellie (worth many camels) for lunch. The journey along the South Bank from Waterloo was interesting. I was limping. Patrick was an airplane, then a submarine. (Because it was raining.) I was an occasional duck. Ellie manhandled my case for me and refused to be the repsponsible adult. We scared many tourists by giggling far too much, and shouting 'pub!' at them, debated filling the graffiti skate caverns with vaseline, drooled over books, and speculated about the most unlikely thing to take with you on a pub crawl (answer: a large group of mormons and some sandpaper.)
Finally made it to Doggetts and achieved food and medicinal alcohol. Got offered the option of eating upstairs in a room with a view but my feet said no. Watched the grand prix on a silent TV with long-distance telephone commentary from Kris, complete with much excited screaming when anyone-but-Alonso won. Discussed whether you could base an entire PhD on the physics of kneecapping someone with an iron bar (answer: probably) and discovered my army of giant spiders could actually come in pink and fluffy - win! We got excited by the concept of fire (well, I did, which may be why we didn't get a candle at our table) and tried to summon an army of evil fishcakes. Decided that with a beard, Patrick is almost certainly the evil twin, which makes Kris the good one. Also decided that we probably had in fact violated Rule One the night before, and were in fact dead, but just hadn't stopped moving yet. So we did what all good zombies do, and went to the Tate to look at sunflower seeds.
Which were... unimpressive. I don't think the whole poisoned dust thing helped very much - I imagine that actually walking on the seeds and feeling them shift under you, with the whispering crunch of yours and other people's footsteps echoing round the Turbine Hall, would have added a whole other dimension to the piece. As it was, it looked unfinished and only half there; an interesting concept, very skillfully realised, but with no visceral impact to transform it into art.
By this point my feet were threatening to rip my spine out and beat me to death with it, so after a random escalator trip to nowhere (because we could) we found somewhere to sit and giggle enough to scare the tourists again. (Or maybe they thought we were an exhibit? I have a piece of paper that says I'm fully qualified to Do Art, after all.) I came up with a wonderful total-destruction plan involving a suitcase full of genuine sunflower seeds and a flock of enraged parakeets, but lacked the energy to carry it through. Or, increasingly, to stay upright. Unfortunately this meant I had to abandon plans to get to MissyKate's birthday drinks and focus all my energy on not dying. Ellie was wonderful (many camels AND a tree full of the finest goats) and managed to get me onto appropriate tube to begin the trek back to Leeds. Called Kris and warned him he might have to actually come onto the train to reclaim my corpse, then concentrated in staying alive and not accidentally eating anybody's brain all the way home.
So thoroughly broken, but brilliant fun. Which was good, as after recent ups and downs I was afraid that London might have been slightly tainted for me this time round. But the city was as wonderful as ever, and I still can't wait to live there.
(Although I will have to be very careful not to die...)
Back the first weekend in December for a longer visit, probably Wednesday to Sunday. Which will hopefully involve slightly less alcohol (see Rule One) and more culture, and a lot of exploring the hidden bits of London (or at least the bits I don't know, which is most of it). It will definitely include ridiculously fine dining and dressing like a girl, could well include Inferno if we can solve the night bus problem, and may even involve twins and ridiculously-young-but-incredibly-pretty physicists. Who knows?
Now to start planning next weekend. Who's doing Wendyhouse?
Ohhh!
Please tell me this means that I will be meeting the legendary Patrick?!
The rest of this all sounds great too. Most of your stories actually do make me wish I was you. Somehow you always manage to make even having your feet eaten by your boots (a feeling I'm quite familiar with) sound like a grand adventure.
Still the highlight for me is that at least one (or more?) of your friends that I've read so much about in these pages may actually be coming to America. This really pleases me. :)
Re: Ohhh!
Re: Ohhh!
(It also depends on money-type-stuff.)
Oh and no Wendyhousing for me this month, Thought Bubble is this Saturday, and as I'm helping out at the con I get in free to the after-con party. With a few drinks on tab behind the bar. This beats Wendyhouse.
Re: Ohhh!
And oooh, I'd forgotten about Thought Bubble! Might have to drop in there beforehand... possibly in full Medieval Wendyhouse dress, if I can drag anyone out for the whole day!
Re: Ohhh!
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no subject