Owohhhhhh Wingnuts in London Owohhhhh

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Well first of all I am actually in Russell Square right now but that is not far from Picadilly so I had to settle. After having spoken to my Bendigo boys yesterday and had Milsey complain again that I haven't updated my blog I realised that I haven't done so in a long time...like a really long time. In fact half my tour is missing. Now that I am not traveling anymore and starting to settle in a little I am going to make a attempt to fill in the gaps but first I think I will just recap since I landed because that is the freshest.

Well it was the night of the 28th and the whole tour landed in London feeling very, very sick sad and sorry for itself. I am now 5 days out and my body is only just getting back to normal. Out of my 45 days on tour I had three nights off the grog and my god did my body let me know about it. Surprisingly enough though through all the fatty food and booze etc. I still haven't put on any weight I am exactly the same as when I left, probably largely to do with all the walking we did on tour and also probably due to the loss in muscle and gain in fat, lets just say I am not the fine physical specimen that I was when I left Australia.

Back to the story though. We landed in London and everyone pretty much crashed out straight away. We all had a beer at the Pub near the hotel and then went to bed, which was freaking awesome. Unfortunately, for some us the reprieve was short lived because the reality of the situation I was in had, inevitably, come down on me like a tonne of bricks. I was in a strange town with no job, house and no ticket home. I was so glad that I had gone on tour because while I was there I had met another bloke with similar plans to me and we decided that we would do the London "thing" together, his name is Jeff. It was so good to have someone in the same shoes as me so that when I freaked out he would calm me down and vice versa. It also meant that both of us had a little experience here and there and we could pool our knowledge to help each other out.

The first port of call was to find a house because around here because without a house you can't get a bank account and without either of those you can't get a job. While we were at the internet cafe first thing in the morning I checked my bank balance which just made things worse, I was in dire straights. It seemed like I would be having to be making the big decision within a couple of weeks, when do I need to call it quits and just go home. All I could do realistically was use that as a motivator because I was damned if I was going home! Jeff and I began scouring gumtree.com which I found out was like the god of all classifieds in London this thing was a god send. Unfortunately you have to take the good with the bad and not all the ads lead us to houses we were interested in or in some cases they didn't lead to houses at all.

Some of the highlights (although that probably isn't the right word to use they would be more accurately described as lowlights) of our house hunting were:

- Scammers: Now most people I have spoken to haven't even seen the scammers, only heard about them, well we got two. The long and short of it is they place ads on gumtree for houses that look and sound freaking amazing, then when you get in contact with them they say they have had their time wasted in the past by people who weren't serious so they ask you transfer a large deposit (one guy said £1000) to yourself using a money transfer company before you have even seen the place, how they get your money from there is beyond me but I was damned if I was falling for it. These things were more annoying than anything else because it wasted so much of our time.

- No shows: One guy set up a inspection with us in Limehouse which isn't really far out, but the tube makes everything so easy that by underground standards it was really far out. It took us about half an hour to get out there. We got there a little early so we went and had dinner at a pretty nice Italian restaurant and then we realised that we were beginning to make ourselves late so we scoffed down and food and ran back to the meeting spot. There we called the guy and the phone rings out "Hmmm, that's strange". I call again and I get canceled....it begins to sink in after a few more canceled calls and a message, finally we get a message saying the phone has been turned off. We head back home as angry as ten men.

- Druggos: We got off at Plaistow station. I think really from the beginning just walking around the area we could kind of guess what we could expect from the house but we were so desperate for a house, and at this stage had nothing set in stone, that we were able to deny ourselves the luxury of saying no to the place. When we got there and walked through the overgrown garden we sort of knew what we were in for. I think the point at which we decided we weren't going to live there was when we walked into the room we were supposed to be staying in and were punched in the face with the stench of pot. "Yeah I think the guys who live here at the moment have been smoking pot in here", No shit sherlock, "They shouldn't be doing that", Really?, "Yeah you are allowed to smoke cigarettes in my house but that stuff should stay outside"....Excuse me? Then the nail in the coffin was once we walked down stairs and were given the house rules "The cleaning roster is up there you all take turns...aaand oh! no hard drugs in my house" See. You. later...

Of course in amongst all this we had to live and I will tell you about some of the other things that have happened to us. First of all we were staying at the Royal National hotel which is the Contiki hotel which was nice but very expensive there was no way we could stay there while we were looking for places. So first thing we started looking for hostels around the same area. Jeff and I found a place called the Smart Russell which was just around the corner from the Royal National. They were charging £23 a night twin share instead of the £76 triple share at the Royal National. One travel tip I will give you, there is a reason cheap accommodation is cheap. When we got there everything looked nice, once we walked past the lobby into the main hostel area we realised it was because the whole building was being renovated. There was nothing we could do but laugh when we walked into our pigeon hole of a room and realised that it had no light expect for a painters light sitting in the corner of the room. We were not laughing however when the fire alarm went off at 2 in the morning...8 times. The first one scared the crap out of us! I have never gotten dressed in the dark so quickly before. Unfortunately if there was a real fire we would have burnt alive because the only reason we got dressed in the dark is because I spent life 5 minutes fumbling with the power plug to the painters light to try and see!

From then we were unsure of how many days we needed to stay as we didn't know when we would find a house so we have been booking a night at a time every morning we have had to wake up, check out and then check in to our new room. Unfortunately on our second night there were no twin shares left so instead we got ourselves into a £18 a night mixed gender quad share. This was alright because all day Jeff and I had the room to ourselves and we were still paying the cheaper rate! When we came home from the Walkabout that night we had been in bed for about 15 minutes and we were just drifting off to sleep before the door got kicked in and scared the crap out of us. Standing in the doorway was this petite little Scottish girl with a very apologetic look on her face. Wait let me rephrase that, a petite little Scottish girl with a very apologetic look on her face, absolutely blinding drunk and looking for love. She slurred to us that her name was Fiona and she did Natural Medicines at the University of London apparently she had too many drinks at her Uni pub and then the taxi driver took her the wrong way so she missed her bus back to Glasgow and now she wished she was spooning someone. It doesn't sound like much but it took her about an hour and a half to explain that to us in some dialectic that sort of resembled English. After that she finally passed out but it was too late Jeff and I were stuffed for the entire next day.

The other thing that happened while we were house hunting was Jeff and I stumbled across the famous Walkabouts Pub in Shepherds Bush. We had a date with some girls Jeff knew in London so we decided that it might be a nice place to have a few drinks also they were playing the Chelsea v CFR1907 game so that just made things better. On a side note since I got here I realised that I actually like watching soccer. It is a lot different to watch the sport over here. I think I like the atmosphere more than the game itself but time will tell. So we stopped in and had something to eat and whilst the barman was clearing our plates he asked when we landed because he saw our tourist map on the table. We told him only a couple of days ago and he said "Have you found a place to stay yet?", No, "We have some guys moving out do you want to move in?", Yeah, "Got a job yet?", No, "Give me your number and I'll see if I can get you a trial on the NRL Grand Final day", Sweet!

After all that, Jeff and I have found a house it is £65 pound a week each and we are on a three month contract. See my new place here and because it is in London you are able to zoom right in to street level! Pretty cool. As for a job I am getting very close so everything is continuing to work out for Wingnut.

Just to keep you up to date with my plans for keeping you up to date. Now I have filled you in on what has happened since the tour ended I dare say not a lot of interesting things will happen so I am going to go back and fill in all the gaps in the tour. This will take some time but I will get it done. In the mean time I will say again; GET ON FACEBOOK because I am constantly uploading tour photos to there and there are hundreds now. Also I lost my phone in Hopfgarden in Austria so I have a new Pommy phone number, if you want it send me an email and I will reply to you with it, I am missing being able to send you guys random messages because I lost all my numbers! Hope everything is alright were you are and I will talk to you again soon.

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Comments

[Lisa]

Hi Zac Sounds like things are falling into place and sorting itself out. I had a look at the picture on google of where you are living. Nice roof. It looks typical England though. I think it sounds exciting and I cannot wait to see the new photos on my space. Love you Mum