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Published: August 9th 2007
Monkey Business
What happens when you have 3 people, a small ledge and a cameraBefore I knew it was Wednesday and I was on the tubes heading towards Heathrow to meet Leah and her travelling friend Reg. After a long and loud greeting, we had a talkative journey back to Maida Vale and Leah’s new flat. I introduced her to her new flatmate, Irene, and got some dinner from her soon to be favourite takeaway place, the Chinese shop at the end of our road.
I took the day off work on Thursday to show Leah the sights of London and teach her how to navigate around the big city. We headed down to Oxford Street to have a look at some of the large department and clothing stores including Selfridges.
We meet my friend Andy (who also came to Edinburgh) to have lunch in St. Christopher’s Place before he leaves for Australia tomorrow. We had a look at the Marble Arch and then walked through Hyde Park.
We had a look at The Serpentine in the middle of the park and then found the new New Zealand memorial which consists of a number of vertical metal pillars in a cross shape. Each pillar has various patterns and images of New Zealand on
Leah - Marble Arch
On the Corner of Oxford Street and Hyde Park it. Apparently at night they are lit up to show the pattern of the Southern Cross, which I think would look quite cool.
We walked down to Buckingham Palace for a bit of a look with the rest of the tourists and watched the guards march up and down tirelessly.
That evening, Leah, Carlo and I headed over to Shepherds Bush to meet up with the rest of the gang and introduced Leah to ‘snakebites’. We went and watched the New Zealand band ‘The Feelers’ play as part of their album release tour for ‘One World’ at The Empire. I’m not sure if NZ bands seem even better away from home, but it was a brilliant concert!
We had an early start to the day on Saturday, having a big breakfast and then heading to Bayswater Tube Station to meet the rest of the gang for the infamous Waitangi Day Circle Line Tour.
The tubes were mayhem! You could not fit another body onboard, and of course holding on is not allowed during the bumpy journey!
Everywhere you went was a sea of black. A number of people got dressed up including a sheep and dog;
traditional wife beater, stubbies, gumboots and a mullet!; a guy dress up as an All Black; and some guys in nana’s old nighties <- not sure what was up with them…
It was pretty easy to loose people, but also bumped into a number of people we knew along the way. We made it to Gloucester Road and started to re-group. Josh told us to stay put, so of course the first thing we thought of was to hide!
Leah randomly suggested we climb a tree - I think mainly kidding… so Helen and I made it our mission! WE tried to get Helen up there but gave up, and then some guys came along and gave me a boost. I managed to get up there to see hundreds of proud Kiwi’s lining the streets, but then came the problem of getting down!
Leah managed to roust up two guys who half lift me down / half caught me as I fell, and once again I was on solid ground. We continued towards Westminster, along with the majority of London’s Kiwi population for the infamous 4pm Hakka.
There were so many people there, we didn’t know where
to look, and could only here what was going on. Hopefully we’ll be better organised next year.
From Westminster, we made out way to Waxy O’Conner’s in Leicester Square for a while. I met Carlo and friends at Tiger Tiger in Piccadilly Circus which was a funky venue with good music! - A place I definitely have to come back to!
On Tuesday - Waitangi Day - while everyone in NZ had the day off, and was heading to the beach, I went to work and proudly displayed my oversized NZ flag across my desk. It’s funny how quickly Waitangi Day soon becomes ‘New Zealand Day’ in the rest of the world, because no one knows what Waitangi is!
And of course, the next thing everyone asks after ‘Whats the flag for?’ and ‘Waitangi Day? Whats that?’ is… ‘oh, so do we get cakes?’
So off to the supermarket I went to provide the office with their excess sugar intake.
After work I meet everyone at ‘The Hemisphere Bar’ off The Strand for Waitangi Day celebrations - they even had Speights, mate!
The Air NZ reps turned up who were giving away prizes and managed to
Waitangi Day
Andrea, Hannah and Leah with the NZ sheep and dog score myself a NZ naturals travelling set of shampoo and moisturiser etc.
I got woken up at 7am the next morning with Leah and Irene coming into my room to tell me to look out the window. I jumped up straight away to see lots of snow outside and it was still snowing!!
There was a lot more snow that last time! We headed outside and took some photos before Irene and I headed off to for work. We got off the bus on the way at Westbourne Green park, and got some more photos of all the snow.
It was snowing the whole way to work and I stopped to get photos of the church and the town centre to get even more photos. After lunch, Emma, Tammy and I went outside to make a snowman in the carpark - since none of the cars could get up the hill!
While we were making the snowman, Darren tried to sneak up on us with snowballs and ended up having a snow fight with him! - It was so much fun; I haven’t had a snow-fight in years!
We finished our snowman complete with milk bottle
Proud Kiwi's
Hannah & Leah at Westminster waiting for the infamous Hakka top buttons and my scarf.
After work we went to the Citrus Restaurant in the Park Lane Sheraton for Grant and Heloise’s birthday dinner. The menu was so fancy that I had to get Helen to translate it for me! But a nice evening had by all.
Brendan met me at the train station after work on Friday. We went back to my place where he caught up with Leah - they haven’t seen each other in 7 months!
We had a big chat and made gourmet home made pizza’s for dinner - Yum!
The three of us walked down to Portobello Markets in Notting Hill Gate on Saturday morning to have a look around. We walked up Hyde Park and I showed them Kensington Palace and it’s garden, although it didn’t look anywhere near as beautiful as in the summer time.
We walked along to The Fountains at the top of The Serpentine, which is one of my (many) favourite places in Hyde Park. It started to rain lightly, so we walked along to my old flat in Strathearn Place and had a drink at The Victoria.
We then headed home for one of Brendan’s
Waxy's
Grant, Laura, Leah, Hannah, Helen, Heloise gourmet dinners.
Helen K and her brother, Dave, came over and all of us including Irene went into Piccadilly Circus to ‘Sport Café’ to dance the night way to some good ol’ cheesy music.
On Sunday, Brendan and I took Leah over to Westminster and showed her BigBen and the House of Parliament. We crossed the River Thames and had a walk along the Southbank past the London Eye before having a late lunch at a funky café called ‘Giraffe’ before heading back home.
Brendan and I went out for dinner at the nice Italian restaurant, Red Pepper, and had to walk home in the rain.. I’m looking forward to summer coming…
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