London - Clapham to Shepherd's Bush

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The next few days was more of a week of formalities.

Following a bit of a sleep in from our Greece trip, Leo headed back up to Cambridge. I showed Suz our photos and after having a Magners at The George that evening, we got into a bit of a cleaning and maintenance mode. We constructed a scaffold out of chairs and a bed-side table looking thing to reach the smoke detector in the hall way and then started attacking the lime scale in the bathroom basin.

I finally managed to contact my bank in NZ to start the ball rolling on my money transfer, which was pleasing, as I was down to.. well not very much!

The following day I moved out of the room that I had been renting since I arrived to hand it over to Heidi. I moved all my stuff into the lounge, and helped Suz move Heidi’s stuff to make space for Matt in her room.
I spent the next few days sleeping on the futon in the lounge, which was fairly comfortable.

I woke up at a reasonably time on Wednesday and called home for a bit of a chat for about an hour and a half.

After lunch, I headed into Waterloo Train Station to surprise Brendan who was arriving back from Southampton after being on his ship for 3 weeks.
However, mid way along the train platform there was a connection to the underground which I didn’t know about and only just caught him before he lost reception in the underground!
We rendezvoused on the tube platform and jumped on the next train. We were so busy looking at photos, we didn’t notice what station we were up to, or that that train had stopped. After a long while we started moving again, to find ourselves heading in the opposite direction and back at the Waterloo station.
Brendan and I, along with the confused people at the other end of our carriage jumped off and then went back to the southbound platform and waited for the next tube and finally made it home!

I watched a DVD “Crash” with Suz and Matt, who had arrived home from his Contiki Tour the night before, while Brendan had a bit of a snooze.

The next morning we woke up to Matt informing us that there had been a terrorist threat at the local airport and the police and arrested a whole bunch of people who had plans to blow up a series of planes mid-flight. Apparently all the airports were closed and set to ‘critical’ situation. Not good since Brendan and I are meant to be going to Paris in a few days!

We spent the morning looking on the internet for travel deals to France, then walked down to Balham, dropped a library book back and got out some more books and a DVD. I showed Brendan around Balham and we had a coffee at ‘Nero’, which is kinda like Starbucks, but a lot better.

We had a relaxing afternoon, I got a bit bored and starting chomping off my hair. I had to get Brendan to tidy up the back for me. It didn’t take me long before I started having second thoughts about the whole idea. Although I took a fair amount off, its not too short, well by world standard anyway, perhaps a little too short for me. … thank goodness hair grows!

Brendan and I went for a walk down to Tesco’s to get some bit for dinner and we bumped in to his friends again: Steve and Rachael. After dinner we watched DVD “High Fidelity”.

Friday was another relaxing day. Brendan and I went down to Balham to drop back the DVD from last night and had a little look around. Suz and Matt came home and we watched another DVD “Green Street.
We got takeaways for dinner and played a few games over a few drinks before going to bed at the respectable hour of about 1.30am.

Another girl was arriving to day to take mine & Brendan’s spot in the flat. We booked our flights and accommodation to Paris for tomorrow (yay!) and caught a tube up to Clapham Common shops and had lunch at ‘San Marco’, which was a nice little café. We went back to the flat to pack up our stuff, had a bit of a sit down and chat with the rest of the flat then Brendan & I caught tube over to Sheperd’s Bush with all of our stuff.
Despite a bit of frustration from Brendan, I managed to get my big suitcase all the way to Shepherd’s Bush with out any assistance from him. … Thanks to a few kind strangers who helped me up and down a couple of the tube satiation stairs.
Helen Otterway came at meet us at the Sheperd’s Bush tube station, walked us back to her place and had a bit of a chat for a while.
We caught the tube back to Clapham to meet up with Brendan’s mates for dinner, Steve and Rachel, and Rachel’s brother, and then went for a drink at the new bar that had just opened next door. Steve and Rachel moved to their new house today in Watford and it was their last drinks in Clapham!
We popped back to Suz’s place to pick up a late few bits that we couldn’t carry before and headed back to Helen’s on the last tubes home.
I had plans of packing for Paris tomorrow, but my bed was too inviting…

Sunday finally arrived - we were off to Paris today!!
We managed to get up about 10am. I still needed to pack for Paris, and I didn’t have a suitable bag to take. After a quick breakfast, we headed down to the shops so I could buy a bag. While we were in the shop we heard on the radio that British Airways have cancelled a lot of their flights due to the recent terrorist threats.

We went down to the internet café on the way home to check the British Airways website: All BA flights from Terminal four to Europe had been cancelled! 😞
We went back to Helen’s flat and dumped our stuff, then walked down to the pay phone and managed to rebook our flight for tomorrow and also adjusted our accommodation in accordingly.

We went for a walk down to the shops and had lunch at a nice little café to cheer ourselves up.
A little bit more ready for our trip, we had an early-ish night, after Brendan cooked us dinner…hopefully we go to Paris tomorrow!

Unfortunately, I didn’t take any photos this week, so you’ll have to put up with a random pic of my hair.

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Photos

The Big Chop
...The remains...