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Ah London, why do so many of us end up here?
Why have
we ended up here!?
Because we need a break from all the truly beautiful places around Europe! We also need a good hard slap in the face with a dose of inefficiency, congestion, grime and free museums.
I know some of you may find this hard to believe, but we know people who have moved over here from New Zealand. Catching up with them is partly why we are making London one of the more significant stops on this trip. We also need a chance to catch our breath and figure out what to do next.
Our arrival into Heathrow is exactly what we had been anticipating: it's cold, raining, the underground isn't working properly and our Tokyo bought clear plastic umbrellas have been lost by the baggage handlers.
Fortunately our good friend Haydn is coming out to the airport on the Tube to guide us. He's about half an hour late though, due to the lines being worked on. This being a Sunday, half of them are closed for maintenance. We are quite lucky that there is one last train back to central London though,
otherwise it's a horribly expensive cab ride. After waiting around in the filthy underground station with a large crowd of people all looking pretty exasperated, it eventually arrives almost an hour late. This is a pretty grim first impression!
My initial reaction to London is probably best captured in this facebook message I sent to a friend back in New Zealand. Excuse me while I quote myself...
"London is a stinking cesspit of filth so far, but I get it now, everyone comes home and tells all their friends "it was soooo awesome, we took heaps of pills, worked at a really horrible job for a few months, drank ourselves into poverty and lived in squalor with some other malnourished Kiwis, you've got to go and check it out!!" But actually they're so traumatised by the experience that they try to make all their friends come over here so they can feel good about being tricked into coming over by the friends that went before them".
Maybe that's a bit knee jerky, but it's just how I felt at the time man!
The natives appear to be getting on with life in the same way that
people everywhere do: adapting themselves to fit the situation, good or bad. Our situation is pretty good really, we're staying with friends, on couches, in Herne Hill, an honest suburb just down the road from the even more honest suburb of Brixton. If you want a goat curry, then this is the right place to be. Speaking of curry, one evening Hadyn suggested we go to a place called Brick Lane where there is a high concentration of Indian restaurants with staff who wait outside and try to lure you in offering all sorts of deals. We managed to haggle them down to 30% off, a free pint each and Pappadoms. Not bad, but although we felt chuffed with our fierce first timer efforts, I think they still made a profit.
This Brick Lane street is right in the East End. It's tough, grubby, vibrant and busy. The houses and shops are all somewhat run-down, the council refurbishment plan certainly hasn't started here yet. So this makes it the perfect place for edgy graphic design companies to set up shop. The cooler than cool ones are out here, you can taste the irony in the air as you walk
by and feel the anger of displaced long term locals as rent rises drive them out of their homes.
We spent a week in London in the end, but apart from the 3 shows that Lindo played, we kept a relatively low profile due to things like late night singalongs that led to long sleepins and a reduction in the huge days of walking and sightseeing like we were doing in the other parts of Europe. Except for a trip out to Oxford (I'll get to that shortly), a couple of musums and art galleries, it ended up being a nice pause and quite well placed in the middle of the whole trip. I suppose, for me, the thing about London is this: it's a magnificant city, with all the splendid grandeur that the capital of a mighty empire must have. However, the empire ceased to be at the end of WWII leaving Britian on it's knees. It's easy to see, as the rebuilding after the devastation of the German bombing raids in the poorer areas is nothing if not utilitarian. I'd have to say that even East Berlin did a better job, and they went up higher than
2 or 3 stories as well. Perhaps London's time was the "Swinging 60s", that's about how old the underground trains are now, and cities like Barcelona now have the batton, so to speak. Or maybe the 2011 Olympics will give it the impetus to be great once again.
Lindos first performance was at an open mic night. A local Herne Hill pub has one every Tuesday and it seemed the perfect opportunity to get the UK tour rolling. There was even a decent crowd, and appreciative, especially when Lindo made a joke at the expense of the Smiths (easy target I suppose!) The second was on Anzac Day eve at a comedy night run by Kiwis for Kiwis. I couldn't say whereabouts it actually was, but it was a £44 taxiride home. The place was full of about 120 Kiwis and maybe 2 Aussies. Lindo went down alright, but it nearly didn't happen at all because initially there was no way to plug his guitar into the PA. However, after some chopping ends off leads, wirestripping with my teeth, twisting bare copper together and then taping the whole mess up I managed to get a thing which would transmit
electrical signals from the guitar to the speakers. Very dodgy, and I hope no professional ever sees that particular cable.
The third led to the Oxford sojourn, which came about because we have a friend living there. Sally and her husband Chris live in a quaint little 200 year old cottage on a farm just outside the town limits, right by the Thames. She had organised a support slot for Lindo, opening for a band called The Epstein, whom she knows. The venue is a fairly well known pub called The Jericho, which is where Radiohead used to play before they was what they was. The show was notable for members of The Epstein joining Lindo in playing his version of the Dr Dre/Snoop Dogg song "Bitches Ain't Shit". All at once he is fronting a 5 piece alt country band playing some hard core gangsta rap! Our walk back to the farm was notable for the scores of drunk Oxford students making fools of themselves. Not that we were much better, we managed to find a fried chicken stall, which we should have left well alone, and gave in to late night grease cravings. I think that
enjoying a pint somewhere local
that's Sacha beside Lindo and Hadyn beside me perhaps fried chicken is fairly high GI.
Oxford is not a big place and this inspired a certain amount of confidence in us, so the day after the show, Lindon, Haydn and I went for a decent walk around, making sure we paid a visit to Old Christchurch, and then embarked on a river cruise in a small leg driven paddle boat. For about an hour we were the terror of the Thames, playing chicken with row boat teams, hooning recklessely, making as much wake as possible to upset the poor fools who had opted for the hire punt boats, and chasing after the slow canal barges as they made they way along the river. We definitely felt the post paddle pint was well earned.
The next day we visited the RAF Museum. I would just like to say this: to all people who like aircraft and are planing a trip to this free museum, give yourself a whole day, like 10 to 5:30, maybe even 2 for the die hard fan. A drive-by RAFfing is not good, I only got to see 1/5th of what I wanted, Lindo did better, but then he didn't have model planes
and books on Spitfires strewn about his room as a lad.
On the 29th we fly Easyjet to Scotland. Yes, that's right, flying on a super budget airliner, this could be interesting...stay tuned
Olza
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jody
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how many...
dudes you know role like this? good to see what yous are up to. we finally got internet at my flat... everything in melb going real good! seeya in sept.